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Dark City

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Mighty_Emperor

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Dark City (Film)

Time - 22:50 - 00:45 (1 hour and 55 minutes long)
When - Saturday 12th March on five

Imaginative science-fiction thriller set in a nightmarish urban complex of the future. A man wakes up in a bathtub with a murdered woman and no recollection of how he got there. In desperation, he escapes from the scene of the crime, but is pursued by shadowy, mysterious figures. From Alex Proyas, director of 'The Crow'.

Director: Alex Proyas
Starring: Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O'Brien, Ian Richardson
(Subtitles, Stereo, 1998, 4 Star)
Click to expand...

IMDB:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/

Well worth watching if you haven't already.
 
I thought I'd split this off from TV reminders as there isn't a thread on it and it is an interesting film - Keifer Sutherland is rubbish but the great cast of British actors act their socks off (Richard O'Brien just this side of ham).

And there is also the Matrix issue:

http://galeon.hispavista.com/cinerama/a ... rkcity.htm

It gets a lot of discussion over at IMDB and it does seem like there isn't too much that can be read into it as they were in production at the same time

Its more likely that they drew on similar earlier films for their look (although there is some talk about The Matrix reuisng some Dark City sets with their permission) - there is a certain Metropolis, Hitchcock and even Terry Gilliam feel to the film.

[edit: There is also a better case for Ghost in the Shell -> Matrix influences:

http://webmirror.kobran.org/matrixgits/page1.html ]
 
Since Trinity and John Murdock both run across the same rooftop (set) there's a pretty strong case for the simularities...
 
Rather Philip K Dickian, and more what the sequels to the Matrix should have been like than the things that they actually produced.
 
Was P.H. Dick the first one to talk about the alternative reality existing with the reality more commonly believed to be around us? Or was it another author? I find it interesting to not when a fictional idea gets created and then, when it filters into the larger culture until it becomes a hit. Eventually the idea is taken for granted as if it was always there.
 
Dark City felt like one of those films I should enjoy more that I did. It went through the motions but with only one idea the result fell completely flat, like a souffle disaster. I'd rather read a Philip K. Dick novel.
 
From Alex Proyas, director of 'The Crow'.
Click to expand...

---but don't let that put you off! Dark City is a far more mature and inventive film.

PK Dick is usually credited with being the first Sci-fi writer to have repeatedly put his characters into situations where they asked "Is this the real world or just an illusion?", although I'd suggest that this preoccupation also pops up in much of the work of Brian Aldiss- even in his early short stories published in the early 1950's such as Not For an Age (in which a man comes to realise that he is reliving a single day of his life over and over) and Outside (in which a man comes to realise that he is not actually a man at all).

Better-read members of the forum than myself can doubtless come up with earlier literary precedents. I'd suggest GK Chestertons dreamlike novel The Man Who Was Thursday for starters.
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
Was P.H. Dick the first one to talk about the alternative reality existing with the reality more commonly believed to be around us? Or was it another author? I find it interesting to not when a fictional idea gets created and then, when it filters into the larger culture until it becomes a hit. Eventually the idea is taken for granted as if it was always there.
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There's always Hinduism and Buddhism. They've been saying that for a looong time.
 
It went through quite a few "working titles", Dark Empire, Dark World, I guess they knew they wanted it to be dark but couldn't decide how big it was.
 
I think Dark City is a fantastic film, and I even think Keifer Sutherland is good in it IMHO.
I think the comparisons with The Matrix can be misleading, though. Yes they may have used the same sets, but Dark City is much more film noir in it's approach (man wakes up with no memory and is wanted for a series of murders), whereas The Matrix is far more live action Anime.
And I do believe that there is a special edition DVD of Dark City planned for later this year.
 
I thought Dark City was a pretty decent film, yess?

The ending smacked of a series from 2000AD tho' - "Bad City Blue", anyone else feel there was a similarity in the denouement?
 
TMS said:
I thought Dark City was a pretty decent film, yess?

The ending smacked of a series from 2000AD tho' - "Bad City Blue", anyone else feel there was a similarity in the denouement?
Click to expand...

Oh yeah I was racking my brain to remember where I'd seen the pizza shaped city in space before. Didn't the city fly into a black hole at the end of Bad City Blue though?
 
That's the one. Leading to the line that the writer may have held in reserve all along: "Bad City Blew". I'm sure a coat was fetched on his behalf.
 
My brother discovered something weird about this film. Apparently in the USA, the "alt-right" has co-opted Dark City as the go-to film as a meme to combat people who combat the alt-right via social media with references to the Matrix and taking the red pill. So for these alt-right activists, Dark City is the same kind of eye-opener as the Matrix, only more conservative... the Matrix is hiding a multicultural society underneath the illusion, whereas Dark City is hiding a traditional America underneath the illusion.
 
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