Perhaps its a reflection of the state of the world (or our perception of it), but many of the most popular genre films of the past decade or more have been of the relentlessly grim-and-gritty variety. Particularly when it comes to superheroes (and especially Batman, whose films have only grown more dour across the decades), glumness is even seen as a marker of quality—fairly or otherwise. Happy endings are great and all, but we’re obsessed with genre movies that aren’t just dark, but wildly, operatically grim.
At their best, those movies show us a world that might not quite align with our day-to-day experience, but perhaps aren’t far off from the vision of life as we might see it in our bleakest imaginings, at the darkest hours of the night. On the other hand, some seem to reflect a teenager’s heightened sense of drama.
Perhaps we simply find it highly relatable that even a character like Batman, with a life far more exciting than our own humdrum existences, still has plenty of reasons to be sad. Just like us! All of the following movies also feature people with plenty of reasons to crawl back into bed, and yet they still manage to lead action-packed lives. Good for them.