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Author Topic: Movies and the color blue  (Read 7046 times)

Ultimuh

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Movies and the color blue
« on: June 08, 2010, 10:00:02 am »

I am not sure if this is old news, but it just struck me last night like a blue flash of lightning.
The novie industry must really like the color blue, at least if you concider a few films I know of.

First we have the X-men, a few blue people there, then the Blue suits in Fantastic Four, then we have Dr. Manhattan from the watchmen (He's a shade of blue atleast). Theese are ofcourse blue from the comics, but still..
And then we have those blue cat-like people from that movie I am not going to mention (I do not want to start a flame war.).

Theese are only few of the many movies in the movie inustry, but I am wondering..
Are there other movies out there where the bolor blue is standing out? Like blue characters, lots of people wearing blue clothes, and so on.. I can't seem to remember anything aside from what I have mentioned myself.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2010, 10:16:15 am by Ultimuh »
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Il Palazzo

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Re: Hollywood and the color blue
« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2010, 10:07:55 am »

Besson's "The Great Blue"?
Bilal's "Immortel(ad Vitam)"?
These are both French, so I suppose your point doesn't stand anymore.
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Jopax

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Re: Hollywood and the color blue
« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2010, 10:09:06 am »

It's the orange/blue contrast, but i advise you not to look it up, once you see it you will start seeing it everywhere and its bad, very bad
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Ultimuh

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Re: movies and the color blue
« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2010, 10:15:34 am »

Besson's "The Great Blue"?
Bilal's "Immortel(ad Vitam)"?
These are both French, so I suppose your point doesn't stand anymore.

Ok, maybe I should have mentioned the movie inudstry instead of hollywood.

I have changed the thread name.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2010, 10:34:33 am by Ultimuh »
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fenrif

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Re: Hollywood and the color blue
« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2010, 10:27:57 am »

It's the orange/blue contrast, but i advise you not to look it up, once you see it you will start seeing it everywhere and its bad, very bad

I think it's more just that all of those characters are pre-established ones that were blue allready. The navi in avatar were probobly made blue because it has connotations of sadness and depression.

It's a primary colour, so yeah there's going to be a lot of characters that use it or are associated with it, but the same is true of most colours if you look at enough films.
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Hollywood and the color blue
« Reply #5 on: June 08, 2010, 10:31:15 am »

It's the orange/blue contrast, but i advise you not to look it up, once you see it you will start seeing it everywhere and its bad, very bad

Like with Renegade and Paragon? Well, Renegade has also been red, but still.
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Starver

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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #6 on: June 08, 2010, 11:36:13 am »

Smurfs.  Nobody appears to have mentioned smurfs.

It just seems to be an unnatural colour for mammalian creatures to be[1].  Even through there are (apparently) no intrinsically green-furred mammals, especially humanoids, everything from a sloth's mat of algae/moss and other incidental chlorophyll staining to the general idea of a "Green Man"/Swamp Thing/Hulk[2] creature being a humanoid made of natural things or relating to the relatively recent concept of radiation, makes green creatures more 'normal' than blue ones.  Mythology notwithstanding.  Whereas a smurf-like being just doesn't (to my knowledge, BICBW) have the same kind of mythological background.

On this world, at least.  The other blue creatures one could mention (though not yet enmoviefied) are the Nac Mac Feagle, ak.a. the Wee Free Men, of Discworld fame.  Who lead directly back (by at least one branch of inspiration) to the Wode-coloured celts, picts or Aussie-accented Scots, according to whatever cultural baggage you carry around with you. :)

Aside from that, you have the concept of blue blood, "She wore bluuuue... Velvet [da da daaa]", The Blue Lagoon, blue movies...  but each of them relies on signs of opulence (pale skin from non-working nobles, and rare dyes), water nature (although the likes of kelpies, etc, are again often more green than blue), and I wouldn't immediately know how to divine the etymology of the latter...

But then we're getting more into the territory of blue being a purely decorative colour.  In the old days, it was "bad guys where the black hats, good guys the white ones", or equivalent, but you tend to get red vs blue (c.f. Tron, Red Shadows vs Action Force[3] and just about everything up to the the Ruskies vs American forces, and references such as "blue on blue" for 'friendly fire' incidents, of course.)


So, opulence, rarity, unusualness, brightness of colour, possibly some antithesis of normal blood (in matters of normal healthy vitality and/or "red in tooth and claw", depending on the imagery rerquired), combined with the heretofore unmentioned association with the sky (certain shades, at least) as well...  And, above all, it's a primary colour in both optical and pigmentation colour-wheels, so rather than go for a more mixed hue (frexample: the likes of mauve) it's pretty basic and unambiguous.  At least to those without blue/yellow partial colour blindness or total colour blindness...

That's what I think.  For what it's worth.

[1] Bright blue, anyhow, you get 'blue' greyhounds and cats that aren't that top saturation/luminosity, and dolphins maybe if that's not a function of the water colorising them away from the usual grey)

[2] Ignoring for now that he was originally intended to be grey...

[3] Does that show my age (and nationality!), or have they gone round in full circle since the Baron Ironblood, commanding the evil red forces, became Cobra Commander, commanding the evil... blue forces...  Hah!
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Jude

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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #7 on: June 08, 2010, 01:58:36 pm »

I feel like, just using anecdotal evidence, you could make a case for almost any color dominating the movie industry

What about Wes Anderson? Half his movies have a red-orange tint!
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Musluk

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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #8 on: June 11, 2010, 02:28:31 pm »

Wouldn't the main tint of blue work against the bluescreening technology? Same goes with green with low enough frequencies short enough wavelengths.

However, as far as I know blue's the most calming color for humans, so...

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[1] Bright blue, anyhow, you get 'blue' greyhounds and cats that aren't that top saturation/luminosity, and dolphins maybe if that's not a function of the water colorising them away from the usual grey)

Exotic animals with deeper blue hues do exist. Few examples on Wikipedia's Blue article
« Last Edit: June 11, 2010, 02:36:55 pm by Musluk »
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Jackrabbit

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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2010, 07:19:28 am »

Battlefield Earth anyone? No?

I used to like the color blue. It's dead to me now.
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Nikov

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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #10 on: June 12, 2010, 08:46:08 am »

I would note 'Red Versus Blue' in military parlance began with the Prussian development of war games. The wooden markers for Prussian formations were naturally painted Prussian Blue, and red was a natural color to paint the opposing forces, since French blue, Austrian yellow, Russian green, British scarlet, would require far more paint and markers than worthwhile.

During the Cold War, while most free peoples referred to the Communist forces as the 'Reds' because of the iconic red banner of socialist revolutionaries, NATO changed its official color scheme to blue versus orange as a diplomatic fig leaf. Warsaw Pact forces did no such thing, and actually reversed their scheme so their troops were red and they were fighting the blues.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2010, 08:49:01 am by Nikov »
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Starver

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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #11 on: June 14, 2010, 05:07:24 am »

Battlefield Earth anyone? No?
I read the book when I was in my early teens[1], long before the film came out[2].  The film wasn't a patch on what I remembered that to be.  (Mind you, I was in my Early teens, so on top of them changing the aliens to just being giant John Travoltas I was probably a lot less critical of what I read... :))


[1] Also the Mission Earth decalogy... which had some interesting scenes in it like the kidnapped Earth prostitute teaching the alien catamite boys a little 'extra' something about [rot13]nany frk[/rot13]....  But I neither took up 'nany frk', nor [rot13]Fpvragbybtl[/rot13][1b], even when walking past their drop-in shop on Tottenham Court Road, so I was obviously not that impressionable!

[1b] Not that my trivial obscuring of this word will stop those who practice it from zeroing in on my reference to it... :)

[2] Ditto The Hunt for Red October, which I liked, but couldn't help noticing how many spelling mistakes there were.  Much later on, I realised that my (UK) library had obviously stocked a US-English version.  Same went for a book from the non-fiction section about how to comprehensively design space stations and their environments that kept mentioning things like "sulfur" instead of "sulphur".  That was nearly three decades ago, but that sort of thing leaves an impression on a growing mind. :)
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Red Fortune

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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #12 on: June 14, 2010, 06:13:26 am »

Starver, I... Why are you using footnotes? You're very organized about your posting.  :P
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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #13 on: June 14, 2010, 06:19:21 am »

I don't know why you think the word sex wouldn't be allowed here. Anal sex, oral sex, as long as we're not discussing it specifically, then I think it's all good. Like, if the story you're reading happens to include anal sex, you can mention that.
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Pathos

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Re: Movies and the color blue
« Reply #14 on: June 14, 2010, 06:45:24 am »

Starver, I... Why are you using footnotes? You're very organized about your posting.  :P

It's more confusing to me that he didn't superscript / subscript them.
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