Well, it’s our first episode of the new year and boy, do we have a kick ass guest to help ring in 2022! Stopping by to drop some knowledge on us about Mycenaean architecture and Lovecraftian horror is author, film critic, and desktop game designer, Josephine Maria Yanasak-Leszczynski! Dark City may not seem like your standard Lovecraft-inspired genre film at first, but Josephine lays out the case for how it effectively the 1998 sci-fi/noir film incorporates Lovecraft’s penchant for pulling from multiple sources and how it plays with the concept of cyclopean environments.
It’s easy to forget that Dark City after came before The Matrix, seeing as how oddly similar the seminal and influential film from the Wachowskis was whereas Dark City was just kind of…forgotten (unless you’re Roger Ebert). Sure, the city may be one of the most poorly thought out science experiments in the history of movies brought down by a half-baked Neo, but it was great to think that studios once spent money on weird, original ideas — even if they did ultimately end up tinkering with them too much.
The Matrix is far more of a “chosen one” narrative. He’s even called “The One”, with “Neo” being an anagram for “one”! The protagonist of Dark City is just someone who’s had a lot of experimentation done on him, some of which got sabotaged.
The Matrix is far more of a “chosen one” narrative. He’s even called “The One”, with “Neo” being an anagram for “one”! The protagonist of Dark City is just someone who’s had a lot of experimentation done on him, some of which got sabotaged.