4 ms·

God, I fucking hate the current color grading trend of killing every color except for two opposing ones (usually amber and blue) and then pushing almost everyth

God, I fucking hate the current color grading trend of killing every color except for two opposing ones (usually amber and blue) and then pushing almost everything else into a chiarscuro of inky shadows. Watch a 90s movie sometime and it will make you weep for how beautiful today's movies could be. For superhero movies in particular, I think a big part of this is a deliberate attempt to distance themselves from the stigma that comics are for kids. They want to sell to an adult audience but adults feel foolish if they consume something too clearly sanitized and kid friendly. The last thing any Hollywood director wants to do is make their superhero movie look like 1990's "Dick Tracy", or something in the Spy Kids franchise because it will drive adult audiences away. So they slather the whole fucking thing in grimdark so it looks like serious grown-up stuff who are too insecure in their maturity to watch a silly movie about dudes in spandex doing magical acrobatics and punching each other. (This is also why so much YA fiction which is heavily read by adults is dystopian. And it's why modern superhero movies so rarely have characters use their actual superhero titles, which sounds corny.)

tomtheelder 5y ago
I think a lot of really beautiful films will have many if not most scenes lean heavily on two colors, maybe 3. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with that, and it's actually really great for creating moods and drawing attention to certain things. But here's the thing: it's not the same two for every scene! Films that are in teal and orange the whole time drive me absolutely nuts. That combination has a place, but there are others! Two similar hues to create a sense of stuffiness and formality. A neutral tone plus a vibrant one (yellow or something) to create an intensity and focus on the vibrant elements. Green and red to really force the feeling of lushness in a natural scene. Monochromatic scenes have a place as well. Like I understand that a two toned scene can create a very striking atmosphere, but lets use a _little_ bit of creativity in how we apply that. Agree about superhero movies though. The color grading does always seem like an intentional choice to create feelings of maturity and grittiness.
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aidenn0 5y ago
Dick Tracy might have been the best comic book film of the 90s; I thought it was quite well done, and where it failed it mostly failed by being true to its source material. What is its competition; Judge Dredd? Captain America(1990)? The 90s Batman sequels? Now that I wrote this, I realize Blade was also a comic originally, but I liked Tracy better.

tomtheelder 5y ago

I think a lot of really beautiful films will have many if not most scenes lean heavily on two colors, maybe 3. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with that, and it's actually really great for creating moods and drawing attention to certain things. But here's the thing: it's not the same two for every scene! Films that are in teal and orange the whole time drive me absolutely nuts. That combination has a place, but there are others! Two similar hues to create a sense of stuffiness and formality. A neutral tone plus a vibrant one (yellow or something) to create an intensity and focus on the vibrant elements. Green and red to really force the feeling of lushness in a natural scene. Monochromatic scenes have a place as well. Like I understand that a two toned scene can create a very striking atmosphere, but lets use a _little_ bit of creativity in how we apply that. Agree about superhero movies though. The color grading does always seem like an intentional choice to create feelings of maturity and grittiness.

deleted 5y ago

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aidenn0 5y ago

Dick Tracy might have been the best comic book film of the 90s; I thought it was quite well done, and where it failed it mostly failed by being true to its source material. What is its competition; Judge Dredd? Captain America(1990)? The 90s Batman sequels? Now that I wrote this, I realize Blade was also a comic originally, but I liked Tracy better.