The Future Is Noir: Difference between revisions

As the [[Cyberpunk]] movement took tropes from the gritty American detective/crime novels of the 1930s, so did films and TV shows take inspiration from the [[Film Noir]] of the same period (or based on it). Featuring darkness except for critically placed light, and often a single source of it for the entire scene, the look is dramatic. Unfortunately, in a serious case of [[Fridge Logic]], it's pretty dumb when you think about it. Large open offices maintained in darkness except for the single desk lamps of the workers. Entrance ways and throne rooms in complete darkness but for the single row of spotlights down the middle. Looks cool, but you never see one of those deskbound workers getting up and running into the wastebasket because their vision is screwed up going from their light source into the surrounding darkness.

 

 

There is a certain ''practical'' aspect to this: nothing hides cheaply-made sets and props better than poor lighting.

 

== [[Anime]] ==

 

== [[Comics]] ==

 

== [[Film]] ==

** 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.

** [[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.

** And by extension, ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'' and ''[[Silent Moebius]],'' two anime series that took visual inspiration from ''Blade Runner.''

* ''[[The Terminator]]'', which even had a night club called "Tech Noir".

* ''Highlander II.'

* ''Renaissance'', a French CGI film about a [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] cop's search for a woman and her {{spoiler|immortality-granting}} [[MacGuffin]].

* ''[[Gattaca]]'' isn't set very far in the future, nor are there any aliens to be seen, but the aesthetic is purest SF noir.

* The aptly named [[Dark City]].

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

** 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.

** 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).

*** Whoever designed Voyager had a flair for the dramatic, as the lights on the Bridge would dim whenever the ship went on [[Red Alert]].

** Justified in-universe because Destiny is always running on the stray edge of being out of power, is falling apart at the joints and hasn't had living-people maintenance of any kind in a million years. The fact that it has working lights at all is a minor miracle and considering that in many cases they were lacking power and parts for life support and basic functions, it's easy to justify leaving the lights down low and not repairing them all.

* In ''[[Firefly]]'', the interior of ''Serenity'' is always depicted as fairly dark to contrast with the bright florescent lighting and [[Creepy Cleanliness]] of Alliance ships (see ''[[Star Wars]]'').

** 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.

* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' (fittingly, considering the title) has several dimly lit levels, including the Skedar attack ship.