In a follow up to my "Did Guardians of the Galaxy rip off Farscape?" post, I have decided to pose this question? Did The Matrix rip off Dark City
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Although now THIS post (lmao) shows up when you google "Dark City The Matrix comparison", I can find articles from 2003/2004 of people doing shot-by-shot comparisons. Which is easy given that The Matrix reused Dark City's sets, and then framed the scenes the exact same way on the exact same sets LMAO. I've thought that the Wachowskis were clearly VERY inspired by Dark City since I first saw Dark City around 2003/2004. Proyas only came out recently with his own stories that make it seem like he didn't know about the sets being reused, a lot of the same crew, that he didn't know one of his producers even showed the movie before it came out in February 1998 to the Wachowskis. It's kind of wild, but both are great movies!
Yeah there's a lot of aesthetic rips but the themes/point of the movies are completely different. I would say thematically the Matrix borrowed more from The Terminator movies. Even looking at the similar shots they're all noir staples (dramatically lit cop, shot down a fancy staircase, rooftop chase, hot lady in a tight dress) that Dark City also borrowed from classic films. Using the same sets was a bit much but that's just Hollywood.
Man, I've not seen Dark City since it first came to video, but I remember loving it - time for a rewatch soon! But yes, I have vague memories of people talking about the similarities like 20 years ago
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Although now THIS post (lmao) shows up when you google "Dark City The Matrix comparison", I can find articles from 2003/2004 of people doing shot-by-shot comparisons. Which is easy given that The Matrix reused Dark City's sets, and then framed the scenes the exact same way on the exact same sets LMAO. I've thought that the Wachowskis were clearly VERY inspired by Dark City since I first saw Dark City around 2003/2004. Proyas only came out recently with his own stories that make it seem like he didn't know about the sets being reused, a lot of the same crew, that he didn't know one of his producers even showed the movie before it came out in February 1998 to the Wachowskis. It's kind of wild, but both are great movies!
https://www.electrolund.com/2004/10/matrix-city-a-photographic-comparison-of-the-matrix-and-dark-city/
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I've also seen The Matrix being compared to The Thirteenth Floor which came out the same year.
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