The Memory of Her Voice: A Love Story in Dark City

Maybe that’s why my greatest love was a brunette with mesmerizing electric blue eyes. She was a mix of Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal and Jennifer Connelly in… well… in anything. But that, my friends, is a story for another time. 

I remember the first time I saw her, back when I was a kid in the early nineties. And yeah, I’m a Cold War relic—born before 1990. Anyway, the first time I saw Jennifer Connelly was in a film that will forever be dear to my heart: Labyrinth. Oh boy… did I have a crush on her. 

Then came Career Opportunities (and let’s be honest—she was the only thing worth seeing in that movie), The Rocketeer—a film I absolutely adore. It has Art Deco, it has Howard Hughes, it has that retro vibe… I just love it. Let’s not forget Mulholland Falls, Once Upon a Time in America, and of course, today's topic  Dark City, . Oh!, And I was so pleasantly surprised to see her in Top Gun: Maverick. 

One film of hers that’s on my to-watch list is Dario Argento’s giallo classic Phenomena. And yes, I’m planning to go through all her movies and share with you the movie memorabilia I’ve collected—because, as you might’ve guessed, I’m a collector. 

When it comes to Dark City, I’m firmly on team “It’s a cult classic—and better than The Matrix.” That’s it. I said it. Put me in a wicker man and burn me to ashes. 

An entire video review is here:

I've always had a thing for noir movies. I’m not sure why exactly—there was never a defining moment, no single film that lit the spark. If you asked me what my first noir movie was, I couldn’t tell you. But I suspect the fascination began in childhood, long before I even knew what “film noir” meant. 

It wasn’t the gritty detective stories or shadow-drenched cinematography that first drew me in—it was cartoons. Shows like Fish Police, Batman: The Animated Series, and those unforgettable Daffy Duck shorts like The Great Piggy Bank Robbery and The Super Snooper planted the seeds2. They were playful, exaggerated, and often absurd, but they carried the unmistakable DNA of noir: the moody atmosphere, the trench coats, the mysterious dames, and the hard-boiled voiceovers. 

Even as a kid, I was captivated by the tone. There was something magnetic about the way these stories unfolded in dimly lit alleys and smoky offices. The heroes were flawed, the villains were clever, and the world always felt just a little off-kilter. It was storytelling with style—where every shadow had meaning and every line of dialogue dripped with tension or irony. 

As I grew older and discovered classic noir films like Dead end, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, Don’t bother to knock and Touch of Evil,and many, many more. I realized those cartoons had been my gateway. They weren’t just entertainment—they were introductions to a genre that would shape my taste in film, literature, and even art. 

Noir, to me, is more than a cinematic style. It’s a mood, a lens through which the world can be viewed with a touch of cynicism and a dash of elegance. And it all started with a duck in a fedora chasing a gang of piggy bank robbers. 

Of course, after that came video games with that noir touch—like the first two Max Payne titles. Their gritty narration and bullet-time action felt like stepping into a graphic novel soaked in rain and regret.  

One of the things that cemented Max Payne’s noir identity was its unforgettable one-liners. Max’s narration was drenched in metaphor and melancholy, like a pulp detective novel filtered through a fever dream. Lines like “The sun went down with practiced bravado. Twilight crawled across the sky, laden with foreboding,” weren’t just stylish—they were poetic, almost philosophical. They gave the game a voice that was uniquely its own: gritty, introspective, and laced with dark humor. Each phrase felt like a cigarette flicked into a puddle—brief, sharp, and smoldering with mood. 

Then came one of the best RPGs ever made, and the game that introduced me to tech-noir: Deus Ex. It wasn’t just noir—it was noir fused with cyberpunk, a dystopian vision where conspiracies lurked behind every neon-lit corner and morality was always blurred. It wasn’t just the gameplay that hooked me; it was the atmosphere. The world of Deus Ex was steeped in paranoia, surveillance, and moral ambiguity. You weren’t just fighting enemies—you were navigating a web of conspiracies that blurred the line between truth and manipulation. The game’s environments—dimly lit streets, sterile corporate labs, and decaying urban sprawl—felt like digital echoes of classic noir settings, but with a cyberpunk twist. 

The protagonist, JC Denton, wasn’t your typical hero. He was quiet, stoic, and often philosophical, delivering lines that felt like they belonged in a Raymond Chandler novel rewritten for the digital age. The dialogue was sharp, the choices were complex, and the themes—transhumanism, control, freedom—were deeply noir in spirit. Deus Ex didn’t just borrow noir aesthetics; it reimagined them for a future where trench coats were armored and the shadows were cast by surveillance drones. 

When I think about Deus Ex in the broader landscape of tech-noir, it stands shoulder to shoulder with giants like Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell. Each of these works explores the intersection of humanity and technology, but they do so with distinct flavors. 

Blade Runner is the archetype—the rain-soaked, neon-lit cityscape, the existential dread, the blurred line between man and machine. It’s noir in its purest cyberpunk form: slow, moody, and philosophical. Deus Ex, by contrast, trades the romantic grime for a sleeker aesthetic. Its world is cleaner, more clinical, but no less dystopian. While Blade Runner asks what it means to be human, Deus Ex asks who controls humanity’s future—and whether we can trust them. 

Together, these works form a constellation of tech-noir storytelling—each illuminating a different facet of our anxieties about the future. And Deus Ex, with its layered narrative and philosophical undertones, fits right in. 

And so we reach today’s topic. Dark City. Released in 1998, it’s a surreal, cerebral thriller that blends noir aesthetics with science fiction in a way that’s both haunting and hypnotic. Like Deus Ex, Dark City explores themes of identity, memory, and control—but it does so in a world that feels like a dream trapped in perpetual midnight. The city itself is a character: a shifting, claustrophobic maze where time and space are manipulated by mysterious alien beings. It’s noir turned inside out, where the detective story isn’t about solving a crime, but about discovering the nature of reality itself. 

What makes Dark City so compelling is its atmosphere. The chiaroscuro lighting, the trench coats, the femme fatales—they’re all classic noir tropes, but reimagined in a setting that defies logic. The protagonist, John Murdoch, wakes up with no memory and is hunted for crimes he doesn’t remember committing. His journey mirrors JC Denton’s in Deus Ex: both are men caught in systems they don’t understand, searching for truth in a world built on lies. But while Deus Ex leans into cybernetic augmentation and political conspiracy, Dark City dives into metaphysical horror and the manipulation of human consciousness. 

In a world where reality is fabricated and memories are manipulated, Shell Beach becomes a psychological anchor. It’s the dream that keeps civilization from unraveling. Without it, the citizens might succumb to despair, realizing they’re trapped in an artificial prison. But with it, they cling to the belief that there’s meaning, that there’s a place where the sun shines and the ocean waves crash—a place that validates their humanity. 

This mirrors a deep philosophical truth: that human beings are spiritual creatures, wired to seek meaning beyond the material. As Nietzsche observed, even in a world where “God is dead,” the human quest for purpose refuses to die. Shell Beach is the embodiment of that quest—a symbol of the divine, of redemption, of a place where the soul might finally rest. It’s the imagined Eden that gives structure to chaos, the dream that sustains civilization when truth is elusive. 

In this way, Dark City becomes more than a sci-fi noir—it becomes a spiritual allegory. Just as religious philosophy asks what lies beyond death, what the soul is, and what our relationship to the divine might be, Shell Beach asks: what do we hold onto when everything else is false? The answer, Dark City suggests, is hope. Hope in a higher truth. Hope in a place of eternal redemption. Hope in the possibility that, even in a world built on illusion, the human spirit can still imagine—and reach for—something real.