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In the course of writing this review, things have gone on a lot longer than I thought they would. So I’m not going to waste any more of your time than necessary today, folks. It’s way too nice outside in eastern Pennsylvania, anyway. So, without further adieu, here follows my review of Dark City, or as I also know it, The Movie The Matrix Tried Really Hard To Be Only To Fail Miserably Especially Due To Two Over-Complicated And Ultimately Useless Sequels.

The film opens with a man in a bathtub, who wakes to find blood on his forehead and a complete lack of memories. He’s in a hotel room and he receives a phone call telling him that he needs to run, as someone is coming for him who should not find him. Since he also happens to find the mutilated body of a call girl in the bedroom, he doesn’t need to be told twice. He makes his way into the night-time city streets and begins a search for his own identity, which is tied to the mysterious Strangers who are looking for him. A fastidious police detective is hot on his trail, his estranged wife is confused by what’s happening to him, and the psychiatrist who called him to warn him about the Strangers clearly knows more than he’s telling.

And so do I. This is one of those “see it for yourself, that’s all I’m gonna tell you” situations. Those of you who might’ve seen Dark City before probably know why I’m being tight-lipped about the plot, and those of you who haven’t are best served going into this one cold. So rather than talk about the plot’s threads and nuances, allow me a moment to talk about Alex Proyas, the writer and director. His previous work that put him on the map was his film adaptation of James O’Barr’s The Crow. You know, The Crow, Brandon Lee’s last film, perhaps the best heroic-vengeance-from-beyond-the-grave flick ever made? Alex’s type of aesthetic and directorial style shines again in Dark City, which is an ironic choice of words considering how prevalent night-time and the shadows are. Still, it’s a vision that’s every bit as unique as The Crow, and this one sprang like a gothic goddess fully formed from Alex’s head.

One of the things Proyas does best is atmosphere, and Dark City is steeped in it. The architecture, the fog, the clothes and the set design all create a setting that is simultaneously old-fashioned and timeless, both noir and fantastical. And this is before everything begins to change. The way in which the growing buildings, altered states of people’s lives and the manner in which things are altered in this city are rendered in a way that still holds up ten years later. Other than the Strangers choosing to use knives rather than relying on their preternatural abilities, there’s nothing dated or laughable about this film or its design despite its age. Like Blade Runner, it’s going to last quite a long time.

He might not look the hero type, but just wait…

Another crucial and brilliant component of this film is its cast. Now, I know some people out there weren’t fond of Rufus Sewell’s performance in Dark City, saying he was flat and unemotional. I disagree. For the most part, Rufus’ character needs to rediscover his emotions along with his memories, and since he’s a relatively intelligent guy, he’s doing so in an analytical manner, and to me, he’s never dull and always interesting to watch. William Hurt’s detective is not just interesting, he’s a joy, the sort of smart, hard-nosed cop who just wants the truth no matter what he has to do to get it. Kiefer Sutherland shows a lot of the range that has gone unnoticed during his years as Jack Bauer, here playing a very clever if somewhat cowardly psychiatrist who’s got a particular angle on the whole situation. And Alex Proyas did the entire human race a favor by putting Jennifer Connelly in some slinky lounge singer attire for a few scenes. I mean, she’s a fine actress and I’ve enjoyed just about everything she’s been in including Ang Lee’s Hulk, but damn the girl can burn up a screen.

The real stand-out for me, though, is Richard O’Brien. Savvy watchers, listeners or readers may recognize him as the guy who played Riff Raff in the cult classic phenomenon The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But if you’re expecting camp or humor from him in this film, you are in for a shock. Mr. Hand, his character, is quiet, menacing, thoroughly creepy and disturbingly polite. He’s one of the most effective villainous henchmen I’ve seen in quite some time. He actually comes across as more interesting and more dangerous than the lead villain, Mr. Book (although Ian Richardson does give the big guy some impressive gravitas), and to this day, when he stalks onto the screen, I get chills.

Seriously. He’s extremely creepy.

I mention that this is the movie The Matrix could have been. Allow me to elaborate on that point for a moment, if you’ll indulge me. The ‘everything you know is a lie’ trick isn’t anything new in cinema. Both Dark City and The Matrix pull the trick for different reasons and while it works in both films, it feels more effective in this one than in The Matrix. I think I can explain why I feel this way without invoking the unfortunate sequels to the latter film. In The Matrix, apart from the clear post-modern philosophical influence primarily attributed to Jean Baudrillard, the dichotomy of the world in which we’re introduced to the characters and the truth behind that world serves as yet another cautionary tale against the emergence of artificial intelligence and how it will doom humanity to servitude or worse to protect humanity from itself. And in the light of the BP oil spill, can you really blame intelligent machines from thinking we’re pretty bad for the planet in general and our existence on it in particular? But I digress.

Proyas doesn’t seem to have a major philosophical influence or point to make, other than supporting a Descartian view of thought informing action and the dichotomy of the body and mind. Rather than concerning itself with delivering jargon salient to this point, Dark City simply presents its characters and themes as they are, baldly stated without hyperbole except for the whole psychic powers angle. The Strangers seem primarily concerned with trying to comprehend minds outside of their own, thus representing solipsism on one side of the debate. While they exist in harmony with what they create, they cannot be certain that those beings that exist within their creation are as real as their own mind. Meanwhile, the characters within the city who are of interest to the Strangers appear to represent a dualist point of view, where all things that exist (implying that they believe the things outside themselves are certain to exist) have a separation between concept and form, between an individual’s body and their anima or animus, to use Jungian terms. I know I’m verging into deep philosophical waters and might be losing some people, and I could probably talk for hours about this stuff, but I think I’ve made my point – Dark City is a lot more interesting than The Matrix, and The Matrix could have been just as interesting if it weren’t based on bad philosophy.

Do you think CTU would have operated better with Strangers in the ranks?

Pseudo-intellectualism aside, if you have the opportunity, see the director’s cut of Dark City. The theatrical release is by no means bad. The characters, themes, action and storytelling are all intact. What the director’s cut adds is an extra bit of depth, another layer of atmosphere and a slightly less disjointed pace. It takes its time a bit more, setting up the story on the assumption that we’re intelligent people and we don’t need to be told what we’re going to see – we just need to be shown. I get the feeling that the theatrical release was cut the way it was so that Bubba Joe McMoviewatcher wouldn’t be completely lost in the plot’s turns and spirals. But I’ve become something of a story snob since I started reviewing things seriously, so take that opinion for what you will.

I guess what I’m trying to drive at in the midst of all of this is that Dark City is a fantastic film. It ranks highly among other innovative science fiction films like Blade Runner and District 9. The director’s cut, especially, is a highly enjoyable experience in visual storytelling, and it’s not the kind of film where you need to switch off your brain. In fact, the more you engage your mind while watching Dark City, the more you’ll take away from the experience. It’s intelligent, well-shot, well-paced, well-acted visual storytelling. Get it from Netflix, or hell, buy it outright, because you’re getting a lot for your money. I mean, what else is out there that’s worth putting your entertainment money into (other than Splice, apparently)?

Another Super Mario game? A Justin Bieber album? Marmaduke?

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

Concluding one of the possible ways the story arc of those Star Wars prequels could have gone if I’d written them. Episode 1 is here, and Episode 2 is here. Remember, I don’t own anything created by Lucas and I’m not looking to profit from any of this, but it is my work and if you want to quote or use part of it, please give me appropriate credit.

Click for Episode 3

Continuing the sort of plots, characters and themes I’d have pursued if it had fallen to me to write the Star Wars prequels. Episode 1 is right here. This one ended up a bit longer than I thought it would. I could probably work C-3P0 and R2-D2 in here somewhere, but I’d rather focus on the characters that really needed help. As before, I don’t own anything created by Lucas and I’m not looking to profit from any of this, but it is my work and if you want to quote or use part of it, please give me appropriate credit.

Click for Episode 2

So I think a good way to spend at least part of this holiday weekend is to put down some of the thoughts I’ve had about what could’ve been done with the Star Wars prequels. Utterly pointless, but then again, so are the prequels as they stand now. It goes without saying that I don’t own anything created by Lucas and I’m not looking to profit from any of this, but it is my work and if you want to quote or use part of it, please give me appropriate credit.

Click for Episode 1

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Back in the days of the late 80s and early 90s, when the excess of the previous decade were giving way to the ‘edgy’ goth culture that emerged to dominate a lot of the media in the next – The Crow, Spawn, A Nightmare Before Christmas, etc – America was getting its first real dose of animé. The Sci-Fi Channel, back when it was called ‘The Sci-Fi Channel’ and didn’t worry about its Google page rank because, well, Google didn’t really exist yet, ran a few animé features every year or so just to whet our whistles for what lay in store for us on the other side of the Pacific. The first round included Lensman, Casshan Robot Hunter and Vampire Hunter D, which while visually stunning and unique in their aesthetics, amounted to pretty standard but well-done action flicks. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that we were introduced to the truly introspective and headspace-violating works such as Akira and this week’s review fodder, Ghost in the Shell.

There’s also the fact that none of those three ‘early’ animé features are available on Netflix, which is a shame because Lensman is a great reworking of E.E. Smith’s novels, Casshan is one of the best treatments of a Mega Man-style protagonist I’ve ever seen, and Vampire Hunter D is… hmm? Oh, right, Ghost in the Shell, sorry about that.

The year is 2029. The world is connected by a global information network that is to the Internet what a Peterbilt 378 is to last year’s Ford pick-up. In Tokyo, the government has divided its various responsibilities into sections, and Section 9 is their covert operations and network security division. Top badass amongst the ranks of Section 9 is Major Motoko Kusanagi, who along with being a crack shot, an expert martial artist and pretty damn smart in terms of both brain and mouth, is also a full conversion cyborg, meaning that other than her brain and most of her spinal column, her body is entirely robotic. A case involving a hacker called ‘the Puppet Master’ falls into Section 9′s lap, and the investigation leads Motoko to question the nature of her own existence even as she tries to unravel the mystery as to who this hacker is and what they’re after.

Ghost in the Shell, like a great deal of animé, is based upon the manga of the same name. The manga was crafted by a guy named Shirow Masamune, and in the interest of full disclosure, I need to make the following statement: I love Shirow Masamune. This is the guy who brought us Black Magic, Appleseed and Dominion, which might be better known by the animé feature called Tank Police. His work is, in my opinion, best described as ‘camp cyberpunk’, a marriage of the mentality behind such works as Blade Runner and Snow Crash with balls-to-the-wall action and genuinely funny humor that has mechanized characters like Briareos from Appleseed acting far more human than some humans do in similar works, even his own. There’s plenty of philosophy, sociological commentary and bits of political satire woven into his stories, and they’re told and drawn well enough that you’re having just as good a time contemplating what he’s trying to say as you do watching cops with tanks blast their way through the bad guys. Ghost in the Shell is exemplary of this style, with discussions on the nature of human existence occurring almost simultaneously with cybernetic supercops doing battle against advanced walking tanks.

The big guy’s Battou. He’s awesome.
He gives us the phrase ‘standard-issue big gun’ among other things.

The action from the manga exists almost intact in the animé feature. Instead of trying to wow an audience with laser guns or giant fighting robots, Ghost in the Shell keeps the action, for the most part, on the human level. While the Major is super-strong, very fast and well-experienced in combat, when the action takes place it happens on a scale to which an audience can relate. I mean, seeing a space battle happen in, say, Star Blazers or Robotech is exciting, but a great deal of that comes from our relationship with the pilots of those fantastic vehicles. Without characters that we like and can relate to, it’d just be so much sound and fury like the opening of Revenge of the Sith. The grounding of Tokyo 2029 in reality, coupled with the interesting characters involved in the combat, lends it weight and makes it more exciting, ramping up the tension as the stakes get higher.

Unfortunately Ghost in the Shell doesn’t have the pace or the occasional tongue-in-cheek aside of its manga source material. Some bits of the film just drag, especially when it comes to Motoko’s navel-gazing. It’s like watching a tense episode of Law & Order: SVU only to have Stabler & Benson stop in the middle of tracking down a serial rapist to discuss the sustainability of the world in general and New York City in particular. It’s interesting, sure, but we didn’t come here for moral philosophy, get the hell on with the detective work. Instead of weaving these questions into the narrative, director Oshii Mamoru stops the action dead to have us ruminate on the nature of human existence.

There’s also the fact that the Major inexplicably gets naked any time she needs to use her cloaking device. “Therm-optic camouflage” didn’t require nudity in the manga, and even in the film a guy is able to use therm-optics just by pulling up the hood of his jumper – he didn’t have to whip out his junk to turn invisible. I don’t object to the idea of seeing Motoko in her skivvies, even if she is a cyborg, but the gratuity and lack of necessity for it in context kind of bugs me.

Sad cyborg is sad.

Ghost in the Shell was ground-breaking for its time. Now, “ground-breaking” is not entirely synonymous with “good”. It’s also a phrase that can get abused by people in the marketing world. Sonic Unleashed, for example, could be described as ground-breaking in that video game series because never before as a hedgehog that runs fast turned into a hulking fur-covered pile of rage and sharp bits that’d be called a ‘werewolf’ if it weren’t a complete misnomer. The DaVinci Code broke new ground for anti-Church conspiracy theorists, but the book is at its best when it’s wedged under a piece of furniture to keep it from wobbling. Twilight was ground-breaking in both its existence as genre fiction aimed at young female readers and the psychological and sexual implications of its characters, but it seemed like the flat characterizations and plodding story pace were set to drain vampires of all of their menace and mystique until the advent of Daybreakers. Incidentally, one has to wonder the fun that could be had if the aforementioned vampire hunter D came across the Cullen household. Hilarity would ensue, I’m sure.

Anyway, Ghost in the Shell is not only a ground-breaking work in terms of cyberpunk animé and post-modern information-age personal philosophy but also pretty damn good as a story. Long treatises and monologues aside, this is a seminal work of the genre and definitely worth seeing if you have any interest in well-done hand-crafted animation that isn’t afraid to be violent, sexy or intellectually interesting for adults. The thing about the film which ultimately works against it is, as good as Shirow’s work is, it tends to be dense, with layers of philosophical and socio-political commentary layered between the character development and action sequences. It’s a similar problem that we have with the recent adaptation of Appleseed, and I suspect that if Black Magic or Dominion were to be revisited as films, it’d be no different. Trying to cram everything Shirow does in his works into a two hour film without a careful hand in the editing process can leave the final result feeling disjointed and lead to some problems with pace. Ghost in the Shell is pretty much the best example of this, but it’s also a fantastic example of the counterpoint to the problem with adapting Shirow’s work to film.

Even today, scenes like this are gorgeous.

Even when there isn’t anything going on, it’s extremely well-drawn or well-rendered nothing. Even if you’re not an animé fan and just have a passing interest in things like cyberpunk action, artificial intelligence that doesn’t want to destroy the world or just characters that are both intelligent and badass, you can do a hell of a lot worse than Ghost in the Shell. And if you like it as a feature, go read the manga or, better yet, check out Stand-Alone Complex, an animé television series that stays a lot closer to Shirow’s original vision. You can expand on a lot of the themes and subjects in those inner layers when you have a dozen hour-long episodes to work with instead of a feature with a ninety minute running time. I mean, imagine if you tried to take one of the many, many themes from a tv series like Star Trek: The Next Generation, let’s say relocating a native population for the sake of governmental whims, and condense it into a feature film that’s accessible to the masses as well as diehard fans. The result would probably be a total disaster! I mean, who would be so stupid as to…

…Wait…

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.