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alternative title(s): Scenery Pron; Spectacular Scenery
Scenery Porn
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Damn, I should've brought my camera.
Scenery porn is the emphasis on luscious backgrounds with great detail, lovely lighting or both. It means that the makers put in extra effort for something that might not have direct influence on the plot. Of course, there are extra points to be earned when the scenery actually enhances the plot in some sort of symbolic fashion.
In live-action movies, scenery porn is in effect when extra effort is put into emphasizing a beautiful surrounding, usually wide-open landscapes. Stage productions can have copious amounts of this trope with elaborate sets and backdrops. A main characteristic is that the scenery is almost treated as a character in its own right, either as a passive onlooker or with a more active role, depending on the setting of the show (if the scenery is literally a character with a mind of its own, then it's a Genius Loci). Bonus Points when Awesome Music is added.
In literature, scenery porn manifests itself as long paragraphs that go into more detail about the setting than necessary, such as describing at length the mountains of the Swiss countryside, or name-dropping all the streets in Chicago as the character turns on them. It's the author's way of proving that he's from the area in question or did the research, and while it's a great bonus for people who know the area, it can be seen as Filler to just about everyone else. On the extreme end of this, some works are popular entirely because they are nothing but Scenery Porn.
Often used to show that The World Is Just Awesome. Compare Shoot the Money. This can be distracting in video games when part of an Empty Room Psych. Silent Scenery Panel has a high chance being this. Scenery Gorn is when Scenery Porn goes bad. Also compare Costume Porn, Gun Porn, and its Super Trope, Awesome Art. Not to be confused with when someone "knows" the scenery.
Compare Real Place Background.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- .hack//SIGN
- Almost everything from Paprika...in fact just about everything by Satoshi Kon follows this trope.
- Everything by Studio Ghibli. You may as well be having a Scenery Orgasm. There's also a reason that the Ghibli Hills trope exists.
- The anime adaptation of Aoi Hana has a lot of it, exploiting Kamakura's eye-catching sceneries.
- The first episode of Black Lagoon gave a nice glance at the scenery in the South China Sea.
- Black Lagoon in general goes pretty far with lavish scenery all the time. Just most of it is the craptown of Roanapur rather than the South China Sea, but it's still full of incredible detail.
- Blame! is a unique version of this trope. It obviously lives and breathes Scenery Porn, but it is much less "pretty backgrounds" and more amazingly-detailed, gritty, futuristic architecture... and it works.
- Le Chevalier d'Eon. The animators in this series like to use many types of cinematic shots and camera pans that are more associated with live-action than anime, and it results in many GORGEOUS shots of Paris and Versailles.
- Now and Then, Here and There has some amazing sunsets and vistas.
- Hal Film Maker seems to be really good at this with their Slice of Life work.
- The Macross universe as a whole has this. Macross Zero, Macross DYRL, and Macross Frontier are standouts.
- Macross Frontier did it wonderfully with the first several episodes showing off the beauty of the Frontier fleet. One episode is mostly Sheryl exploring the fleet in amazement at gorgeousness that rivals her own. But over the course of the series and their conflict with the Vajra, those shots steadily turn into Scenery Gorn. The last scene in the series, of their new home, is full of Scenery Porn though.
- Kyoto Animation is also good at this.
- AIR: The beautifully rendered sea and blue sky with white clouds play a very important symbolic role in both the game and the anime series. The town is often depicted with great detail as well.
- The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya pays a surprising amount of attention to its backgrounds given how completely mundane they are: a small city and the local high school. See this page
 for several side-by-side comparisons of shots from the anime and photos of Nishinomiya, the real town in which it's set. This page also has a lot of photos of locations shown in the anime. As another example of scenery porn, witness the five planes of motion illustrating such exciting activities as Kyon walking to school and the background in the Asakura vs. Yuki fight.
- Here are similar side-by-side comparisons for Kanon and CLANNAD.
- And for "K-On!" (or the OP at least).
- Melody of Oblivion's watercolor-style backgrounds are very beautiful, although because of the rich symbolism, they often are important to the plot.
- To be fair, a number of anime JCStaff worked on (things like Honey and Clover and Nodame Cantabile to name a few) have that great watercolor background going on. Sometimes, it goes to the the detriment of actual animation quality, but the backgrounds are plain beautiful.
- Most of Makoto Shinkai's work. Shinkai, in fact, will focus the camera on the Scenery Porn in the middle of important scenes with his characters.
- 5 Centimeters Per Second is the epitome of cloud Porn.
- Every production released by Hayao Miyazaki (and Studio Ghibli by extension) manages to pull at least a long sequence of very pretty scenery. (Given Miyazaki's love of flying, it's no surprise that every work has at least one extended aerial sequence.)
- Kimini Todoke's anime adaptation is saturated with beautiful, pastel-colored backdrops.
- Kamichu!! has a lot of shots of Onomichi, the seaside town where the main characters live, emphasizing the hilly landscape and shoreline.
- Blue Drop contains many beautifully animated sceneries, usually involving lots of seabirds or Hagino's spaceship standing in for a submarine.
- Masashi Kishimoto of Naruto has become a master of this in recent years. From the panoramas of Konoha, to the other villages, to various battlefields.
- The Mahou Sensei Negima! manga is infamous for its beautiful backgrounds which were made on a computer. Most of the tankoubon volumes actually have appendices showing off the models, and listing the real-world architectural influences they draw upon. Many people complain that they look out of place, what with the character models being simplistic to the point of Only Six Faces, although they certainly add a great deal to the atmosphere, especially once the Magic World arc gets started.
- While it isn't as advanced or as noticed, Ken Akamatsu's previous series, Love Hina, had its backgrounds similarly developed.
- Akamatsu loves this trope; this◊ (don't worry, it's Work Safe) is the title page from one of his early doujins. Yes, he even puts Scenery Porn into actual porn.
- ICE contains a quite a few pretty shots of the dystopian future world it tries to warn against.
- Kara no Kyoukai may be a subversion, as it features incredible artwork and attention to detail, but in a very gloomy, run-down city setting.
- Not the second movie though, you get a very beautiful city for at least a good half.
- Gankutsuou was known for this, regarding specially the psychedelic patterns
- Mushishi has lots of it as well.
- Mouryou No Hako has lovely background animation with vibrant colours and gorgeous shots of flowers, trees, riverbanks, picturesque little villages and the like.
- "OriginSpiritsofthePast" is completely this, to the point where the characters and plot only get in the way.
- The works of Katsuhiro Otomo, such as AKIRA, whose formal education was in the field of architecture, is known for his painstakingly rendered urban landscapes. You will say holy shit. This is noticeable even in his earlier works, which take place in a city in the seventies and not in any magnificent Neo-Tokyo.
- Ghost in the Shell
- The Ghost in the Shell film has the haunting, wordless, boat ride sequence.
- Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence was godly in this regard.
- The Stand Alone Complex series have extremely detailed backgrounds for TV animation.
- Texhnolyze, despite its bleak surroundings, features some startlingly beautiful and detailed scenery.
- Both Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo (or really, any anime directed by Shinichiro Watanabe) feature this in spades.
- Eve No Jikan and it's precursor Aquatic Language both feature sumptuously lit, gorgeously filmed coffee houses (with interesting clientele).
- ef: A Tale of Memories plays this trope to sometimes absurd levels, often abandoning realism totally for its backgrounds.
- The animated film Patlabor 2 has a large amount of Scenery Porn. The apex of this is the "boat scene" in which two characters have a long, extremely philosophical conversation while riding a small boat down a waterway. As the conversation goes on, the camera view focuses on old buildings, factories, and other features of a near-future Tokyo.
- Seirei No Moribito has the lush Ghibli Hills of their "real world" and the strange, spectacular Spirit World, both shown in eventless, lingering shots and accompanied by the proper soundtrack. Moribito's Scenery Porn might as well be X-rated. It's that damn good!
- A Little Snow Fairy Sugar does this to show off the tourist-bait preserved medieval German village where the series is set.
- In Mokke the characters are often placed in shots that offer a good view of the hilly surroundings around the main characters' village. Yes, the Japanese really love their hills.
- Maikaze did a great job with the landscaping in their portrayal of Gensokyo,.
- Arguably a lot of Yotsuba&! is devoted to stunningly realistic and gorgeously detailed drawings of Yotsuba's ordinary Japanese suburb, including several beautiful shots of the surroundings.
- Diamond Daydreams is rife with beautiful shots of Hokkaido, Japan's northern-most island—so much, that it sometimes feels as if show has been sponsored by the Hokkaido Tourism Organisation.
- The city of Alto Mare in Pokémon Heroes. Based on Venice, Italy and absolutely beautiful. Hell, you could say this for all the Pokémon movies. Every one of them opens up with a gratuitous, sweeping shot of the environment, and every one of them has some kind of ridiculously epic set piece that will probably get messed up pretty bad. It's become a joke among fans that the studios use research for movies as an excuse to go on a vacation.
- CLAMP have made some good manga examples of this, which may or may not carry over to the animated adaptations. Present more or less in all their works but mostly in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, where some of the background art is truly spectacular (Rekort, Outo and Piffle, anyone?).
- The Dragon Ball manga is also rife with breathtaking establishing shots (that more often than not get blown up in the course of fight scenes) — it helps that Toriyama has a small army's worth of assistants to draw in all the windows of a skyscraper.
- Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is positively awash with it, both in the manga and in the anime. There is no chapter or episode without some beautiful landscape thrown in, and there are a lot of chapters consisting of NOTHING ELSE than scenery porn. It is also should be considered as epitome of the grass Porn.
- In Amanchu!, Kozue Amano again showcases her ability to draw lovely backgrounds, which was already the trademark of her highly successful other work, ARIA.
- Binchou-tan blends the moe-aesthetic with lots of lovely shots of the hill and the town at its foot. Whether this is a match made in heaven or hell is up to debate.
- While the original series had its moments, Rebuild of Evangelion takes this to non-stop, Nerdgasmic levels of Scenery Pornography. Seriously, just watch the second movie's trailer.
- Hayate the Combat Butler has some pretty stunning scenes. Sakura petals, cityscapes, giant Ferris wheels... pretty much all of the background work (of the manga) is impressive.
- Time Stranger Kyoko.
- Yu Yu Hakusho has a nice moment of this, when, during a tournament held on an island, one fighter flies (he's one of the few in the series who can) up high over the island to get a good look at the ocean and feel the sunshine and the breeze; understandable, he's from the Demon World.
- The 2004 Appleseed movie, particularly the flyby of Olympus in the beginning. The sequel Ex Machina does this better still.
- Scenery Porn, in combination with the fact that Kentaro Miura doesn't use assistants, is largely responsible for the snail's-pace at which chapters of the Berserk manga are released.
- Basquash!! treats the viewers to some very pretty shots of a shabby cityscape.
- Eiichiro Oda's detailed drawings of backgrounds and buildings in recent volumes of One Piece (especially the Thriller Bark arc) may qualify: although they don't distract from the story or the foreground, careful attention is still paid to them and they are one of the reasons for the more cinematic quality of the anime of late.
- Also, whenever the characters visit a new locale in the manga, a good page and a half is almost always dedicated to giving readers a good view the place.
- Eden of the East does this, even with Washington DC where particular attention was paid to Dulles and the White House.
- Osamu Tezuka, the grandfather/deity of manga and anime, loved to do this. Many of his serious works, like Buddha and Phoenix, devote a noticeably large number of pages to showing gorgeously drawn vistas and photorealistic architecture. His works often devote entire pages to such beautiful scenery for nothing more than an establishing shot. There is also a huge contrast between Tezuka's simplified and cartoony character designs and the detail put into the full-page landscape art; it creates an effect that makes the characters stand out by visually separating humans and animals from inanimate objects and greenery.
- Real Drive wallows in it, to the point of completely abandoning the plot just to show some lovely scenery.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena has one of the most unbelievably beautiful schools ever. Both versions are extremely unlikely, but the quality and gorgeousness of the scenery makes it well worth it. Amazing in that Utena was a budget series.
- Monster has a good bit of this, with many real-life locations being painstakingly drawn.
- To some extent this can be said for every Manga written by Naoki Urasawa. Pluto is especially fond of this as well.
- Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei has this in spades, with some of the most mind-blowing scenes also beautifully rendered.
- Kenichi Sonada's Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats (both anime and manga versions) are set in Chicago. Sonada took a tour of Chicago before Gunsmith Cats was drawn, and took copious photographs and notes. As a result, it's not only possible for natives of the city to pinpoint where the action sequences take place, but also when, as Sonada happened to be visiting the city during a major face-lift being given to the Field Museum—and his animators faithfully reproduced the scaffolding that framed the building for a significant period of time.
- Sengoku Basara, renowned for its high quality animation, is fitted with some pretty stunning landscapes.
- Dennou Coil has beautifully rendered shots of the town and the virtual environments mixed with it.
- Mononoke (not that one) has very detailed, stunning backgrounds similar to ukiyo-e art, particularly in the earlier arcs.
- Noir does this for some of its locales, in particular Paris◊ and the Alps.
- While Mysterious Girlfriend X is loved by many, the only reason most can form into words is the beautiful backgrounds.
- Any manga written by Ueshiba Riichi largely consist of scenery porn. You can spend hours examining all the details he put into backgrounds.
- Ah! My Goddess has a spectacular amount of this. Kosuke Fujishima is a huge fan of highly-detailed, perfectly-rendered buildings, often drawing vast scenes of a town market or technological district, not to mention Keiichi and Belldandy's amazing Temple/House. It extends to his love of vehicles as well.
- Sora No Woto is.... Just... Look. Look I brought you a PV
- Last Exile pretty much never stops doing this.
- Steamboy. The film took sixteen years to make, and boy does it show.
- The 2009 Uchuu Senkan Yamato film is a mixture of this and Technology Porn, with grand space opera battles and detailed spacecraft interiors and exteriors.
- Souten No Ken has lots of this, compared to its Scenery Gorn predecessor, Hokuto No Ken.
- Red Line takes this to downright perverse levels, combining with Technology Porn before the pair begin making sweet love to your eyeballs, and then the race begins...
- Tekkon Kinkreet is chocked full of these. Nearly every background, inside and out, are painstakingly detailed, yet still manage to retain a soft, hand-drawn appearance. This even applies to scenes that incorporate CGI, which also uses textures that are hand-drawn.
- Much of The Sky Crawlers is devoted to featuring the beautiful vistas of Ireland and Poland, as well as the incredibly detailed indoor settings.
- Nurarihyon No Mago always does sweeping shots of their massively detailed scenery. The shot often also moves into the main house as though a camera were gliding through. Add in the impressive CGI cherry blossoms that sway in the wind magnificently and you can see that this show is fueled by this trope. Both of the opening credits are also amazing in this respect.
- Kurozuka does this with everything from flowers to blood and dystopian cities.
- Jigoku Shoujo, particularly at Ai's house and in the psychedelic scenes.
- Tanaka Yutaka is known for well-illustrated manga with at least a few pages of Scenery Porn, but his Mimia-hime turns it Up to Eleven.
- Hanasaku Iroha is very, very beautiful to look at, with the background almost reaches movie level.
- ROD the TV pulls this off. See.◊
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica takes this to Up to Eleven not just with the breathtaking shots of a futuristic Japan (just look at Madoka's house in the first episode!), but also with the witches' barriers, which combine Deranged Animation and Design Student's Orgasm to make for some surreally beautiful environments.
- The Inazuma Eleven anime has extremely detailed backgrounds. And with the camera revolving around Endou or Tachimukai whenever either of them uses God Hand, the shots are redone with a new background every time it's used in a new location.
- Danball Senki is led by the same team (Level 5 with OLM) as Inazuma Eleven and it shows, although the CGI is a bit more conspicuous (likely an intentional stylistic choice, since it's a futuristic sci-fi series).
- The Wandering Son anime. Even for all its faults with the manga fans, you can't help but notice how high-quality and gorgeous the anime is. There's not a moment of Off Model, the anime team payed attention to detail, and the series overall looks like an anime movie rather then a Twelve Episode Anime. It's especially noticeable at the end of the first episode, with the Sakura◊ Blossom◊ scene.
- Every Kekkaishi volume cover is breathtakingly pretty in some way, to say nothing of the scenery within the manga itself.
- The main reason The Walking Man exists.
Comics
- If there are two things that Cerebus The Aardvark is known for, the one that isn't soul-crushing misogyny are the intricate pen-and-ink backgrounds rendered by artist Gerhard. The trade paperback covers are even more impressive.
- The series Top 10 is a good example of this trope in comics. Every bloody panel is filled with incredible detail of the city of Neopolis, as well as no less than three visual Easter Eggs per page.
- Another independent comic book example, Luther Arkwright and its colored spinoff Heart Of Empire had a lot of thought put into the Steam Punk backgrounds, which were usually flooded with references to other issues, Victorian culture, science fiction or random statues of Luther (after he died).
- Skydoll puts great effort in settings that will only be shown for few panels. It helps that one of the creators is an architect.
- Calvin and Hobbes sometimes does this when Calvin plays in the woods, or during the "Spaceman Spiff" strips. (Though arguably this served the plot in each instance to emphasize the natural world as a trope in Calvin's life — contrasting it with his television watching habits — or to emphasize the expanse of his imagination.)
- Incidentally, most of the alien desert scenery isn't made up — they're basically Bill Watterson's sketches of beautiful desert scenery in southern Utah.
- Kazu Kibuishi's Amulet has far more interesting scenery than characters, at least so far.
- His Copper strips on the other hand have both.
- In Archie Comics' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures series, the Turtles' world tour arc is kicked off with some breathtaking artwork of the cliffs of Tibet.
- Archie comics themselves were prone to this, especially if Bob Bolling was behind the desk. Just look.
- Roger Leloup of Yoko Tsuno fame loves drawing very complicated backgrounds of all kinds.
- Pogo had some fantastic scenery.
- Bryan Hitch. His Triskelion is a sight to behold.
- Moritat the main artist for the Elephantmen series has his work often compared to Blade Runners fantastic Cyber Punk sets.
- James Stokoes comics like Won Ton Soup have heavily detailed backgrounds full of Easter Eggs.
- Brandon Graham's comics have weird and wonderful environments full of imaginative bizarreness and Funny Background Events.
- Geof Darrow, hands down. Though his work can also enter into Scenery Gorn due to squick, like when the main character in Hard Boiled wonders through the red light district.
- Moebius, who is a major influence on the four artists mentioned above, is quite the master of this trope ranging from the Arcadian forests of The Adena cycle, the strange alien worlds of Arzarch and the futuristic metropolises of many of his sci-fi stories.
- Philippe Druillet takes this to insane heights with his multiple page spreads of epic, near-surreal landscapes.
- Jack Kirby liked to create so many distinct and strange fantastic machines and cities that Kirby Tech is practically a trope in and of itself.
Card Games
- Many of the Land cards in Magic: The Gathering are pretty impressive, in particular Mirrodin's metal fields, Ravnica's city-scapes and Zendikar's impossible rock formations. This is particularly noticable with the full-card art variants for basic lands.
- Many of the newer land cards from blocks go together with other like-blocked, same colored, lands to make large, overly detailed pieces of art.
- The Invasion basic lands were particularly impressive, with all of the five basic land types having at least one example each of what could be considered the "definitive" Plains/Swamp/whatever.
- A handful of Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Field Spells depict some absolutely gorgeous scenery.
- As does the Pokémon TCG. A lot of the backgrounds in the card illustrations are gorgeous, especially in the Holon series.
Films
- Avatar is so completely packed with it from start to finish that the saturated colors and imagery of the alien environment actually outplays everything else.
- Titanic gives us shots of the exquisitely designed first class areas of the ship. (And jaw-dropping scenes of the same gorgeous rooms being decimated)
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is essentially a movie of Terry Gilliam's wildest scenes imaginable. Pretty.
- S. Darko has ridiculously good scenery porn for an otherwise terrible movie.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey; same with Barry Lyndon
- 2010: the Year We Make Contact made excellent use of the Voyager probes' photographic record of the Jovian system.
- The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is full of Scenery Porn describing the three protagonists' trip towards Alice Springs. Guilty also of Costume Porn, with both during the climb to Kings Canyon.
- The Brothers Grimm: Nothing but Scenery Porn. The magical woods were the best part (possibly only good part) of the whole thing.
- Bram Stoker's Dracula. Studio interiors of Victorian London, especially the rose-filled garden, bathed in rich colours and looked really... fantastic. Great Costume Porn, too.
- Hammer Horror, namely their Gothic films has sumptuously lush and dazzlingly clean London and Transylvania.
- Cast Away - There was considerable Scenery Porn in this Tom Hanks vehicle. The film spends a lot of time focusing on how isolated his character is, trapped on the island — hence there is much time for the camera to celebrate the landscape. Most of the views looking out to sea are CGI-enhanced: the location itself was in the middle of a chain of islands all visible from the beach.
- Field of Dreams: The producers went out of their way to ensure the most beautiful shots, by building the actual field on two adjoining properties to allow for uninhibited sunset shots, and sometimes breaking a single scene up over several days to ensure "Magic Hour" effects everytime, and also by changing the story's setting from Iowa City to the more picturesque Dubuque County.
- Coraline is this trope mixed with plot. The garden and mouse circus scenes in the other world are beyond breathtaking, especially in 3D. All done in stop-motion.
- Curse of the Golden Flower is an indoor example which mostly takes place in an opulent Chinese castle overflowing with intricate ornamentation. The film extends the detail to Costume Porn as well.
- Terrence Malick ostensibly built his career on Scenery Porn. His movies may either be brilliant explorations of the scope and depth of man's existence or boring as box of rocks. However, no one can doubt the sheer awe-inspiring beauty of his films. See:
- The Fall, where every frame of the movie could be hung in an art gallery, though most of this is due to being filmed all over the world, rather than set design. In fact, scenery porn seems to be director Tarsem Singh's specialty, considering how much his previous film The Cell has it. Judging from the trailers, his next film, Immortals, will also have it in abundance.
- The Lord of the Rings. The films are sometimes described as "the best advert the New Zealand Tourist Board ever had".
- This is directly mocked in Flight of the Conchords. The band's manager is a New Zealand tourism board employee, and his office is full of travel ad posters referencing The Lord of the Rings.
- From the trailer, it's seems that the prequel to LOTR, The Hobbit, will pretty much follow it's footsteps in showing the beautiful landscape of New Zealand.
- In a surprise move, Eragon forewent the casting of New Zealand and went with dark horse Hungary in a move lauded by critics. Hungary has mountains.
- The Chronicles of Narnia movies; again filmed in New Zealand. There's a reason films from New Zealand use this trope though. The Narnia films also had scenes shot in the Czech Republic and elsewhere.
- Ditto the much older Willow (itself heavily based off The Hobbit) and every fantasy epic since LotR.
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture spends a lot of time on Scenery Porn, to show off the jazzy new SFX and the sleek, new model of the Cool Ship. The theatrical version is especially gratuitous with the Scenery Porn because the film actually wasn't finished when it was released to theaters, so the special effects shots were just edited in without being trimmed down at all. The director's cut tones it down a little (but not entirely).
- Star Trek III: The Search for Spock featured a gorgeous shot of a Vulcan temple high in the mountains towards the end of the movie. The establishing shots inside the temple may fall under this trope as well.
- The Shining begins with a long sequence of a car driving through mountains, because mountains are cool, apparently.
- This is used to illustrate the seclusion of the hotel, a major plot point. It's also this trope in its darkest form, since paired with the soundtrack and the weightless gliding of the camera, it sets a rather ominous mood.
- Blade Runner - There many slow pan shots of scenery and buildings. It is hauntingly beautiful. It is high tech. It would suck big time to be there.
- Another Ridley Scott Film: Legend has scenery that, combined with Jerry Goldsmith's Ravel-inspired score, might make you feel woozy with sugar overdose...
- The Sound of Music. Three solid minutes of beautiful shots of the Austrian mountains, with pretty, birdlike instrumentals in the background, has got to be the definitive example of Scenery Porn.
- Gus Van Sant's Gerry is pretty much nothing but Scenery Porn.
- Sunshine - This movie exists solely to show cold green corridors, the molten surface of the sun and alternate between them. Add some epic music and please ignore the characters. We did.
- In this vein, Under the Tuscan Sun mainly exists to make yuppies think that Tuscany is very, very pretty.
- While George Lucas is not a very good character director, he does know how to impress with his wide pans over alien landscapes in Star Wars. The Otoh Gunga in The Phantom Menace, Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, the Death Star, the entire Order 66 scene in Revenge of the Sith, and Coruscant in general in the prequels are good examples that show where he truly excels. (Although the Cloud City scenery porn in ESB wasn't really his, Lucas having very little involvement with Episode V compared with the other movies, in the Special Editions where he had a lot more input that sequence was extended.)
- The parts of the James Bond films that aren't Fanservice or Stuff Blowing Up fall into this category a lot of the time. Examples:
- The David Niven movie of Around the World in Eighty Days — including long scenes of the heroes ballooning through the Alps, long parades, and a flamenco dance in Madrid that lasted at least 5 minutes — and that one was while the hero was supposed to be in a big hurry!
- This movie is just one of many from the 1950s-1960s that indulged in this. At the time, the advent of television was pulling enough people from movie theaters that gimmicks like widescreen photography were put into play, and filmmakers needed to fill that space somehow...
- All of Jules Verne's Les Voyages Extraordinaires are like this, and therefore each corresponding Film of the Book tends to follow suit.
- The Searchers is full of this.
- The Western genre in general is prone to this, ranging from John Ford's films (of which The Searchers was just one of many) to New Old West variants like Brokeback Mountain.
- True Grit is chock-full of this — big, sweeping shots of beautiful Western scenery.
- Dances With Wolves, anyone? It's half made of this trope.
- The Proposition, although the landscape in question is the barren Australian outback. Still beautiful, in its own way.
- Generally, any film shot outdoors in the American West, the Australian Outback, or New Zealand, will almost inevitably make use of the scenery for at least one establishing shot.
- Even the comic Western Shanghai Noon is beautiful to look at, with lots of extraneous shots of snow-capped mountains, streams, deserts, plains, etc.
- For all the Scenery Porn of John Ford's Westerns (thanks to Monument Valley), his non-Westerns such as How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man provide tons of it as well.
- The films of David Lean (especially Lawrence of Arabia and Dr Zhivago) are textbook examples of this trope.
- Just about any Terry Gilliam film fits this trope. In fact, one reason the other members of Monty Python eventually chose Terry Jones to direct the troupe's films was their belief that Gilliam was more concerned with cinematography and set design than with creating comedy.
- Used gratuitously in the Mamma Mia!! movie.
- The Adventures of Milo and Otis is filled with shots of gorgeous farmland, waterfalls and forests, nicely complemented by adorable puppies and kittens.
- Tim Burton's films are full of this, with his Batman films a particularly good example. Joel Schumacher's entries in that series attempted this but were too garish and implausible for their own good. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy largely eschews this as per its more realistic approach to the universe.
- Van Helsing had so much eye candy it outshone many of the movie's
actors flaws.
- What Dreams May Come's title alone suggests how much of the movie is spent just showing off CGI vistas of the afterlife. From a mountain range made out of paint, to angels flying around classical cities perched on cliffs flowing with waterfalls, to a bleak hell filled with giant shipwrecks and littered with crawling bodies. Justified since in that movie's mythos, Heaven is whatever you imagine it to be, and to Robin Williams' character that means living in his wife's beautiful landscape paintings.
- Superman Returns and the first Incredible Hulk movie both fell short of the expectations of the two's franchise. However, both movies had an amazing sequence of showing off the two titanically powerful characters in very eye catching scenes (Hulk hopping around in the American Southwest desert and the Lois/Superman flight sequence).
- Russian Ark, a single take film encompassing thirty three rooms of the impossibly gorgeous Hermitage Museum, is arguably 100% scenery porn. It also reaches similar heights of art Porn, history Porn, and costume Porn.
- The Coen Brothers do this in almost all of their movies in order to establish the era and area their movie is taking place in, but it's especially notable in Fargo and No Country for Old Men.
- Used copiously in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I swear, they spent half the runtime just on the breathtaking establishing shots.
- There Will Be Blood. The scenery was the next biggest character after Daniel Plainview, even after Day-Lewis ingested mass quantities of it.
- One of the many attributes of an Alfred Hitchcock film. He liked to make sure you knew that this was a real place, putting emphasis on noteworthy landmarks or monuments.
- Jarringly averted in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was set in Hawaii. There was hardly any Scenery Porn. In fact, if not for the fact that it's repeatedly mentioned (and odd little things like Mila Kunis' kukui-nut leis) it could have been any hotel in any tropical area.
- The Hellboy film series, especially the second movie (The Golden Army). The Troll Market scene in particular is beautifully done, looking like a peek into a filled-out and populated magical world.
- Basically every movie produced and directed by Guillermo del Toro. Another recent example (from 2006) is El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth).
- Wuxia examples: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers...
- The latter two were made by the visionary (pun intended) director Zhang Yimou, for whom Scenery Porn is a Signature Style. He can get breathtaking vistas out of a movie about four concubines that takes place exclusively in a single house (Raise The Red Lantern).
- Walerian Borowczyck, whose softcore erotic films tend towards this trope. A good example is the short film La Marée (The Tide), from Immoral Tales, which features two young cousins taking a cycle ride to a white-cliffed beach in northern France.
- The Twilight movie adaptation takes this to a ridiculous level, for no real reason except, perhaps, to seem "romantic": sweeping shots of mountains, fields of flowers, huge waterfalls. Too bad Forks, Washington looks NOTHING like the movie (and books) claims it does.
- The road trip sequence at the end of Elizabethtown qualifies and is pretty much designed specifically to be gorgeous by the love interest so it will keep the protagonist's mind off his depression.
- Akira Kurosawa is a master of this trope. Try seeing Ran and not falling in love with the amazing beautiful landscapes of Mount Aso (where most of the movie was shot).
- Several scenes in Serenity, particularly the intro to Beaumonde, were shot to emphasize the beauty (or, in the case of Miranda, the surrealism) of the environments.
- Hard Candy was directed by David Slade, who had primarily done music videos in the past. It shows; even though almost all of the movie takes place in a few rooms, it looks absolutely stunning, with saturated colors and narrow focus-planes.
- In Bruges, thanks to the filmmakers' ability to use the rarely-filmed city as the actual shooting location.
- The Qatsi trilogy and Baraka are mostly scenery porn and awesome music, although there's a good bit of shots of people without much interesting scenery behind them as well.
- Jeremiah Johnson
- Jurassic Park and its sequel have lots of long shots showing off Kauai's mountains, jungles, and plains. And then dinosaurs were added and history was made.
- Renegade (aka Blueberry) features a great deal of breathtaking panoramas often shot from sweeping helicopters.
- Every single shot of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist.
- The extended shots of Chicago in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
- Pretty much any film by Wong Kar Wai, another Chinese director for whom Scenery Porn (and stuff verging on the real) is a Signature Style. Some of his best Scenery Porn:
- Michael Bay, for all his Strictly Formula, has admitted as such that around an hour into every movie he makes, there's a dramatic slow-motion sequence. These, as well as some other parts of his movies, often have awesome scenery.
- Dead Mans Shoes has a lot of this, with grand sweeping shots of the beautiful countryside of the Peak District in north-central England standing in harsh contrast with the dark events of the film, an effect which Word Of God confirms is intentional.
- Mary Poppins had a very inviting London.
- And not a single frame of it is the real thing.
- Young Einstein has some impressive Australian scenery in this segment (not to mention great music to go with it).
- While not generally considered the best of the series, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: The Dream Master and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare are visually by far the most stunning.
- David Lynch's Dune.
- The Fountain. Throughout the entire film, you find it hard to pay attention to the astronaut's story because you're gawking at the visuals. Then, at the end, the conquistador reaches the tree and you're treated to an even more arresting vista.
- The documentary Winged Migrations consists almost entirely of birds, Scenery Porn, and the most gorgeous music they could find.
- Also in the bird-watching genre; the icy landscapes in March Of The Penguins are bewitching (if not quite inviting.)
- The movies Jean de Florette and sequel Manon des Sources take place in the backcountry of Provence, France, and showcases scene after scene of beautiful countryside. Even the village is wonderfully old-fashioned. Since their release, the movies have greatly helped bring tourists to the surrounding region.
- Martial-art action movie The Forbidden Kingdom contains absolutely beautiful panoramic shots of China, a mixture of realistic, and fantasy-based.
- Nancy Meyers' films often are full of scenery porn. The Holiday uses shots of a house in LA and a cottage to compensate for the woefully awful story.
- Giant, which begins with wide sweeping shots of the green Maryland countryside which then contrasts with the beautiful desolation of Texas.
- The Wizard of Oz: First five minutes in Munchkinland showing off the art direction.
- Slasher Flick Just Before Dawn has lots of beautiful shots of the Oregon forests and mountainside.
- Stephen Soderbergh's 2002 version of Solaris isn't a great film, but it is worth watching for the panning shots of the titular planet's surreal oceans, coupled with Cliff Martinez's beautiful soundtrack.
- The original 1972 film was one of the most expensive films to come out of the Soviet Union, and as a result, it is about 30% artistic montage. There is a beautiful sequence filmed of a man driving down a highway (filmed in Tokyo) that goes on for a solid five minutes, with no dialogue.
- Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha is a beautiful example and one for costume porn. Although the filming took place in California, it was still a breathtaking choice to portray still-traditional Kyoto, Japan. All the cinematography was breathtaking and almost made up for the fact that it was kind of a mediocre film anyway.
- How to Train Your Dragon: Berk is gorgeous.
- Unlike many other conservationist documentaries, the French movie Oceans skips the statistics and goes straight to outrageously beautiful views of marine life, shot from impossible angles, with very little narrative.
- Eves Bayou includes many a sweeping panoramic shot of the eponymous swamp.
- Letters to Juliet has been described as an advert for the Tuscan tourist board.
- The Bird People In China showcases some of China's beautiful mountain scenery.
- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist does this to the Big Applesauce.
- Disney's Dinosaur is this with a little story trown in. In fact, just ignore the storyline and concentrate on the stunning visuals.
- Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time has this all the time. It's absolutely gorgeous.
- The Duellists has some of the most beautiful naturally-captured vistas and scenery shots ever caught on film.
- Suspiria is absolutely beautiful. Reds, blues, greens, you name it. It's a candy fest for the eyes.
- Every animated film by René Laloux, director of obscure French weirdness like Fantastic Planet, Gandahar and The Masters Of Time. Bizarre but beautiful alien worlds that look straight out of a Salvador Dali painting.
- Establishing shots in Northfork.
- Baraka is a non-narrative film which contains nothing but Scenery Porn.
- Starting with Prisoner Of Azkaban the Harry Potter movies have shot many of Hogwart's exteriors at gorgeous Scottish locations. In Deathly Hallows Part One where Harry, Ron and Hermione are on the run, they camp out at beautiful spots all over Great Britain.
- In the Order of the Phoenix, there are many shots of the Ministry of Magic atrium, which gets wrecked at the end of the film.
- The Dark Crystal and its Spiritual Successor Labyrinth both have intensely detailed fantasy worlds; since both also qualify as Starring Special Effects (specifically puppets) and were made before CGI was commonplace, the sets are that much more of a logistical and aesthetic triumph.
- Pixar is very good at this:
- Wall-E. Earth as a desolate wasteland is ironically the most beautiful looking thing in the film.
- Cars has a long scene at the start and finish that is pretty much all Scenery Porn.
- And its sequel, Cars 2, takes it Up to Eleven with new settings and colorful environments. At some points it looks a little too realistic for a universe made of Cars.
- In The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible's second arrival at Syndrome's island pretty much existed to show off how awesome the island was.
- Finding Nemo has some very impressive underwater scenes.
- A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2 both feature the same tree (to different levels of detail and mood).
- Up has some amazing shots of the jungle, ranging from rocky terrain to lush foliage and everything in between. But it's not only that— even the cityscape and the sky can be counted in this trope.
- Brave has this from the freaking poster. And it's set in the Scottish Highlands, meaning there will be more to come.
- The Indonesian film Denias, Senandung di Awan is filled with beautiful shot of the landscapes of Irian Jaya (Papua) including the snow covered Jayawija mountains◊. In one scene, we are treated to all of it from sweeping helicopters, truly breathtaking.
- The eco movie "Home" is essentially 90 minutes of high octane scenery porn to make sure you sit through the entire lecture.
- The 1980s Conan the Barbarian tried to ape Frazetta as much as possible. Nearly every scene is based on one of his paintings.
- Don Juan DeMarco: Every sexual escapade the title character (Johnny Depp) describes takes place in a beautiful locale; a picturesque Mexican village, a richly adorned palace, an idyllic tropical island. (And of course Johnny himself is easy on the eyes.)
- Never Cry Wolf: Loads of gorgeous Alaskan landscapes. For that matter, you'll be hard-pressed to find anything filmed in Alaska/ the Yukon that doesn't qualify for this trope.
- Asgard may be completely computer-generated, but it is absolutely stunning. Jotunheim is also Scenery Gorn.
- Unforgiven
- Silk (2007): filmed in Japan and Italy and containing many sweeping establishing shots of places all around the world as the main character travels from Europe to Asia to fetch silkworms.
- Almost any Bollywood romance film. Seriously, you can turn the sound off and just watch.
- Valhalla Rising has notable amounts of Scenery Porn—long shots of the Scottish highlands and Eastern Canada with little dialogue.
- Vertical Limit is set on K2 and was filmed on several mountains around the world, and makes full use of it. The beauty of the scenery almost makes the human suffering even more jarring.
- As the title suggests, the romantic comedy A Walk in the Clouds is arguably nothing but this. Even the scene of the vineyards burning is gorgeous.
- Also used extensively in the film The Beach, especially the scenes at the eponymous beach (which is the real beach at the Thai island Koh Phi Phi.)
- Edinburgh has never looked so lovely as from The Illusionist.
Literature
- Dan Abnett does this in droves, particularly in the Gaunt's Ghosts novels, where he'll spend a couple of paragraphs just describing a single room.
- Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series — more known for its normal Porn, but full of pages and pages of descriptions of apparently identical hills covered with many, specified, types of grass.
- Victor Hugo is notorious for devoting whole chapters of The Hunchback of Notre Dame to describing the cathedral itself and the Paris skyline. The book is actually called Notre Dame de Paris — the name of the church — and a large part of it is a plea for the preservation of old cathedrals. Many literary critics in fact consider Notre Dame to be the main character.
- Hugo did much the same thing with Les Misérables, wherein the story - changed in the musical version to be centrally about Jean Valjean and Cosette - was centered around the entirety of France.
- The heath is described so much in Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native that it might as well be its own character.
- Robert Jordan had a tendency towards this sort of thing - settings, views, and even minor character mannerisms were described in great detail.
- Dean Koontz can take this to great lengths, sometimes exaggerated for humor.
- By the Light of the Moon features a very detailed description of a bedroom shared by two brothers, contrasting the personality of the elder with the younger, ending by mentioning that the latter has been left bound and gagged on his bed. The surreal church visions throughout the book (isolated bits of the church appearing in hallucinations to the protagonists, such as a font seen in the desert and a confessional booth reflected in a restroom mirror rather than the stalls that are really there) are crowned with elaborate descriptions of the church interior proper late in the book. One of the viewpoint characters is a painter, which helps justify some of the Scenery Porn.
- Dark Rivers of the Heart: Justified Trope in that the traumatic memories of the male protagonist center around a childhood incident involving his father's home; he says of his father, a noted painter, that anything he did was done with the aesthetics well worked out in advance.
- J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. At least 80% of it was Scenery Porn, or it felt like that. This is why it made such good stock for film. There's a particularly good speech by Gimli about the caverns behind Helm's Deep, which goes on for a page and a half.
- Much like his Fictionary, Tolkien insisted on drawing (and making corrections to) a Fantasy World Map as the story was being written, setting a trend for future writers. His scenery descriptions were sufficiently detailed that geographer Karen Wynn Fonstad was able to reconstruct a thematic atlas of Middle-Earth including geology, climate, and vegetation.
- The moon world in his children's book, Roverandom is so imaginative and vividly-described that it qualifies as this.
- H.P. Lovecraft is best known for indescribable Eldritch Abominations, but he certainly didn't skimp on description when it came to scenery. He was very much a fan of architecture, and his stories feature long and detailed descriptions of the scenery (see for example the descriptions of Providence in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward). Usually this worked well and helped to set the mood, but on a few occasions it came out as rather egregious. The Dream Quest to Unknown Kadath in particular has a scene near the end where it seems like the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep has been hired as the spokesbeing of the New England tourism committee.
- Cormac McCarthy's The Road intricately describes the bleak, empty, lifeless wasteland setting in far more detail than he does any of the book's characters.
- Forget The Road. Look at Blood Meridian or Suttree. Just read the first page of Suttree
- Chris Riddell's pictures of the sky ships in The Edge Chronicles. Hell, most of the pictures in those books. None of the illustrations distract from the actual written story, but they're still rather detailed and well-drawn.
- The World at the End of the World by Luis SepĂşlveda. Read it, and feel how you're actually picturing yourself looking at the majestic landscapes of the far southern tip of South America.
- John Steinbeck had a crush on the Salinas Valley.
- Shaun Tan, man. Just Shaun Tan. If you're reading this page, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of The Arrival. Or The Red Tree. Or Tales from Outer Suburbia. Or any other book with his name on the cover.
- All of Jules Verne's Les Voyages Extraordinaires are like this.
- Around the World in Eighty Days is the most notable example. The book indulges in long descriptions of scenery and culture as well — in fact, it's half of the appeal of the book. That's not even mentioning the incredible number of journey-delaying encounters Phileas Fogg encounters while being "in a big hurry". They'd be Wacky Wayside Tribes if Verne hadn't integrated them seamlessly into the plot.
- From the Earth to the Moon
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
- The Mysterious Island
- Journey to the Center of the Earth
- Dragons Wild by Robert Asprin spent an extremely inordinate amount of time describing both the scenery and streets of New Orleans French Quarter and the people who lived there (and their hours and routines as a result of living in the Quarter) as if to say "see, I really lived here! I'm a local!"
- The first two books were fine, but the last two books of the Hyperion Cantos — especially the last one — are largely endless descriptions of pretty nonexistent locales on other planets (well, aside from the transplanted Vatican City), with little bits of completely inconsequential plot and exposition thrown in here and there.
- Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. According to rumour, he wrote the first few chapters especially Scenery Porn-heavy in order to drive off readers looking for cheap and quick thrills. Elitism isn't dead!
- There's an awful lot of Scenery Porn early on in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Once Lord Foul really gets going, however, it turns into a kind of Break the Cutie exercise on the world. Scenery Gorn, anyone?
- 3001 by Arthur C. Clarke has the first two-thirds of the novel basically taken up by a tour of the future world through the eyes of 21st-Century viewpoint character Frank Poole.
- Ridiculously long sections of Gormenghast are dedicated to descriptions of the titular castle.
- David Weber seems to do this a lot. In his Prince Roger books, pages and pages are devoted to lovingly-crafted descriptions of the Mardukan jungle, cities, and other locales, while in his Bahzell Bahnakson series, he had a tendency to get overcreative when it came to creating his cities, and he seemed to want to let the reader know every in-and-out. This is most evident in War God's Own, in which the characters never seem to be able to go into a city without commenting in 3-5 page long descriptions on how advanced/beautiful/innovative it is. To be fair, this is probably because they are country boys who have never been out of their respective, reasonably barbaric homelands in their lives, but the point still stands.
- Watership Down may require you to consult a botanical guidebook in order to follow the story, as it slides seamlessly between Scenery Porn and existential dread. After an opening quote from Aeschylus about death and dripping blood, you get this:
The primroses were over. Towards the edge of the wood, where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog's mercury and oak-tree roots...
- Stephen King is a big fan of describing the surroundings even when the characters are being hunted by The Legions of Hell. If it weren't for the looseness of his geography, it would be possible to draw a map of his fictional Maine towns... and he spent extra time describing the entire American landscape in The Stand.
- Hannibal is worth reading for the sumptuous descriptions of Florence.
- E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros frequently stops in order to describe the supernaturally beautiful scenery, both indoors and outdoors. The description of the Demon Lords' throne room is the most outrageous example, but there are others. The novel contains its share of Costume Porn as well.
- Anne of Green Gables put Prince Edward Island on the map, for this very reason.
- Discworld novels don't usually have too much of this stuff beyond the Establishing Shot of the Disc at the start of the early books. But you can definitely tell that Men at Arms was being written at the same time as The Streets Of Ankh-Morpork: A Discworld Mapp was being compiled. The description of the "gnarly ground" in Carpe Jugulum probably counts as well. And then there's The Last Hero, and Paul Kidby's gorgeous pictures of the Rimfall, Cori Celesti, and the Disc as seen from the moon.
- Talesofthe City is the urban version of this trope featuring not just streets and locations both notable and mundane, but accurate (for the time) bus lines. While it was admittedly a serialized story in a local newspaper and thus explicitly aimed at a local audience it can still feel like more effort is spent on showing off how real and local it was than writing a compelling narrative. As a much-loved series, however, YMMV.
- Ben Aaronovitch does this with London in his Rivers Of London books, it starts to get a bit out of hand in the sequel Moon Over Soho.
- Conan the Barbarian is a more literal example with many attributing the revival of the books to Frazetta's fantastic covers.
- In Stanislaw Lem's Tales of Pirx the Pilot, a spacesport is described very vividly. You can almost smell the Diborane.
- Both of the primary narrators in The Historian describe their surroundings in lengthy and exquisite detail. Landscape and architecture both receive near-fetishistic attention, taking up a sizable portion of the book's 650+ page length.
- The illustrations of Dinotopia are filled with gorgeous cities and ruins. See for yourself◊.
- William Golding's Lord of the Flies is full of this.
Live Action TV
- Any science fiction show, when they leave their station/ship/plot device. And sometimes when they're still on it.
- Every establishing shot ever on The Amazing Race. Watch the Openening Credits from one of the later seasons, every scenery shot is a place they've visted over the course of the series.
- Breaking Bad. The cameras take every opportunity to show off the deserts of New Mexico.
- Boardwalk Empire; the jaw-dropping re-creation of Atlantic City's boardwalk is this all over, and more than a few establishing shots give a sweeping view of it.
- Burn Notice is full of shots of Miami in every single episode, often accompanied by girls in bikinis, which makes it an odd combination of Scenery Porn and actual (softcore) Porn. So did CSI: Miami and (possibly) for the same reason. And, indeed, most shows set in Miami fall prey to scenery porn. It's almost like there's a reason. Some other show they're referencing... Some other show set in Miami. Some other show that looks like a 45-minute music video of cars and guns and bikinis and scenery porn.
- Carnivŕle has perfect cinematography. At least, the first season had it nailed down pretty fine.
- Most episodes of Charmed open with some magnificent, view-from-the-sky establishing shots of San Francisco. The White Lighters have also been known to have meetings with the main characters on the top of the Golden Gate Bridge.
- Doctor Who, for all of its Special Effects Failure, also employs sweeping vistas.
- Especially in the new series, where we've had some really lovely alien planets, gorgeous shots of outer space, and most recently, some amazing location shooting in Utah.
- Both Kingdom and Doc Martin have long shots of their (Norfolk and Cornwall respectively) scenery.
- Supposedly the reason why Last of the Summer Wine was initially popular was that people would watch with the sound off, ignore the plot, and just gaze at the beautiful scenery.
- The people who watched the unfunny "comedy" A Year in Provence generally did the same thing.
- Life had great cinematography, and also showed the LA area to good effect.
- Life on Mars went out of its way to establish its version of the Seventies, down to copying lighting and cinematography techniques from Seventies films and television. A prime example of Real is Brown.
- Lost. The directors of the show not only use the gorgeous vistas of Hawaii (where they actually shoot) really well, but they also create really meaningful establishing shots. No generic, CSI-style flyovers here, folks.
- Mad Men has ridiculous amounts of detail in the backgrounds and props, things that add character but never, ever get used. One hotel room gets a suit valet (thing you hang a suit on), a bottle of liquor in the background, clothes and pocket-stuff, cuff links... and none of it is used or referred to, but captures the era.
- The scenery in Australian drama McLeod's Daughters is lush and beautiful. The sweeping shots over the farms are stunning.
- Many of the sketches in Monty Python's Flying Circus written by Terry Michael Palin were set on location in beautiful countryside locations. (It got to the point where as soon as they began reading a sketch, John Cleese would go 'here we go, pan over beautiful countryside'). Lampshaded in a sketch at the end of one episode which starts with an image of the ocean roaring onto a beach, at which point John Cleese comes on and apologises for the fact that there's no actual jokes at all, but at least the scenery is lovely.
- The Ken Burns mini series The National Parks: America's Best Idea is essentially six episodes of old photos, talking heads, and lots and lots of this.
- No Reservations is as much Scenery Porn as it is Food Porn.
- NYPD Blue really liked its slice-of-life shots of the titular city. Law & Order and its offspring occasionally indulge too.
- Literally the entire reason that Planet Earth and associated series exist.
- Ever since Power Rangers moved to New Zealand, they've been taking advantage of the beautiful landscapes the country has. Mystic Force and Ninja Storm are especially good for it.
- The Santa Barbara police station on Psych falls into the Architecture Porn category. Many of the exteriors, whether filmed in Vancouver or Southern California, are also very pretty.
- Pushing Daisies not only has this (including a beautiful CGI-enhanced graveyard), it also has architecture Porn. Can't... stop... drooling!
- The episode "Window Dressed To Kill" has, towards the start, a shot of a massive prison in the middle of an icy area that qualifies as scenery porn among scenery porn. Seriously, it's gorgeous.
- The Granada TV Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett is pure Victorian scenery porn, down to every last detail. It was one of the last ITV series that got given a big enough budget to reproduce this kind of detail—when you look at their later dramas, there simply isn't as much * stuff* on tables, walls, on the streets because they can't afford it anymore. And considering how the Victorians loved their bric-a-brac, every elaborately decorated inkwell, every Orientalist screen, every Arts and Crafts wall-hanging, every lead ornament on a window, every mother*** ing Symbolist painting whose height of popularity matches the story year exactly is enough to make the history geek pass out in ecstasy. And that's before we see the ominous print of the frickin' Reichenbach Falls on Holmes's mantlepiece, and the way the directors framed numerous shots to match the original Sidney Paget illustrations... excuse me, I think I need a lie-down.
- The city of Atlantis is beautiful in its own right, but several later-season nighttime establishing shots are breathtaking.
- Star Trek: Voyager has a ridiculously gorgeous opening title sequence—so much so it broke physics
- On Top Gear during their overseas specials, at least a few minutes of reverent attention is paid to the surroundings. The Vietnam special was particularly devoted to this, at least in part because the presenters wanted to show the country as "more than just that place where a war happened".
- Torchwood is full of beautiful shots of Cardiff. And in "Countrycide", the countryside.
- The Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Wallander, set in southern Sweden, is heavy on the scenery porn, with countless lingering shots of beautiful Swedish landscapes.
- Wheel of Fortune can get very elaborate with its set designs, which change every week. They especially love Halloween week, where the set is replete with gag tombstones, an animatronic gargoyle, smoke and lights, etc.
- The BBC documentary series Planet Earth has a ton of this. Aerial views of mountains, deserts, and forests, waterfalls and oceans, large migrating groups of animals, and more, all shot in HD, no less! Just let this video explain for itself.
Music
- Kanye loves this: "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" and "Amazing" were excuses to show off Prague and Hawaii respectively, "Stronger" showed off a pseudo Akira-inspired version of Japan and "Power" was what one imagines he imagines happens when he walks through his living room in the morning.
- U2 tour stages. The most obvious examples would be the Trabant-lit, widescreen-adorned Zoo TV stage, the neon-filled Popmart stage with its gigantic LCD screen, and the current 360 "Claw" stage, but the relatively minimalistic heart-shaped Elevation stage deserves a mention. Their stage designer, Willie Williams, does this in many of his works.
- Bono pointed out in a Rolling Stone piece that the 360 stage has been compared to that of David Bowie's Glass Spider Tour in 1987 — can you blame them? Bowie was one of the first rockers to use this trope, starting with 1974's Diamond Dogs Tour with its giant "Hunger City" set — so big that it eventually had to be dropped because of its sheer expense (not to mention complaints from the band/backup singers, who were all obscured by it for most of the show). The 1990 Sound+Vision Tour substituted giant projections of Bowie and other performers for physical setpieces. (Bowie has also notably averted this trope in other tours, such as the 1976 Isolar Tour that used only lighting to set scenes/moods...and even that was limited to white lights.)
- Snoop Dogg's video for "Beautiful" would be nothing but a stereotypical bootyshaking rap video if not for the breathtaking scenery of Rio De Janeiro. In fact, the last shot of the video is a panorama of the city with "Obrigado Brasil" ("Thank you Brazil") at the bottom of the screen.
- The Gorillaz videos Feel Good Inc. and El Manana have the floating island, which looks like something straight out of Studio Ghibli. Butterflies flicking around, modest wildflowers and rolling grassy fields make the place stunning, especially when contrasted to the debauchery and filth of the Feel Good Tower.
- iamamiwhomai videos frequently feature secluded and oddly beautiful areas of the Swedish landscape. The concert takes this Up to Eleven.
- Most of Ben Howard's videos, especially 'Keep Your Head Up', 'The Wolves' and 'Old Pine', filmed in the English countryside.
- Guillemots' video for We're Here is made up of this.
New Media
Tabletop Games
- The setting of Mortasheen has a lot of this for its weird and wonderful locations, which are macabre but not so depressing that they fall into Scenery Gorn. For example, there's the Corpse Sea, a crowd of zombies so vast that it actually qualifies as a sea, the Flesh Forest, a forest made out of meat due to bio-experiment runoff, and the Smut, a desert dominated by a sentient bone-collecting fungus.
Theater
- The Phantom of the Opera includes a few sequences designed to make you "ooh" and "aah" just from all the pretty effects they exhibit. The regenerating theater at the beginning, boat scene, bridge and, of course, the chandelier all fall under this. This and other examples of style over substance are a big reason the show has a lot of haters.
- The musical version of Sunset Boulevard exhibits this in several of its effects, including one where the stagehands actually built a ''split screen", with Norma Desmond's famous staircase on the top and a party scene on the bottom. This eventually proved to be the original production's downfall, as it was too expensive to run with anything less than capacity audiences.
- After intermission, the musical version of The Producers brings out an identical set to the office, except painted completely white (even the windows and desks) for little more than a cheap gag and to show us how much money they spent.
- Similarly 42nd Street, also meant to evoke the Follies, as well as the movie musicals of Busby Berkley. Where did they get all those costumes in Depression-era New York anyway, especially since it appeared to only be the first rehearsal?
- Sunday In The Park With George has both a straight example and a subversion. Act I involves the actors and a few flats, recreating a famous painting almost perfectly onstage. Later, in Act II, they put on an impressive laser light show, and then make a deal out of it being all flash and no substance.
- Speaking of Sunday, the recent revival recreated both of the above effects with a set made entirely of giant computer screens.
- Theatre's dual champs of scenery porn could be Cirque du Soleil's "O" and KA, in Las Vegas. The theatres were specifically built for them, which is standard for all non-touring Cirque troupes, but these take it to a whole new level. (Of course, other Cirque shows also boast amazing set design — turntables, ascending/descending stage sections, projections, etc. — and mindblowing acrobatics.)
- Because most non-Broadway theater (not the same as "Off-Broadway theater") operates on minimal budgets, sets tend to rather spartan these days. A subtle but effective pan of the show often starts by raving about the sets and costuming, implying the story, acting and direction were awful.
- Lampshaded in Spamalot, with references to King Arthur and Patsy being lost in "A Very Expensive Forest", complete with flashing dollar signs on the obviously-cardboard trees.
- The London production of Voyage, the first in Tom Stoppard's exhausting trilogy of plays about Russian thinkers The Coast of Utopia, utilized a backdrop of photorealistic video imagery projected on a massive white semi-circular screen that curved around the stage. During scene changes, the video would pan and scan to the next frame - for example, from the yard to the manor. Overall, the effect was pretty stunning.
- Tanz Der Vampire has so much scenery porn. There are several gorgeous sets, but if the scene of Sarah coming into Krolock's castle for the first time doesn't have your chin in your lap, then nothing ever will. The second you realize that the chorus is being sung by the portraits - which until that moment anyone would have sworn were actual paintings - that is a crowning moment of awesome.
- The Broadway version of The Lion King also qualifies. The opening number alone is worth the price of admission.
- The Light in the Piazza has the most GORGEOUS sets.
- In the Heights has an amazing set. The set designer had an eye for detail. There are so many little things that really make it amazing. During the actual show there are people in the apartments doing things.
- City of Angels calls for 19 or 20 scenes in each of its two acts. A lot of the sets are Deliberately Monochrome, however, as they belong to the Show Within a Show.
- Wicked's Clock of the Time Dragon. Not to mention the climax of "Defying Gravity".
- American Idiot's set is deceptively simple — they have set pieces that move, tip over, and make amazing use of projections (particularly in "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Wake Me Up When September Ends").
- Almost every production of Tosca.
Video Games
Web Comics
- In Whats Shakin, many large panel scenes are drawn this way to emphasize something dramatic going on. Or transitional pages to help break the mood, like THIS one.
- Darths & Droids plays with this trope a couple times. Paticularly here and here.
- Megatokyo, with intricate buildings and weapons. Probably due to the artist actually being an architect originally.
- The Phoenix Requiem.
- Gunnerkrigg Court's urban landscapes are beautiful and foreboding. And the scenery has only improved over time.
- Say what you want about Drow Tales, but the art, especially the art from the remakes, is fantastic.
- Family Man. Observe.
- Another example, complete with an accurate depiction of the sky during medevil times.
- Dresden Codak, one of the few webcomics I'd actually want to hang on a wall.
- Artist Aaron Diaz actually draws the comics on the computer. When sold as prints, they are between four and six feet tall, sometimes bigger. They look amazing hung on a wall.
- Rice Boy and Order of Tales actively revel in this, having entire pages that are beautiful sweeping landscape drawings or are lots of little no-dialogue panels just showing the characters moving through the environment. This is much less of a problem than you'd think, since the comic generally updates with multiple pages at a time.
- The Dreamland Chronicles does this from time to time, especially when establish new scenes, such as Astoria (continued on the next page) or Ashendel (also a double page).
- Nature of Nature's Art occasionally indulges in this. It's even more impressive when you realise that the art's done entirely in oekaki.
- Besides lots of nudity, the unfinished CG webcomic Dreamwalk Journal depicts vast exterior and interior vistas on the insect-dominated world of Cyeatea (more or less SFW images). You don't suppose James Cameron was a fan, do you?
- The Meek has some beautiful and distinct backgrounds in each of it's three Rotating Arcs, from a tropical jungle to a government building to an oasis.
- While those links are all safe, a fair bit of the rest of the site is NSFW. Just a heads up.
- Randall from XKCD will occasionally play with this trope, most notably seen here.
- Homestuck may start with sparse black-and-white backgrounds, but as the story continues the art becomes more elaborate and colorful. Especially the players' various lands.
- The opening view of Sherbourg in Snow By Night does a good job of laying out the beautiful details of the colony.
- The Black Blood Alliance has some gorgeous backgrounds. Unfortunately, this is one of the few good things to say about it.
- Off-White has some impressive backgrounds.
- Question Duck has many gorgeous backdrop. Which have, of course, nothing to do with the question the duck asks.
- Slightly Damned indulges in this when the characters arrive in the city of St. Curtis. Rhea is impressed too.
Web Original
- ElephantsDream. The sheer level of detail that was put into the machine is simply astounding.
- Most everything in the Colour My Series is drawn with great detail, even rooms or machines with little to no interactions.
Western Animation
- The Fleischer brothers were absolute masters at this. They had little 3D model sets that fit perfectly into their cartoons. This was long before computers, mind. See Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor for example.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender has plenty of pan-shots of huge and largely detailed locales. Ba Sing Se is a goldmine for this kind of thing. Sokka once took some swordsmanship lessons that included landscape painting of a valley and◊a waterfall◊ (based of a real one in Iceland)... that he got to look at for all of three seconds. His picture◊ was not very good.
- The Fire Nation royal palace is pretty nice, too.
- Judging by the trailer and concept pictures, The Legend of Korra will be following in its parent series' footprints in this regard, but even moreso with an Animation Bump.
- The trailer for the non-existant movie also had some very nice scenery porn.
- Batman: Gotham Knight did this with the first of its six shorts — the backgrounds are very beautiful and detailed, in contrast to the character designs, which are very simple and jagged.
- The new Clone Wars animated movie and TV shows. The backgrounds and ships are all lovingly detailed and realistic. The characters... Ohmygod! Is his hair made of solid plastic??
- In just the second episode of Futurama, they managed to do this with the Moon.
- Code Lyoko should be the posterchild for this trope. The lead background painter by the name of Frédéric Perrin created meticulous backgrounds which were utilised in almost every scene in the non-3D sequences of the show; Indoor, Outdoor, Industrial, Urban, Nature, you name it. Check out his work for yourself.
- Disney Animated Canon is prone to this, especially during the early films, and "Disney Renaissance" that started with The Little Mermaid (1989):
- Snow White (1937): Especially during an early scene (just before the nightmare fuelish forest scene) of Snow picking flowers in the forest.
- Pinocchio (1940): What a pretty town!
- Bambi (1942) was pretty much entirely Scenery Porn, with a little bit of story thrown in.
- Sleeping Beauty (1959). Not only are the backgrounds meticulously and beautifully painted, the animation is flawless and the foregrounds are no less breathtaking. There's a reason this movie almost bankrupted Disney.
- The Little Mermaid (1989).
- The little remembered The Rescuers Down Under (1990) had some amazing shots of the Australian Outback, and the New York scenes were pretty stunning as well.
- The ballroom scene in Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991) is a brief bit of Scenery Porn. The background was done digitally, while the characters dancing were hand-drawn. As a rule, when the camera flies backwards in a widening spiral with a rotating viewpoint through a massive and detailed candelabra while the room is spinning in one direction and the dancers spin in the opposite direction and there are no mistakes, you know two things: 1) this was done with computer graphics, and 2) this is goin' on the ol' résumé. Disney still uses this clip to blow the socks off of viewers.
- Aladdin (1992) is full of Scenery Porn, drawn from reference photos of actual Islamic architecture. Not actual medieval Arabic architecture, mind you, but actual Islamic architecture.
- The Lion King (1994)
- Pocahontas (1995) - literally painting with all the colors of the wind.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) made medieval Paris look absolutely beautiful.
- The shots of Chinese countryside in Mulan (1998) were fabulous, especially during "A Girl Worth Fighting For".
- Tarzan (1999) had a lot of it.
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) is conspicuously guilty of this - although there are plenty of us who would have died to see more. Do you have a dollar?
- Brother Bear. Just look at it! Makes you wish it'd never become civilised.
- Treasure Planet (2002) begins with a shot of a spaceport shaped like a crescent moon, displaying every building and ship, and when zoomed in enough, the inhabitants. The visuals build up from there.
- Just from the trailer, you can tell that Tangled is continuing the tradition.
- Even Disney's Deranged Animation looks awesome; there's a reason Disney is the trope namer for Disney Acid Sequence.
- The animated series Dungeons and Dragons featured quite a bit of Scenery Porn, especially when showing what formidable landscape the teens had wandered into that week.
- The French film Fantastic Planet is a particularly bizarre example; wallowing in strange crystalline structures and surreal images. It's Scenery Porn on drugs.
- Though some of it hasn't aged amazingly, both Beast Wars and Beast Machines deserve mad props for this.
- Kung Fu Panda. Even if you don't count the opening two minute dream sequence storyboarded and overseen by the respected and famous James Baxter (whom you may have been introduced to via The Lion King), just about every shot of the Valley of Peace counts as this...and the Jade Palace...and Chorh-Gom in the Mongolian mountains... and the suspension bridge where Tai Lung fought the Furious Five. Talk about luscious!
- The Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland animated movie perfectly captures the jaw-droppingly virtuoso style of artwork that made Winsor McCay's original comic strip so memorable. Even the movie's infamous Accidental Nightmare Fuel is rendered lushly, with a large amount of fine detail.
- Oban Star Racers is recognizable for its stunning, picturesque backgrounds. Special note must be taken of the alien vistas in the Oban arc.
- The "Plagues" sequence in The Prince of Egypt is the wrath of God made manifest. It looks awesome.
- Most of the movie falls into this category, honestly. From simple dialogue scenes showing the vast majesty of the Egyptian empire, to Moses walking out his front- er, tent flap to be greeted with sweeping mountain landscapes, to the crossing of the Red Sea, the movie is pretty much a scenery porn extravaganza.
- The animated series Samurai Jack indulged in this on many occasions. Special mention should go to the episodes "Jack and the Three Blind Archers" and "Jack Remembers the Past".
- The Irish/Belgian/French film The Secret of Kells. It toys with perspective masterfully in some scenes, and others are simply jaw-dropping.
- The Tom and Jerry theatrical short Mouse in Manhattan.
- The cartoon To Spring, which also has lots of Technicolor Porn with all the garish paints.
- The Simpsons: "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" has a few examples of this, including the obligatory leaving-Manhattan-via-a-bridge ending (and "camera" zoom out).
- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) episode "The Ancient One" is full of these, once Leo arrives at the hidden land, where the backgrounds, instead of being in the series' usual style, are painted in a manner reminiscent of Avatar.
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs has some very elaborate backgrounds made entirely of food.
- The backgrounds on Chowder look like they came out a Moroccan and Indian influenced Dr. Seuss book. The end results are gorgous, as shown in this opening shot◊ from the Knishmas special.
- While not exactly unimaginably detailed, the backgrounds from the Looney Tunes Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner shorts were◊ very◊, very◊ pretty◊ and had gorgeous colors.
- The House of Mouse Prop Room (an extremely large basement that's supposed to house different props and backdrops for (almost) every animated Disney movie ever made), which for some reason, looks like something drawn by ''Mike Mignola'' of all people! Guess which Disney movie Mignola was involved in!
- The French animated series Wakfu takes a few cues from anime... including gorgeous artwork.
- While this devArt page offers more characters than background, those backgrounds you do see with the characters are the barest sample.
- Thomas the Tank Engine And Friends, particularly in the first five seasons.
- The film "Rio" is FULL of this. There are gorgeous scenes of the jungle, but then you get to the flight scenes where we see them overhead, and oh boy! The parade also looks amazing, with dancers in great costumes and beautiful floats. A float featuring a scarlet macaw stands out in particular.
- Of all shows, Family Guy can do this when they want to. It's usually when they're trying to make the setting romantic or just pretty, for whatever reason. A more specific example would be the walk on the beach Adam West had with Lois' sister.
- ThunderCats (2011), is flush with many exquisitely rendered, unique environments jam-packed into each episode, detailed (and spoiled) here.
- My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic manages to pull this off in its Sugar Bowl of a Flash cartoon. The color, fluidity and amount of tiny details crammed into general shots are impressive. Some episodes use backgrounds that have never been seen before and are unlikely ever to be seen again, like the Training Montage in "Call of the Cutie", the fall foliage in "Fall Weather Friends", and the Wild West scenery throughout "Over a Barrel". There's also the pegasus city of Cloudsdale, an entire city made of clouds and rainbows. Its a pretty Sugar Bowl!
Real Life
- Reddit has a Subreddit named "Earth Porn" that is devoted entirely to real photographs of brilliant landscapes. [1]
- Related are the Subreddits City Porn, Space Porn, Village Porn, and Water Porn.
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