Alex Proyas’ noir sci-fi picture Dark City was released in 1998, and while it attracted sci-fi viewers in general, the more devoted cinema fans were shocked by how the film redefined and evolved the meaning of being human. Proyas’ film combined the horror and science fiction genres, wrapping them in the guise of a good detective thriller.
The video fundamentally asks, “What makes us human?” and “Can those ingredients be changed to understand or replicate our human nature?” To answer this question, the Strangers, a group of highly intelligent aliens, develop an artificial environment to mimic a more realistic society.
Furthermore, The Strangers would employ all humans as test subjects for their studies, and the humans, of course, have no idea. Because the Strangers were a fading race, they believed that the individuality of humans could save them. They were naturally curious about how the human mind worked. Is it merely the sum of our memories that makes us human, or is there something else?
But every now and again, a weapon, a resistance, emerges that alters the course of events since they are the only ones who can see what is actually going on. Dark City is one of those buried gems from the sands of time, but Marvelous Videos exist to unearth these works of art and deliver them to you. So, without further ado, let us have a look at this stunning work of art before diving into the epic villains known as the Strangers, who are as vicious and sadistic as they are tragic-fated victims.
Forget the Sun. Forget Time. Forget Your Memories. Welcome to the Dark City
The film begins in a hotel room where one John Murdoch wakes up naked, with his forehead bleeding in a bathtub. It soon turns out that Mr. Murdoch was suffering from a psychotic breakdown and amnesia. He wears his clothes and walks out of the room, only to receive a call from one Mr. Daniel Schreber, who warns Murdoch about a group of men wanting him dead.
But this grave warning soon became less critical to Murdoch when he noticed the corpse of a woman killed in a ritualistic murder. Murdoch feels dread and leaves the room only to discover that Schreber’s warning held truth. He narrowly escapes a few pale men wearing trenchcoats.
After much struggle, he learns his own name and other things like his wife Emma, his possible connection to a town called Shell Beach, etc. Meanwhile, Police Inspector Frank Bumstead learns about the girl’s murder, and it is revealed that it was the latest one of a string of similar murders committed in the city, probably an act of a serial killer.
Since the woman was found dead in his hotel room, Murdoch becomes the prime suspect of the murders. Meanwhile, the men in black trenchcoats are in hot pursuit, and when they finally find him, it is revealed that Murdoch can change reality using his imagination, a power that his pursuers called Tuning.
Murdoch managed to kill one of them named Mr. Quick and flee from the scene. But right before fleeing, he saw how an organism came out from the skull of one of the men before dying. By now, it must be amply clear to you that these men are, in fact, the Strangers that this video is about. They are a part of an organization that lives underneath the city, a form of parasitic brotherhood that uses dead humans as vessels.
There are a few peculiar things to notice here; for instance, the city is full of confusing anachronisms, which are mostly reflected in the diverse architecture. Furthermore, the shops and other businesses are named by their description; for example, the hotel is called Hotel, the barbershop is called Barber Shop, and the food automat is simply called, you guessed it right, Food Automat.
These places have no real identity to them, isn’t that strange? Furthermore, the city has a perpetual nighttime, and none of the residents seem to notice it, apart from Murdoch, of course. And then there’s the town of Shell Beach, which everyone is acquainted with, but none seem to recall how to reach Shell Beach. Nevertheless, at midnight, Murdoch finds himself still searching for answers, but he notices something strange.
Everyone goes to sleep at midnight, and the buildings start to change and evolve. This was the work of the Strangers, who were working at the behest of their leader Mr. Book. They were using a huge machine to tune the city and its people according to their convenience. Dr. Schreber was secretly working with the Strangers, and with his help, one of the Strangers, named Mr. Hand, injects himself with Murdoch’s memories so that those memories could help him find Murdoch.
In due course of time, Bumstead and Emma save Murdoch from the Strangers, but Bumstead takes him into custody. During the interrogation, Murdoch poses some striking questions, and Bumstead starts to question his reality as he knows it. When the Strangers attack the police station, Bumstead frees Murdoch, and they confront Dr. Schreber, who tells them that the Strangers are aliens with a hive mind, who are on the verge of extinction.
In order to find clues to the survival of their own kind, they abducted humans and placed them in the city. They change the memories of the people in the city so as to learn more about human behavior and, more specifically, the human soul, which they believe is the key to their survival. Furthermore, when a person is imprinted with other memories, he’s supposed to sleep, but the subject wakes up once in a blue moon.
Murdoch was one such anomaly, and he gained the psychokinetic powers that the Strangers share. It’s the psychokinesis that helps the Strangers to alter reality, etc. The three of them then embark on a journey to find Shell Beach but end up at the edge of the city, only to find that the city is floating in space.
However, with Dr. Schreber’s help, Murdoch learns about the true extent of his powers and kills the Stranger leader Mr. Book in a climactic psychokinetic battle. In the end, he transforms the city, creates the Shell Beach, and turns the city’s direction towards a star so that the city receives sunlight.
We really couldn’t explore a great many details of the film that it provided to build and support the story. It was important to leave things to your imagination and viewing. This beautiful and generous film lives and breathes in the film noir of the 40s, and yet, the city is filled with anachronisms like old cars, automats, neon cigarettes, etc. One never figures out which era it was that the characters were living in. And the credit for this wonderous sense of confusion goes to director Proyas and co-writer David S. Goyer, who had also written the story to Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins.
Both the films feel quite similar in their visual style. Dark City is one of those few films that change the way directors tell their stories. It serves as some sort of a paradox in the way that it’s both confusing and comprehensible. Dark City essentially has two plot elements; first, the blurred line between reality and imagination.
We know from the beginning that the Strangers are executing an intricately elaborate plan, something unimaginable to the human mind, but we don’t understand what it really is. And second, the love story between Rufus Sewell as John Murdoch and Jennifer Connelly as Emma Murdoch.
So, even though the Strangers injected a story, a memory into Emma’s mind about loving Murdoch, they could never figure out how love feels because it is not something that’s entirely controlled by our brains. There are emotions and feelings involved; to be in love is to feel from the soul and not the brain.
But this, the Strangers couldn’t understand. And in the end, we end up feeling a bit sympathetic towards the Strangers as their race gets extinct because of their failure to understand love, and they died due to hate amidst people who loved, who truly loved. Nevertheless, let’s now explore the Strangers from Dark City, beings who were supremely powerful but had an equally tragic life.
The Strangers Parasitic Alien Species
By now, it must be abundantly clear to you that the Strangers were enormously powerful and had infinitely advanced technology. And yet, the hive mind species was on the brink of extinction. They figured out that the individuality of humans was the only way in which their species could survive and flourish. So, in order to understand the basis of human individuality and his uniqueness, they started to experiment with humans.
They believed that it all originated in the human soul, which resulted from the human psyche, and more specifically, the human brain. But more on that later, because before we begin to explain their objective and mode of operation, it is crucial to learn about their true form. The Strangers look like bald, pale, and Nosferatu-like humans, who dress in black trenchcoats and possess eccentric mannerisms.
However, this is just a façade, a vessel to hide their true selves and interact with humanity. In reality, the Strangers are smaller jellyfish-like organisms that have tentacles like a bunch of angry noodles. These parasitic organisms take over human corpses and reside in the skull cavity, essentially controlling the body and keeping it from deteriorating. Furthermore, because of being so delicate, if the human skull that they are residing in gets damaged, it leads to a quick death for the strangers.
Also, they could not withstand moisture and sunlight, which was why they ensured that the city was kept in a direction away from the light of the nearby star. Interestingly, the humans never seemed to notice the perpetual nighttime because the Strangers made everyone sleep at midnight, which probably rebooted their memories. Because Murdoch didn’t sleep when the clock struck 12, he could realize that he hadn’t seen the daytime in days.
As far as their personality and behavior are concerned, Strangers live in a society of sorts and assemble in a senate-like congregation to discuss matters of importance or transform the city. Although they have a hive mind, they are divided into hierarchies, and Mr. Book seems to be the leader, while Mr. Hand serves as a general of sorts, who leads the action on the field.
Whenever they assemble together, their psychokinetic powers merge together, and this combined force is immensely potent. However, each Stranger has some degree of psychokinetic power, and it seems like Mr. Book is the most powerful of them all. It was revealed in the film that when Murdoch woke up midway during his memory imprint, he gained the power of Strangers and eventually evolved from a human to a Stranger.
To oversimplify it, we can say that he was the bridge between humans and Strangers. The personalities that individual Strangers share are not very distinct from each other, but yes, they all developed various eccentric traits in terms of language, behavior, movement, etc. When not talking to each other in English with an unnerving monotone, we find the Strangers communicating through the chattering of their teeth.
Now, the chattering also happened when they all assembled in their underground laboratory for Tuning. The most peculiar of these would be Mr. Sleep, who looked like a little kid but was the most sadistic of all Strangers.
Not only did Mr. Sleep bite on Murdoch’s hand when he was hanging from the door of a building, but he was also the first one to demand Murdoch’s execution when he was captured. Interestingly enough, Mr. Sleep was played by twins Satya Gumbert and her brother Noah Gumbert. It’s fairly difficult to spot the difference. But the kids knew very well how to portray an evil character.
The past of the Strangers and what circumstances led their species to their dwindling numbers is largely unknown. We don’t even know anything in particular about their home planet or even their species’ true name. However, we do know that their hive mind was smart enough to leave their homeworld and form a colony of sorts on an extraterrestrial object, possibly a small asteroid.
They created an artificial city on this celestial body and started to abduct humans from Earth and place them in this new city. They believed that the cure for their impending doom was the individuality of humans against their collective society. It is highly possible that they looked up to the feats that humans as a species achieved, how they developed scientifically in a matter of a few thousand years.
You see, a hive mind is both powerful and weak at the same time. While everyone else gains from the knowledge of one individual, there is little scope for innovation and thinking because one is not entirely free to think alone. So, they abducted humans and started to study them, their behavior, and psychology. But they came to realize that the human soul played a larger part in honing the personality, and the Strangers couldn’t understand what the soul was or how it worked.
So, to further their plan, they enlisted the help of Dr. Daniel P Schreber, a psychologist whose memories they erased, all but his memories about his scientific knowledge and personality. This ensured that he never discovered a way back to Earth. Although Schreber served them and followed their orders, he hated the Strangers and constantly plotted to end their menace.
The doctor would implant people with new memories as prescribed by the Strangers, which were usually a mix of memories such as a troubled childhood, an unfortunate and untimely death of a family member, etc. On the other hand, a poor man may be implanted with memories of a rich man and vice versa.
As for their surroundings and environment, the Strangers would alter them to suit the memories. Daniel P Schreber’s name is interesting because his namesake used to be a German judge who was suffering from three mental illnesses, including paranoid schizophrenia. During his days at a mental institution, he penned a book titled Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, which was supposed to prove that he was of sound mind and serve as his argument for release.
Anyway, Schreber would be employed to study various aspects of the human mind, and one day, the Strangers decided to study what role memory played in free will. Would a man implanted with a serial killer’s memory continue with the killing? Or, would he give in to his natural instincts and never kill?
For this purpose, the Strangers chose John Murdoch, our protagonist. However, John woke up while the experiment was still in progress. Although Schreber deleted Murdoch’s earlier memories, Murdoch woke up briefly, and Dr. Schreber couldn’t plant the memories of the serial killer in him. John had become a stray, someone who resisted the sleep that the psychic Strangers induced.
Now, while most of the strays suffered mental breakdowns from the knowledge they had gained and the things they had seen, Murdoch turned out to be different. He had evolved into something more, something of an amalgamation between a Stranger and a human. And with the best from both worlds, Murdoch could do whatever he wanted; only he had to concentrate hard enough.
And Murdoch defeated them all, including their leader Mr. Book, after which he went on to transform the city into the idyllic Shell Beach and also turned the city around towards a star so that the eternal night Dark City would come to an end.
New TV Series based on the Sci-fi movie Dark City (1998)
Today, Dark City is celebrated as one of the finest films by a dedicated cult audience, and we believe that the film would have performed far better financially had it been released in a slightly different cinematic timeline, say in the late 2000s.
It did inspire several other films like Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Lana and Lily Wachowskis’s Matrix, which even bought the set pieces of Alex Proyas’s Dark City. Now that we are seeing a revival of many 80s and 90s films, including The Matrix, it feels like the best time for Dark City to return to the screens.
And thankfully, Alex Proyas recently confirmed to a media house that he was in the process of developing a Dark City television series. While there is no other piece of information available regarding the cast, story, etc., Proyas confirmed that he was going back and forth with his film, analyzing what he did correctly and where he faltered. Let us hope that the project doesn’t get burned away in the developmental hell and survives to come to life.