Dark City (1998)
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''Dark City'' is a 1998 neo-noir
science fiction film Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar ...
directed by Alex Proyas and starring Rufus Sewell, William Hurt,
Kiefer Sutherland Kiefer William Sutherland (born 21 December 1966) is a British-Canadian actor and musician. He is best known for his starring role as Jack Bauer in the Fox drama series '' 24'' (2001–2010, 2014), for which he won an Emmy Award, a Golden Glo ...
, Jennifer Connelly,
Richard O'Brien Richard Timothy Smith. known professionally as Richard O'Brien, is a British-New Zealand actor, writer, musician, composer, and television presenter. He wrote the musical stage show ''The Rocky Horror Show'' in 1973, which has remained in conti ...
, and Ian Richardson. The screenplay was written by Proyas,
Lem Dobbs Lem Dobbs (born Anton Lemuel Kitaj; 24 December 1958) is a British-American screenwriter, best known for the films '' Dark City'' (1998) and ''The Limey'' (1999). He was born in Oxford, England, and is the son of the painter R. B. Kitaj. The pen ...
, and
David S. Goyer David Samuel Goyer (born December 22, 1965) is an American filmmaker, novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for writing the screenplays for several superhero films, including ''Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (film), Nick Fury: Agent ...
. In the film, Sewell plays an
amnesia Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be caused temporarily by the use ...
c man who, finding himself suspected of murder, attempts to discover his true identity and clear his name while on the run from the police and a mysterious group known as the "Strangers". Primarily shot at Fox Studios Australia, the film was jointly produced by New Line Cinema and Proyas' production company Mystery Clock Cinema, and distributed by the former for theatrical release. It premiered in the United States on 27 February 1998 and received generally positive critiques, but it was a box-office bomb.
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
, in particular, supported the film, appreciating its art direction, set design, cinematography, special effects, and imagination, and even recorded an audio commentary for the film's home video release. The film was nominated for the
Hugo Award The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier a ...
for Best Dramatic Presentation and six Saturn Awards. Some critics later noted ''Dark City''s similarities to and influence on the ''Matrix'' film series, whose first installment came out a year later, and the film is now widely considered a sci-fi cult classic. Concerned that audiences would not understand the film, New Line asked Proyas to add an explanatory voice-over to the introduction, and he complied. When a
director's cut A director's cut is an edited version of a film (or video game, television episode, music video, or commercial) that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit in contrast to the theatrical release. "Cut" explicitly refers to the ...
of the film was released in 2008, among the changes was the removal of the opening narration.


Plot

John Murdoch awakens in a hotel bathtub, suffering from amnesia. He receives a phone call from Dr Daniel Schreber, who urges him to flee the hotel to evade a group of men who are after him. In the room, Murdoch discovers the corpse of a ritualistically murdered woman along with a bloody knife. He flees the scene, just as a group of pale men in trenchcoats (later identified as members of "the Strangers") arrive. Police Inspector Frank Bumstead is looking for Murdoch as a suspect in a series of murdered prostitutes, though Murdoch cannot remember killing anybody. Following clues, Murdoch learns his own name and finds out he has a wife named Emma. When the Strangers catch up with him, he shows he has the ability to alter reality at will, which the Strangers can also do and refer to as "tuning", and he manages to use these powers to escape. Murdoch wanders the streets of the anachronistic city, where nobody seems to notice the perpetual nighttime. At midnight, he watches as everyone else falls asleep and the Strangers physically rearrange the city and, assisted by Schreber, change the inhabitant's identities and memories. He learns that he came from a coastal town called Shell Beach, which is familiar to everyone, though nobody knows how to get there, and all of his attempts to visit are unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the Strangers inject one of their men, Mr Hand, with a copy of the memories given to Murdoch, hoping it will help them predict his movements and track him down. Inspector Bumstead eventually catches Murdoch, though he acknowledges that Murdoch is most likely innocent, as by then he has his own misgivings about the nature of the city. They confront Schreber, who explains that the Strangers, which are extraterrestrials who use human corpses as their hosts, have a hive mind, and are experimenting with humans to analyze individuality in hopes of making a discovery that will help their race survive. Schreber also reveals that Murdoch is an anomaly who inadvertently awoke when Schreber was in the middle of imprinting his latest identity as a murderer. Murdoch and Bumstead take Schreber and attempt to reach Shell Beach, but instead end up at a poster for the town on a wall at the edge of the city. Frustrated, Murdoch and Bumstead break through the wall, revealing outer space, just before some of the Strangers, including Mr Hand, arrive with Emma as a hostage. In the ensuing fight, Bumstead and one of the Strangers fall through the hole and drift out into space, and the city is shown to be a deep space habitat surrounded by a force field. The Strangers bring Murdoch to their home beneath the city and force Schreber to imprint Murdoch with their collective memory, believing Murdoch to be the culmination of their experiments. Schreber betrays them, however, and instead inserts false memories in Murdoch that artificially reestablish his childhood as years spent training and honing his tuning skills and learning about the Strangers and their machines. Murdoch awakens and, now able to fully realize his powers, frees himself and battles with the Strangers, defeating their leader Mr Book in a psychokinetic fight high above the city. After learning from Schreber that Emma has been re-imprinted and cannot be restored, Murdoch employs his powers, amplified by the Strangers' machine, to create an actual Shell Beach by flooding the area within the force field with water and forming a spit and beaches. On his way home, Murdoch encounters a dying Mr Hand and informs him that the Strangers searched in the wrong place—the mind—to understand humanity. He rotates the habitat toward the star it had been turned away from, and the city experiences sunlight for the first time. Opening a door leading out of the city, Murdoch steps out to view the sunrise. On the pier in front of him is the woman he knew as Emma, who now has new memories and a new identity as Anna. Murdoch reintroduces himself and they walk to Shell Beach, beginning their relationship anew.


Cast

* Rufus Sewell as John Murdoch * William Hurt as Inspector Frank Bumstead *
Kiefer Sutherland Kiefer William Sutherland (born 21 December 1966) is a British-Canadian actor and musician. He is best known for his starring role as Jack Bauer in the Fox drama series '' 24'' (2001–2010, 2014), for which he won an Emmy Award, a Golden Glo ...
as Dr. Daniel P. Schreber * Jennifer Connelly as Emma Murdoch / Anna *
Richard O'Brien Richard Timothy Smith. known professionally as Richard O'Brien, is a British-New Zealand actor, writer, musician, composer, and television presenter. He wrote the musical stage show ''The Rocky Horror Show'' in 1973, which has remained in conti ...
as Mr. Hand * Ian Richardson as Mr. Book * Bruce Spence as Mr. Wall * Colin Friels as Detective Eddie Walenski *
John Bluthal John Bluthal (born Isaac Bluthal; 12 August 1929 – 15 November 2018) was a Polish-born Australian actor and comedian, noted for his six-decade career internationally in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. He started his career ...
as Karl Harris *
Mitchell Butel Mitchell Patrick Butel (born 10 February 1970) is an Australian actor, singer, director and writer. He is best known for his work in theatre, including musical and opera productions. He has been the artistic director of the State Theatre Compa ...
as Officer Husselbeck * Melissa George as May *
Frank Gallacher Frank Gallacher (7 April 1943 – 23 February 2009) was a Scottish-Australian actor. Gallacher was born in Glasgow in 1943. In 1962, aged 19, he was working in London when his parents and younger sister decided to emigrate to Australia. Gallach ...
as Chief Inspector Stromboli *
Ritchie Singer Ritchie Singer is an Australian actor. Singer portrayed executive producer Richard Shapiro in the fictionalized 2005 American television movie/docudrama '' Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure'', based on the creation and behind the scenes ...
as Hotel Manager / Vendor *
Justin Monjo Justin Monjo (born 1963, New York) is an American screenwriter, television producer, and actor, best known for his work on ''Farscape'' and penning the Farscape movie in 2014. He is the son of children's author F. N. Monjo III and the great-great- ...
as Taxi Driver * Nicholas Bell as Mr. Rain * Satya Gumbert as Mr. Sleep (Noah Gumbert as Mr. Sleep Filming Double) * Frederick Miragliotta as Mr. Quick * Jeanette Cronin as a Stranger * David Wenham as Schreber's Assistant *
Alan Cinis Alan Cinis (born 10 August 1960 in Orange, New South Wales), an Australian politician and actor, has served as a Councillor on Leichhardt Council, Sydney, New South Wales, representing the NSW Greens since 2008. As an actor, Cinis has starred ...
as Automat Cop * Bill Highfield as Automat Cop * Terry Bader as Mr. Jeremy Goodwin * Rosemary Traynor as Mrs. Sylvia Goodwin * Maureen O'Shaughnessy as Kate Walenski
Anita Kelsey Anita Kelsey is an English singer and songwriter whose vocals and top lines are featured on many hit dance records and feature films. Her voice has appeared as backup vocals for artists such as Kings of Leon, ...
provided the singing voice of Emma Murdoch.


Production


Influences

For ''Dark City'', Proyas was influenced by
film noir Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ' ...
of the 1940s and the 1950s, such as '' The Maltese Falcon'' (1941). The film has additionally been described as Kafkaesque, and Proyas cited the TV series '' The Twilight Zone'' as a conscious influence. Proyas also wanted the film, though nominally science fiction, to have an element of horror to unsettle the audience.


Writing

Originally, Proyas conceived a story about a 1940s detective who is obsessed with facts and cannot solve a case where the facts do not make sense, saying: "He slowly starts to go insane through the story. He can't put the facts together because they don't add up to anything rational." In the process of creating the fictional world for the character of the detective, Proyas created other characters, and ended up shifting the focus of the film from the detective (Bumstead) to the person pursued by the detective (Murdoch). Proyas envisioned a robust narrative where the audience could examine the film from the perspective of multiple characters and focus on the plot. After writing the first draft of the screenplay by himself, Proyas worked with
Lem Dobbs Lem Dobbs (born Anton Lemuel Kitaj; 24 December 1958) is a British-American screenwriter, best known for the films '' Dark City'' (1998) and ''The Limey'' (1999). He was born in Oxford, England, and is the son of the painter R. B. Kitaj. The pen ...
and
David S. Goyer David Samuel Goyer (born December 22, 1965) is an American filmmaker, novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for writing the screenplays for several superhero films, including ''Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (film), Nick Fury: Agent ...
to create the final script. Goyer had written '' The Crow: City of Angels'' (1996), the sequel to Proyas's 1994 film ''
The Crow The Crow is a supernatural superhero comic book series created by James O'Barr revolving around the titular character of the same name. The series, which was originally created by O'Barr as a means of dealing with the death of his fiancée at t ...
'', and Proyas invited Goyer to co-write ''Dark City'' after reading Goyer's screenplay for '' Blade'', which had yet to be released. The Writers Guild of America initially protested the crediting of more than two screenwriters for a film, but eventually relented and credited all three writers.


Design

When Proyas finished his preceding film, ''The Crow'', in 1994, he approached production designer
Patrick Tatopoulos Patrick Tatopoulos (born September 25, 1957) is a Greek- French production designer and director who lives and works in the United States. His designs have appeared in numerous motion pictures, including '' Pitch Black'', ''Underworld'', ''I, Ro ...
to draw concepts for the world in which ''Dark City'' takes place. The city was entirely constructed on a set, and no practical locations were used in the film. Describing the city, Tatopoulos said:
The movie takes place everywhere, and it takes place nowhere. It's a city built of pieces of cities. A corner from one place, another from some place else. So, you don't really know where you are. A piece will look like a street in London, but a portion of the architecture looks like New York, but the bottom of the architecture looks again like a European city. You're there, but you don't know where you are. It's like every time you travel, you'll be lost.
The production design included themes of darkness, spirals, and clocks. There appears to be no sun in the city's world, and spiral designs that shrink when approached were used. The Strangers' large clock does not have any numbers, and Tatopoulos said: "But in a magical moment it becomes something more than just a clock." The production designer created the city architecture to have an organic presence alongside the structural elements. The Strangers' lair is a large underground amphitheater, in which a sculpture of a human face hides a large clock and a spiraling device changes the layout of the city above. The set for the lair was in height, while an average set is , and was built on a fairground in Sydney, Australia. The film's budget was $30–40 million, so the crew used inexpensive techniques to build the set, such as stretching canvas onto welded metal frames. The lair also had a rail conveyance that appeared expensive. Tatopoulos said: "We had, obviously, a car built, but we had just one built. We laid some rail for it to ride on. We made a section of corridor that we kept driving through all the time, and you end up believing this thing is running along forever." Proyas wanted the rail car to pass various rooms, which was not feasible given the budget, so Tatopoulos and the crew used "replaceable elements and strong design textures" to give the impression it was passing different rooms. The Strangers themselves are energy beings who reside in dead human bodies. At the beginning of the design process, the filmmakers considered having the Strangers be bugs, but they decided the bug appearance was overused. Tatopoulos said one day Proyas "called me and said he wanted something like an energy that kept re-powering itself, re-creating itself, re-shaping itself, sitting inside a dry piece of human shape."


Casting

About the character of Mr Hand, Proyas said: "I had Richard in mind physically when I wrote the character, because I had these strange, bald-looking men with an ethereal, androgynous quality", and O'Brien had famously played a similar character (Riff Raff) in '' The Rocky Horror Show''. When Proyas visited London to cast the film, he met with O'Brien and found him suitable for the role. Daniel P. Schreber, the character portrayed by
Kiefer Sutherland Kiefer William Sutherland (born 21 December 1966) is a British-Canadian actor and musician. He is best known for his starring role as Jack Bauer in the Fox drama series '' 24'' (2001–2010, 2014), for which he won an Emmy Award, a Golden Glo ...
, was named after Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge with narcissistic, paranoid psychosis, and possibly schizophrenia, whose autobiographical ''Memoirs of My Nervous Illness'' (''Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken'') (1903) inspired some elements of the film's plot. Hurt was originally asked to play Dr Schreber.


Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack was released on 24 February 1998 by TVT Records. It features music from the original
score Score or scorer may refer to: *Test score, the result of an exam or test Business * Score Digital, now part of Bauer Radio * Score Entertainment, a former American trading card design and manufacturing company * Score Media, a former Canadian m ...
by Trevor Jones, and versions of the songs "
Sway Sway may refer to: Places * Sway, Hampshire, a village and civil parish in the New Forest in England ** Sway railway station, serving the village People * Sway (British musician) (born 1983), British hip hop/grime singer * Sway Calloway (born 1 ...
" and " The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" performed by singer
Anita Kelsey Anita Kelsey is an English singer and songwriter whose vocals and top lines are featured on many hit dance records and feature films. Her voice has appeared as backup vocals for artists such as Kings of Leon, ...
. It also includes music by Hughes Hall from the trailer a song by Echo & the Bunnymen that played over the final credits, as well as songs by
Gary Numan Gary Anthony James Webb (born 8 March 1958), known professionally as Gary Numan, is an English musician. He entered the music industry as frontman of the new wave band Tubeway Army. After releasing two albums with the band, he released his d ...
and Course of Empire that did not appear in the film. The music for the film was edited by Simon Leadley and Jim Harrison.


Release

New Line Cinema wanted the filmmakers to consider retitling the film ''Dark World'' or ''Dark Empire'' to help differentiate it from the recently-released '' Mad City'', but ''Dark City'' was kept as the title. The film was originally scheduled to be released in theaters on 17 October 1997, then 9 January 1998, and finally 27 February 1998, when it debuted in 1,754 theaters in the United States.


Home media

The film was released on VHS on 2 March 1999. A Region 1 widescreen DVD of the film was released in the United States on 29 July 1998. Special features on the DVD included two audio commentary tracks (one with film critic Roger Ebert, and one with director Alex Proyas, writers Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer, and production designer Patrick Tatopoulos), cast and crew biographies and filmographies, comparisons to Fritz Lang's '' Metropolis'', set design drawings, and the theatrical trailer. A director's cut of ''Dark City'' was officially released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on 29 July 2008. The director's cut removes the opening narration, which Proyas felt explained too much of the plot, and includes approximately eleven minutes of additional footage, most of which extends scenes already present in the theatrical release with additional establishing shots and dialogue. The DVD and Blu-Ray featured expanded audio commentaries by Ebert, Proyas, and Dobbs and Goyer, along with several new documentaries. The Blu-ray Disc also included the original theatrical cut of the film and the special features from the 1998 DVD release.


Reception


Critical response

Among mainstream critics in the U.S., the film received generally positive reviews.Dark City
Metacritic. CBS Interactive Retrieved 2 September 2010.
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 75% approval rating based 85 reviews, with an average score of 6.8/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Stylishly gloomy, ''Dark City'' offers a polarizing whirl of arresting visuals and noirish action".Dark City (1998)
Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media Retrieved 16 June 2022.
On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on reviews from 23 critics. Writing in the '' Chicago Sun-Times'',
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
called the film a "great visionary achievement", while also exclaiming that it was "a film so original and exciting, it stirred my imagination like '' Metropolis'' and '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''." In the '' San Francisco Chronicle'', Peter Stack wrote that the film was "among the most memorable cinematic ventures in recent years", and "maybe there's nothing wrong with a movie that is simply sensational to look at." He felt the film's "twisting of reality and its daring look—layered and off-kilter grays, greens and blacks—make it click." In a mixed review, Walter Addiego of '' The San Francisco Examiner'' thought that "as a story, ''Dark City'' doesn't amount to much", its "complicated plot" containing important themes that were "no more than window dressing", but that "what counts here is the show, the creation of a strange world by a filmmaker who clearly knows science fiction and fantasy, past and present, and wants to share his love for it." Unimpressed by the film, Marc Savlov of '' The Austin Chronicle'' wrote: "You really have to feel for Alex Proyas. This guy wears bad luck like the grimy trenchcoats of his protagonists, only his zipper's stuck and he can't seem to shake the damn thing off." He felt "''Dark City'' looks like a million bucks (or rather, a million bucks gone to compost), but at its dark heart it's a tedious, bewildering affair, lovely to look at but with all the substance of a dissipating dream." Left equally disappointed was John Anderson of the '' Los Angeles Times'', who said of the directing that "If you had to guess, you might say that Proyas came out of the world of comic art himself, rather than music videos and advertising. ''Dark City'' is constructed like panels in a
Batman Batman is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, and debuted in Detective Comics 27, the 27th issue of the comic book ''Detective Comics'' on ...
book, each picture striving for maximum dread", and that Proyas was "trying simultaneously to create a pure thriller and sci-fi nightmare along with his tongue-in-cheek critique of artifice. And this doesn't work out quite so well." Author TCh of ''
Time Out Time-out, Time Out, or timeout may refer to: Time * Time-out (sport), in various sports, a break in play, called by a team * Television timeout, a break in sporting action so that a commercial break may be taken * Timeout (computing), an enginee ...
'' felt that the development of the Murdoch character was "surprisingly engrossing" and thought the "art direction is always striking, and unlike most contemporary sci-fi, the movie does risk a cerebral approach, tapping a vein of postmodern paranoia." Richard Corliss of '' Time'' said the film was "as cool and distant as the planet the Strangers come from. But, Lord, is ''Dark City'' a wonder to see."
James Berardinelli James Berardinelli (born September 25, 1967) is an American film critic and former engineer. His reviews are mainly published on his blog ''ReelViews.'' Approved as a critic by the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, he has published two collections of r ...
writing for ''
ReelViews James Berardinelli (born September 25, 1967) is an American film critic and former engineer. His reviews are mainly published on his blog ''ReelViews.'' Approved as a critic by the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, he has published two collections of r ...
'', remarked that "Visually, this film isn't just impressive, it's a tour de force." and noted that "''Dark City'' opens by immersing the audience in the midst of a fractured, nightmarish narrative." Berardinelli also said "''Dark City'' appears to be New York during the first half of this century, but, using a style that is part science fiction, part noir thriller, and part gothic horror,
royas Royas () is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. Population See also *Communes of the Isère department The following is a list of the 512 Communes of France, communes in the French Departments of France, department of ...
has embellished it to create a surreal place unlike no other." Describing some pitfalls, Jeff Vice of the ''
Deseret News The ''Deseret News'' () is the oldest continuously operating publication in the American west. Its multi-platform products feature journalism and commentary across the fields of politics, culture, family life, faith, sports, and entertainment. Th ...
'' said that "when critics talk about films being 'style over substance', they're definitely talking about movies like ''Dark City'', which looks good but leaves an unpleasant aftertaste." He was quick to admit that "The special effects and set designs are dazzling", but ultimately felt "Proyas makes a crucial error in treating the subject even more seriously than ''The Crow'', and the dialogue (co-written by Proyas and ''The Crow: City of Angels'' scriptwriter David S. Goyer) is unintentionally funny at times and often just plain dumb."Vice, Jeff (27 February 1998)
Dark City
''
Deseret News The ''Deseret News'' () is the oldest continuously operating publication in the American west. Its multi-platform products feature journalism and commentary across the fields of politics, culture, family life, faith, sports, and entertainment. Th ...
''. Retrieved 2 September 2010.
Andrea Basora of '' Newsweek'', stated that director Proyas flooded the screen with "cinematic and literary references ranging from Murnau and Lang to Kafka and
Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitari ...
, creating a unique yet utterly convincing world". Similarly, David Sterritt wrote in '' The Christian Science Monitor'' that "The story is dark and often violent, but it's told with a remarkable sense of visual energy and imagination." Marshall Fine of '' USA Today'' found the film to be "Fascinating, visionary filmmaking", and said that "With its amber-tinged palette and its distinctively dystopian view of life, it may be the most unique-looking film we've seen in ages", but said that it "defies logic and makes frightening and unexpected leaps."
Stephen Holden Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic. Biography Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually be ...
of '' The New York Times'' wrote that the "plot that ''Dark City'' builds on John's predicament is a confused affair" and that the film's premise is "unsettling enough to make you wonder if it could actually derail a seriously drug-addled mind." Steve Biodrowski of '' Cinefantastique'' found the production design and the cinematography overwhelming, but he considered the narrative engagement of Sewell's amnesiac character to be ultimately successful, writing: "As the story progresses, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, and we gradually realize that the film is not a murky muddle of visuals propping up a weak story. All the questions lead to answers, and the answers make sense within the fantasy framework." He compared ''Dark City'' to Proyas's preceding film, ''The Crow'', in style, but found ''Dark City'' to introduce new themes and to be a "more thoroughly consistent" film. Biodrowski concluded that "''Dark City'' may not provide profound answers, but it deals seriously with a profound idea, and does it in a way that is cathartic and even uplifting, without being contrived or condescending. As a technical achievement, it is superb, and that technique is put in the service of telling a story that would be difficult to realize any other way."


Box office

Its opening weekend in theaters, ''Dark City'' grossed $5,576,953, enough to place fourth at the box office; '' Titanic'', which had been released ten weeks earlier, grossed $19,633,056 and was still number one. The following weekend, it earned $2,837,941 (a decrease of 49.1%) and dropped to ninth place, while ''Titanic'' remained in first with grosses totaling $17,605,849. During its four-week theatrical run, the film earned $14,378,331 domestically. Internationally, it took in an additional $12,821,985, for a combined worldwide box office total of $27,200,316. The film's cumulative gross was the 105th-highest of 1998.


Accolades

The film won and was nominated for several awards in 1998. Film critic
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
cited it as the best film of 1998, and in 2005 he included it on his "Great Movies" list.Ebert, Roger
Great Movies: Dark City (2005)
6 November 2005.
Ebert used it in his teaching, and also recorded an audio commentary for the original DVD and the 2006 Director's Cut. The film was screened out of competition at the
1998 Cannes Film Festival The 51st Cannes Film Festival was held from 13 to 24 May 1998. American director, producer, screenwriter, and film historian Martin Scorsese was the Jury President. The Palme d'Or went to the Greek film '' Mia aioniotita kai mia mera'' by Theo A ...
.


Analysis

Theologian
Gerard Loughlin Gerard Patrick Loughlin is an English Roman Catholic theologian and religious scholar. He is Professor of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham, England. He is the author of ''Telling God's Story: Bible Church and Narrative Theology' ...
interpreted ''Dark City'' as a retelling of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. For Loughlin, the city dwellers are prisoners who do not realize they are in a prison. John Murdoch's escape from the prison parallels the escape from the cave in the allegory. He is assisted by Dr. Schreber, who explains the city's mechanism as Socrates explains to Glaucon how the shadows in the cave are cast. Murdoch, however, becomes more than Glaucon: "He is a Glaucon who comes to realize that Socrates' tale of an upper, more real world, is itself a shadow, a forgery." Murdoch defeats the Strangers, who control the inhabitants, and remakes the world based on childhood memories, which were themselves illusions arranged by the Strangers. He casts new shadows for the city inhabitants, who must trust his judgment. Unlike Plato, Murdoch "is disabused of any hope of an outside" and becomes the demiurge for the cave, the only environment he knows. Of the lack of background provided in the film, Loughlin said: "The origin of the city is off-stage, unknown and unknowable." The city in ''Dark City'' was described by Sarah L. Higley as a "murky, nightmarish German expressionist film noir depiction of urban repression and mechanism". It has a World War II-era dreariness reminiscent of Edward Hopper's works, as well as details from different eras and architectures that are changed by the Strangers: "buildings collapse as others emerge and battle with one another at the end". The round window of Murdoch's hotel room is concave like a fishbowl, and is a frequently seen element throughout the city. The inhabitants do not live at the top of the city; the main characters' homes are dwarfed by the bricolage of buildings. The film contains motifs from Greek mythology, in which gods manipulate humans to serve a higher agenda. Proyas said: "I do like Greek mythology and have read a little of it, so maybe some of it has crept into the work, though I don't completely agree with that point of view."


Similarities to other works

The film's style is often compared to that of the works of Terry Gilliam (especially '' Brazil''). Some stylistic similarities have also been noted to
Jean-Pierre Jeunet Jean-Pierre Jeunet (; born 3 September 1953) is a French film director, producer and screenwriter. His films combine fantasy, realism and science fiction to create idealized realities or to give relevance to mundane situations. Debuting as a di ...
and Marc Caro's 1995 film ''
The City of Lost Children ''The City of Lost Children'' (french: La Cité des enfants perdus) is a 1995 science fantasy film directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, written by Jeunet and Gilles Adrien, and starring Ron Perlman. An international co-production of ...
'', another film that was particularly inspired by Gilliam (Gilliam had presented Jeunet's and Caro's previous film '' Delicatessen'' (1991), which was a deliberate homage to Gilliam's style, in North America). '' The Matrix'', which was released one year after ''Dark City'', was also filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney, and it even used some of ''Dark City''s sets. Comparisons of the two films have made note of similarities in cinematography, atmosphere, and plot.Morales, Jorge
Comparación de los Filmes "Dark City" & "The Matrix"
Retrieved 24 December 2005. (Spanish)
Fritz Lang's 1927 film '' Metropolis'' was a major influence on the architecture, concepts about the baseness of humans within a metropolis, and the general tone of ''Dark City''. In one of the documentary shorts included on the director's cut home video releases of the film, the influence of the early German films '' M'' and '' Nosferatu'' are also mentioned. One of the last scenes of the movie, in which buildings "restore" themselves, is similar to the last panel of the '' Akira''
manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
, and Proyas has called the film's final battle an "homage to
Otomo Otomo or Ōtomo may refer to: People * Ōtomo Chikaie (1561–1641), daimyō * Ōtomo Chikasada (died 1570), samurai * Ōtomo no Kuronushi (9th century), poet * Ōtomo no Otomaro (731–809), samurai * Ōtomo no Sakanoue no Iratsume (c. 700–750 ...
's ''Akira''". ''Dark City'' has also drawn comparisons to the anime films '' Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer'' (1984) and '' Megazone 23'' (1985), as well as the 1993 video game '' Gadget Invention, Travel, & Adventure''. When Christopher Nolan first started thinking about writing the script for '' Inception'', he was influenced by "that era of movies where you had ''The Matrix'', you had ''Dark City'', you had ''
The Thirteenth Floor ''The Thirteenth Floor'' is a 1999 science fiction neo-noir film written and directed by Josef Rusnak, and produced by Roland Emmerich through his Centropolis Entertainment company. It is loosely based upon '' Simulacron-3'' (1964), a novel by ...
'' and, to a certain extent, you had '' Memento'', too. They were based in the principles that the world around you might not be real".


Tie-ins

''Mask of the Evil Apparition'', a short film written and directed by Proyas and set in the ''Dark City'' cinematic universe, was released in 2021. During a Q&A session after a screening of the short film, Proyas revealed he was in the early stages of developing a ''Dark City'' series.


See also

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(The Outer Limits) *
List of films featuring space stations There is a body of films that feature space stations. Science fiction films have featured both real-life space stations such as the International Space Station and ''Mir'' as well as fictional ones such as the Death Star and the Satellite of Love. ...
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The Signal (2014 film) ''The Signal'' is a 2014 American science fiction thriller film directed by William Eubank, and written by William and Carlyle Eubank and David Frigerio. The film stars Brenton Thwaites and Laurence Fishburne. It premiered at the 2014 Sundance F ...


References


Sources

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External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dark City (1998 Film) 1990s science fiction drama films 1990s dystopian films 1998 films American neo-noir films American science fiction drama films American dystopian films Films about amnesia Films directed by Alex Proyas Films produced by Alex Proyas Films shot in Sydney Australian neo-noir films Australian science fiction drama films Films with screenplays by Alex Proyas Films with screenplays by David S. Goyer Films with screenplays by Lem Dobbs Films about extraterrestrial life Films about altered memories Films set in outer space Films scored by Trevor Jones 1998 drama films 1990s English-language films 1990s American films