Sometimes there are two films released within the span of about a year that are extremely similar to one another. For instance, 2013 had Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down and 1998 had Armageddon and Deep Impact. Usually, a much better fate befalls one than the other. About 13 months before the release of the Wachowskis’ blockbuster, iconic The Matrix, there was another film that was actually quite similar, though not quite as explicitly as being one of two movies about a meteor heading to Earth. And, just as White House Down lost money while Olympus Has Fallen made money, The Matrix soared while the other bit the dust.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The “other,” in this case, would be Alex Proyas’ Dark City. And, if you’re watching it today and get certain Matrix vibes, there’s good reason for that. A few of them, in fact.
What Is Dark City About and How Is It So Similar to The Matrix?
In Dark City, Rufus Sewell plays John Murdoch, a man who awakens in a dingy hotel room’s bathtub with no recollection of who he is or how he get to his current location. He received an ominous call from Dr. Daniel Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) who warns him that a group of men will soon come find him, which isn’t great considering, in this hotel room, is also the corpse of a young woman.
While Murdoch is heavily implicated in this crime, Police Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) feels that something is off. Not just in terms of Murdoch being wrong for the crime, but rather that something is askew with their entire world. He’s not alone in that, as Bumstead’s investigation leads him to Murdoch’s wife, a lounge singer named Emma, who also can’t wrap her head around just what feels odd about their city, outside the fact that it never experiences daylight.
Without sharing too many details, the simple truth is that they are all pawns in the hands of these mysterious, pale beings in pursuit of Murdoch. His existence proves either a flaw in their plan or that it is, in fact, a success.
Proyas’ movie didn’t copy The Matrix and The Matrix didn’t copy it, but there are certainly some similarities noticeable right off the bat. For one, the green tint that permeates the world of the Wachowskis’ movie is very much present here, if not darkened a bit due to the fact that the city in which we spend all of our time never goes from night to day. Furthermore, Murdoch being contacted by a mysterious individual on the phone who leads him to answers certainly brings to mind Neo’s early correspondences with Morpheus. Lastly, Murdoch is revealed to have powers that allow him to stand apart from the remainder of his made-up world, and Murdoch experiences something not so dissimilar here.
Most importantly, though, is the fact that The Matrix‘s production, which got going when this one’s had wrapped up, uses some of the same sets. This was primarily true of rooftop sets, but it’s awfully hard to look at the lobby in which we meet Hurt’s character and not get some strong déjà vu of the climactic gunfight that capped off the 1999 classic.
The great irony is that, even though this wildly inventive film came first, it only made $27 million against $27 million while the similarly inventive movie from the following year made nearly $500 million worldwide against $63 million. It’s as if people either weren’t yet ready for a dark mind-bending sci-fi world in 1998 and were in 1999 or they needed the extra selling point of bullet time to actually pique their interest.
But the fact remains that Dark City has accrued a cult following over time and deservedly so. It’s a visually captivating cinematic world with a compelling mystery at its core. It’s Raymond Chandler meets H. P. Lovecraft. If you can get on board with that, you’ll have a great time.
Stream Dark City for free with ads on Tubi.
Have you seen Dark City? Do you prefer it to The Matrix? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme
