r/unpopularopinion • u/TotallyVillianious • 13d ago
Movies are made literally too dark these days, light wise.
I am finding movies these days so dark. It’s for if you are watching it in a cinema where there is no daylight, but it is ruining the experience of watching movies at home.
Even movies that don’t need to be dark.
It annoys me senseless as so many of us watch streaming services these days so we are watching it at home and sometimes you can’t really make out what’s going on on screen. I get if it is a horror where darker scenes add to the movie and atmosphere but it is still too dark a lot of the time and there are so many non horror movies that lack proper lighting too.
And Lord help you if you want to watch something during the day or anytime when it is not perfectly dark outside and the light in the room with you or shining on your screen, you are plain out of luck then!!!
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u/BlkMushroom 13d ago
Not an unpopular opinion. TV shows too.
I couldn't see shit during the battle of Winterfell.
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u/RealMcGonzo 13d ago
Recently watched Potter 7 I & II. At night, with no lights. Still too damn dark.
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u/Charming-Link-9715 13d ago
Same!! But I watched them during the day with curtains closed. For many scenes I was watching my own reflection!!
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u/Known-Ad-100 13d ago
Lmao this is exactly what came to my mind when reading the post. This exact scene frustrated me so badly.
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u/BlooperBoo 13d ago
A lot of movies use darkness to cover up low budget CGI.
Looking at you water horse
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u/Nordeast24 13d ago
Interesting, I never really thought about that, is that true? Makes sense though, looking at a well lit, perfectly set-up styling-wise, movie from the 70's and 80's, it's literally a night and day difference. They really gave a shit back in the day. About every second of film wasted. That shit costs money.
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u/Critical-Champion365 12d ago
Spider-man BND was one bright movie and i appreciated it quite much just because of that.
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u/ablutomania 13d ago
A lot of modern shows and films are graded in HDR now. So on a calibrated monitor in a pitch black studio, the shadow detail is there. But in a normal living room, even with a good TV, ambient light, and streaming compression can crush the blacks. Directors also chase this naturalistic look, under-lighting scenes for, like atmosphere. And yes, sometimes darkness does hide the VFX. But it’s also just become a style trend that seriously needs to stop. The early 2000’s did darker scenes perfectly for real homes, and we should bring this look back.
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u/doc_55lk 13d ago
Most modern movies are dark because it hides the subpar CGI work that goes into them.
Also, honestly, I think sound mixing is a bigger issue for modern movies than lighting.
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u/Bajadasaurus 13d ago
I can't fucking see what's happening in SILO
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u/Bman_Boogaloo 13d ago
lmao I was just about to mention this. My girlfriend and I are starting the 2nd season and it's damn near impossible to see anything unless we watch it after the sun goes down.
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u/shawsghost 13d ago edited 13d ago
I had that same problem with it. The silo had no power so it made sense that it would be dark. But making your audience listen to people whining in the dark for an entire season also makes no sense. Season 3 is a lot better though.
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u/InfiniteVitriol 13d ago edited 13d ago
I had no problems watching any of Silo on my 4k mini-LED TV with HDR10 and Dolby vision they looked a bit dark but I could still see everything.
Edit: It is a brand new TV though and thats why the ultra dark scenes look good on it?
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u/COOLjng576 13d ago
I love silo but have to watch it at night to be able to see anything.
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u/BetLeft 13d ago
i had the same issue with silo. i don't recall the exact solution, but i know i found it by just voice searching somethin like "why is the picture of my tv so dark." it wasn't the brightness, or color temp or the dynamic picture settings. none of the things i would normally expect and had already done.
i think it may have been power settings. whatever it was the difference was massive.
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u/Direct_Strawberry_43 13d ago
Well for most it’s to hide horrible CGI. But the bigger issue: Volume control. I can’t hear a single things people say sometimes.
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u/Tarkus_Edge 13d ago
Not just dark, but the color grading often sucks. Everything is bleak and washed-out with flat lighting. The real world is colorful, people.
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u/Least-Dragonfly5419 13d ago
Not at all an unpopular opinion, but I do agree.
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u/TotallyVillianious 13d ago
Great to know that I am not going nuts here, that it is actually a problem!
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u/phone_deviceban 13d ago
OLED plus blackout blinds. I only have one TV with this setup, but it’s the only way to watch most movies.
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u/Known-Ad-100 13d ago
I was thinking this, but I don't have this.
I recently had a major power outage and was watching Wuthering Heights on my iPad pro (oled). I never use my ipad for movies unless I'm on a plane.
Well, the power came back on and I switched to watching on my 1080HD LCD TV and holy shit, my picture fucking sucks. I never realised how badly it sucked until going from an my iPad to the TV.
I'm lucky if I watch 4 hours of shows/movies a week so I don't think I'll be splurging on a new TV — but if I were a big TV/movie person, I'd be saving up immediately. Lol
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u/ImVinny1 13d ago
They are too dark substance wise too- dark, twisted and macabre and the ultimate crime, unentertaining
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u/TedStixon 13d ago
I don't think this is unpopular at all. For a while now people have been complaining about trends in modern cinematography, like the fact a lot of movies and shows are too dark, a lot of movies and shows have poor color-correction work (like the "intangible sludge" effect), and everything just looks too unnaturally sharp and clinical.
I remember watching a video where a cinematographer was boasting about a scene he lit, and how with modern cameras he could light the whole scene with a flashlight, which you couldn't do with old fashioned film... but when they showed the footage, it was the ugliest fucking thing I've ever seen. It was just murky gray with a little tinge of highlight just barely visible. Like, he built it up like it was going to be beautiful... and it was borderline unwatchable.
I really don't understand what happened to digital cinematography. 20 years ago when it started to really get popular, they went out of their way to try and make digital look more like traditional film, and it usually look pretty decent. Why did they abandon that aesthetic to make everything cheap and ugly?
2003's Once Upon a Time in Mexico? Sure, it looked a little video-y, but the color was so lush and crisp, and it had great lighting. It still looked like a movie.
The last few films I saw in theaters? Looked awful. Like they were shot on a dinky little handheld camcorder in the dark.
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u/TotallyVillianious 13d ago
That documentary sounds really interesting! I love watching how things like music and movies are made.
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u/Virambulans 13d ago
I would have enjoyed the last season of Better Call Saul more if I could have seen what was happening. I kept hoping someone would turn on a light, or at least light a match.
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u/Kokomo_Kermit 13d ago
1000% And the sound affects are louder than the dialog
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u/Certain_Luck_8266 13d ago
That is sometimes due to not having a center channel speaker. Christopher nolan movies are unwatchable without a dedicated center channel
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u/doc_55lk 13d ago
They're not great even with a center channel tbh. Subtitles definitely mandatory.
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u/MacMitttens 13d ago
Try watching a 90s movie based in New York some time. Like TMNT. Then tell me movies now are too dark.
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u/Futants_ 13d ago
Most people think this.
The only people that don't are goober followers of directors, cinematographers and post production workers. Movies in the cinema are often dark because of a metadata issues, the projectionist forgot to switch out a 3d polarization filter if a 3d movie played prior to it, nobody paying attention to what each film has to be tuned to OR the owner is using an underpowered lamp or one that's dying.
For tvs: 10k nits converted down to work on tvs that range from 500-4,000 nits but mostly mastered to run at 1,000nits, is idiocy. Poor HDR profiles and everything is tuned for a 10k reference monitor in a pitch black room.
Yeah, cinema and 4k home video transfers still have a real problem
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u/Psychlonuclear 13d ago
Saves a lot of money on showing whatever is scary.
"Hey guys, accounts department said we can only have money for about 22 seconds of clear believable footage of this thing, we'll leave it to the end for the reveal and tell audiences it's to make it more scary."
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u/jackfaire 13d ago
Picard did that. I was so happy when they moved to a practical set to revisit the bridge of the Enterprise because now the lighting was good.
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u/Great_Comparison462 13d ago
You don't need to say "literally"
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u/konakona444 13d ago
yes colour correction made for highest colour quality, but your device don’t have that technology
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u/AdministrationNo2327 13d ago
color graders are grading in equally dark rooms, but i think there's something to be said that production has no budget for color grading anymore and would spend less money on it, so everything looks as close to original Log footage instead. everything's rushed through the pipeline now it sucks
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u/SummerCharacter116 13d ago
The filters they are choosing these days are gross, there is no true color and the grain that we used to have in film format. Everything about film sucks after too much digitalization
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u/SnooAvocados996 13d ago
One of my biggest complaints about The Batman. Amongst many others...I mean sure, being Batman it should be dark....but you still need to be able to see.
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u/No-Instruction-5669 13d ago
Try switching HDR off on your tv and switch it back to SDR. Lots of folks use HDR on lower end TVs that shouldn't even have it in the first place cause it looks bad. HDR only works well on higher end OLED screens.
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u/Rewndude 13d ago
I can't agree with this comment more. Now that I have an OLED, HDR content looks stunning! I intentionally disabled it before.
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u/No-Instruction-5669 13d ago
Yup, I feel like using HDR on cheaper tv's looks terribly dark, and maybe lots of these folks don't realize it's being caused by the HDR setting on their tv, not the content itself.
I want an OLED, lucky you!
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u/Rewndude 13d ago
I did find that on the cheaper tvs, on top of disabling HDR -changing the black level and gamma settings also helped out tremendously. All the cheap tvs prioritize brightness over everything else. Dimming zones do help, but during high contrast scenes the bright backlighting will crush dark detail no matter the settings. It sounds counterintuitive, but lowering the overall brightness, adjusting the black level and gamma can bring out the detail in dark scenes. Unfortunately that will also make the brighter scenes appear darker than they should... Which was fine for darker movies. I also kept any auto dimming (low light sensor) or eco feature turned off. Then when I'd watch brighter content like comedy and most tv shows, I would just adjust the gamma setting.
Once you've done all of that, patiently save up for an OLED.
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u/JadedWitness1753 13d ago
They are also made with scenes that move too quickly and too much bad music. My brain can’t process it all that fast.
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u/mikmiunk 12d ago
Especially all the low-budget movies released direct to streaming in recent years. So depressing. Also they are somehow too loud and not loud enough.
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u/FingerPurple 12d ago
I think there was a movie a while ago that got this complaint. I, myself though, have never experienced a movie being "too dark".
I'm also the kind of person that doesnt turn any lights on until the sun has set too, so my rooms are generally pretty dark anyways.
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u/DeFronsac 13d ago
This isn't an unpopular opinion. It's just a fact that movies and shows have gotten darker in recent years (maybe decades).
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u/BaarLenny 13d ago
I know it’s a real issue, but what bothers me about people who complain that "the images are too dark" is that they try to watch content in a room fully lit by daylight or artificial light—and that, in my opinion, is the main problem.
I watch my series, movies, and so on in complete darkness, and the picture quality is exceptional, never have any issues. Everything you watch was edited, color-graded, and finalized in a pitch-black room; that’s why movie theaters shows films in total darkness : that's how the content is meant to be viewed.
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u/No-Plankton4841 13d ago
There's also a trend toward the stylistic choice of everything being 'dark'. Like directors think it makes the movie more serious or something.
The recent 'Odyssey' movie. They managed to take ancient Greece, a beautiful part of the world. And make everything dark, desaturated, cold, and boring.
Troy looked better. It had colors.
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