The Dark City director’s cut is a vast improvement over the original taking the high concept film and placing much more responsibility on the audience rather than piecing it together every step of the way, something that was obviously intended by writer/director Alex Proyas from the start and on Blu-ray high-definition there really is no comparison to what this film once was and what it has now become.
To prepare for reviewing this new cut of Dark City, which runs a full 11 minutes longer than the original was to grab my standard definition DVD copy and watch the theatrical release before watching the director’s cut. The Blu-ray disc does include both the theatrical and director’s cut, but I also wanted to use the opportunity to compare the audio and visual differences when bouncing from SD to HD and I can tell you now it is astonishing.
Dark City tells the story of a world under the control of an unknown alien race of beings who possess the ability to “tune” the world to their liking and adjust the memories of the people inhabiting it as a social experiment designed around getting to the soul of human beings. It’s extremely high concept and as you will see from the included documentaries it is a film that not even Proyas was able to completely wrap his head around on his own let alone explaining it to the studio execs.
Purely on a level of aesthetics and judging this new release by my eyes and ears it simply doesn’t compare. New Line Home Entertainment has given this disc a spectacular sounding DTS track and from the opening shot of the stars alone you can tell the blacks are much richer and the shiny dots in the sky simply pop off the screen when compared to their standard definition counterpart. Considering the darkness of the film already the added clarity to the lighter notes gives the film that much more atmosphere. However, the look is only the beginning, the feature itself and the attached documentaries are far more interesting.
Immediately anyone familiar with Dark City will notice the changes. The voice over at the beginning of the film is gone, adding ambiguity to the story I wish had been there the first time I had seen it. The scene remains the same, but without the dumbed down narration you are able to evaluate the scene more clearly as the quick credit sequence is also shown much sooner. There are many changes like this in the film as scenes have simply been moved such as the pool scene with Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) and Mr. Hand (Richard O’Brien). Even dialogue hesitations are given an extra beat for emphasis and the special effects have been toned down in some instances, particularly Murdoch’s (Rufus Sewell) early experiences with “tuning”.
All of the changes, save one (I didn’t like the move of the pool scene since it seemed to need one more establishing shot to set up John being there), enhance the story making it more of a mystery the audience and characters must solve. Even though it would have been far more fun watching this film the first time without the narration, finally seeing it how Proyas intended it to be seen is enough for me.
Included with the film is a feature length documentary discussing the making of the film with several individuals including relatively new interview comments by Roger Ebert, assumed to have been recorded probably sometime in 2006 before medical complications caused him to lose his voice. Ebert has been a longtime fan of Dark City and he even has a commentary track on the director’s cut I am sure many of you will find interesting. However, the most interesting things to come out of the documentary involve comments from Proyas and Sewell with regards to the dumbing down of the film.
Proyas talks a bit about the $27 million budget of which he fought hard for saying traditionally “the bigger the budget the smaller the idea.” Studios don’t tend to risk a lot of money on anything that is too high concept and before you scoff at $27 million remember this was made in 1998 when gas cost somewhere around $1.03. Suffice to say, things have changed.
Commenting on the changes he made to the theatrical release (primarily the opening narration) Proyas says, “It was definitely there for the dummies, there’s no question,” but Rufus Sewell has something to say about that, “I think they probably felt they didn’t want to alienate certain people, but I just think, ‘Fuck ’em.'” I couldn’t help but laugh (and agree) with that.
You will learn that both Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise were both talked about to star in the film, but an interesting comment was made to that point saying that while John Murdoch may not know who he is in the film, audiences would look at the screen and say, “Well I know who he is, he’s Johnny Depp.” It’s an interesting idea to cast a relatively unknown actor, as Sewell was at that time, in a role playing a man who is equally unfamiliar, even with himself. It aids the audience’s involvement and is a very good observation.
Also included on this release are a new commentary track with Alex Proyas on his own, Ebert’s track and a track with writers David Goyer and Lem Dobbs, which was basically pieced together using the previous DVD commentary from the original release making for something of a sporadic commentary track. There is also a gallery of production photos and all of the original DVD special features are available when you choose the Theatrical version of the film.
One thing that is fun to turn on is the pop-up “Director’s Cut Fact Track” which points out all the changes made to the film including additional dialogue, extended scenes, moments that were cut and others that were moved. It’s an interesting watch considering no matter how familiar with the film you may be it is highly unlikely you will catch all the changes. However you are sure to notice that you will now be hearing Jennifer Connelly’s voice in her singing scenes instead of Anita Kelsey’s, which was who you heard in the theatrical release.
As much as I wish I would have seen Dark City in theaters it just wasn’t released long enough for me to convince any friends to go check it out. The trailer music alone had me hooked, but it seems now we are only left with the definitive edition on Blu-ray and DVD, which I guess is fine with me.
