Like The Dark Knight 14 years later, The Crow swept over the culture like a tidal wave when its young star Brandon Lee was killed before the film’s release.
Proyas then leveraged the success of The Crow to make Dark City…
The Strangers are devoid of that vital essence, so they created a simulacrum of a world to imprison and study the human soul, in hopes they could ultimately become one with it.
Like the earlier Talosians from Star Trekº and the later Agents in The Matrix, the non-individuated Strangers were the direct descendants of the Archons from Gnostic mythology: wardens of an illusory prison-world.
Conversely, John Murdoch (played by Rufus Sewall) is the man who wakes up to the scam — in a bathtub, no less — but he’s also man without memories.
Murdoch lives in a 1940’s film noir city trapped in permanent midnight, yet he becomes awake while the whole city sleeps.
Murdoch’s first act on re-waking/re-birthing is to rescue a goldfish, whose bowl he inadvertently knocks over.
Fish and ocean imagery play a prominent part in Dark City.
Murdoch is also given a Grail Quest, in this case for the mythical “Shell Beach,” a childhood refuge that Murdoch repeatedly visits in his mind.
Lying on the floor in the apartment where Murdoch awakes is a dead woman with spirals cut into her breasts. Murdoch doesn’t realize it yet, but he is being framed for her murder.
Murdoch then receives a strange telephone call, warning him that the police are coming for him.
This exact event would be repeated in The Matrix the following year.
As Murdoch escapes the apartment to the city streets below, he is pursued by the Strangers, but discovers he has the power to alter reality, which he uses to make his escape.
A classic fugitive dream-story follows, with Murdoch pursued by the Strangers, Doctor Schreber, and a mild-mannered yet relentless detective named Bumstead, played by William Hurt (of Altered States fame, significantly).
In addition to trying to catch Murdoch, Bumstead is also worried about his former partner Walenski, who has woken up to the same reality Murdoch has. But Walenski is powerless to do anything about it, and subsequently goes completely insane.
Let’s see who this guy is meant to stand in for:
Walenski is the film’s John the Baptist, who initiates Dark City’s Christ into the reality of their shared prison.
That done, Walenski throws himself in front of an onrushing subway train.
The true nature of Dark City is revealed to Murdoch in the subway, a a stand-in for the caverns of the ancient Mysteries in modern ritual dramas.
Not for nothing, but note “Walenski” isn’t all that far from “Wachowski.”
