Movies and TV and stories talk about how there's 6 months of daylight and 6 months of darkness. That does not fucking happen. This is still part of storytelling to this day (I'm looking at you, Sweet Tooth season 3).
Days get stupidly long in the summer, and there's a while where the sun really doesn't go down. in the Winter days get stupidly short, and there's a while where it doesn't really come up all that much. But it's not 6 months of one and 6 months of the other.
The farther beyond the arctic/antarctic circle you go, the longer the period of continuous night and day. Just above the circle it's like one day where the sun is up at midnight, barely. At the pole, it's quite a while.
Nope, the movie takes place in Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow), Alaska, which is one of the northernmost populated areas on earth. From the Wikipedia page:
When the sun sets on November 18, it stays below the horizon until January 23, resulting in a polar night that lasts about 66 days.[37] When the polar night starts, about 6 hours of civil twilight occur, with the amount decreasing each day during the first half of the polar night. On the winter solstice (around December 21 or December 22), civil twilight in Utqiagvik lasts a mere 3 hours.[34][38] After this, the amount of civil twilight increases each day to around 6 hours at the end of the polar night.
Edit: to OP's point, most depictions of the Arctic aren't that far north. 30 Days of Night happens to be one that really does have that level of continual darkness. Even so, while it's night for several months, it's really just the day shortening to the point that you don't see the sun with that civil twilight reducing to a few hours, and then as the "days" get longer eventually you start to see the sun again. The reverse happens for the summer, where eventually the sun doesn't set enough to be out of view.
There's a few movies that get it mostly right. Wasn't it the entire plot of the movie 30 days of darkness? I think it was still too light in those last days depicted before darkness fell.
(movie trailer music starts)
in a world... where online commenters... don't read articles... ONE HERO... challenges EVERYONE... to do the unTHINKable....
(movie trailer music stops)
Tell me about it. And sunsets aren't from a bright day to a dark night. During winter "days" are permanent twilight, the sun being very very low all the time it's above the horizon, and during the summer, "nights" are dim because the sun is never that far below the horizon.
Sweet Tooth had pretty much a countdown iirc. And then it went from 100% daylight to complete darkness in seconds.
edit also i'm annoyed when people don't wear hats in the cold but iirc in Sweet Tooth they had pretty good winterclothing most of the time idk.