Dark City (1998)
As a young boy, Alex Proyas was deathly afraid of the dark, even more so when he began experiencing recurring nightmares involving strange-looking bald men who come out at night and chase him with knives. He felt that these strange men must be able to alter reality when he would notice things were rearranged in his bedroom from what he remembered.
As a teenager, Proyas passionately read sci-fi novels by authors like Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and Brian Aldiss, expecially ones where characters find out their reality is revealed to be some elaborate artificial creation or experiment. Proyas wondered it he could be living in an alternate reality created by the mystery men in his dreams. He also read graphic novels, Japanese manga, “Heavy Metal” magazine, and anything by Moebius. He wrote a script for a potential animated short, entitling it “Pedestrian Furniture”, his first incorporation of the strange men of his childhood dreams who moved furniture around as he slept.
As an adult, Proyas became interested in Gnostic philosophy, the psychology of Freud and Jung, and especially the 1903 autobiography of Daniel Paul Schreber called “Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.”, which details first-hand his experience undergoing psychosis, envisioning the world experienced through the delusions of a psychotic mind. He began to free associate all of these things he enjoyed and worked them into a new script idea in late 1989, after directing his first feature, Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds, even though he didn’t have any knowledge of how these things fit together narratively or thematically. He entitled it Sleepwalker , a surrealist concept blending his love of fantasy, sci-fi, philosophy, and psychology.
Though his ideas were broad, Proyas kept the concept small so it could be made cheaply in Australia. Being a fan of Hollywood film noir mysteries, he began with a hardboiled detective named Frank Bumstead as his main protagonist because he liked the notion of seeing someone logical and analytical go insane as his search for clues reveals he’s living in a fantasy realm generated and manipulated by otherworldly creatures he cannot comprehend existing.
Reading Raymond Chandler’s crime novels inspired Proyas to break from the detective’s point of view. He liked that Chandler’s narratives followed the perspective of multiple characters within a layered, complex plot, so he expanded his supporting characters using traditional noir archetypes. Meanwhile, his fantasy entities controlling reality were steeped more within German expressionist cinema like Metropolis, Nosferatu, M, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The atmosphere Proyas envisioned was influenced by American architect Hugh Ferriss.
Further revisions toyed with titles like Shadows and Mystery Men, but Proyas settled on Dark City feeling it best captured the film noir vibe. Proyas had no explanation for the Mystery Men’s origins or motivations for controlling the lives of the human characters, writing purely from a subconscious level even he didn’t fully understand. He saw the Mystery Men mostly as a metaphor for how humans were unconsciously manipulated by the government, media, and corporations, and the need for us to resist that control.
Fleshing out his secondary characters prompted Proyas to eventually shift the story’s protagonist to the main murder suspect, an amnesiac named Jonathan White, because his character arc and emotional stakes were more exciting. The detective’s arc was broken into two characters: Bumstead, the current homicide detective, and Thompson (later named Walensky), the previous detective who went mad trying to solve the case. Gruesome moments of body horror ran throughout the story. The Mystery Men, led by Mister Black, are insects animating human cadavers from within their skulls. The Mystery Men use robotic bugs to spy on humans and create a killing machine, a puppet outfitted with tools and deadly weapons. Dr. Schreber, a psychologist studying White, reveals they’re living in a world made from the insects’ dreams. After most human characters die horrifically, there’s a court-case climax exonerating White, followed by an epilogue on an ocean pier where White meets a woman, then begins strangling her, revealing he is, indeed, a murderer.
As Proyas was working on 1994’s The Crow, Hollywood studios came knocking, offering him action or comic-book-style followups he had no interest in directing. He counter-offered with his Dark City script, but the studios felt there was zero commercial viability for such a weird, phatasmagorical concept. Proyas reached out to Dennis Potter, who was very supportive of the script but politely declined (he called Proyas insane and frightening), possibly due to illness. The film is dedicated to his memory in the closing credits.
Proyas took the studio feedback to heart, working more on the script to reduce the gruesome qualities and provide better rationale. Rather than the dreams of the insects, the city could be built from the memories of the human characters. New themes explored whether memories make us who we are. He gave the Mystery Men a modus operandi: they experiment on humans to see what makes us do the things we do. If they implant the memories of a serial killer into an innocent person, will he be prone to murder or will he remain innocent?
Sensing a hit with The Crow, Miramax showed interest in producing Dark City as a follow-up with Edward R. Pressman slotted as producer. However, because Miramax was undergoing tumultuous management changes, Proyas shopped it elsewhere after The Crow‘s financial success gave him clout.
The tragedy of Brandon Lee’s death during The Crow found Proyas retreating to Cannes, France for a spell. Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg visited Proyas’s hotel room to discuss Disney working with him on future projects. Proyas mentioned Dark City, Katzenberg set up a meeting in Hollywood. Disney’s execs weren’t pleased with the nonsensical, repulsive script but because Katzenberg was high on Proyas, they placed it in under development under their Touchstone banner with Proyas’s partner, Andrew Mason, producing.
Proyas received many studio notes relating how the characters didn’t work, the story didn’t make sense, and narrative aspectshe should add or remove. Proyas began losing faith, wondering why Disney continued working with him on a script they couldn’t conceptually grasp and seemed to despise.
Proyas rationalized that, as a director, his storytelling emphasized visual components rather than emotional hooks. He approved Disney’s suggestion of hiring a professional screenwriter to make Dark City accessible. Proyas has enjoyed reading the script for Blade, so he contacted its screenwriter David Goyer. However, when Proyas learned Goyer was scripting The Crow‘s sequel, which Proyas adamantly opposed, their conversation grew awkward and Goyer thought it was best to decline.
Disney assigned Kafka screenwriter Lem Dobbs to bolster characterizations, reduce cliches, and eliminate pretentiousness. Proyas liked that Dobbs was a film noir aficionado who could add Americanisms of older eras, phrases like “the heebie jeebies” and places like the automat. Dobbs reduced phantasmagorical elements and grounded the narrative into a firm reality, while converging the character destinies into one cause. Dobbs felt that the protagonist being named White and the antagonist named Black was trite. Proyas suggested Walker, but Dobbs thought this too was cliche. They settled on John Murdoch.
Dobbs injected a plot he’d seen in an episode of “The Outer Limits” called “A Feasibility Study”, where aliens teleport a section of a city, including the people, to their home planet to study the feasibility of turning all of humanity into slaves there because they’re suffering from a genetic disease where they become immobile as they age. The humans eventually discover the alien intentions and decide to fight for soul, aka their freedom of choice. The Strangers could be aliens that abducted humans to populate a city floating in space for experimentation on how to save themselves from extinction.
Dobbs also fleshed out Murdoch’s wife, developing a love story inspired by the Nicholas Ray film, In a Lonely Place, where a romance blossoms between a woman who helps a murder suspect she doesn’t know. Dobbs keyed in specifically to the line in the film, “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” Dobbs found ways for Emma (changed from Elizabeth) to appear throughout the story to add purpose to Murdoch’s quest.
Disney’s interest plummeted when their suggestions to “dumb it up” to broaden the appeal couldn’t be done without unraveling the intricate plot until it became nonsensical. They finally deemed Dark City as unfilmable and put it into turnaround. Licking his wounds, Proyas took Steven Spielberg up on an offer to direct Casper: The Friendly Ghost. However, creative conflicts about Casper‘s tone, the unfinished script, and Spielberg’s bossiness ruffled Proyas’s feathers and he departed.
20th Century Fox picked Dark City up in mid-1995, announcing it as their first production Fox’s new Sydney Studios in Australia. To get the screenplay back into shape, Proyas sought David Goyer again. Though Goyer’s agent warned that high concept, expensive movies rarely get made, Goyer accepted because he was an Australia-phile curious to work there. Goyer added action sequences and a science fiction underpinning to make the premise more relateable and less weird. Goyer incorporated more of Proyas’s spiral motif throughout the story as symbols for the search for the soul.
For the lead, Proyas suggested Ralph Fiennes or Liam Neeson. Fox nixed Fiennes because Strange Days bombed and Liam Neeson wasn’t a box office draw at the time. Things paused when Fox began negotiations with Tom Cruise, who’d expressed interest in doing a sci-fi film. Proyas felt a huge star was a double-edged sword. While it increased the studio’s fervor, it also added star demands and increased studio scrutiny. Cruise would cost more money than Dark City‘s entire budget at the time. Talks ended when Fox president Tom Jacobson resigned and many projects were cancelled, including Dark City.
New Line Cinema acquired it in April 1996 as part of a two-picture deal with Proyas (the other was an intended remake of Quatermass and the Pit.) New Line offered creative freedom except they requested a title change. New Line’s parent company, Warner Bros., was working on a film with a similar title, Mad City, slated for release at the same time. They changed the title to Dark World, but Steven Spielberg, who was working on The Lost World, threatened legal action. It then became Dark Empire but that prompted legal action from Lucasfilm. They reverted to Dark City after the release date was pushed back. They changed the Mystery Men to the Strangers to avoid copyright issues with an existing comic book superhero property being developed for a film adaptation.
New Line had a list of prefered actors, including Jim Carrey, Johnny Depp, and, oddly, David Letterman. Proyas had casting freedom though and wanted an unknown so audiences wouldn’t assume Murdoch was a hero. Proyas selected British art-house regular Rufus Sewell for his unique vibe, intelligence, and his dangerous looks. Proyas admired Sewell from British TV and stage productions for his energy, vitality, and sense of humor. Sewell had the handsomeness of a leading man with the idiosyncries of a character actor.
Sewell found portraying Murdoch challenging. As an amnesiac, he was a blank canvas. Furthermore, Proyas wouldn’t reveal Murdoch’s backstory to Sewell until it was time so that his performance remained ambiguous. Sewell observed that having no memories made Murdoch like a child, so he played him as child-like, but with adult instincts and vocabulary. Nevertheless, greenscreen work where he played to a blank wall while portraying a character on the edge without knowing anything about him made centering his performance difficult.
William Hurt originally requested to play Schreber, but Proyas wanted him for Bumstead. Hurt was demanding but Proyas felt Hurt’s persistent questioning of the script caused him to reconsider his ideas for the better. In previous drafts, the detective had a mother living in an iron lung that he’d serenade with his accordion. The accordion remains in the movie but not the mother.
For the female lead, Connelly wasn’t the studio’s first choice. Dobbs felt Connelly looked too young and babyfaced to play a sultry femme fatale, but Proyas felt she brought a lyrical quality to Emma. Connelly wouldn’t do the scripted nude scene claiming she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress. She didn’t reveal until the last day that she was pregnant. She grew frustrated trying to find character motivations because Emma is confused that Murdoch isn’t acting as she remembers him, primarily because his memories weren’t injected. Anita Kelsey’s voice was used for Emma’s singing performances in the theatrical version, but Connelly’s vocals were restored for the Director’s Cut.
Schreber was intended for an older actor like Ben Kingsley. Ian Holm was sought until Proyas connected with Kiefer Sutherland, who he’d befriended at Brandon Lee’s funeral, in a hotel bar. Kiefer read the Dark City script and locked on the Schreber role as something he could portray, arguing that he’d be a more tragic figure if he were younger. Proyas expressed doubts until Sutherland stood up and read Schreber’s lines, transforming his speech and mannerisms into lisps and stutters in front of Proyas and other bystanders suggesting that Schreber would be nervous and apprehensive, having not interacted with a cognizant human in some time.
Dobbs was rehired to calibrate the script. He individualized characters for the Strangers, including Mr. Hand, who gets imprinted with Murdoch’s memories. Mr. Hand reveals the city is fashioned on human memories revised daily to study test humans to find the secret of individual souls, hoping to avoid evolutionary extinction. Shell Beach is a fictitious place concocted by the Strangers to manipulate city residents into believing compliance leads to a better situation.
For the modeled the look of the Strangers after Richard O’Brien’s character from the 1994 British children’s TV show, “The Ink Thief”. When casting, Proyas contacted O’Brien, who was amenable because the premise reminded him of a favorite TV show, “The Prisoner”. Proyas cast the other Strangers in O’Brien’s mold and instructed the actors to follow O’Brien’s lead for their performances. O’Brien found it challenging removing emotion from his performance, as Strangers don’t exhibit any. O’Brien played guitar during his off-time and jokingly came up the idea of making Dark City into a musical. He regaled Proyas with impromptu plot-related songs, including one about necrophilia.
The small robotic killer puppet from the early scripts was turned into Mr. Sleep. Because they couldn’t afford the robot effects, they reconceived Mr. Sleep as a child.
The shoot took place at the newly opened Fox Studios at Australia’s Sydney Showgrounds. Because every scene took place at night, an indoor set shoot was ideal. Actors hoping to spend time enjoying Australian beaches instead spent all day in a darkened hangar. Exteriors were shot in a section of Sydney known as The Rocks, which had architecure dating back to the 1920s. Dobbs observes that the city itself feels patterned after Sydney, Australia built from Proyas’s own childhood memories of certain shops and amusements. There is a nostalgic search for one’s childhood, to return to the past to know yourself, so it’s fitting that Proyas emulates the characters by fashioning a city from his memories.
Because city is built on memories, designs are inconsistent in architecture and time period. Production designer Patrick Tatopoulos employs his artistic influences: Vasquez, Bruegel, and Bosch, plus the cinematography in F.W. Murnau’s films. Proyas referenced the police photography of Weegee to depict people falling asleep during the Tuning.
CG elements enhance the miniatures and painted matte backgrounds. Psychic energy fuels the subterranean machines control the world above in a process they call “tuning”. Tatopoulos got the idea of morphing the buildings of the cityscape while working on Independence Day and seeing the crew move building facades around for different city setups. Proyas remembered smallscale buildings on wheels moved during The Crow to represent different places in the city.
There’s no explicit origin explicitly for the Strangers. It’s revealed they’re insectoid parasites (perhaps from another dimension, perhaps extraterrestrial) who control and animate human cadavers (inspired by the “scorpions” the real-life Dr. Schreber felt were in his head as he walked among corpses). Dobbs viewed the Strangers akin to the Fates, controlling the peoples’ lives to help their own cause. Goyer observes the Strangers as what humanity could become if we lost our souls, reaching an apex in evolution where they were bored. They test humans like marketing executives hoping to find their missing mojo.
It’s also never explained where the humans originate. Proyas envisioned them as oming from an intergalactic spaceship a thousand years from now. Goyer thought the city represented purgatory and the humans were deceased.
As for the Tuning employed by the Strangers to manipulate people’s memories and the geography of the city, Proyas argues it isn’t magic but an evolutonary psychological advancement among a race with a shared mind. Just as Arthur C. Clarke observed that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishible from magic”, Robert Anton Wilson further promoted that advanced parapsychology is even less distinguishible.
The film ran over schedule and budget. New Line threatened to shut down on the scheduled of production but Proyas insisted that the linking material was needed so the movie made sense. New Line granted a two-week pick-up shoot.
Initial test screenings revealed most viewers were confused and frustrated. They tried re-editing the film to make things clearer. When further test screenings resulted in worse scores, New Line allocated funding for three more weeks of shooting and seven weeks of second-unit work to fix narrative issues and add an exciting confrontational climax. The original ending featured Murdoch’s murder trial was deemed too existential and unsatisfying. Proyas grew disenchanted with with its sour tone where the Strangers win. He felt humanity should overcome their suppression, with Murdoch leading their revolution by harnessing the Strangers’ powers. The new climactic psychic battle pays homage to Proyas’s favorite Japanese animated feature, Akira.
New ending was to expand the world. New Line ordered voice-over narration for the prologue to clue in audiences on what’s happening. Proyas founfd the tweaking and adding/removing scenes difficult because of the chinese-box nature of the plot. Every change forced alterations to other scenes to keep it making sense. New Line provided additional resources to finish the film, though time ran out again before fully completed.
They trimmed overt blood and gore hoping for a PG-13 rating, but it received an R-rating anyway. They appealed, stating there’s no sex or bad language, and little on-screen violence, but the MPAA said it was too intense and weird. As it was getting an R-rating anyway, they returned the bloodier moments they’d trimmed. Its initial August 1997 release date was pushed to October, then February 1998 to avoid competition with Titanic. Nevertheless, it failed at the box office, earning about half of its $27 million budget.
Roger Ebert proclaimed it the best film of 1998. I find it an uneven but masterful visual experience containing nifty, philosophical concepts worth pondering. That it was conceivd prior to the similarly premised The Matrix merits respect.
As the title implies the look of the film is dark, similar in this fashion to Proyas’s previous film, The Crow, which features similar lighting and emphasis on set design, and the same cinematographer, Dariusz Wolski. Others will compare to Metropolis, Blade Runner, and Brazil, featuring dark, dense, oppresively Kafka-esque cityscapes.
I see Dark City as a metaphor for Hollywood filmmaking. The city is like a studio lot with sets that change regularly. People are cast into different roles at the whim of the “Strangers”, aka the studio heads, crafting different stories set in a period drama full of damsels, killers, and cops. Proyas himself compared the Strangers to demented scriptwriters, creating, revising, and peoplig their world with characters and situations.
Nifty but uneven, with hammy performances, especially by Kiefer Sutherland, who sputters, stutters, wheezes, and limps campily. Without characters to care about, we’re forced to follow dizzying plot points to solve a loopy puzzle box.
Dark City plays like graphic novel come to life. It’s an intriguing, multilayered mystery that merits multiple viewings. There’s plenty to admire while waiting for the pieces to come together. The bombastic finale which draws from the anime classic Akira gets silly with its head-to-head (literally) confrontations. Although coming out prior to the similarly premised The Matrix, Dark City failed to achieve mainstream success, though it’s still championed by a cult contingent.
A sequel was discussed during production where Murdoch gets corrupted by playing god. In 2021, Proyas released a 20-minute short film called, “Mask of the Evil Apparition” spiritually set in the Dark City universe. Proyas also began working on a Dark City streaming series featuring the daughter of John and Emma. Proyas hinted that Sutherland could return as Dr. Schreber.
Qwipster’s rating: B
MPAA Rated: R for violent images and some sexuality
Running Time: 100 min. (director’s cut: 111 min.)
Cast: Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt, Richard O’Brien, Ian Richardson
Director: Alex Proyas
Screenplay: Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, David S. Goyer