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The Future Is Noir: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[Ghost in the Shell]]'', particularly the film. Although there are daytime scenes, they're usually cloudy and dim, and the majority of the action is set at night or in darkened buildings.
* ''[[Akira]]'' seems to take place [[Always Night|almost entirely at night]].
== [[
* ''[[Elephantmen]]''.{{context}}
== [[Film]] ==
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** In ''Alien'', note that the crew areas (easily identified by being mostly white) are brightly lit, and it's the cargo / maintenance / engineering areas that are poorly lit. As for ''Aliens'', the colony on LV-426 had been shot to hell, everyone was dead, and much of the place had been blown up with 'seismic survey charges'.
** ''Alien 3'': the entire setting. The surface of the penal planet was cold and dark, even when the sun shone, and the prison itself had black shadows everywhere. The look of the film has more in common with old German black-and-white films than with the preceding ''Alien'' franchise.
* ''[[Immortal (film)|Immortal]]'', though a little more brightly-lit than normal, still has all the fedora-wearing detectives, corrupt politicians, dingy cities and cool bars that are the norm for a Noir movie.
** [[Enki Bilal]] seems to love this. His two other movies (Bunker Palace Hotel and Tykho Moon) have a similar Noir-ish feel.
*** Bilal is better known as a graphic novel artist, at least in Europe, and his favourite colouring tool appears to be charcoal.
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* ''[[Altered Carbon]]''. Pretty much all of it.
* The aptly titled novel ''[[Cyberpunk|NOIR]]'' by K.W. Jeter, where a [[Irony|sympathetic]] guy named McNihil is a retired [[Private Detective|PI]] and had his eyes surgically altered to see the world in shades of grey, like noir films of the 30s.
* ''[[The Windup Girl]]'' combines this trope with Biopunk to wonderful effect. Although it is often sunny in 23rd century Thailand, there is little electricity, so every building is dimly lit and grungy.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'', at least compared to the cheery, fluorescent world of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|The Next Generation]]''. This is explained that the Cardassians that built DS9 prefer darker lighting than humans (it's even darker when you see it in the [[Mirror Universe]] or under Cardassian administration; Garak pointed the latter out when his brain went blooey and chewed out Bashir with several rants). In the conference room particularly, there is patchy lighting over everyone's faces, just like the venetian-blind-obscured lighting in much of [[Film Noir]].
** Even ''TNG'' eventually went noir when the movies started rolling out. Sometime between ''All Good Things...'' and ''[[Star Trek Generations|Generations]]'', someone apparently busted out half the lights on the Enterprise-D.
*** The real-life explanation is that the E-D sets were not built to a high enough standard to look real on film using normal light. ''Generations'' used dim lighting to hide flaws in the sets. This does not explain light levels on the Enterprise-E, however.
**** The ''Enterprise-E'' is a Sovereign class warship, of course. And you can't know that your ship is a warship and not a neighborhood with a warp drive unless everything's dim, right?
**** The ships controls are rather bright touch-screen panels, dimmer lights would likely help them stand out a little better.
** ''TNG'' had actually ''started'' with noir lighting. The production staff apparently hated this look, but for some strange reason waited until the third season before firing the initial lighting cameraman and bringing in someone who brightened things up.
** "Yesterday's Enterprise" featured an alternate timeline where the Federation was at war with the Klingons, [http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Enterprise-d_bridge_alternate.jpg the bridge] was very dimly lit, and [[Take That|there was a plausible reason to have]] [[Improbable Age|Wesley as a full ensign]]. Interestingly, the [[Darker and Edgier]] alternate timeline had an opposite effect on [[Good Guy Bar|Ten Forward]]: instead of being the usual mood-lit recreational area, it's a banal mess hall with white fluorescent lighting (now, in the normal timeline, the lights ''do'' go up in there as needed, but you'd probably only notice if you're paying much attention to it).
** As noted on ''[[SF Debris]]'', ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]]'' tended to do this in their "magic meeting room" whenever the situation was supposed to be serious.
*** Whoever designed ''Voyager'' had a flair for the dramatic, as the lights on the Bridge would dim whenever the ship went on [[Red Alert]].
** Klingon and Romulan ships in ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series
* An episode of ''[[Farscape]]'' answered the question of "why is Moya so damn dark?": aliens have FAR better vision than us little (but still "''superior!''") humans. Also, Moya is a living ship. It makes some sense that she'd want to conserve energy for other, more critical things, despite anything Pilot might tell her to do.
* For some reason interiors of [[Stargate Universe|Destiny]] are very dark.
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** It also explains why Cerberus is so much more advanced than the Alliance: their stations and vessels actually have adequate lighting!
*** Ironically, this was meant to make them seem creepier, in a cold, sterile, medical sense.
* ''[[Deus Ex:
* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' (fittingly, considering the title) has several dimly lit levels, including the Skedar attack ship.
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