Sci-Fi Dark City

[jimmylace]

Underrated gem. Some of the minature work doesnt really stand up too well, but The Matrix owes alot to this movie.

 

[Lord Blackbolt]

I was just watching this movie on TV the other day....and really it's just a great movie. So under appreciated. I know many people claim the Matrix copied from this movie....but whatever. Personally I like this movie better than the Matrix....and I think the theme music for this movie is really kick ass too. I remember they used it for the first X-men movie trailer...I wish Alex Proyas does more movies. He's never let me down yet. Crow, Dark City....and to a lesser extent...I Robot. (say what you want about that movie...the action was awesome and it looked very stylish. Blame fox, Proyas almost wanted to quit the movie because of Fox butting in.)

 

[Retro]

(sweet I'm the first reply!)
Yeah, I just got the DVD a few weeks ago...great movie!
And let's face it.... Jennifer Connelly was a BABE!!!!:heart:
(plus pre-Jack Bauer Keifer!t: )

 

[GoldenAgeHero]

it was an alright flick. i like the matrix alot more.

 

[Warhammer]

Wow, there was a thread that Kevin made before the one that I made?

Wowzer.

 

[Jack Rabbit]

I recently watched this movie for this first time.

 

[Spider-Fan]

Proyas best movie

This is one of the gems of the 90's, and a brilliant piece of science fiction.

 

[Morg]

Wow, there was a thread that Kevin made before the one that I made?

Wowzer.

Next time do a search

 

[Jager X]

I've been trying to run a discussion about this movie for nine years now. This movie is pretty damn perfect. The scene where Jennifer Connelly appears on stage is just mesmerizing. I have yet to accept the fact that Jennifer lost her most beautiful feature, her robust figure.

 

[Movies205]

These movies primarily serve as gnosticism allegories.

Take that allegory away and there's not much left.

They focus primarily on gnosticism where Memento focuses on the "our memories define us" concept and explores it fully.

I just wrote this paper for my film studies class comparing Memento and Dark City and connecting it to their film noir roots... I figured there's plenty in it that people can disagree with...

Identity, Noir, and a dash of Sci-Fi​

Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998) and Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) both deal with the theme of identity connected to memory. However, their connection goes deeper, both films share a number of nuances borrowed from film noir. These two films present the unique opportunity of seeing the advantage of genre. Genre more often than not gets a bad reputation from the ignorant and the pretentious as being in some way limiting. The irony being that to an experienced artist, genre is completely liberating. Genre allows for artists to pool their collective ideas by building off each other work in a specific genre, not to mention it also allows for a unique way to engage the post-modern audience. Memento and Dark City display an immense knowledge of craft since they’re built upon the tenants of an arguably dead genre, film noir, to create something new and fresh.

The definition for film noir taken from Richard Barsam‘s Looking at Movies, “Film Noir. French for “black film,” the term film noir refers to highly stylized crime films, indebted to or based on detective stories, and generally characterized by their somber tones and pessimistic moods. Film noir stories concentrate on crime and corruption; on characters (heroes and villains alike) who tend to be cynical, disillusioned, and often insecure or impotent loners. The mood of the stories is enhanced by characteristic visual elements, including sleazy nighttime settings lit to emphasize contrasts between black and white, create deep shadows, and enhance the fatalistic mood; the oblique composition of images; and the use of exaggerated camera setups and angles”

Memento tells the story of a man suffering from short term memory lost and his quest to find the man who ruined his life. The main character in Memento, Lenny, is a cynical and disillusioned loner. Lenny’s backdrop is in a sleazy underworld on the outskirts of society focusing on crime with a pessimistic tone. Barsam’s description of noir is somewhat jarring due to its omission of the “femme fatal” which is found in many noir films. The “femme fatale” is a female character usually introduced as someone who needs help from the protagonist of the story. Later on we usually find out that this female character was actually just using the main character for her own gains. The “femme fatal” in Memento is in the form of Carrie Ann-Moss’ character, Natalie. When she’s introduced, she’s the stereotypical damsel in distress, with the intent of stirring immediate empathy within the viewer. Later on we find out that it was all a guise so she could take advantage of Lenny’s handicap.

Dark City tells the story of a man who awakes in a sleazy hotel room with no memory of who he is or how he got there, to complicate matters there’s a dead hooker in the tub. Thus starts this man’s quest to figure out who he is, however, the “strangers” might have something to say about that. While Memento stringently follows Noir’s thematic roots, Dark City follows its cinematic roots. Film Noir was prominent between the 1940s-1960s so it’s interesting that the décor of Dark City mirrors that of the 50s. Many of the costumes seem to come right out of a classic noir film. Dark City also seems to be having a visual pun with Noir’s adherence with the sleazy nighttime setting by making the city constantly dark. The film also employs “deep shadows, to enhance the fatalistic mood; the oblique composition of images; and the use of exaggerated camera setups and angles” While Dark City employs quite a few of Noir’s thematic elements, overall thematically it owes more to the Science Fiction genre than Noir. However, it does feature a disillusioned main character on the outskirts of society. Even here though it plays with convention by giving a happy ending to what turns out to be a good character.

To place the two films in conversation with each other, this paper shall be analyzing four different scenes. The first scene comes from Memento when Natalie reveals herself as a “femme fatale”. The second scene is from Dark City when the main character, John Murdoch, meets his wife, Emma Murdoch, for the first time. Thematically the scenes are similar in that both deal with the only female characters in the narrative, secondly they tell you a great deal about both Natalie and Emma, and lastly they both are romantically involved with the main characters of their respective narratives. Memento thematically is very much in vein with film noir, Natalie is a female character the audience has come to trust then the narrative exposes she’s got her own plans, however leaves it open to interpretation as to whether she’s completely bad or not.

Cinematically it doesn’t possess many traits of film noir outside of the narration. The camera set-up is very simple, it’s a simple shot/reverse shot over the shoulder sequence with a little shaky/handheld camera use thrown in. However what really flies in the face of film noir is that the scene is shot very bright and the colors are very saturated, at least in this particular scene. Film Noir naturally is associated with black and white, so the colors are very well defined stark contrasts. The color in Memento, at least for half of the film, is the exact opposite; one could describe it as “mellow”.

Dark City cinematically borrows heavily from film noir while thematically strays quite a bit from film noir. The scene, in question, is remarkably dark for a colored film; it’s almost completely lit up by diegetic light sources. It also employs many different camera set-ups, very consciously staying away from the typical shot/reverse shot, and it employs many extreme angles. These are traits lifted directly from film noir and adapted to color film.

Thematically Dark City is very different, starting with the female character, Emma. She represents something entirely different than the “femme fatale”. I’d argue that Emma is very much in keeping with the sci-fi tradition, in which the protagonist and female character love each other but are kept apart by the conflict of the plot, only to be reunited in the end when the plot is resolved. Emma is noble and altruistic which is demonstrated when she helps John escape by distracting the police officer. This not only reveals something about Emma but also about John. Film noir protagonists are usually described as antiheros since they’re neither good or bad and often cynical. This scene eludes to a deep love between the two characters something that’s not found in the film noir protagonist, and denotes a certain goodness to John.

The second pair of scenes to be analyzed are the final climaxes to each film. In both films, the structure of the plot could be described as convoluted which presents a need for an explanation in the climax, the “reveal”. Most noir films have highly convoluted plots and follow a similar plot structure. In Memento it comes when Lenny kills John G, only to find out that this is not the first John G. he has killed. Thematically the scene represents everything film noir is about, a convoluted plot which shows how deep corruption/evil goes, an even bleaker outlook, and an ambivalent ending. Memento is masterful in that up to that one scene, the audience is led to believe that Lenny is a good guy on a quest for justice, and then comes the earth-shattering revelation that he’s a killer. In one single scene the audience is provided with two characters, Lenny before the accident, this is the Lenny the audience is treated to in every scene due to his memory lost. Then there is the enlightened Lenny, the puppeteer controlling the Lenny previously mentioned. It’s confusing, convoluted, and ambiguous… everything noir tries to emphasize about life, and most of all its pessimistic.

Dark City’s climax scene is heavily influenced by noir in the sense that the entire plot structure builds toward it. The one issue with this statement is the beginning narration which reveals a great deal of the plot. However an interesting trivia fact about the film is that the beginning narration was never meant to be featured in the film, it was put in by studio pressure in fears the audience wouldn’t get the plot without an explanation. Having cleared that up, it further highlights the film-makers inspiration from noir, since the climax scene is use to completely clear up everything that going on as well as clue the audience in on the main protagonist’s purpose. However, the convention is infused with conventions from the Science Fiction genre. When all is cleared up it doesn’t take the film into a more ambivalent direction but turns the protagonist into a savior. The ending is far more optimistic instead of being pessimistic, something directly taken from the sci-fi genre. However the key difference between the two films is highlighted in the resolution of the common theme the films are discussing, memory connected to identity.

Dark City’s ending argues that human nature goes beyond science, it something spiritual almost. John even says the aliens looked in the wrong place to find what makes us human, instead of the mind they should have looked in the heart. Dark City’s prognosis is much more optimistic and even ends with him getting the girl on a beautiful sunny day. While Memento’s prognosis is far bleaker since in the end, it says that humans’ personalities are dictated by the superficiality of memories. This is compounded by the fact that earlier in the film Lenny has a scene where he explains to Teddy how shallow memories really are. Dark City and Memento truly are fascinating since they show the greatness of genre while illustrating how original genre truly can be.

 

[블라스]

Wasn't there a new DVD in the works?

 

[turtlefocker]

Dark City is a poor man's Truman Show.

you are Funny

 

[Figs]

wow people are only just discovering this movie now? well better late than never I guess. The film reminded me more of the first Matrix movie than the Trueman Show. The Strangers remind me of the agents.

Couple of Facts you might want to know-

David Goyer of Blade and Batman Begins fame was one of the writers of Dark City and you can definetly feel some of the influence in Batman Begins.

Both Dark City and Matrix where filmed in Fox Studios Sydney and the matrix used some of the sets leftover from Dark City. both Matrix and Dark City concern artificial memories and habitats, and both are patrolled by faceless superpowered beings challenged when a human develops comparable powers.

While I enjoyed both Batman Begins and Dark City, you can clearly tell it's Goyer by the dialogue. Watch the scene where Batman is at the top of the stairs with Gordon in the Asylum doing his speal about "its a psychotropic(sp?) hallucinogen" and all that. Then listen to most of the dialogue with Keifer Sutherlands character in Dark City. Both use an extreme amount of words to explain things, which to pace the scenes better they say them super fast so it doesn't drag on, like if they were to say all that they had to say in a slower pace.

 

[nocomics]

Proyas best movie

This is one of the gems of the 90's, and a brilliant piece of science fiction.

Nah, Proyas best movie is the Crow

 

[Arkady Rossovich]

Which "Dark City"?There was a 1950,1990 and 1998 films with the same title.

 

[RockSP]

Which "Dark City"?There was a 1950,1990 and 1998 films with the same title.

1998. You know..the only one that was directed by Proyas...

 

[Rez]

I think it's already incredibly dated, sadly. The Matrix, well, not so much.

 

[Symbiotic]

edit.

 

[enterthemadness]

So...no one has heard?

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/11808

While on the set of his upcoming film UNBORN, writer-director David Goyer updated us on the re-release of DARK CITY, which he wrote for Alex Proyas to direct. "It's coming out fairly soon [and will] probably have limited theatrical, but Im not sure," he explains, "I have seen almost all of it and I took part in an over hour long making-of."

In addition to the special features, Goyer reveals that there's more to the re-release than just special FX upgrades. "[They re-did] the score and the cuts a little longer," he reveals, "all of the parties involved did fairly lenghtly interviews with us, they'll be incluced on there."

 

[enterthemadness]

So...no one has heard?

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/11808

While on the set of his upcoming film UNBORN, writer-director David Goyer updated us on the re-release of DARK CITY, which he wrote for Alex Proyas to direct. "It's coming out fairly soon [and will] probably have limited theatrical, but Im not sure," he explains, "I have seen almost all of it and I took part in an over hour long making-of."

In addition to the special features, Goyer reveals that there's more to the re-release than just special FX upgrades. "[They re-did] the score and the cuts a little longer," he reveals, "all of the parties involved did fairly lenghtly interviews with us, they'll be incluced on there."

 

[cerealkiller182]

Hope they didnt pull a Lucas. Ill definitely be checking it out though

i liked that original FX

 

[Symbiotic]

So...no one has heard?

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/11808

That's what I tried to post. Good read.

 

[Kent]

Re-did the score? Why would they do that? It was fine the was it was.

My only real problem with the original cut is Keifer's voice over in the very beginning. It should've been cut out, and the solution to the mystery of WTF is going on would've been a lot more fun. That is, we should only know about as much as John at any given point in the film.

 

[Sentinel X]

Its an interesting flick but The Matrix beats it by miles!

 

[Symbiotic]

Its an interesting flick but The Matrix beats it by miles!

I like both.