With almost no exceptions, when it’s night, and the moon is in the sky in movies, it’s a full moon. Why?
This isn’t just the full moon because it’s a werewolf movie. It seems to be the rule. No matter the movie genre, if it’s night, the moon is full. Is it more dramatic that way?
What do you think the reason for this is?
People expect a full moon to illuminate a nighttime scene. A crescent just won’t do it.
A full moon is prettier. Unless something in the script specifically requires the moon not be full, why bother to show it at all if it isn’t visually appealing?
Not only is it full, but it’s way bigger then anything you would see in real life.
Yes.
Give me a nice, thin crescent moon anytime.
Or a gibbous moon in a blue daytime sky.
Can’t remember the title, but I once saw a film which had a crescent moon CGI’d into the nighttime sky.
With stars inside the crescent. :smack:
There’s a crescent moon in every Dreamworks movie.
Well, sometimes the moon isn’t full. Or crescent, either. But generally it’s that way because the plot demands it (as when the phase of the moon is a time-telling device). See Splash, for instance.
Incidentally, the moon always seems to be full in werewolf movies. In fact, it might absurdly be full several nights in a row.
Why? you’d think that you could conspicuously show the moon not full on nights when the character could be outdoors after dark, and not be turning into a wolf. But I can’t recall any cases of that.
Aesthetics. Full moons are way prettier than other phases. Nobody sings a song about a half moon. If your scene is going to include a moon, why not make it full? Would you show flowers that haven’t bloomed yet?
The only thing that bugs me about night scenes in movies is that in animated films, every night sky scene MUST include a meteor every 10 seconds or so.
It’s the same reason every window in Paris has a view of the Eiffel Tower.
Speaking of the full moons and animated films, this reminds me of a goof in the first Despicable Me film. At the beginning of the film Gru comes home and says “Good morning” to his neighbour. About ten minutes later he’s standing framed by a full moon in the night sky. Sloppy.
It’s odd to me that people are saying full moons are prettier. Surely, the iconic image of the moon is a crescent, no? I find that the prettiest.
How do you know only ten minutes have gone by? Isn’t it likely they were only showing selected highlights from his day?
It’s partly because they only show the Moon at night. If you’re seeing the Moon at night, it’s more likely to be full than any other phase. A crescent moon is mostly up during the day, with just a little bit at night either shortly after sunset or shortly before sunrise.
And while one can debate whether the full or crescent moon is more aesthetic, nobody wants a gibbous moon.
Nope. He comes in, sit down and doesn’t even have time to eat his muffin before Dr Nefario calls him. At the end of the call he commands the minions to assemble and descends into the basement. As he descends we see the minions gathering as he goes by, rushing into the arena where he is standing. He gives his speech which ends with the moon thing. It’s continuous action throughout.
Stephen King uses that in “The Talisman.” One of the characters becomes more werewolf-ish as the moon gets closer to full. However, he completely tosses that away for, “Cycle of the Werewolf,” where the moon is always full and at bogus times of consecutive months.
I do. Esp. since they can often be seen in the daytime.
I get more annoyed when they use a crescent moon in a movie (ostensibly set in the northern hemisphere) and they have the horns point the wrong way. Hint to Hollywood: if it’s evening/dusk, the horns point to the left. If it’s early morning/dawn, they point to the right. And as someone else pointed out, there are no stars in the “dark” portion ever. That’s unlit moon; light doesn’t shine thru it.
In E.T., the Moon was really screwed up. In the first half of the movie, I think it was a First Quarter, which sets around midnight. When Eliot is out in the backyard, supposedly very late at night, it’s still high in the sky. On Halloween, there’s a full Moon, which rises as the Sun sets. This implies E.T. was with him for a week or so instead of just a few days. Also, the full Moon wouldn’t be high in the sky until late in the evening. I also have to wonder about the stained-glass window in the kids’ closet. From the orientation of the house, I don’t think it was in a position for sunlight to come streaming through.
It would have been better to correct some if this in the touched-up version of 2002, instead of messing with the non-PC dialogue. :mad:
As always, there’s an xkcd for that.
There’s a big cultural history to “stars between the tips of the crescent moon”.
A lot of ancient civilizations used a symbol consisting of a star within the body of a crescent moon shortly before and after the Christian era. It appeared in Byzantium and in Rome and in medieval heraldry. It’s not evident if this was anything more than a symbol, rather than an observation.
The star and crescent was famously the symbol of the Ottoman empire, and from there became generally associated with Islam.
It’s mentioned in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Of course, there’s a high proportion of weird in that poem, so it fits perfectly in the mood. Someone pointed out the impossibility, and Coleridge apparently changed it to “near the nether tip” in later editions
In November 1668, Cotton Mather reported seeing a star-like point of light within the dark part of the crescent moon. Mather was a pretty good observer, so people give this some credence.
In 1795 the Royal Astronomer, Rev. Nevil Maskelyne, also reported seeing lights in the dark portion of the moon. A Mr. Wilkins also reported a light inside the dark part of the moon, but I don’t know if it was at the same time.
Similar reports were made in 1847 and 1867
In 1869 the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain investigated reports of lights on the moon.
In 1877 there were several reports of lights on the lunar surface.
One theory for these was that they were due to meteor strikes. At the time, it was suggested it might be volcanic activity.
http://cavinessreport.com/ad3_3.html
It’s used in lots of modern flags (see the Wikipedia article above).
There was a legend that the Ottoman symbol derived from an observation. IIRC, a friend of mine wrote an article about this, where he said the origin of the symbol is “lost in antiquity”