Dark City Directors Cut

Alex Proyas

R4 DVD

Reel DVD

Dark City is considered by many to be the best Science Fiction of the Nineties, it has been compared with Blade Runner from the decade before and still offers a stunning visual experience mixed with a startlingly original plot and an avalanche of Science Fiction themes and motifs. At the time it was released it was somewhat of a “slow mover”, in many ways it suffered the same release problems as Blade Runner. It was savaged by the critics and ignored by audiences. I think the truth of the matter was that it was too intellectual for the market of the period and this has been proven by the fact that over time it slowly began to develop a cult following and is now is considered a major classic with a major following.

It is always compared to The Matrix and perhaps it is a fair comparison because they both cover similar themes. However, Dark City was released before the Matrix and explored much of the territory in a far more serious manner. While the first Matrix film has similar Gnostic themes it was far more action based and seemed to lack texture and mood. It is very hard to fault the dark Noir of Dark City especially considering this has come from the man who made The Crow.

It is also fair to say that as the Matrix went into its first sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, it went into action overdrive with way too much style and way too little substance and then went right off the rails with Matrix Revolutions. It could be critically suggested that the Matrix succeeded where Dark City failed due to marketing strategies rather than quality. The Matrix was carefully marketed with Anime packages (The Animatrix), new agers and transpersonal psychologists sprouting its virtues and such big budget special effects that nothing could match. But when you strip away the hype, Neo is a new age type of “John” from Dark City and the ideas are far less textured and refined than in Dark City. I must admit the tribal, new age rubbish that the Matrix ended up using to sell its two sequels certainly left me cold, even if the films were interesting.

Under the surface of Dark City is all manner of philosophical speculation and religious exploration. It is clearly strongly influenced by Gnostic thought, a heretical Christian tradition, which taught that Archons manipulated man for their own ends. The process of changing memories every night and the constant change of roles has a strong “reincarnation” motif and John becoming the super-human who can now use the machine against the “Archons” obviously has both a Buddha and Christ resonance.

Evolutionary philosophical thought has also strongly influenced the film with not only the reincarnation concept but that “John” is evolving towards the next stage of post human evolution and hence becomes a Overman or Superman (this also has resonance with the German philosopher Nietszche).

At the same time, the fact that the aliens envy man and try to become human is also found throughout religious myth and legend. This concept of the god becoming human (or trying to) is the basis of the vast number of avatar or incarnation myths found everywhere from ancient Egypt through India to Christianity. However in this telling the gods (read aliens) are either negative (as seen with the Gnostics) or capricious (a bit like the Greek or Roman deities).

This edition of Dark City is a refined director’s cut. There are so many “Director’s Cuts” on the market of films these days that I become a bit dubious. Too often it seems to be the idea to add every bit of footage you can find and pad the film to an insane level or worse change the whole drift of a classic film. Was Decker a replicate ? Who Really knows ????? Even more over the top is reworking films altogether totally redoing special effects until you have a new version of an old film. Now, personally it is not my place to tell a director what to do with their film, however, out of respect for their fans I do think it would be reasonable to always make available various editions, especially if the film is considered of classic value. So, for example, with Blade Runner, while the new version has many detractors, at least it is part of a package and you can watch the various versions and decide what you like.

With Dark City Proyas has taken a conservative approach and allowed what is a unique film to stand the test of time and I think this was the right decision. While it certainly was a CGI intense film at the time, he has basically only tweaked here and there and added a few scenes and extended character dialogues to enhance the plot and produce a better texture to the experience. Other changes were more subtle but nevertheless significant, for example, Proyas re-composited the distortion effect that occurs when John uses his mind power and a few other subtle changes were made in a similar vein.

The sound remix is a major improvement, adding a much better audio experience with some great surround effects, mood music and environmental sounds.

The extras are also worth noting. Memories of Shell Beach is solid 40 minute look at all the key elements of Dark City. Alex Proyas and writer Lem Dobbs discuss the beginnings of the story and how they worked together to improve it in conjunction with David Goyer who worked on revisions of the script. Also explored are the styles of the film, the use of models and special effects and the strange reaction from critics and audiences on first release.

Another major documentary is the Architecture of Dreams—a 30 minute collection of short visual essays exploring the many philosophical ideas behind Dark City. Also included are three commentaries, a personal introduction by Alex Proyas and a production gallery with well over 80 photos and images. A pretty good offering to say the least !