Recently, the first images from the live-action film adaptation of Wicked were released and the response to the very first glimpse of this fantasy musical was generally, “Why is everything so dimly lit?” Despite taking place in the merry old land of Oz, the first Wicked photos were placed entirely in the shadows, with the primary characters barely visible thanks to the strangely bleak lighting. Especially egregious was the first picture of Glinda (Ariana Grande), which surrounded this pink fantasy character with such darkened surroundings that it looked like she was trapped in the black void from Under the Skin.

Unfortunately, Wicked isn’t the only instance of a modern piece of pop culture being plagued by bizarrely darkened cinematography. Across a variety of movies and TV shows, there’s a strange tendency to dim down the brightness to the point of visual incoherence. What’s going on? Why are so many 21st-century motion pictures dying to wrap everything up in darkness?

This Isn’t The First Time We’ve Struggled With a Dark Screen

Back in April 2019, one of the final episodes of Game of Thrones caught a whirlwind of controversy thanks to how the pivotal Battle of Winterfell was dubbed impossible to watch by many viewers. While it is true Game of Thrones exists in a time before electrical lighting (thus, this world may be prone to bouts of darkness that can’t be fixed with a light switch), few, if any, of the preceding episodes garnered this kind of criticism. This was clearly an issue with the episode itself rather than the world these characters inhabit. The whole discourse became so omnipresent that the cinematographer behind the episode had to come out and say that this decision was a bold artistic choice while claiming that people’s television sets were to blame if the episode was impossible to watch.

A year before this, Emily St. James of Vox did a piece breaking down the second season of Ozark and specifically how the show kept defaulting to dim lighting no matter the situation or setting. This was illustrated through eleven perfectly chosen images from the program’s second season all wrapped in shadows, including one where a man is out on a lake in bright sunlight yet covered in shadows. Many of these shots feel like parodies of modern filmmaking choices, but instead, they’re all played super straightforwardly in the confines of Ozark. St. James makes an astute point here that the rampant use of dark lighting no matter the context in Ozark robs conceptually striking imagery of their impact because they don’t register as visually unique, an important theme to keep in mind when talking about these lighting tendencies.

Then there are the movies, which have also often lapsed into rampant darkness in the modern world. Sometimes, there’s complexity behind motion pictures that initially seem too hard to see. Cinematographer Bradford Young’s work on Solo: A Star Wars Story, for instance, attempted to differentiate this movie from other Star Wars installments by lending the entire movie a dimmer lighting style and a heavier use of shadows, among other unique visual facets. Per IndieWire, Young has explained that this choice was also meant to reflect the zeitgeist of the larger real world. This visual scheme ended up being controversial for many fans due to the film looking far too muddy, though some of these complaints appear to have been the result of faulty projecting systems rather than innate problems on the part of Young.

Unfortunately, not as much nuance is brought into other rampantly dark modern motion pictures. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania received resounding criticism from audiences and critics alike for several sequences that were deemed too dimly lit to see properly. Meanwhile, the barrage of live-action Disney remakes has inspired constant criticism that these features are often visually incomprehensible thanks to dim lighting meant to accentuate a sense of “realism.” Speaking of other big-budget movies, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald featured excessively dark lighting that, when combined with poor editing and frantic camerawork, rendered big set pieces visually incoherent, most notably an opening escape sequence involving the titular villain. A barrage of streaming movie blockbusters, namely Netflix’s 2022 action feature The Gray Man, have also suffered from an influx of sequences where you can barely tell what’s happening on-screen. The list goes on and on and on here.

RELATED: ‘Wicked’s Jon M. Chu to Bring Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ to Screen

So, Why Are TV Shows and Movies So Dark?

For many TV shows and movies dominated by dark lighting, the culprit is mostly a misplaced idea of where “dark” moods come from. Many of these projects, whether it’s Ozark or The Crimes of Grindelwald, believe just wrapping up your characters in lots of moody shadows will automatically give the entire project gravitas. Of course, that’s not true. Any piece of art conveying an ominous or weighty aura typically captures that atmosphere through a combination of different factors (themes, real-world influences, relationship to other pieces of art, etc.) rather than just refusing to put a functioning light bulb on your set.

For TV programs, a lot of this comes from a yearning for an easy street to securing a place alongside great modern TV dramas like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos. Ironically, those two shows, among many other small-screen masterpieces, made use of all kinds of lighting. Walter White and Tony Soprano existed in bright daylight, a choice that emphasized how monsters can be lurking under anyone’s nose rather than just in the creepy shadows. The variety of lighting decisions across countless episodes made those characters seem like they inhabited our world and allowed moodier shots to really stand out. Like Emily St. James said about Ozark, when every shot is attempting to be grim and dark, the potentially impactful pieces of brutality don’t feel special.

As for movies, it’s worth pointing out that many of these projects are big-budget blockbusters. Whereas TV is dominated by adult dramas soaked in incomprehensible lighting choices, movie theaters are often packed with expensive escapist fare where you can’t even tell whose fighting who. Some big-budget movies, like Solo, do have at least a clear thematic intent on paper for why they’re opting for such strangely dark lighting. In other cases, though, this lighting choice is often used for purposes like concealing visual effects shortcomings. Quantumania, for instance, had long stretches of its story shot on a StageCraft stage (otherwise known as The Volume), which can only cover so much ground or depict so large of an environment. Drenching the Quantum Realm in darkness allowed the potential shortcomings of this technology to be less visible, but also guaranteed that this domain just looked so unappealing to spend time in.

A terrific piece from Polygon by A.B. Allen on this topic also touches on how historical precedent is informing why so many modern filmmakers end up with dimly-lit movies. Simply put, Allen notes that the mid-2000s saw a rush of films, both in the indie and mainstream scene, that got popular because they utilized grounded approaches meant to simulate reality rather than old-school forms of filmmaking that often utilized lighting that looked good on-screen but didn’t evoke everyday life. We now live in a world where go-to blockbusters directors like Denis Villeneuve, Matt Reeves, and others aren’t even the people who helped subvert those lighting norms…they’re folks following in the footsteps of those pioneers. Trying to keep that tradition alive and take it in even more realistic directions has led to sparser lighting styles that often look too dim to the eye.

Dim Lighting Isn’t Bad, but It Shouldn’t Be the Only Option

Allen’s nuanced approach to writing about this topic (coming from the valuable perspective of being an experienced filmmaker) is incredibly valuable and reminds one that not all approaches to dimmer lighting are necessarily bad. 2022’s The Batman, for instance, had extremely evocative environments drenched in uncertain shadows and dark looming buildings, all in the service of accentuating its film noir and expressionistic inspirations. Rooting The Batman in such specific genre trappings, not to mention the skills of director Reeves and cinematographer Greig Fraser at making gripping imagery, lent real purpose to that movie’s darker atmosphere. Plus, there was discernible variation in lighting throughout the story, with a daytime church funeral scene being discernibly different than separate nighttime sequences where Batman beats up baddies.

Plus, the history of cinema is littered with filmmakers who were masters at darker lighting. Classic film noirs or any of the monochromatic works of Akira Kurosawa, for example, show that few things look as cool as smoke or perfect-looking shadows in black-and-white cinematography. However, it’s fair to say that the lighting in something like Ikiru had slightly more thought put into it than the incomprehensible lighting choices of The Crimes of Grindelwald. The problem isn’t dark lighting itself, but rather it’s used so poorly and rampantly in modern pop culture without any real thought. Everything from Cruella to Game of Thrones drenches every frame in dim lighting no matter the tone, betraying both the viewer and all the exciting visual possibilities in good versions of dark lighting in the process.

If this trend must persist as a staple of modern pop culture, motion pictures and prestige television programs alike must utilize darker imagery more thoughtfully. If one is having trouble making out where Glinda is in a frame from Wicked, well, then you know your trend is heading down some worrisome directions.