Dark And Gritty Realism

The picture above is a screenshot from the game “Undead Horde” which this blog post is not about. But it’s a nice way to illustrate the point I’m trying to make, so bear with me.

In the game, you play as an undead necromancer who has come back to free his former realm from the pesky living plague and his way of doing that - the game being a strategy game - is to summon his undead minions and replenish his army on the battlefield by raising his dead enemies to fight for him now.

With a different take on the graphics and the storytelling, this game could be dark and gritty and gory. After all, the player is raising the dead and making them fight against the living. If the graphics were all realistic, the game would be gritty and dark. The way they are, comic-style and with a relatively light palette, considering the theme, the game is fun to play and rather addictive.

For a lot of stories, people take the other direction. Instead of making a story light-weight and fun, they make it dark, gritty, and their version of ‘realistic.’ Or grim-dark, as some people refer to it. There is, of course, nothing wrong with grim or dark stories, with stories which come from the darker sides of our reality and are full of murder, pain, and suffering. It is, however, not the way to save your otherwise weak story from being mediocre or bad. It’s also not some kind of fashion everyone has to follow.

During the last few years, the DCEU has proven that making something grim-dark is no guarantee for success. Following the example of the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, they produced a number of comic-book movies which were all gritty and dark. And failed. Funnily enough, the two lighter entries to the DCEU, “Wonder Woman” and “Aquaman,” have been much more successful than their grim-dark colleagues. Overall, the MCU, which has not put as much gravitas into its movies, unless they deemed it necessary, has been much more successful.

That is food for thought, is it not?

The big problem is not that dark themes exist in literature (and other media). Dark themes have always existed - the original versions of modern fairy tales have been very dark overall themselves. Horror is a strong genre, if often underestimated. Danger and death play a big role in action movies. Thriller or crime stories wouldn’t exist without the grim and the dark (safe for cosy mysteries, perhaps, but even those have dead bodies).

The big problem is thinking that dark and gritty and edgy are a way to easily make a story more appealing for the general audience. And that it always works.

In media, a lot of things come in cycles. Horror has a cycle for specific monsters (vampires come and go). Certain genres come and go and come again. Others, like action, are always there, but the themes shift over time.

Another big cycle is how dark and gritty stories come and go. This cycle, however, is bound to how the real world looks. To put it short (although I’ll explain it a bit later), the darker the real world is, the lighter the stories are and vice versa.

The 1930s, with WWII coming up and the Great Depression at its worst, saw a large number of musical movies and light stories. Heroes who fought the evil always triumphed (which is one reason for the 1930s being the golden age of pulp) and they were good on the whole.

Anti-heroes came later, in the 1950s, when the noir genre took up much speed. At that time, WWII was over, the world was recovering, and most people lived relatively well, due to the New Deal and the general boost of economy after the war. The noir genre, as the name says (‘noir’ is French for black), is defined by its darkness, by the anti-heroes, by the betrayal, by the choice between two evils. Heroes are no longer without fail, they are no longer triumphant. They can’t really win - they can choose not to lose too much.

So whenever the world around them is dark and their lives are hard, humans want to listen to light stories where the good triumph, the bad are slain, and the world is a good place. Whenever the world around them is friendly and live is good, humans want to listen to dark stories where the good fight an uphill battle, the bad are powerful, and the world is full of dangers. Essentially, people want fantasies which are polar opposites to their own situation. It makes sense, too - if the world is horrible, you want to hear about someplace nice, if the world is easy to navigate, a much darker world provides the tension and thrill you won’t have in real life.

What does that mean for the success or missing success of the DCEU and other recent movies and other media?

Well, it’s not that easy. One aspect of why dark and gritty might work or not work is the current situation of the world. If the world is dark and grim, then stories of that kind will not work. Another aspect is the story as a such. Some stories can be turned grim-dark and will still work. Others can’t.

Among the characters of the DCEU, Batman can be turned grim-dark. With his background, the trauma of seeing his parents die, the darkness which is inherent in Gotham City, Batman can be dark and grim (but also light and fun, as Adam West proved). Superman, on the other hand, is a very bad choice for grim-dark. There are some dark storylines in the DC comics, but on the whole, Superman is a very good person. He’s a boy scout, the All-American boy who isn’t even from Earth. Gritty and dark doesn’t suit him.

With the “Wonder Woman” and the “Aquaman” movie, the producers, directors, and script writers went in a different direction, making strong, powerful, and positive characters their leads. Which is strange, considering that Wonder Woman is the one most likely to actually kill (unlike Superman and Batman). However, the two movies were made on a much lighter note, if only because nobody expected a comic-book movie with a female lead or a movie about Aquaman, who is the butt of many jokes in the DC universe, to succeed. They have a better colour palette, they have a much lighter tone, they treat their characters better. They look much more like traditional comics than the other entries of the DCEU.

In other words: they are very much like the MCU has always been. The MCU is not without dark and deep themes, but they handle their movies with a much lighter hand. They bring a point across while at the same time they have a lighter colour palette, bits of humour, and good character interactions.

Gritty and dark can definitely be aspects of a story. They can be good and useful aspects. But they shouldn’t be used just ‘because everyone does’ or ‘because people want them right now.’ There has to be a better reason for them, a reason from within the story and its characters. Oh … and try “Undead Horde,” it’s a good game.