Grim n' Gritty

Look at the two big Syfy reimaginings, Tin Man and Alice. Both went steampunk, both went gritty, both had mixed results.

 

I think TIN MAN worked out better, having Zooey Deschanel around to not get in the way of some good supporting players. She's lovely and can never be accused of trying to hog the moment.

 

Still, the android/hitman/nightmare White Rabbit in ALICE was pretty cool.

I think my geek card needs to be revoked, b/c outside of Nolan's Batman films, which have been discussed to death, I can't think of a single property I enjoy that's been given this treatment. Though I will say of your example, Schwartz, that I could not make it through the pilot (or whatever it was) for Battlestar Galactica specifically b/c it was so goddamn serious*. I think it was around the time I saw Starbuck doing push-ups in the stockade or the glowing-spine fuck thing that the Cylon woman was experiencing. From what I understand (given all of the accolades), the show actually got interesting and good (though I'll probably never know for myself), but at the time I took it as being too dull and self-serious in the way that the original show was too dull and goofy for me to pay any kind of attention to.  

 

 

*I have certain admitted incongruities in my judgment of genre fiction when serialized on television. I turn into different kind of viewer. I'll watch every episode of The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, etc., but until Game of Thrones, I was completely unable to commit to anything genre that wasn't the Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.

The other thing with BSG is you can see they learned from the mini series.

 

They ditched all the chaff and focused on the great stuff and it really became something special.

 

I'm really struggling to think of anything beyond the Bat either.

 

The "grim and gritty" Moopets made me laugh, and I loved that Pokemon spoof that was done too.

 

But other than that I'm drawing a blank

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I felt the same way. The miniseries bored me and I continued to be bored with the series early in the first season. It wasn't until "Six Degrees of Separation", the seventh episode of the first season, that the series really started to work in my eyes. So I agree with others, you should give it another shot.

 

Some things take a little work to watch and are a bit of a slog at first, but they're worth it when they get really good later on. The best example for me is "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", which I hated for most of THREE seasons, before I really started warming up to it in season 4. By the end, I was surprised that it had become the source of some of my favourite episodes of any Star Trek franchise and my absolute favourite Star Trek character ever (Jadzia Dax).

 

I really struggled with the "Battlestar Galactica" re-imagining at first, but once I started liking it, the show never let me down from then until the end (aside from a few plot lines that I thought were ill-conceived/stupid).

 

Regarding the original topic, I think "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" is actually an example of a grimmer and grittier take on a concept. I recently re-watched "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and thought it was pretty obvious that the people running the show felt empowered by Gene Roddenberry's death in a way, as things immediately got way darker than Star Trek had ever been before in the season following it (season 6).

 

Some of the subject matter explored once he was no longer able to influence the series was stuff he never would have allowed. For example, torture, war, and very disturbing psychological turmoil. And since he was gone from the beginning of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", that show's producers felt free to make it more dark than any Star Trek series had ever been right from the start.

THE MECHANIC remake.

I think the grim and gritty Statham remake works just fine, especially considering that it's an action film first and foremost. It improves on the original in many ways (production values, quality of the action sequences, acting) but doesn't quite match the tone or the cool factor that Bronson brought to the original. It also doesn't quite stick the landing by changing the ending in a major way. I really enjoy it, though.

Lost in Space was pretty grim compared to the TV show. While the effects were miles away from the TV version, it had zero fun factor.

 

I don't think we needed carrot monsters, but the movie is pretty much a bore and a slog to get through due to the lack of any humor.

 

A grittier version of Bond that, in turn, led to a grittier version of Bond. Casino Royale definitely rejuvenated the Bond series, although I frankly don't remember Quantum of Solace much at all.

 

 

Am I alone in thinking that Nolan hasn't quite pulled off the grim n' gritty approach to The Bat? I mean, sometimes it works, but sometimes it just makes the movies so fucking po-faced as to be ridiculous. Mainly due to the guy's fetish for function following form. Ichi the Killer already showed that heel blades are silly, so why on Earth are we being expected to take them seriously now? And of course, there's the hilarious shot of the football player unwittingly outrunning the sinkhole (the crowning moment being when he inadvertently pushes another poor sap to his death).

On the subject of Batman, even the Burton films were pretty grim and gritty to the surprise of many.  The super stylised design off-set this somewhat, but I think many were expecting something more like what Schumacher brought along from the very start.

 

On BSG.  It's a very worthy show and no sci-fi fan should avoid it (it has the best space battles in any medium not computer games since Return of the Jedi, for one thing), But it does get a little padded from time to time.  I think there's an all time classic series of several 12-by-50min seasons in there.  Incessantly stretched out to 24 eps it frays, a lot.  You especially notice this not watching them weekly and the need for melodrama gets a bit tiring.  There was one time where in some ep with Lee and the english lawyer guy;  I was bit dozy watching it and somehow they end up in a room in a stand off talking tough.  I must have rewound it and rewatched the precedings five times or so and I still had no idea why these guys were pointing guns at each other, except they were 30 minutes in and worried things were going a bit slow.

Stuff like that.  And stand alone eps that take you out into the fleet for a while to look at their lives, showing all sorts of interesting details and problems about life on the ships that never come up again.  It's like it had to still be an old fashioned TV show according to someone.

 

Anyway, I'm not sure it counts but the Next Generation films went there a couple of times.  Nemesis and First Contact had a lot of tough stuff for...some reason.  Mr Plinkett has thoroughly disected this already though.

 

I'd even put in the Transformers Movie, which was amazing when I was whatever I was at the time, just because it was so violent.  It ruined the cartoon for me, watching all the lasers behave basically like a water canons.  I wanted my Transformers to blow holes in each other that pissed oil everywhere as they writhed sparking their last on the floor!

Aaaand then watching the movie again 20 years later ruined that for me too (no it's not good, ok? The Touch is an astoundingly bad song, the epitome of everything wrong with eighties nostalgia. Good animation, but that's about it).

Is that a win for gimngritty or not? I don't really know.

 

There are times where Nolan's desire for realism collide with some of the comic book action he shoots. I'm specifically thinking of the Dark Knight opening, in which a bank robbery, shot with the propulsion and intensity of Heat, culminates in the Joker fortunately escaping when a line of school buses showed up, with enough room to let him cut in. I think the moments that don't work in Nolan's trilogy are a result of this incongruity.
 

 

I am pretty sure that scene was intended as the Joker hired a bunch of buses to mask the escape and not just luckily happened into a school district-wide field trip.

 

Honestly, I'm OK with the tech explanations, mostly because they don't take up too much screen time. And Nolan's Batmobile/Tumbler is goddamn awesome.

 

On Batman: The real Elephant in the room is The Dark Knight Returns. Frank Miller defined the whole Grim N Gritty trend in comics with that miniseries. After the success and acclaim of that mini, DC and then Marvell "grittied" up many of not most of their characters. Suddenly there was a Grim N Girtty Green Arrow forChristsake.

 

On BSG: No doubt that was a successful reinvention of the 78 series. The frustrating thing is, most of the themes of the new series were right there in the old, but the 70's weren't ready to face the implications of a civilization being decimated.

 

I'm just getting into Season 7 of Deep Space Nine, and it is amazing how many plot and character elements were recycled in BSG: both series even have a secondary character lose his leg!

 

Oh and though I have not and will not see it, I WILL call it: Willy Wonka Grim N Gritty version = FAIL!

 

 

There's also the fact that Miller was being hugely satiric with his interpretation of Batman in DKR, which too many imitators of him miss.

I would say that the surrounding story in DKR is often satiric, but Batman himself seems to be taken quite seriously in that story. To me, at least.

I think it's obvious that Miller is portraying Batman as utterly insane.

 

Of course, the guy spent so much time staring into that abyss, and now...

The problem with that is how, in the story, anyone who opposes Batman either changes their mind (Ellen Yindel, Superman to a degree) or has no credibility (Joker's idiotic psychiatrist).

 

And the situation in Gotham with the Mutants is portrayed as so hopeless that Batman HAS to step back into the fray.

I'll add Miami Vice the Movie to the Mix. It succeeds in updating the vibe from the 80's TV Show, Mann's Video shooting brings reality to the proceedings, and the actors bring their A game to a story that probably does not deserve it.

 

Points off for using a shitty band to cover "...In the Air Tonight" and for lack of Olmos.

I don't think the Nolan's Batman films are all that grounded unless we compare them to Burton's. I mean at the end of the day two films in the Franchise are going to involve a secret order of vigilantes who still think training people with swords and ninja gear will give them an edge.

 

It's just that sometimes that goes up against the surface level shit regarding Batman's tech and the function of the city that rubs me the wrong way about the films. I can deal with the Joker when he's a colorful badguy interacting with other crazy dudes and George Raft style gangsters, but somehow when he's put up against just as equally unrealistic Eastern Bloc thugs it just doesn't work for me.

But then at the hospital Joker blows up the builder then jumps into another bus that just happens to be waiting for him with the back door open, then peels off once he's jumped in and closed the door after closing the door....

Firefly

 

  I would call it grim and gritty, but it is a rough around the edges view of the future. Civilization is just advanced enough to travel in space and terraform planets. After that things aren't much different. Mal isn't exploring strange new worlds or rebelling against an oppressive empire, he just wants to be left alone and provide for his crew.