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    Cliche Compendium

    EDIT: Removed
    Last edited by Your Usual Table; 03-11-2021, 17:16.

    #2
    Cliche Compendium

    "It'll be a lot darker"

    The hint of something dangerous and adult specially designed to make the potential bum-on-seater think that he or she will be in for a film of quality and appeal. This is bollocks, as you can be as 'dark' as you want and still present a truckful of celluloid cack.

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      #3
      Cliche Compendium

      ian.64 wrote:
      "It'll be a lot darker"
      Usually, with things like the Batman films, it means exactly that, it'll be darker in the sense that they've spent naff all on the lighting and you'll strain to make out any detail in the perpetual onscreen murk and fug.

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        #4
        Cliche Compendium

        Never liked the Batman films, really. After the first one they were really on the wayne.

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          #5
          Cliche Compendium

          I recall seeing an interview with Daniel Radcliffe before the second Harry Potter film. He must have been 11 or 12 then, I guess, where he said the second one would be "darker and edgier than the first." It was clear that he was told to say that and didn't really know what that was supposed to mean.

          But he wasn't entirely wrong. The stories do get more fraught with danger and "adult themes" as they progress and the Harry Potter films have done a good job of maintaining a kind of moonlit-moors quality. I dig it.

          Except that the latter Batman films were a lot darker than the previous lot, in every sense, and the Tim Burton films were way darker, in every sense, than what 90% of the public imagined a Batman story to be like.

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            #6
            Cliche Compendium

            When filmmakers describe their films as "dark" and "edgy" I am completely turned off. If I want dark and edgy I'll go to a cave and sit on a butcher's knife.

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              #7
              Cliche Compendium

              I dig films that are actually dark and edgy, but if the director has to make a point to say that it is, it probably isn't.

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                #8
                Cliche Compendium

                Sorry to Tratorello for letting my pun side get the better of me, but he's correct in his assertion. A few more light bulbs wouldn't go amiss.

                But there is this 'it'll be dark' vibe that usually pops up in a form of declaration in some franchise or series, which sort of admits that what they did previously didn't work and now they're going to be sombre and risky all over the shop. As if making everything all doomy and horrid will up the quality quotient when all they had to do was improve their storytelling. Mood in place of making things work in a structural sense.

                But, sometimes, in the right hands, I concede it can work.

                Anyway, another bugbear, when actors explain why they came on board the project because they were a 'fan' of the director's work, even if that director only did two or three films and they weren't that much cop anyway. It was the paycheque and a clever agent, wasn't it? Admit it.

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                  #9
                  Cliche Compendium

                  Reed John wrote:
                  I dig films that are actually dark and edgy, but if the director has to make a point to say that it is, it probably isn't.
                  This is pretty much how I feel. Plus, because the phrase has now become so ubiquitous, it gets my back up when I hear it being used.

                  I also think that, with "dark & edgy" being such a cliche, the films being made by people prone to use the phrase are also likely to be cliched too.

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                    #10
                    Cliche Compendium

                    (FWIW, I seem to like the Batman films that nobody else here does and vice versa. I liked 'Batman Begins'.)

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                      #11
                      Cliche Compendium

                      evilC wrote:
                      (FWIW, I seem to like the Batman films that nobody else here does and vice versa. I liked 'Batman Begins'.)
                      Do people on here not like Batman Begins? I quite enjoyed it.

                      If you're being contrary, I'd have thought you'd have to say you liked Batman & Robin.

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                        #12
                        Cliche Compendium

                        Stumpy Pepys wrote:
                        evilC wrote:
                        (FWIW, I seem to like the Batman films that nobody else here does and vice versa. I liked 'Batman Begins'.)
                        Do people on here not like Batman Begins? I quite enjoyed it.

                        If you're being contrary, I'd have thought you'd have to say you liked Batman & Robin.
                        Actually, no - you're right. I'm not being entirely accurate: 'Batman & Robin' was indeed atrocious!

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                          #13
                          Cliche Compendium

                          But back on the topic of 'dark & edgy', I thought I'd just mention this:

                          'Amer'

                          Showing at the ICA on a double bill with 'Tenebrae'.

                          (Apologies for the cross-posting.)

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Cliche Compendium

                            Do people on here not like Batman Begins? I quite enjoyed it.

                            After a second viewing, I'm warming to it, mainly because it works as a slightly better detailed and elegant adventure and isn't - as the sequel became - a pompous, tad-overrated slog.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Cliche Compendium

                              Yeah, it's all the talk of 'dark and edgy' and 'psychological depth' that puts me off the forthcoming Bananaman: Ultimatum.

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                                #16
                                Cliche Compendium

                                Same here with SuperTed: Portent of Discord. If I hear one more story about Tom Hardy's method preparation for playing Skeleton I'm going to scream.

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                                  #17
                                  Cliche Compendium

                                  And don't get me started on the portentuous, up-itself waste of three hours that was Supergran: Infinities.

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                                    #18
                                    Cliche Compendium

                                    Scooby-Doo: Helter-Skelter was properly dark, though, with Manson in the closed-down fairground and everything.

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                                      #19
                                      Cliche Compendium

                                      Likewise, Dougal and the Blue Cat has some pretty scary moments. Not a film to watch on acid.

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