What is wrong with Dark/Edgey?

[DudeistBelieve]

This is something that's been grinding my gears. It feels like everytime theres a new property or something, inevitably I see people complaining

"ohhhh look how hard it's trying to be dark and edgey and brooding"

As if any of those stylistic choices are bad things. Are you people seriously going to try and tell me something like Sin City isn't fucking cool? I like Dark/Edgey stuff. I loved Spiderman 3, when Spidey is being a dickhead and dancing around the room and seductively eating cookies in front of the teenage girl and telling people to go find religion when they ask for forgiveness. That shit was fun, it's still a terrible movie, but it's fun and interesting.

Why the hell does everything now need to be bright and sunny like a Marvel movie?

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

It's swings and roundabouts. For a while everything was dark and edgy (Nolan Batman, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, etc.), but then it became a clich? and people wanted a change of pace, so now a more lighthearted tone is what's popular. Give it time and things will swing back around to dark and edgy again in due course.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Dark and Edgy is fine if written well. But something trying and failing to be sufficiently dark and/or edgy is like a PG-13 slasher flick. Somewhere between laughable and making me embarrassed on the creators behalf.

Add that to "dark and edgy reboots" being almost universally terrible and you've got bearded Superman whipping out a set of guns with approximately 19 barrels to gun down the twin clones of Hitler.

 

[HybridChangeling]

It's a slippery slope for both games and fans. One day your watching Sin City for kicks, and the next day your writing poetry while listening to your first press "Black Parade" album. /S

Or maybe it's because the internet is 90% cynicism which doesn't go well with almost anything. For example; Every new fandom, movie, cool thing, and reddit comment thread. There's a lot of criticism for the sake of it on the internet. It is really hard for positive content or even dark and edgy stuff to exist without people tearing it apart and being generally idiots towards fans of it. There is some parts of the comic fandom I know where liking Red Hood (Jason Todd) as a character is "just angsty" and even places in this website is very negative towards CERTAIN topics and issues. They even don't like certain stuff. Grey Jedi......

Respect and Enjoy. Words to live by. Respect others interests, Enjoy your own. Makes for a good life.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Dark and edgy (there's no second 'e' there) isn't bad in and of itself. It can be done very well. A lot of Batman is dark and edgy. I would say that the Dark Knight trilogy was that way, and it worked just fine.

The hate comes from when it is not done well, or it feels forced, or it ruins the mood of the story. Just look at what happened to the Prince of Persia games. The first game was about a plucky prince and had a nice, colorful scheme to it and felt very much like its own style. Then the sequel came out and the game was barely recognizable because they dialed the dark, brooding, edgy, "this is what kids love nowadays" meter up to freak thirteen. If the name was not on the cover of both games, I'm betting a lot of people would not realize that is suppose to be the same character.
Same thing with the Superman movies. Superman is meant to inspire, meant to be about someone who is good and who gives the audience hope. That...is not what Man of Steel or Batman v Superman was.

To use your Marvel reference, it would be like if Captain America suddenly turned into the Punisher in his way of thinking and appearance. No more Stars and Stripes uniform, but instead the flag is tattered and ripped. He constantly smokes now. He doesn't treat women with respect, but instead calls them "*****" or "whore" every chance he gets. All of this is done in order to make him seem more on the brink, more on the edge, and thus cool.
And, as you can see, it completely destroys his character. I was honestly afraid they were going to do something like this to him in Winter Soldier, attempt to take away his upright attitude because it wasn't "edgy" enough for modern times. So glad they didn't.

As for people complaining that a movie is literally too dark, the washout color effect is starting to get a bit annoying. It would be nice if not everything in a movie looked like it was in a world of grey tone over everything.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Dark/Edgy (Or Grimdark) work best when its the tone of a project as a whole, like it is in Sin City. It quickly falls apart why you try to jam it into stories of hope and give it a happy ending.

Just look at dark fiction that actually works - Batman (Solo), Judge Dredd, Warhammer 40k, Sin City. These are works where dark is all there is - There's no hope. Barely any joy. They're drenched in misery and pain and agony and the viewer, nor the characters in the works, expect anything else from their surroundings. They don't start well, nor do they end well.

The trouble starts when you try to use Dark/Edgy as a plot device rather then a tone. It often muddles the waters, and creates a jarring experience. Dawn of Justice, for example. There's competing threads in the movie - The darkness of what is a broken world and the miserable pricks who are trying to be heroes, and the hope they try to inject in to show what we'll eventually end up with, and they just don't mesh well together. Can mixing these be done? Yes. Is it much harder to do then just going full on dark? Yes. Did Spider-Man 3 and Dawn of Justice pull it off? I suppose that's a matter of opinion, but I don't think either came anywhere close.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

As Bilious said, we just got back from the "Dark and Edgy" party. It doesn't help that the last bits of that party were full of shit like TASM or Man of Steel.

Then there's the entire thing of forcing dark and edgy themes onto properties or characters that don't need it. Do we really need Wacky Races reimagined as some kind of half-baked Mad Max reject? Do we really need a Superman who looks like and is a brooding asshole? Do we really need an R-rated Batman v Superman edition? Do we really need to throw in lame gore into the DCAU? I think this is the larger problem than over-saturation. They keep making things dark and edgy not to try out new things or because it suits the property, but because they think it will make more money.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Good edgy:

Bad edgy:

 

[Saelune]

A lot of it comes from worrying that its some sort of poor attempt to appeal to stupid kids rather than being a quality product. And ofcourse sometimes even when its edgy and brooding for a good reason, people assume it isn't. Its a trope, and people react to tropes in such ways.

 

[Zhukov]

Because excessive dark-and-edgy is fucking boring and non-engaging. It induces apathy.

"Everything's fucked!"
"Alright. So why should I care about what happens next?"

It also frequently comes across as juvenile, in the sense that the creator is desperately trying to distance itself from anything associated with children or childishness. Y'know, like 14 year olds are prone to doing.

"Levity is for babies! This is a dark mature story of mature darkness for dark mature adults who know how dark and mature things really are! Please respect me!"

Oh, and let me just preempt anyone thinking of trying to retort with, "What, so a story where everything is always fine and happy wouldn't be boring?". Yes, that would also be boring. There would be no stakes or conflict. It's almost as if there's a reason why good stories tend to mix the good with the ugly. Rays of hope in a shitty world or something going terribly wrong in an otherwise okay world.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

It's swings and roundabouts. For a while everything was dark and edgy (Nolan Batman, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, etc.), but then it became a clich? and people wanted a change of pace, so now a more lighthearted tone is what's popular. Give it time and things will swing back around to dark and edgy again in due course.

How was Nolan Batman "dark or edgy"?

This is another sore spot for me. When I think Dark/Edgy, I'm thinking primarily Frank Millar's work. Sin City. The Spirit. 300. It's a noir thematic and stylistic choice. Rob Liefield, his stuff is edgey with the musclebounds and what not.

The Dark Knight Trilogy just looks real. It's serious. There are scenes in it that look like it could be The Departed. Which is another movie I've had people tell me is edgy. What the hell is edgy about it? Just cause of the ending?

Dark/Edgy (Or Grimdark) work best when its the tone of a project as a whole, like it is in Sin City. It quickly falls apart why you try to jam it into stories of hope and give it a happy ending.

Just look at dark fiction that actually works - Batman (Solo), Judge Dredd, Warhammer 40k, Sin City. These are works where dark is all there is - There's no hope. Barely any joy. They're drenched in misery and pain and agony and the viewer, nor the characters in the works, expect anything else from their surroundings. They don't start well, nor do they end well.

The trouble starts when you try to use Dark/Edgy as a plot device rather then a tone. It often muddles the waters, and creates a jarring experience. Dawn of Justice, for example. There's competing threads in the movie - The darkness of what is a broken world and the miserable pricks who are trying to be heroes, and the hope they try to inject in to show what we'll eventually end up with, and they just don't mesh well together. Can mixing these be done? Yes. Is it much harder to do then just going full on dark? Yes. Did Spider-Man 3 and Dawn of Justice pull it off? I suppose that's a matter of opinion, but I don't think either came anywhere close.

again, Dawn of Justice and Man Of Steel in no way felt dark or edgy. I can't look at Sin City, or as someone else suggested Shadow The Hedgehog, and look at those movies and be like it's anywhere near that same tone.

What those movies are, is serious. They took the concept of costume heroes and completely stripped them of any whimsy and really said "What happens if we had an indestructible alien walking around that we have no way of stopping?" but that is not what Dark is. Superman feeling the weight of people's suspicion about him is not the same thing as Marv hunting down a hooker's killer because she gave him a pity fuck while waxing poetic narration. Batman v Superman was NOT Max Payne like at all.

Am I making sense at all? Joyless and lacking whimsy does not make something dark alone. Sin City has plenty of camp and humor in it.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Because excessive dark-and-edgy is fucking boring and non-engaging. It induces apathy.

"Everything's fucked!"
"Alright. So why should I care about what happens next?"

It also frequently comes across as juvenile, in the sense that the creator is desperately trying to distance itself from anything associated with children or childishness. Y'know, like 14 year olds are prone to doing.

"Levity is for babies! This is a dark mature story of mature darkness for dark mature adults who know how dark and mature things really are! Please respect me!"

Oh, and let me just preempt anyone thinking of trying to retort with, "What, so a story where everything is always fine and happy wouldn't be boring?". Yes, that would also be boring. There would be no stakes or conflict. It's almost as if there's a reason why good stories tend to mix the good with the ugly. Rays of hope in a shitty world or something going terribly wrong in an otherwise okay world.

That's not true. There's plenty of reason for the viewer to care about Dwight, Marv and Hartigan's stories.

Juvenile, I'll give you.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It's good to have a balance. As has been stated, when everything is fucked and horrible all the time it just becomes white noise. Even Berserk has a large arc where things are mostly fine and not too bad, before things take a turn for the absolute worst.

What's also important is that you have characters that wish for a better life and a better world despite living in one that's horrible and being powerless to do anything about it. This is what makes something like The Witcher 3 work eventhough it's chock full of death, war, and persecution. Most of the people you meet in that world are just trying to live their lives peacefully. They're not going out of their way to be assholes, like in GTA5.

 

[Zhukov]

That's not true. There's plenty of reason for the viewer to care about Dwight, Marv and Hartigan's stories.

It's been a long time since I watched Sin City and I only watched it once, so I don't recall which character was which.

The first one (the big grizzled thug guy) and the third one (Bruce Willis) were both trying to save their respective girls as I recall. That was the hopeful element in the shitty world. That's why those stories worked, at least on some level.

The second guy and his story can fuck right off. That whole thing just felt like sniffing Frank Miller's second hand wank rag.

 

[Hawki]

"Dark and gritty" is usually seen as a term of derision nowadays. And I'd be fine with that if "happylite" (or something similar) could be applied as well.

Batman v Superman is an example of "dark and gritty" not working, because while that works for Batman, Superman suffers because there's nothing to distinguish him from Batman (bear in mind, I like Man of Steel). On the other hand, "happylite" can refer to something like G3 My Little Pony or any number of pandering cartoons. Where there's nothing at stake, no gravitas, no drama, nothing. Going back to the superhero genre, MCU films tend to veer towards this.

Either extreme can be bad, but one extreme isn't necessarily worse or better than the other.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Dark and edgy (there's no second 'e' there) isn't bad in and of itself. It can be done very well. A lot of Batman is dark and edgy. I would say that the Dark Knight trilogy was that way, and it worked just fine.

The hate comes from when it is not done well, or it feels forced, or it ruins the mood of the story. Just look at what happened to the Prince of Persia games. The first game was about a plucky prince and had a nice, colorful scheme to it and felt very much like its own style. Then the sequel came out and the game was barely recognizable because they dialed the dark, brooding, edgy, "this is what kids love nowadays" meter up to freak thirteen. If the name was not on the cover of both games, I'm betting a lot of people would not realize that is suppose to be the same character.
Same thing with the Superman movies. Superman is meant to inspire, meant to be about someone who is good and who gives the audience hope. That...is not what Man of Steel or Batman v Superman was.

To use your Marvel reference, it would be like if Captain America suddenly turned into the Punisher in his way of thinking and appearance. No more Stars and Stripes uniform, but instead the flag is tattered and ripped. He constantly smokes now. He doesn't treat women with respect, but instead calls them "*****" or "whore" every chance he gets. All of this is done in order to make him seem more on the brink, more on the edge, and thus cool.
And, as you can see, it completely destroys his character. I was honestly afraid they were going to do something like this to him in Winter Soldier, attempt to take away his upright attitude because it wasn't "edgy" enough for modern times. So glad they didn't.

As for people complaining that a movie is literally too dark, the washout color effect is starting to get a bit annoying. It would be nice if not everything in a movie looked like it was in a world of grey tone over everything.

OK I am gonna come out say this but I think both POP, Jak and Daxter, and Rachet and Clank got better when they became more "dark and edgy" from a gamepay perspective they were a lot more fun (Sands of Time was increadibly repetitive with its combat, only the platforming was decent, the sequals improved the combat alot)

I miss the tone and more adult humor of the first 4 rachet and clank games and HATE the tools of destruction era Rachet and Clank which we are still living in right now.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Good edgy:

Bad edgy:

You gotta admit the edgyness of the Shadow the Hedgehog intro was awesome:


Should have put a Testament soundtrack to make it better:

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

"Dark and gritty" is usually seen as a term of derision nowadays. And I'd be fine with that if "happylite" (or something similar) could be applied as well.

Batman v Superman is an example of "dark and gritty" not working, because while that works for Batman, Superman suffers because there's nothing to distinguish him from Batman (bear in mind, I like Man of Steel). On the other hand, "happylite" can refer to something like G3 My Little Pony or any number of pandering cartoons. Where there's nothing at stake, no gravitas, no drama, nothing. Going back to the superhero genre, MCU films tend to veer towards this.

Either extreme can be bad, but one extreme isn't necessarily worse or better than the other.

I think its too harsh to say Superman in the movie is indistinguishable from Batman I mean I never felt any Batman vibes from him in the movie. You may argue that they failed to make him a beacon of hope but he was certainly not like Batman.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

They're not going out of their way to be assholes, like in GTA5.

You expect Criminals and Psychopaths to NOT be assholes?

 

[JimB]

For my part, I am prejudiced against "dark and gritty" because too often the tone becomes an end unto itself rather than a means to tell a story, and it sacrifices everything else, especially believable characters who act like any kind of comprehensible human being, in service of maintaining a tone. It all too often comes off like a teenager in his mopey, nihilistic phase writing bad poetry about all the conformists and Barbie cheerleaders: pretentious and hypocritical, and in this day and age, carries with it at least for me disturbing connotations of the manifestos of assholes like Elliot Rodgers, with their condemnation of a society they ultimately understand nothing of except their own juvenile and self-centered point of view on it.