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Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n
Sat 25 July 2026 16:45, UK <\/p>\n
As one of the cinema\u2019s undeniable masterpieces, any movie would love to be mentioned in the same breath as 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially when that breath is coming from Roger Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n The critic cited his review of Stanley Kubrick\u2019s seminal 1968 sci-fi as the best he\u2019d ever written<\/a>, largely because he was one of the few people in attendance at the first screening who immediately understood they were witnessing cinematic history in the making.<\/p>\n The auteur poured years into the production, diligently working out the story and developing new, cutting-edge methods of realising his vision on the biggest screen possible, but when it played to a packed house for the first time, hundreds of people walked out<\/a>, not knowing what the fuck they\u2019d just watched.<\/p>\n Through a modern lens, it\u2019s ludicrous to imagine anyone storming out of A Space Odyssey, the film that single-handedly inspired some of the modern era\u2019s biggest directorial names, covering everyone from Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve to James Cameron and Ridley Scott, never mind the way it laid the groundwork that eventually led George Lucas to Star Wars.<\/p>\n With that in mind, and the fact that Ebert considered it one of the ten finest features he\u2019d seen in his life<\/a>, which puts it right at the head of the pack when he\u2019d literally seen tens of thousands of them, it takes a pretty special picture to convince him that it\u2019s worth being mentioned as a touchstone. It wasn\u2019t just 2001, though, but he compared it to three separate seminal sci-fi flicks.<\/p>\n \u201cDark City by\u00a0Alex Proyas\u00a0is a great visionary achievement, a film so original and exciting, it stirred my imagination like Metropolis and 2001: A Space Odyssey,\u201d he wrote, giving it the full four-star treatment. \u201cNot a story so much as an experience, it is a triumph of art direction, set design, cinematography, special effects, and imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n Not content with name-dropping Fritz Lang and Kubrick, Ebert threw Ridley Scott into the mix, too. \u201cLike Blade Runner, it imagines a city of the future,\u201d he noted. \u201cBut while Blade Runner extended existing trends, Dark City leaps into the unknown.\u201d Metropolis, 2001, and Blade Runner? If you hadn\u2019t figured it out by now, Ebert fucking loved this movie.<\/p>\n Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n How much did Ebert love Dark City? He loved it so much that he recorded an audio commentary for its home video release, but no amount of adulation could convince paying customers to check it out at their local multiplex, with Proyas\u2019 ambitious neo-noir doing what all cult films do and bombing at the box office.<\/p>\n It might have fared better had it been released a year later, with The Matrix carrying more than a few echoes of Dark City<\/a> and turning mainstream Hollywood on its head, but it wasn\u2019t to be. It may not be as towering as the three titles he compared it to, but clearly, the critic believed that it deserved to be.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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