There's a new trend in Hollywood. Dark. Black. Not-so-nice. Shades of grey yanked over to the maximum distance from white. In other words, complex characters that aren't all good, haven't quite attained the minimum qualification required to become an Eagle Scout, and who, quite possibly, choose to go commando.
Strike Batman out of that list. The commando bit, that is. Like most of his caped compadrés, old Batty chooses to wear his briefs on the outside. I guess that happens when you see your folks rubbed out in front of your eyes and then fall into a well that happens to be populated by flying rats with pig noses.
That apart, Batty began the dark trend, unless one goes back to the original badass from the dark side, Darth Vader. Before Hayden Christensen ruined an iconic character for a generation of filmgoers, Vader was the ultimate anti-hero: a man transformed by his own failings and by circumstance into an evildoing minion for a greater villain. Not bad deep down inside that (dark) suit of his, just bad on the surface, destroying the odd planet here and there. Ultimately, his love for his son brought him back to the Light Side (White Side? Right Side?), albeit at the cause of personal destruction.
Nevertheless, credit for the recent renaissance of the Dark hero must go to Messers Nolan, Goyer and Bale (director, scriptwriter and lead actor) of the rebooted Batman franchise. Their combined reimagining of the Dark Knight in Batman Begins (there's that word again!) brought in gazillions of dollars at the box office and set the stage for a wave of darkness, not to mention prequels. 2006's Casino Royale saw James Bond return to his roots as envisioned by creator Ian Fleming -- a paid assassin with little love for his profession and even less for double entendres. Even the boy wizard Harry Potter could not escape the trend trap -- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix both ratcheted up the gloom and disfavoured levity.
Everywhere you look you will see black, grey, and deep shades of midnight blue. Even the studio logos at the beginning of these films now have hues of doom washing over them. Warner Brothers seems to have patented the grey/deathly green shade for its opening logos.
How cool is 'dark' right now? Pretty. Jessica Alba, the curvaceous starlet at the heart of the Fantastic Four franchise, had obviously been briefed by 20th Century Fox's PR Department when she said in an interview that the second installment was 'darker' than the first. If anything, FF4 is notable in the Marvel universe for the lack of problems faced by its titular quartet. There are no complexities in this relationship, no inner demons, no major sources of heartache (apart from the physical appearance of the Thing, an appropriate name for a walking skin rash).
Is darkness now a prerequisite? Sure, we would all like to see fictional characters made to seem three-dimensional, but does one really go to see a superhero flick for the frowns or the FX? Excruciation or explosions? Bullet-dodging or boo-hoo?
Perhaps both. Last year's Superman Returns, while far from 'dark', erred on the side of emotion by giving us a 2 1/2-hour superhero love story. Notable perhaps only for a sequence where a would-be thief shoots a bullet into Superman's eye and sees it fall flattened to the ground, the movie confused tedium for depth and did not deliver the goods to effect-expectant fans.
The two FF4 films, on the other hand, sought to make a virtue of levity, jettisoning depth of character for general tomfoolery while still clumsily attempting to convey a message in each part. (First -- people are more than just skin-deep; hence blind girl falls in love with the Thing. Second -- even superheroes need to settle down; so Johnny Storm looks for a serious relationship with a cute army captain.)
And actually, Batman and Bond did strike the right notes when they opted for dark, but then, darkness is in their very blueprints. Harry Potter is an orphan and a misfit whose friends die turn by turn. (Superman is an orphan too, but perhaps the cheery nature of his costume renders him impervious to 'darkness'.) Spider-Man tried to do nasty in his third cinematic avatar, but only managed to conjure up visions of bad 80s bands with his mascara.
Now, as long as no one tries to do a dark version of Garfield...
