Dark Is Not Evil/Film

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• Tim Burton has based much of his career on this trope:
  • Batman of course
  • The citizens of Halloween Town, from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, are textbook examples. They even say as much in the opening song (see the quotes page). Even though they're all skeletons, Frankenstein-esque monsters, ghosts, vampires, a Mad Scientist, etc., for the most part they're just fun guys who love a good Halloween. The only one who's really evil is Oogie Boogie - and he isn't exactly popular with the others.
    • However, they did kidnap Sandy Claws Santa Claus, and Lock, Shock and Barrel memorably sang a song about different ways to kill him. Of course, said children work for Oogie Boogie, and Jack hadn't meant for Santa to come to any harm...
    • The children also live in a land of zombies, vampires, living skeletons, and a reanimating Mad Scientist, so being dead doesn't mean ceasing to exist for them, obviously.
    • Oogie Boogie is actually from a completely different (and very dead) holiday, so he's not really from Halloween Town anyway, as one of the video games reveals.
    • This is pointed out in Kingdom Hearts, when Sora, Donald, and Goofy wonder why Jack would help them stop the Heartless. Jack explains that while the people of Halloween Town love scaring people, they don't want anyone to actually be hurt, like the Heartless do.
    • Jack actually did tell Lock, Shock, and Barrel not to send Santa to Oogie. To actually trust them to keep their word, however . . . . .

Jack: And one more thing... leave that no account Oogie Boogie OUT OF THIS!

• • Corpse Bride also plays on this trope. The undead are jovial and friendly both to each other and to mortals, while a lot of the mortals themselves are jerks.
    • They are also more colorful whereas the mortals appear in what can only be called 'the Tim Burton palette'.
  • Beetlejuice is yet another example. It features a sympathetic ghost couple who try to scare off a new family that moves into their house with the intent of giving it a massive makeover. The couple meet various other undead people along the way, some hideously disfigured. The dead are all portrayed as eccentric-but-decent people, with the sole exception of the film's eponymous antihero, Betelgeuse, who's really more Chaotic Neutral.
    • The Animated Adaptation is considerably Lighter and Softer, although it also plays into this trope. Lydia is a Perky Goth who enjoys horror movies, insects, rainy days, and other creepy things, and she's a very nice person. Similarly, the Netherworld ranges from freaky to downright bizarre, but very few of the ghosts there are actually malevolent.
  • His version of Alice in Wonderland has Chessur, an unbelivably unsettling version of the Chesire Cat, although he is among the good guys. To a lesser extent, the Mad Hatter and the Ugly Cute bear/hyena/reptile like Bandersnatch (originally a bad guy, then changing sides); in the end, the Red Queen's minions also stop being in her side. Yes, that includes the creepy card soldiers.
    • Meanwhile, the pretty and bland people of Alice's world are almost all shown to be hypocritical, boring, domineering, or shallow.
    • The White Queen fits in weirdly here, though. Her dominion seems to be dead things, even though she's perfectly nice, so it kind of makes sense.
  • The ENTIRE moral of Edward Scissorhands is this. The town starts to judge him by his appearance of being scary and 'monstrous' when in fact he is the most human character in the movie, being caring and downright innocent...
• Part of the twist ending to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, in which Mad Scientist Caligari is actually a perfectly kind psychologist, his sleepwalking hitman is just a harmless loony, and the hero turns out to be a paranoid psychopath. Although it is notable that after The Reveal, Cesare and Caligari look a lot less dark, and Francis looks a lot darker. Since Tim Burton gets all of his ideas from Caligari, this makes perfect sense.
  • ...Unless, of course, you see the very rare removed footage, which pulled a Double Subversion and twisted this back on again, by revealing in a Mind Screw moment, that the "kind psychologist" really IS Dr Caligari.
• Santi, the Creepy Child ghost in The Devil's Backbone.
  • And, while we're on the subject of Guillermo del Toro, it turns out that the faun of Pan's Labyrinth is entirely trustworthy.
  • Similarly, the intentions of the other children in The Orphanage weren't quite as macabre as originally thought, as they were trying to let her know something crucial.
  • Similarly, as if the Hellboy movie hadn't already the eponymous demonic protagonist, the sequel also introduces several magical creatures that, for most part, just want to be left alone. A notable example is the Angel of Death, which is pretty weird and macabre looking, but helps nonetheless.
• Daywalker Blade is not only dark, he's black.
• The Man in Black, from The Princess Bride dresses like a villain, even acts like one in places (more in the book than in the movie), and is eventually identified as the murderous Dread Pirate Roberts - but at the end of the day it's all subterfuge, because he's really the presumed-dead hero Westley.
• Jessica Rabbit sure gives the impression of a seductive Femme Fatal, but she's "just drawn that way". In truth, she's actually a Happily Married woman loyal to her husband, and as far as the eponymous crime goes, a Red Herring.
• This trope and its reverse are essentially the entire plot of Clive Barker's Nightbreed - it's the humans who all act monstrously. Especially the one played by David Cronenberg.
• Star Wars has Badass Mace Windu. His fighting style, Vaapad, focuses on channeling his inner rage and bloodlust into strength and speed. He is able to go berserk on bad guys without losing control and falling to The Dark Side.
  • Aside from the Windu example the Star Wars movies play it pretty straight. Luke using his anger to channel the dark side and overpower Vader (which is basically an uncontrolled version of what Windu does) almost brings him past the point of no return.
  • In the Expanded Universe, it's made clear that The Dark Side itself is not necessarily evil; it can be fueled by any emotion—even positive ones. It's just that Evil Is Easy, and also that having so much power tends to mess with pure emotions like love and justice.
  • That's been Jossed. The Dark Side is evil, as per Word of God and various other sources in the EU. The Potentium is a flawed view.
    • Who was talking about the Potentium? They believe that there is no Light and Dark Side. Others, such as the Gray Jedi, acknowledge that there are two sides of the Force, yet rely on the Dark Side as well without being evil (really, the decision to dumb it down to simple black and white was a move almost as dumb as their homophobia, but that's a whole different can of worms).
  • At the least, Force Lightning is not a Sith-exclusive power, as Kyle Katarn, Jolee Bindo and Starkiller (post-Heel Face Turn) have shown.
• The titular character of Darkman has a Nightmare Face and always dresses in gloomy black like a classic villain stereotype. Yet, his main goal is to fight the worst city criminals.
• Firefox - In this movie, an American pilot steals a super-advanced Soviet fighter jet and is pursued for the last third of the movie across Europe by his Cold War counterpart. The American is in all black, and the Soviet is in almost pure white. (Does it make you the bad guy if you're performing grand theft aero for LIBERTY?)
• Ladyhawke. Knight errant Etienne Navarre dresses in all-black armor with red flourishes, and turns into a wolf at night. His lover Isabeau wears a fair amount of black herself; by contrast, both the Big Bad (the Bishop of Aquila) and his Dragon wear white.
• Men in Black: They are "Men In Black" after all, but also Earth's "best, last, and only defense against the scum of the universe". Lampshaded in Will Smith's music video.
• Toothless the dragon is completely black, uses the cover of night to his advantage, his breed is considered the scariest and most dangerous dragon of all, and is on two different occasions referred to as something unholy.^[1] However, he's also one of the main characters, a "good guy," and freakin' adorable.
• The made-for-TV-movie When Good Ghouls Go Bad features this. The eponymous ghoul may look scary, but he's what's left of a harmless (and actually kind of cute) goth kid who just wanted to show off the statue he made of his mentor. D'aaawwww.
• In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne's motivation to make his persona dark and frightening is explored via Super-Hero Origin story.
  • The Dark Knight Saga deserves special mention as, probably more than any adaptation, it places a huge emphasis both on just how dark of a character Batman is, but also on how morally good and selfless he is.
• In The Beastmaster, Dar encounters a group of bat people who eat their prey by dissolving them with corrosive liquid and drinking them up. However, they are far from evil, in fact getting a Big Damn Heroes at the end by saving the city from The Remnant
• The Nega-Scott from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World looks downright evil, red eyes and all. However, he turns out to be a nice guy once Scott confronts him. The two even make plans for brunch.
• At the end of Gladiator, Maximus wears his standard all-black armor for his final confrontation with the evil Commodus, who wears all white. Of course, Commodus is invoking the opposite trope by dressing in white, since he's casting himself as the heroic one.
• Jetfire from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an elderly Decepticon-turned-Autobot who turns into a sinister-looking fighter jet, specifically the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

1. ↑ The dragon hand-guide describes his breed as an "unholy offspring of darkness and lightning" and Hiccup's father calls him "Devil" in one scene.