"Wow, this must have taken hours. I mean, this is really extensive, candle-wise."
— Juliet, Psych, "Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast"
There's something about having candles as ambient lighting. They create an atmosphere of warmth and closeness. And in set design, they make for a really cool shot. Having lots of them enhances the effect even more.
But here's the thing: lighting them all can be a tedious pain in the backside. And yet, scenes in various media can feature tens (if not hundreds) of lit candles on nearly every available surface, with hardly any acknowledgement as to how long it must have taken to light them all, or whether it's truly necessary to use this many of them.
Maybe it's a case of Coitus Ensues, Romantic Candlelit Dinner, or Candlelit Bath, and mood light is needed. Maybe some kind of Candlelit Ritual needs to be performed. Maybe power is out and characters want light without abusing the Nuclear Candle trope. But whatever the reason, expect dozens of candles to be instantly lit between shots, usually without explanation. Extreme examples may occur when an uninhabited room is already filled with inexplicably lit candles when the scene gets there.
A subtrope is the appearance of Lit Candles Everywhere in any scene set in a church. No matter the time of day or night, day of the week, liturgical season, presence or absence of any clergy or congregation, or indeed of electric lighting, if characters head into or seek sanctuary inside a church (or other churchlike place) they will find it filled with dozens of big waxy candles burning away in every available holder and sconce and on every flat surface. In Real Life, candles tend to be lit specifically for services — and not randomly, en masse, all around the building and left burning 24/7 to provide ambient spiritual atmosphere. In fictional works, however, their presence is apparently needed to make the setting unambiguously scream "church" at first glance, no matter that there may be such obvious visual cues as ecclesiastical architecture, altars, pews, a priest in vestments, and so on.
Can be a case of Acceptable Break from Reality for works set in times before electrical or gas lighting: the interiors of houses are simply too dark to film in even at light levels where humans are able to see, hence the economically-impossible abundance of candles to keep things visible.
Compare Nuclear Candle, where a single candle creates an inordinate amount of light. Also compare Hollywood Torch, another trope about a convenient light source.
Not to be confused with Better than a Bare Bulb, which is about lampshading tropes and not lighting.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Mayhem (Allstate): Justified in one ad where a teenage boy has gathered a huge number of candles to spell out "PROM?" for a promposal.
Films — Animated
- The Book of Life:
- The Cave of Souls is the home of the god Candle Maker and is filled to the brim with lit candles. Each represents a person, and when that person dies, the candle snuffs out.
- When Manolo wants to do a serenade for Maria and propose to her, he sets up a pathway from the town to the nearby tree, consisting of two long rows of candles that go all the way across the bridge.
- During the scene at the graveyard, the graves are decorated with countless candles. Justified, considering the local reverence for those who passed away, and the fact that this is the Day of the Dead.
- La Muerte's hat and dress are decorated with many lit candles.
- Heavy Traffic: Michael's mother Ida's first scene is of her in the family's apartment surrounded by a lot of candles. Of course, then she sticks her unconscious husband's head in the oven, and it starts to seem like she lit them with the intent of blowing them all to smithereens.
- Kung Fu Panda 1 has a scene featuring hundreds of lit candles. Master Oogway is blowing them out one by one until Shifu loses his patience and snuffs them all out with a burst of air.
- In Tangled, while Mother Gothel is singing "Mother Knows Best", she closes windows and plunges the tower into darkness. Rapunzel starts lighting candles, but despite Mother Gothel going around and snuffing them out, offscreen Rapunzel still somehow manages to line an entire stairwell with lit candles on both ends of each step.
Films — Live-Action
- Zigzagged in Barry Lyndon, as the number of candles present depends on the location. While the home of a peasant or a tent in an army camp has a few candles on a stick, a tavern has dozens of candles, while palaces and resorts of the wealthy have hundreds of them in the chandeliers. Justified since the film takes place in the 1700s.
- In the film adaptation of Because of Winn-Dixie, the party held at Miss Gloria's is illuminated by countless candles, even though she's one of the poorer residents in the town and nearly blind. Roger Ebert pointed this out in his review
:
Ebert: It is one of those parties you see only in the movies, where the people may be poor, but they have an unlimited budget for candles. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe, all over the yard outside Miss Gloria's house. - In Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), while Jonathan Harker is locked in Dracula's castle in Romania, Dracula seduces Mina Murray. In one scene, they waltz around a room circled by rows of candles.
- Carrie (1976): After Carrie's rampage, she returns home to find her mother has lit votive candles throughout the entire house, showing her own descent into religious madness as she seeks the strength to kill her daughter.
- Dark Angel: The Ascent: During Veronica's love scene with Max, the latter's bedroom is decorated with around a hundred candles. While the fire itself may be explained by Veronica's demon powers, Max must have stocked up some crazy supplies beforehand.
- As in the books, the Harry Potter films feature numerous floating candles in the Hogwarts Great Hall. In the first movie, the effect was achieved practically, with real candles suspended from wires. After they had an accident with a falling candle, they switched to CGI floating candles for the subsequent movies.
- In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indy is in a room loaded with lit candles as he's taken over by the Black Sleep of Kali.
- The church in John Woo's The Killer (1989) is lit with numerous candles, as well as having a good number of doves.
- The Phantom of the Opera (2004): The Phantom's lair constantly has lit candelabras, even when characters are first entering the room. In fact, some of them rise from the water already lit.
- Queen of the Damned: Akasha's crypt is lined with dozens of torches and braziers, which ignite as Lestat approaches. Justified because, even in her torpid state, she has the power to put on the display to provoke Lestat's curiosity.
- Transformers: Age of Extinction: Despite being on the run, having had one of their friends killed before their eyes, when Cade and his group hide out in an abandoned church, they apparently saw fit to light every candle they could in the church. During the daytime, no less.
- William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: At the end when Romeo goes to visit the (not yet) dead Juliet in her family tomb, the room is filled with lit candles.
Literature
- The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn:, Joruus C'Baoth leads Thrawn and his entourage (of two) to the tomb of the Guardian of the Mountain. The vast hall is crowded with countless hundreds of candles...
C'Baoth: Do you see all the candles, Grand Admiral Thrawn?
Thrawn: I see them. The people must have honored him greatly.
C'Baoth: Honored him? Hardly. Those candles mark the graves of the offworlders who have come here since his death.
Pellaeon: How did they die?
C'Baoth: I killed them, of course. Just as I killed the Guardian. Just as I now kill you... - In The City Without Memory, the table in the Moles' castle is packed full of candles. Justified because of a tradition started by Old Mole, who, in addition to losing one eye when he was younger, started having problems with the remaining eye when he became old, and believed insufficient lighting was the problem.
- Justified in Godfather Death, one of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales: Death brings his godson into a cavern where thousands and thousands of candles are burning in countless rows. Death explains that the candles are the life-lights of living people, and every time a candle burns out, a new one starts to burn elsewhere all by itself.
- In the Harry Potter books, the Hogwarts Great Hall is lit with numerous floating candles. Its initial description in the first book:
Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting.
- In Malleus, the second volume of the Warhammer 40k Eisenhorn trilogy, Lord Inquisitor Rorken's office is a long dark room lit entirely by what appears to be hundreds of candles. Subverted with a reasonable explanation: as Eisenhorn notes in the narration, this is actually an illusion by both of the side walls being mirrors.
- Neverwhere: The Great Hall of the Angel Islington is crowded with candles, both in candlesticks and in clusters on the floor. They somehow come alight when the angel enters the room, and extinguish themselves when it leaves, though the flames never touch the wicks. That Islington is always surrounded by flames is Foreshadowing that it's actually a Fallen Angel.
- Justified in Thud!, where a symbol of an extremely potent dwarven rune is discovered on a cocktail drinks menu and kept surrounded by lit candles at all times, because of what could happen if it were left in the dark (summoning a sort-of demon of vengeance that dwarves are terrified of, with good reason).
Live-Action TV
- The Big Bang Theory: In "The Financial Permeability," Penny is experiencing a Broke Episode. When Leonard visits her apartment, it's lit with loads of candles. She sarcastically explains that, "when I didn't pay my bill, the Department of Water and Power thought I would enjoy the ambience." Needless to say, she has a rather ridiculous number of candles for someone who is supposed to be so broke.
- Connections: A woman goes into labor during the New York City blackout of 1965. The hospital staff gets every candle they have. She awakes after labor thinking she has died and is at her funeral mass because of all the candles.
- The Cry of Mann sequel Call Of Warr has scenes in Vid's creepy church, which is entirely dark, save for an absurd amount of candles.
- Dexter: Already upset that Dexter's shacking up with "gross English titty vampire" Lilah so soon after breaking up with Rita, Deborah drops this gem about the number of candles the new couple apparently require to get their game on:
Deborah: And are you trying to fuck her or light her on fire?
- Friends:
- When Monica is giving Chandler a romantic dinner, she lights the entire room with an insane amount of candles.
- During the scene where Monica and Chandler get engaged, it's apparent that Monica's surprise for him included covering the apartment in candlelight, which is immediately noticeable when he walks into the room.
- Merlin (2008): When Arthur proposes to Guinevere he does so by filling her home with lit candles. Cue a lot of jokes from the fandom about how much of a fire hazard it is to fill a wooden house with open flames.
- Psych: In "Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast", Alice leads Juliet up a flight of stairs, down a corridor, and into a room, all lined with candles. Juliet lampshades how much time would have been needed to set it all up.
- Ranczo: In Mr and Mrs. Więcławski's bedroom, following Klaudia's advice on how to rekindle their feelings. It really did end up fiery! Literally.
- Scream Queens (2015): There are several times when the house is lit by an absurd number of candles, with multiple candelabras seen in each shot. It's justified by one of the Kappa pledges being an extreme candle-enthusiast,
- Stargate SG-1: Teal'c apparently requires this trope to undergo his kelno'reem meditation, which for Jaffa replaces sleep, resting and restoring Jaffa and larval Goa'uld symbiote. The least we ever see him using is during a prolonged offworld mission, where he makes do with a small table and five or six candles. In his quarters at the SGC, he'll typically be surrounded by what appears to be hundreds of lit candles.
Music Videos
- In the music video for Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", dozens of lit candles are scattered haphazardly throughout the castle's throne room.
- The Police: The band's video for "Wrapped Around Your Finger" from their final album, Synchronicity, consists of Sting singing in a dark room completely filled with lit candlesticks. At the end of the video, he begins knocking them down dramatically.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: At Skopp City, several locked rooms at the apartment building with shrines inside have multiple candles lit up outside their doors. Within the Underground City beneath Freeway 42, the antechambers containing the monuments of all the victims who were killed by the Mechanika Virus are illuminated by hundreds of candles filling up the entire room.
- In Divinity: Original Sin II, this is Played for Drama: towards the end of Lohse's personal quest, Malady takes her into the personal Pocket Dimension of the demon possessing her to sabotage his power by severing his connection to other people he possesses at the same time — each represented by a small candle. By snuffing out a candle, Lohse instantly kills the possessed person, weakening the demon... and then comes the big whammy, when they reach an opening and see millions of candles stretching all the way to the horizon, revealing just how insanely overpowered Ahdramalik really is.
- Fallen London and Sunless Sea: The Chapel of Lights is a Creepy Cathedral on a small island in the Grim Up North, all lit by innumerable candles. Given that candles are associated with the most notorious Undead Abomination in the Neath, this is an early clue about the true nature of the priests, to say nothing of the ritual candles made from Human Resources and worse.
- Lampshaded in Far Cry 4 when Pagan Min goes on a rant about the "industrious fool" who goes around lighting all the candles scattered around Kyrat. He briefly considers paying someone to blow them out. Instead, he bans candles and declares that lighting one is treason punishable by death.
- In Heavy Rain, Nathaniel's apartment is a Room Full of Crazy with crucifixes and Bible verses all over the walls. There are also lit candles on almost every flat surface.
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The mansion where Venom Snake makes contact with Code Talker is decorated with plenty of candles. The basement room where he's being held is particularly full of them, and they magically extinguish and light themselves as Snake makes his entrance.
- In Minecraft Dungeons, the Highblock Halls mission features countless lit candles strewn about on the floor of the enormous castle, with many rooms having clusters of 5+ candles in nearly every corner.
- In Monster Hunter: World, the Research Base is a wooden airship covered with books and fabric drapes. And of course, lit candles are scattered across all of that.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: The chamber containing the sarcophagus of the Shadow Queen has a lot of lit candlesticks surrounding it. Once she awakens from her slumber, the candlesticks quickly snuff out before being lit again with black flames.
- Resident Evil:
- In Resident Evil (Remake), a massive amount of candles can be found in the areas Lisa Trevor has been living in. Most of them are still burning, meaning they were somehow presumably lit simultaneously (despite the fact that Ms. Trevor has had her mind severely stunted and her hands are bound).
- The same occurs in Resident Evil Village, particularly throughout Castle Dimitrescu. While the castle's eponymous Lady has daughters and enough undead servants to keep those lit, it's a little harder to explain their presence in several other locations, like the stone lifts that have lit candles placed in the numerous carved recesses lining the shaft. Seems like an awful lot of work for whoever has to keep replacing those each day.
- RuneScape: The vampire Count Draynor's tomb has dozens upon dozens of candles on the floor near the walls; in older versions of the game, they caused Scratch Damage when stepped on. Draynor dwells in a Haunted House, so perhaps the candles are tended by the same Ghost Butler that traps the player character.
- Salt and Sanctuary: The very last area of the game is a seemingly endless underground expanse, thickly covered by lit candles that stretch into the distance. Seeing this was once the Nameless God's domain and the desire for a Candlelit Soul was his all-consuming desire and the reason for his madness, it doubles as a Room Full of Crazy.
- Shadow Warrior (2013):
- One of the early secrets takes place in a cave filled to the brim with candles. Said cave is located near a body of water.
- The end of "Chapter 5: She's a Courier" takes place in a room full of lit candles surrounding the Whisperer and the statue behind her. Unlike other examples, these candles are indestructible and their fire unextinguishable, so Wang can go around everywhere he pleases until the player decides to get the Nobitsura Kage out of the Whisperer's hands.
- The end of "Chapter 10: We Should Stick to the Lack of Plan" leads Wang and Hoji into a vessel dragged by Zilla Enterprises from the ocean floor. The vessel itself, by the time Wang and Hoji find it, is full of candles surrounding the Whisperer.
- In Terraria, this behavior is mechanically punished by the game (or rewarded, depending on your perspective). If you place 100 candles within a small area, a "Torch God" mini-boss fight is activated and every flame in the area will throw itself at you one by one. Survive long enough, however, and the Torch God will gift you the ability to automatically match torches to whatever biome you're in.
Visual Novels
- In the adult visual novel Cute Demon Crashers, when the protagonist enters her bedroom to have sex with the succubus Mirari, she sees that Mirari has set up candles everywhere. Then she realizes that the "candles" are actually battery-powered lights, at which point Mirari says that while candles are nice, the battery powered lights are significantly safer.
Web Videos
- A frequent sin in CinemaSins, where Jeremy inevitably points out how nonsensical it is for every candle to be lit in every shot.
Jeremy: Which of these f*cking on-the-run desperate assholes took the time to light all the rosary candles throughout the church?
- Lindsay Ellis points out the silliness of this trope in her video essay on the 2004 film adaptation of the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical version of The Phantom of the Opera.
This happens in the movie because it's how it happens in the show. Candles literally rising from the floor. But when you see it in the show do you think, "Oh hey, literal candles literally rising from the floor." No, you're like, "Oh, this is like a scene transition. I've heard about those." Nope. In the movie, it appears to be literal. The Phantom is not only a genius mechanical engineer but has a lot of spare time.
- Lampshaded in an Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder video on unintentionally hilarious sex scenes. Host Daniel O'Brien addresses the Fridge Logic of dozens of lit candles appearing when Coitus Ensues in the film Desperado.
