“Napoleon” Is The Latest Victim Of The Darkened Film Trend

Color is slowly disappearing from our lives, and the new Napoleon movie is the latest casualty. Our homes, wardrobes, cars, and even fast food restaurants are on the hunt for the kind of sleek minimalism that only monochromatic color schemes can satisfy. Increasingly, our movies are no exception.

For some reason, directors have decided that increasingly gray and bleak aesthetics are the way to signal a serious movie. When color film first came out, technicolor was all the rage: bright hues telling stories with one beautiful frame after another. Now, viewers are saying that the color seems to be intentionally stripped from our stories. It’s most noticeable in series like Harry Potter and Batman that get darker from movie to movie, which has sparked jokes about them eventually just being a black screen, but viewers are beginning to notice that even historical fiction has turned to a hundred shades of gray. When did we decide that the most sophisticated way to watch movies was with the lights off?

“No Wonder the French Critics Loathe This Film”

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was something of an unexpected flop. With a famous director and Joaquin Phoenix as its front-runner, the film should have more than cleared its budget at the box office, but audiences failed to show up as expected. While the film had a budget between $130-200 million, the box office only brought back $137 million, likely leaving producers in the red. Some have speculated that this was due to the film’s long runtime and historical content, which frequently pose challenges for viewers who worry they’ll get bored trying to sit through it.

Still, the lack of visual appeal made the movie difficult to market, and viewers took notice. One movie-goer took to Twitter to share his thoughts, telling prospective viewers, “don’t bother,” and saying, “Really Boring...colour is 'le serious' washed out it's awfully lit and that's before we get to the screenplay.” Another said he “hated the murky, washed out look of it all,” and others joked about whether France was trying too much to look like Gotham: “Pretty appropriate since Joaquin is playing the Joker again.”

Most of the film is shot in shades of blue and gray, with little saturation from scene to scene. It treats color with about the same regard it has for French history, which is to say, not much, sparking commentators to quip, “No wonder the French critics loathe this film.” One reviewer, speaking to the film’s “last gasp” of a conclusion, calls the scenery a “Mordor-esque hellscape with, again, NO COLOR.” Time Magazine similarly criticized the color palette, saying, “Trust no one – not even me – who tries to tell you Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is any good. Good is perhaps not the word to use...Its color palette is both grand and muted, like a newly printed map distressed to fool you into thinking it’s an antique.” Perhaps this after-market distressed look is exactly the problem: Ridley Scott and directors like him are trying to tell a story with color that should be told with, well, the story. Ultimately, reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes also agreed in deeming the movie pretty mid. It scored 59% on the site’s Tomatometer and only 58% for an audience score. 

Why Films Have Gotten Darker

Movies haven’t always been so dark. When Technicolor was first developed, the film industry couldn’t contain its excitement. Directors took ample creative license to use highly saturated colors in movies, and broadcasters had fun launching their switch from black and white to color television. 

Part of the darkening of film over time is that the initial enchantment with color as a breaking technology has worn off, and the novelty has lost its luster. Additionally, though, subtle changes in digital technology are somewhat responsible for our darker movies. The advent of digital recording meant that movies could be shot with greater intricacy in detail and color, and digital filming technology has only gotten better with time. This technological improvement has afforded filmmakers a greater degree of freedom, no longer needing sharp color contrasts for figures to show up on the big screen. Just like how Technicolor excited directors into pushing their limits with new technology, digital film has had similar effects on movies’ experimentation with the limits of new media.

Digital film isn’t fully at fault, though. A deeper and less obvious trend is at play with our cultural perception that monochromatic color schemes deserve to be taken more seriously, effectively taking our obsession with minimalism even into the color spectrum. 

There’s a plot trend, too. Anti-heroes and dark, jaded lead characters have become the hallmark of a sophisticated movie, and this is often communicated via dark, gray scenes meant to show the character’s outlook. While this tool may be worth employing occasionally, the idea that the only characters worth taking seriously are depressed, morally conflicted, or otherwise edgelords is an assumption we should challenge. The more we romanticize the idea that darkness and depression are inherently more interesting than truth and beauty, the more we glorify and glamorize values that ultimately make the world a worse place to live in. We’ve internalized this anti-hero anthem for far too long, convincing especially young people that the only way to feel deep and complex emotions is to be a little evil or otherwise broken. The world has enough depression and complexity to go around – Napoleon’s tale certainly did – we don’t need to invent more.

Time for Color

Arguably, no counterfactual has been so clear on audiences’ desires for color as this year’s Barbie movie. The film’s insane success should be seen as a sign that viewers are tired of tired-looking movies. Barbie was successful because of, not in spite of, its bright pink hues, which were so beloved by fans that they caused paint shortages and fashion trends. The “Barbenheimer” meme also served to show off just how bright pink Barbie’s world was, especially in contrast to Oppenheimer’s, which used a much more muted color palette, especially in its advertising.

Barbie’s nostalgia for audiences was not just related to its content, but also its look and feel. The movie absolutely reminded women of how they used to play as little girls, poking fun at fake food, drink, and surfing, but also at the magic of color and setting, giving them reprieve in many ways from the grayness of the world they’re supposed to consider mature.

Closing Thoughts

Napoleon’s lack of success should signal to filmmakers that, even with famous directors, big-name actors, and relatively untouched material, audiences still want something nice to look at. Taking ourselves and our films seriously won’t be accomplished by making everything we touch monochromatic. 

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