I like Dark and Gritty

There, I said it. I know that I'm wrong to have this preference, but there you go. Society, feel free to flagellate me.

Obviously, this is sarcasm. I feel like the backlash against Darker and Grittier has become absolutely insane. The pinnacle of this is the reaction to Power/Rangers, the fan film by Adi Shankar.

For anyone unaware of the history, a while back Shankar released a fan-film. It depicted a universe that diverged from Power Rangers canon sometime in Zeo, with the Machine Empire signing a peace treaty with Earth, and then expanding it's influence to effectively control the world. It picks apart the idea of Power Rangers as effectively being child soldiers, and features death and nudity.

This film was intended as a satire of the entire concept of Darker and Grittier reboots. However, many people didn't get the satire, and openly hoped that the coming Power Rangers movie would be in the vein of this short film.

I was one of those people. I didn't get that it was a satire. I do now.

Here's the thing, though: even fully understanding that, I still want the Power Rangers movie to be Dark and Gritty. I'll happily watch the shows, which have dozens of episodes to goof around and makes jokes. But when I watch a 2-hour Power Rangers movies, I expect shit to promptly get real in the way it usually does in a season finale.

Yeah, it's true they could produce a film that isn't appropriate to current child audiences...but, so what? Those child audiences are more than welcome to watch the current Power Rangers series, and when they get older they're welcome to see the dark and gritty movie. I don't see why I, as a 28-year-old who grew up basking in the glory of Power Rangers am not allowed to like the idea of a Power Rangers movie with people my age as it's target demographic.

The original concept of darker and grittier was made to target 15-17 year old males and tends to be used in place of plot. I'm no saying it doesn't have it's purpose, but from my point of view it's sort of the sledgehammer of plot tools. It forgets about nuance and depth and instead just sort of randomly flings darkness over there.

What it forgets though, is that just having everything shitty burns you out on the atrocity fast. What should be horrifying instead comes off as cheesy. I run World Of Darkness games and find that the best horror comes when you juxtapose moments of incredible darkness right after moments of triumph and light. Chiaroscuro gives you more of a depth of emotion than Darker and Grittier ever could.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I find that assessment to be rather questionable.

First it is not originally aimed at 15-17 year old males. That statement alone is extraordinarily dubious and very likely factually incorrect on multiple levels. Especially considering this sort of approach to fiction is not new and has been frequently used to appeal to more adult audiences in general for quite some time. Similar classical sci-fi and fantasy works fit rather surprisingly well in the genre especially compared to other works of fiction of there time and match pretty well with modern works. In fact the market for these works dates back quite a ways and was originally aimed at adults in general.

As for the commentary on plot that isn't any better. Works like Game of Thrones show and books, the new Battle Star Galatica, The Walking Dead show and comics, and the newer Batman spring to mind. Not only do they aim at more broad audiences they are quite very clearly not substituting Darker and Gritty for plot. Even Warhammer fantasy and 40K has several well constructed story plots set in those verses. Dan Abnett's works come to mind for WH 40k.

Just like any other setting it is really not superior or inferior then any other outside of individual preferences. Yes it can be overused and poorly done but that is true of all settings. Right now I feel it is being over used. To many trying to cash in on the Grim Dark bandwagon while it lasts.

Who watches the watchmen?

@shimaspawn: Two points. Firstly, the fact that something has a target demographic of teenagers or young people doesn't mean older people are wrong to enjoy it. That's the logic that we apply to everything from The Hunger Games to My Little Pony.

Secondly, I think the burn-out is part of why I liked Power/Rangers. I enjoy goofy Power Rangers series that last for fifty episodes or so, but for a two-hour movie, or a 15-minute short, when I don't have time to really burn out, I like dark stuff.

Darker and Edgier is not bad (often even good) when it's not gratuitous and thought out well. In the case of say, Batman, Batman is an inherently dark story. While you can go overboard with that, a dark Batman story just feels natural.

Some light-hearted stories can be made darker if thought out well. A good example would be Majora's Mask or Twilight Princess to their respective franchises. They're darker and edgier than a normal Zelda game, but still feel like they're edgier.

You could even make a dark Mario game and have it feel natural. Make Bowser act like some kind of evil warlord, and make the Mushroom Kingdom out into a surreal alien world.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

I think the biggest problem is the poor adaption of non gritty works to gritty and dark. Some of them feel shoe horned. Others can lend themselves surprisingly well to it with a little bit of creativity.

I understand burn out quite well. Some folks recommend not spending too much time in the grim dark works and taking breaks for something lighter or even comedic.

Who watches the watchmen?

@Protagonist: Keep in mind, the current "dark" Batman was mostly developed by Frank Miller. He was Dark and Gritty for his first few issues, but after that there wasn't alot of difference between the Golden and Silver ages. Batman isn't inherently dark, as many of the lighter adaptations have shown.

@Tuelfel: Yep, pretty much.

Frank Miller's recent work on All-Stars Batman suggests otherwise. Right now many fans, myself included, find that he's going too far with the whole grim dark thing. He's essentially using Batman both as his own soapbox regarding Gotham and other DC heroes while making Batman nothing more than a hypocritical brutal thug who doesn't even follow the "thou shalt not kill" rule. The result is you end up with a hero who feels more like a grumpy Punisher who's deluded himself into thinking he's a morally just crusader. It's essentially not a DC comics plotline anymore.

edited 25th Apr '15 9:22:26 PM by SgtRicko

I feel what makes Majora's Mask work where other dark interpretations of a material falter is in presentation. It's subtly melancholic and the fears it preys on are very, very close and human - even when the fantastic are involved.

The game never beats you over the head with how DARK and EDGY it is, but the game informs you pretty much from the get go that it's going to be a much heavier ride with the omnipresence of the moon, the time and the constant reminder that everything will die and be destroyed in a horrible moon crash should you be unable to stop it. It builds a sense of urgency and of terror.

Also, the villain isn't Super Stalin Hitler who burns villages, razes cities and commits genocide, rape and other atrocities for the lulz just to show how bleak and awful this world is. The villain (for the most part) is a lonely little kid spurned by abandonment who came across the wrong thing at the wrong time.

The issues at hand are very interpersonal too. The most famous sidequest revolves around getting a couple married, others involve soothing death spirits, helping the living in the place of the dead, healing a man who has become infected and allowing another to witness life grow before the moon crashes.

Hell, the fact that the characters reactions change each day settles the feeling of the impending apocalypse. The on the third day, guards saying you need to get out of the village while standing in terror looking up at the sky, the swordsman cowering behind his scroll on the third day when previously he said he could cut the moon in half, Cremia finally allowing Romani to wear the mask and drink Chateau Romani because she knows they're all going to die when the moon crashes are very poignant moments in the game, but the wonderful thing about it is that it's subtle, background stuff.

I feel that where Majora's Mask gets it right where so many get it wrong is that it mastered Show, Don't Tell. The melancholic was built from the ground up and a lot of the darker stuff you either had to pay attention too or go out of your way to see. Far to many times, Darker And Edgier stuff fails because it feels out of place or too ludicrous/bombastic and Wangst-y to actually serve the story well. It just hammers you over the head with how DARK it is rather than making the darkness feel natural or atmospheric.

edited 26th Apr '15 1:34:10 AM by PippingFool

I'm having to learn to pay the price

Pretty good point. Beating you overhead the head with the setting is definitely a problem of some of the works. Definitely worse in adaptations I feel they tend to over compensate.

edited 26th Apr '15 2:07:16 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

I also feel that a lot of D&E works tend to fall on very abstract and distant evils, rather than more closer to home and interpersonal ones that doesn't invoke Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy.

To use a non dark & edgy but pertinent example: Compare people's reactions towards Voldemort and Umbridge. Voldemort is clearly the malevolent and evil of the two characters, he's committed all sorts of atrocities and crimes and induces a wizarding war. Yet the viewing public has much, much more bile for Umbridge than there is for Voldy.

Because Voldemort's class of villain is one that is seen as distant, impersonal, as more of a storybook tale than a real figure we ever have to deal with in our lives. Umbridge? Umbridge was realistically insidious, she was just a vulgar, rude, bigoted and highly unpleasant individual that sends the hairs on the back of your neck up each time. Not many of us will know a Voldemort, we'll all know an Umbridge.

And for that principle, I feel a lot of the ways D&E fails is that people have no way to relate to the darkness. Going back to the Majora's Mask example, there was a lot of interpersonal interactions even if you weren't there to see them that added up to the atmosphere of the game (Darmarni's scene where you get the Goron mask or the end with the Deku Butler and the "sad tree" are good example) and make the gloominess work. Having your grittiness be too outlandish or distant makes it hard for people to care.

edited 26th Apr '15 8:20:42 AM by PippingFool

I'm having to learn to pay the price

The main backlash against the dark Power Rangers trailer (or rather, the point of the satire) is that using "let's take the newest incarnation of Existing Franchise X, and retool it to be Darker and Edgier!" is a lazy and often inappropriate way to do things. Why in God's name would you think Power Rangers would be better as a dark and edgy series? Are fans of Power Rangers — an idealistic series filled with Ham and Cheese, where the good guys always beat the bad guys in the end and the day is saved by a handful of teenagers with attitude — really clamoring for a gritty deconstruction that treats the premise like a war story where Child Soldiers are fighting a Hopeless War for the survival of humanity? I mean, if you want to tell that story, then go ahead and do it. It certainly could be interesting. But why make it Power Rangers, of all things?

In short, the problem isn't "Dark and Edgy", it's "Darker and Edgier" — where they take a lighthearted and optimistic work and inject dark edginess into the premise — that alienates people, because it takes the series in the opposite direction as the original work.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I know this was meant as sarcasm, but it's still a point I want to address: Why is enjoying media that is dark and gritty supposed to be a bad thing?

Poor adaptation is always a problem, whether you're going from light and fluffy to grimdark, or the other way around.

And yet, doing that does clearly garner a good number of fans, different from fans of the original light-hearted work. If the adaptation is done well, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It seems like you're saying that the new Dark Knight movies are a bad follower to the original Adam West Batman, because they abandon the humor and the light-hearted camp for grim mass-murder and a hero who can't save everyone. MLP has plenty of dark fics, even grimdark, yet the ones that are written well are still popular in the fandom despite the abandonment of cheery happiness that characterizes the series.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

There has been quite the backlash against "dark grittiness" in it's varies forms for some time now. This maybe a reaction to anyone of a number of recent "dark and gritty" reboots, or it may just be the fact that "darker and edgier" has come to be seen as a juvenile sentiment, just as "lighter and softer" is often seen is a childish sentiment.

Funnily enough, the rejection of darker works and reboots can be seen as cheap way for some young adults to seem "mature" in their taste in the same way as some teenagers rejection of lighter works can be seen as a cheap way to seem "mature".

Sure, but you can see how it would alienate the original fans, which is why people complain about it. The reverse is true as well, of course — turning a dark work into something Lighter and Softer can have the same issue.

Batman is something of a special case, as he can pull of light and soft or dark and edgy because he's got nearly 80 years of history behind him. Hell, Batman: The Brave and the Bold (a Lighter and Softer animated take on Batman and many lesser-known DC heroes and villains that ironically came out right around the same time as The Dark Knight) addresses this directly in a blatant-but-short Author Filibuster in the middle of one episode (seen here).

edited 26th Apr '15 8:24:04 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I am a bit confused at the "conflict" here.

What is wrong with you enjoying something? Just because a handful of people think it is silly it does not make it silly or so.

Always remember that Tropes Are Tools. Darkier And Grittier can be a thing used well and succesfully, or it can dumb down something to the point it loses everything worthy it had.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

What Aszur said.

I also have a preference for "dark and gritty" works, but as the others have said they have to have something else to them other than darkness and grittiness. If the plots are complex and the characters well-rounded - especially the "darker" characters - then we're all good.

To use Warhammer 40K as an example, a lot of people who are only familiar with it superficially think it's one of the worst "grimdark" excesses. Look a little deeper into the reams and reams of background material and you'll find rich background histories, a diverse array of characters and factional politics that range beyond its stereotype. Of course, the stereotype does have something to it in some of the more poorly written background material.

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

Sorry, got distracted by something shiny, but I wanted to respond to a number of the things here.

@Pipping Fool: I can see that, in terms of relatability. However, people still enjoy reading about Voldemort. A work being unrelatable doesn't make it bad, it just makes it less impactful. I enjoyed the Avengers, and I have no idea what it would be like to fight Loki to save mankind.

@Native Jovian: Firstly, I think “Why?” is a terrible question to ask when discussing any fiction. Fiction exists for entertainment, so it starts out already unnecessary from a practical standpoint. We don't need fiction like we need food or water. Thus, no justification is required.

Personally, I just think seeing a wildly different take on something I love is fascinating.

That puts you in a distinct minority. Some people like seeing different takes on things, to be sure, but They Changed It, Now It Sucks! is certainly a thing, and making such a radical change in tone is likely to lose the thing that attracted people to the work in the first place.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.