It’s Always Darkest Before It Gets Darker: Part One
So who would have guessed it? “Dark” is the new black, folks! After years of gritty Hollywood scripts being recalibrated on the corporate anvil to make the hero “more likable” it would seem that the success of The Dark Knight has convinced certain executives that our cultural archetypes no longer have to have “pat the dog” scenes and a redemptive arc.
Lauren A.E. Shuker, writing in the Wall Street Journal, interviews Warner Bros. Pictures Group President, Jeff Robinov, and observes:
Like the recent Batman sequel — which has become the highest-grossing film of the year thus far — Mr. Robinov wants his next pack of superhero movies to be bathed in the same brooding tone as The Dark Knight. Creatively, he sees exploring the evil side to characters as the key to unlocking some of Warner Bros.’ DC properties. “We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it,” he says.
Forgetting for a second that if a My Little Pony flick had made almost $500m to date, we would be saturated two years from now in hypercolored equestrian stories emanating unalloyed happiness from every computer-animated pore, where the greatest threat to anything would be an unlocked paddock; this means that, in the trickle-down factor common when massive success is generated by one amorphous property (er.. Batman K-POW anybody?), many other intellectual holdings are now going to be spitballed into incorporating darker fins and a side portion of angst.
Seeing as DC is doutbless already strip-mining all its characters - giving Kamandi a loincloth utility belt with napalm pockets - I thought I’d throw my own hat into the ring with some national syndicated newspaper strips. From their inception many of these strips, in the early days, started out as a good deal less sanitized than their current counterparts (Little Nemo was extremely violent, Little Orphan Annie given to fascist musings and lynching kidnappers). I’ve decided to rejig some of the less caustic ones for possible franchising with an eye to a darker reboot…
(NOTE TO EXECUTIVES: these are just rough drafts. sirs. I can do much more backstory. Maybe a little recovered memory thang, some entrails in the snow visuals. Darker. Grittier.)
Next: Popeye’s pipe goes SNIKT!
The Daily Mona Lisa Monster Truck:
Veni Vidi Vince, as profiled by Juxtapoz magazine, is a classically trained Royal Academy artist who gave it all up for a life of white trash iconography. Only you can tell if it was worth it…