#5. Movies are Color-Coded by Genre
Have You Ever Noticed:
There's some unwritten rule that horror movies should be blue:
The Ring
Saw
The Nightmare on Elm Street reboot.
Meanwhile, apocalyptic movies are gray and washed out:
Then there are more subtle ones, for instance movies set in the desert tend to be yellow. And we don't mean when they're out in the sun and sand, either. Even when indoors it'll often look like it was filmed through a jar of urine:
Smokin' Aces (Las Vegas)
The Hills Have Eyes (rural Nevada)
Movies where reality is off-kilter will be green:
Fight Club
The Matrix films, aka The Greenest Movies Ever Made
Honestly, half the time you can guess the genre of the film based on one still from the trailer.
What's Going On?
It's called digital color correction. Back in the day, if you wanted your movie to have an artistic, stylish color palette, you had to go through the pain in the ass process of using filters on your lights and camera, or get the footage exposed just the right way. It was expensive, it was difficult and it was limited to people who really knew what they were doing. So if someone took the trouble, it meant they had a good reason, dammit.
Now? If you're a Hollywood director, with a few clicks of the mouse you can immediately look stylish and artsy by making the audience feel like they're watching your movie through a pair of novelty sunglasses. Hell, if you've got a Mac and a thousand bucks, you can get a color-correction program and give your home movie of a toddler farting on a cat an otherworldly green tint.
The Coen brothers didn't invent it, but Oh Brother, Where Art Thou was the first movie to heavily use digital color correction, to the point that every frame was digitally colored to give it that old-timey sepia tone.
But where the Coen Brothers were creating a unique and distinct look, other directors have realized these colors are a no-cost way to create atmosphere without, you know, having to write a good script or hire competent actors. These colors are a visual shorthand for various emotions and ideas (yellows seem hotter, blue makes a scene seem lit by spooky moonlight, washed-out grays are depressing). In other words: It's just laziness.
