I saw the movie “Dark City” when it first came out and thoroughly enjoyed it. Recently I rented it to show it to my brother and now he thinks I’m crazy because I insist that major changes were made in the movie between original release and the version we saw together. Changes which made the movie much, much weaker. For example, SPOILER…
In the original version we didn’t learn until well into the movie that the earth had been conquered by aliens; in the “revised” version a voice over tells us this immediately after the credits. Also, there were bits of dialogue cut. For example, I distinctly remember one of the characters in the original saying something like “Didn’t you ever notice that none of us ever goes to the bathroom?”
Am I halluncinating, or were these changes actually made in the film? And if so, is it possible to rent a copy of the original?
AFAIK, the voiceover has always been a part of the movie. However, word quickly got out that the voiceover was a complete spoiler and when the video came out, a lot of people would mute the first few minutes for friends watching it for the first time.
Dark City is one of my all-time favorite movies, even though I didn’t discover it until it was on video. If you’re watching it for the first time, please, PLEASE mute the beginning narration, which spoils the key twist of the entire movie. I do this now and enjoy it much more every time I see it.
I must have either missed seeing “Dark City” from the beginning or wasn’t paying attention, because I don’t remember any opening narration that spoilered the movie. Good for me, because it blew me away.
During the last bit, Keifer limps out and consults his pocket-watch, and we see the city start to shut down on schedule. Then the titles, and then we switch over to Murdoch waking up after the Tuning.
It has ever been thus. Maybe someone’s been fiddling with your memories.
The narration is opaque enough that, on first viewing, there’s still some uncertainty about what’s going on. There’s a certain amount of delayed significance, so it seems like much more of a spoiler when you watch it again.
I first saw it on TV and missed the first few mins. I turned it on just as John was waking up in the tub.
Wow what a movie.
Then I got it on DVD and saw it with the vioceover. What a horrible horrible voice over. It went from a movie where you were always finding new things to a movie where you went. “Oh so that was the thing from the begining” Totally different vibe in the reveal shots. Now when I tell people about the movie I tell them to skip the intro and go right to John in the tub. Far far better movie that way.
I had trouble with his pronunciation of that word too, at first. I still think Kiefer based Dr. Schreber’s voice on Peter Lorre, and I only wish he had said “Murdoch, you fat, bloated EEDIOT!”
Sure it’s a spoiler. It tells everything about what the situation actually is instead of letting the viewer discover it along with the protagonist. Nothing in that voiceover covers anything we don’t discover later in the film. It’s only there for dummies who couldn’t figure things out.
When I first saw the film on tape, I had been warned, so muted the description. I loved the film, then went back to see what it said. Definitely completely unneccesary and it definitely gave everything about the situation away.
It’s sort of like saying: “Here’s Charles Foster Kane. He’s a rich man who has a thing for his longlost childhood sled.”
I’m just chiming in to say that I also believe the “spoiler” isn’t, and furthermore that this slavish insistance on surprises in films has gone too far! Oh wait, no, that’s for the Pit. Er, furthermore that I think the fact that this isn’t our ordinary world, that something is very different about it, isn’t meant to be a “surprise”, nor is that the Strangers exist.
If there’s a gasp moment in the movie, it’s when we see the light and really *feel * how dark it has been until then for the first time. And the only way to spoiler that is to describe it, which I haven’t even done just now. You’ll think so if you’ve seen the movie, but if you haven’t it could mean anything.
And so it is with the VO - which I’m pretty sure was there when I saw it in the theater.
I disagree. I saw the movie in the theater, and while the opening sequence occurred I got progressively angrier at it; nothing in the movie mollified that anger.
I can understand that not everybody would find it to be a spoiler, but for me, one of the greatest pleasures that a story can offer is a sense of mystery in the beginning, and the slow unfolding of that mystery. Without that narration, Dark City would have been a splendid example of that pleasure, but with the narration, there was very little mystery for me at all. The movie could have started off seeming as though it were a straightforward film noir, and the move into a completely different genre could’ve bowled me over; but I started off knowing that the film noir trappings were going to be pulled aside. Hmmph. I was one of the folks who immediately started telling people to show up two minutes late to the movie, or to cover their ears and say “La la la la la!” until they saw a swinging lightbulb on screen.
Also, the final fight scene was terrible, I thought. Also, I remember thinking that the final scene period could have been better-accomplished, but I don’t remember how.
Other than those two big and one small criticisms, I thought the movie was superb, one of the best science-fiction movies ever made.
There’s nothing very spoilerish, though. Look at it. What is in there that’s clear without having seen the film? The only information that isn’t in the first 15 minutes of the film is that the strangers’ race is dying out, and much of it is totally misleading.
In the first 15 minutes of the movie, we see these freaky creatures exercise their ability to manipulate physical reality, and we know that they have jellyfish critters in their skulls. We know they’re doing something sinister, and Schreber is working with them. The only thing we don’t know is that their motivation is that their race is dying, and that’s hardly a major point, and doesn’t tell us what we’re actually doing.
After you’ve seen the movie, the intro VO seems to carry more information than it does if you go in cold. The writers make heavy use of delayed significance – for example, the first time you see the movie, the people in the lobby who wake up as John comes down are just dozing and roused up by his agitated movement. It’s midnight in a seedy hotel. The second time you see it, it’s not the same scene.
Nothing in the VO reveals anything major, and the minor things that are revealed are put right up front by the action anyway. We accept that the action takes place on Earth. We accept that “tuning” is a relatively localized effect, because that’s how it’s shown. We have no clear idea about the nature of their experiments, and we don’t really know Schreber’s relationship with them. It’s all still a huge surprise.
I have a hard time imagining a scenario where the absence of the VO could have had that effect, unless you took pains to make sure that you never came into contact with any promotional materials before seeing a film. How could anyone sit there in the dark waiting for a straight-forward noir film when they’ve gone to see Dark City? The trailers, posters, and DVD packaging are all quite plain. Even if you did, two minutes into it we see a cadre of black-coated Nosferatu with inhuman mannerisms and gurgling alien vocalizations using mind-control powers. That’s kind of a clue it ain’t Raymond Chandler.
I may be wrong about the film-noir mistake that I coulda made: I saw the movie in the theater, and haven’t see it all the way through since (I very rarely watch a movie more than once). However, I did avoid most of the promo materials: I didn’t have a television then, and I didn’t get to go see movies very often. I maintain that without the spoilery intro, I would have gotten a great deal of pleasure from slowly learning what was going on; as it was, the voiceover, for no good reason, ruined that pleasure.
I agree with most others, that this isn’t a real spoiler.
If you want to have a real spoiler watch “The Discovery of Heaven”, after the book from the Dutch writer Harry Mulisch.
I was so looking forward to it as the book was simply great, but they managed to give away the complete plot in the first 3 lines of voice-over.
That really destroyed an otherwise quite enjoyable movie.
First, it’s barely a spoiler because of the timing of the revelations, and because when you see the movie cold, it doesn’t really mean anything to you.
Second, the movie is about John figuring out what the hell is going on. It’s about his human struggle to deal with his memories and the power of the mind. It’s not about foiling alien plots to tune your city.
Well, precisely. If Memento had begun with a voiceover saying, This guy who’s my friend? I convinced myself that maybe he killed my wife, although there’s a good chance that I did it myself. I’m killing him now, but watch as I learn about this event!, you still would’ve been able to watch the protagonist figure out what the hell is going on, but you would’ve been robbed of the pleasure of doing so for yourself.
I’m pretty surprised that so many people didn’t mind the voiceover. I hated it so much and so immediately that I was convinced everyone else would, too; and this is the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone who didn’t.
