Hybrid Noir

Abstract

Hybrid Noir takes the noir elements and activates them in another genre. Film Noir often darkens the other genres, like science fiction, with Blade Runner (Ridley Scott 1982), or the superhero genre, as with the Netflix version of Jessica Jones (2015–2019) created by Melissa Rosenberg. To explore the darker side of the Jessica Jones story, Rosenberg relied, as did the writers and artists of the graphic novels, on film noir. Similarly, in the early 1980s, Ridley Scott turned to noir to explore the darker implications of the sci-fi genre, which had become overly fixed upon the construction of utopias. With genre hybridity filmmakers bring the noir dream to the foreground while working with another genre.

Appendix

Hybrid Noir Film List

Science-Fiction

• Soylent Green (1973), d. Richard Fleischer

• The Lathe of Heaven (1980), d. Fred Barzyk and David R. Loxton

• Blade Runner (1982), d. Ridley Scott

• Trancers (1984), d. Charles Band (sequels)

• Robocop (1987), d. Paul Verhoeven (sequels, reboot)

• Naked Lunch (1991), d. David Cronenberg

• Equinox (1993), d. Alan Rudolph

• Strange Days (1995), d. Kathryn Bigelow

• Gattaca (1997), d. Andrew Niccol

• Dark City (1998), d. Alex Proyas

• The Matrix (1999), d. The Wachowskis

• The Thirteenth Floor (1999), d. Josef Rusnak

• Minority Report (2002), d. Steven Spielberg

• Blade Runner 2049 (2017), d. Denis Villeneuve

Comic Book/Superhero Adaptation

• Batman (1989), d. Tim Burton

• Dick Tracy (1990), d. Warren Beatty

• Batman Returns (1992), d. Tim Burton

• The Shadow (1994), d. Russell Mulcahy

• Daredevil (2003), d. Mark Steven Johnson

• The Punisher (2004), d. Jonathan Hensleigh

• Batman Begins (2005), d. Christopher Nolan

• Constantine (2005), d. Francis Lawrence. Adaptation of Hellblazer

• The Dark Knight (2008), d. Christopher Nolan

• The Dark Knight Rises (2012), d. Christopher Nolan

• Daredevil (2015–2018), Netflix series, Drew Goddard, creator

• Jessica Jones (2015–2019), Netflix series, Melissa Rosenberg, creator

• Luke Cage (2016–2018), Netflix series, Cheo Hodari Coker, creator

• The Punisher (2017–2019), Netflix series, Steve Lightfoot, creator

A note on Batman: From the character’s beginning, in Detective Comics #27 (1939), Batman evoked imagery and narrative motifs that would find their way into film noir. Since the 1970s reiteration of Batman, in comic book form, he has very much been a neo-noir hero, relying on noir storylines and noir-influenced art. The movies, beginning with Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989, similarly invoked noir with varying degrees of hybridity, ranging between Burton’s more comic characters and world come to life and Christopher Nolan’s comic book characters living in our world. The three Nolan Batman films make this list, but so to would multiple animated versions, both feature and TV series.

Parody of this group appears occasionally, such as the Spider-Man Noir character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).

Horror

• The Silence of the Lambs (1991), d. Jonathan Demme

• The Addiction (1995), d. Abel Ferrara (Noir and Vampire Horror)

• From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), d. Robert Rodriguez

• Hannibal (2001), d. Ridley Scott

• Red Dragon (2002), d. Brett Ratner

• Hannibal (2013–2015), TV series, Bryan Fuller, creator

A note on Horror-Noir hybridity: many questions here. Often, horror films may evoke some noir imagery—maybe just being in black and white—and we readily call it Horror Noir. Case in point: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Psycho contains virtually none of the essential noir elements, yet some (Schwartz 2005) claim it as noir. When Horror and Noir work as Hybrid Noir, the resultant film works as noir and as horror. Do the Saw films work as noir because they feature a detective? More accurately, these films may borrow elements of noir without becoming noir—fully succeeding as horror, but not as neo-noir.

Cowboy/Western Noir

• The Killer Inside of Me (1976), d. Burt Kennedy

• Red Rock West (1992), d. John Dahl

• Blue Desert (1992), d. Bradley Battersby

• The Border (1982), d. Tony Richardson

• Bright Angel (1991), d. Michael Fields

• Clay Pigeons (1998), d. David Dobkin

• No Country for Old Men (2007), d. Ethan and Joel Coen

• Hell or High Water (2016), d. David MacKenzie