We've written before about the amazing concept designs going into Wynter Dark, which also includes giant, dire polar bears. I was intrigued by the filmmakers' description of the Nomen, whom they think of as fantasy monsters placed in a hard scifi context:

Wynter Dark is not a fantasy film - it's a post apocolyptic adventure film that looks like a fanatsy film - without the fluff and bluster that useally accompanies that genre.

Don't get me wrong, I loved Lord of the Rings and... and... actually, that's pretty much it.

That fact that WD isn't a fantasy film doesn't mean that it's short of fantastic characters, take these early designs for the Nomen. Nomen are deformed giants whose genetics got scrambled due to being too close to a nuclear reactor that melted down. Several hundred years later the mutations have been passed down and further twisted by in-breeding.

Have we mentioned yet that we cannot wait to see this damn movie? Holy crap hurry up and finish it so we can get a new source of monstery goodness other than Outlander.

Check out more concept art at the Wynter Dark production blog, Unstable Marzipan!

via Quiet Earth and Avery Guerra!

It's no mystery why pop culture is on course for more darkness and nastiness. That's what's done well in the past year or two. And the entertainment industry always wants to give us more of what we've already liked, even if conditions have changed in the meantime.

Just looking at the "Dystopia" tag on io9, I see lots and lots of posts which say something like, "in the upcoming movie _______, everybody eats their own reprocessed shit and then bathes in the blood of their own parents, before being eaten by zombies." There are a lot of vaguely satirical movies coming, about people forced to compete in evil game shows or video games turned real, like Game, or Fortuna.

We also have a few years of apocalyptic movies on the way, including the reliably Irwin Allen-esque Roland Emmerich, with 2012. I tried to read the script for 2012 and found myself developing a spontaneous case of TMJ disorder. There are also several post-apocalyptic movies on the slate, including Wynter Dark and The Road. There are literally 10,000 zombie movies coming out in the next couple of years, enough to keep a zombie army entertained forever.

And as for television? The shows that seem likely to be still on the air in a year or so are all pretty dark, including the increasingly twisted Lost and the quirky-but-dark Fringe. The new shows that are on the way are sardonic as fuck, including Ron Moore's Virtuality, a claustrophobic tale of astronauts trapped in a sardine-can ship with a virtual reality system that's getting scarier and scarier. And Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, a show about a woman who's had literally everything taken away from her, including her name and identity, so she can be a plaything for the rich. It's not exactly Pennies From Heaven, y'all.

If you're excited for another few years of bleak, no-way-out entertainment, then skip the rest of this piece. But if you're actually hoping for more fun, a more upbeat approach to storytelling, and maybe a bit of lightness, then read on. What could move things in that direction?

First of all, hope that Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen are not just hits, but mega hits. It seems like a safe enough bet, actually. Both films seem much shinier and friendlier than the big films of this past summer, especially Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Dark Knight and even Indiana Jones 4, which featured Indie being accused of being a Commie, plus lots of angst about getting older. If either Trek or Transformers does better than Dark Knight, then you can bet we'll see Hollywood rearranging its priorities pretty quick. Another possible oasis of escapist fun next summer: another toy movie, G.I. Joe.

Conversely, you may want to root against Watchmen, which features rapist superheroes and a morally ambiguous ending. And Terminator Salvation, which McG is promising will take place in a super-dark future: "This picture takes place after Judgment Day. It happened. Everything is gone. The story of the movie is the 'brink moment' Reese always talked about." You may also want to root against Wolverine, depending on how much Fox succeeded in watering down the Wolverine movie's allegedly dark tone. (Last we heard, there were vague rumblings the director and the Fox suits were fighting over just how dark and gritty the Wolverine film would be allowed to be, even down to the way the sets were painted.)

Second, hope that Hollywood backs off its "all superhero films should be like The Dark Knight" meme pretty fast. Chances are, a slew of Dark Knight clones wouldn't be all that good, and they would mostly flop.

Third, accept that pop culture is always going to be a mix of light and dark. I shouldn't even need to say this, but I'll say it anyway. We need our Watchmens as well as our Incredibles. So what we're really talking about here is the ratio of light to dark. We'll always want both, and we'll always have both.

Fourth, bear in mind that escapist fun often starts from a dark place. Look at the original Battlestar Galactica, or the Glen Larson Buck Rogers, both of which are post-apocalyptic. Oftentimes, the funnest heroes are the ones who come out of the worst bogholes and rise above.
It's often part of the light-hearted heroic formula.

Fifth — and this may be the most important — support books and comics that are bright and optimistic. The book and comics industries have a slow development process, but they can respond to a hit faster than TV and movies can. Buy upbeat space opera novels about capable people surmounting problems. The next time Mark Waid psyches himself up to write something cute and fun like Brave and the Bold, do your part to make it a mega-hit. You'll be helping to support the source material for Hollywood's next sunny, cheery hit.

Here's a concept teaser that explains the Wynter Dark back story:

Pete Ford, the Creative Director of Wynter Dark, was kind enough to answer some pressing polar bear questions I had that stemmed from the amazing bear war concept art.

The polar bears, can you ride them?

Pete Ford: No frickin' way. They are weapons of war called "Protectors" - the idea is that they are unleashed on the battlefield and EVERYONE stands back. Kind of like a white 500 kilogram furry grenade... with teeth. They are also trained to patrol the Kingdom's northern frontier.

How does one train a polar bear?

PF: Very carefully! Polars Bears are untrainable but we figure that there's been enough time to work out a system which is touched upon in the film. I won't give it away as it plays into a key scene in the movie and goes some way to explain why the furry guys are so pissed all the time.

Do we fight the bears alone, or are they a part of someone's military tactics?

PF: The bears are exclusively the weapons of The Kingdom of New York.

In this future is the ocean frozen over so one could potentially walk across the water to London?

PF: Yep - except for the two months of summer. Mind you it's lousy with ice bergs but still quicker to sail across rather than march the troops over when it's frozen solid.

Will Wynter Dark be more of a survival story or a warring kingdom story?

PF: Warring Kingdom. Society has had hundreds of years to rebuild, mind you there is a survival story (of sorts) at the center of the adventure - I don't want to give that away as it's the emotional core of the film and should stay under wraps for a bit.

Can you explain to our readers the significance of the different Kingdoms?

PF: The promotional video (which we use to sell the idea of the Kingdoms to the studio guys) goes into it better than I can here but basically the idea is that the magnetic polar reversal is catastrophic for just about everybody on the face of the planet, the few survivors get to the major cities. In the mythology of the story the cities become states and in time become Kingdoms. Why are they are war with each other? You'll have to watch the film to find that out.

Do you have any idea when this will be released in theaters?

PF: Stay tuned - we will be releasing some very cool news soon about the film that will start to put a time frame on release.

Thanks to Quiet Earth for pointing out the teaser trailer.

We've already reported on amazing Wynter Dark concept art of a cold New York, with some sort of man-made force field surrounding the city. But these bear-fight pics take the post-apocalyptic cake. The movie takes place 800 years in the future, when New York has been dominated by the Kingdom of London. The back-and-forth struggle of power stretches across a planet that is experiencing a worldwide ice age.

I'm fanning out in a major way about this movie. Wynter Dark sounds fantastic, and I cannot wait for the epic bear battle followed closely by the human war between major world cities. The film is currently in production.

[Quiet Earth via Unstable Marzipan]

[Quiet Earth]