MovieChat Forums > Dark City (1998) Discussion > so what happens after the end?

so what happens after the end?


They dont remember earth or in which part of the universe they are located? also these people are going to be confined to a single city area for the rest of their lives and they will know it. wont they go nuts or something?

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The protagonist will have to shoulder the burden of changing the landscape by popular demand? If that is the case, he will go nuts and reduce the population to a manageable few.

Progressively, I think he will work with the aliens to maintain the population's ignorance of reality. The aliens get what they 'needed' and the citizens get to live out their 'happy' lives. Win-win.

Whether there will be any population growth is debatable.











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Est modus in rebus sunt certi denique fines quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum Goldilocks

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He eventually turns he whole city-disk into a re-creation of ancient egypt, and takes and royal architect job for himself.

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Most people in the world do tend to stay in the same area most of the time anyway so it wouldn't be that much different.

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That depends on the fundamental reality of Dark City.
-It appears to be a space station orbiting some sun-like star. Maybe the subjects were abducted by the Strangers. Maybe they are able to contact Earth and get rescued.
-Maybe it's all a VR concept, and there's some way of down-staging to plain old Reality.
-Maybe it's an Inception type dream world, and they just wake up somewhere, after a certain cue.



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The story is king.

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I'm in the minority who feels the hopeful note of the movie's end is a false-facade, that John is arguably worse off for his revelation.

He is now burdened with the knowledge of everything that has happened, knows he had a life he will never be able to recall, perhaps a family lost forever, in a place he couldn't even imagine (someone brought up contacting Earth - John doesn't even know the WORD 'Earth' - that won't be happening). He'll also be responsible for the people of this city going forward. I feel the film has a VERY dark ending, or at least future, implied for its protagonist.

On the flip side, he's about to hook up with pre-anorexia Jennifer Connelly, which might just make up for all of the above.

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He will continue creating and continue forgetting until he will find out his real name was Bastian Balthazar Bux, which will allow him to return home to his father.

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And his father is Ego, the Living Planet no less.

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They don't know where they come from. In this world, Earth may not even be a real place but just a part of the backstory invented by the Strangers - like Shell Beach. Or maybe it does exist. Who knows?

What I gathered is that the giant machine at the center has a spherical radius of effect. Within that sphere, anyone capable of using it can tweak basic physics any way they want. Turn energy into matter, change matter from one form to another, create light, change the force of gravity, like Neo in The Matrix except in real life. I assume interstellar travel is also possible. Of course, space is the next best thing to infinite. Without knowing the location of their homeworld (Earth?) simply being mobile won't get them there.

Perhaps Murdoch will use the machine to spawn new machines just like it. Bigger ones even. Teach the population how to tune, the way he does. Even if they never get home they could build a great civilization using the Strangers' technology. And some of the surviving Strangers could just tell the humans where they came from. Perhaps in exchange for a promise that John and the others will do what they can to help - for all we know their race could still be saved.

Almost anything can happen going forward. That's the message I got. This is a whole new beginning; given the ability to shape reality with thought alone, where things go is limited only by your imagination ... The End.

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They don't know where they come from. In this world, Earth may not even be a real place but just a part of the backstory invented by the Strangers - like Shell Beach. Or maybe it does exist. Who knows?

...

Perhaps Murdoch will use the machine to spawn new machines just like it. Bigger ones even. Teach the population how to tune, the way he does. Even if they never get home they could build a great civilization using the Strangers' technology. And some of the surviving Strangers could just tell the humans where they came from. Perhaps in exchange for a promise that John and the others will do what they can to help - for all we know their race could still be saved.

Almost anything can happen going forward. That's the message I got. This is a whole new beginning; given the ability to shape reality with thought alone, where things go is limited only by your imagination ... The End.


Brilliant! But we must not forget:

he's about to hook up with pre-anorexia Jennifer Connelly, which might just make up for all of the above.


As moviegoers, we tend to look for "neat solutions" that fit our pre-programmed notions of how movies SHOULD end. "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "Once" come to mind in the romance genre - we're surprised (and in both cases, should be pleased) that the protagonists DON'T find the love they're after, and in fact should not.

We expect to see Murdoch return everyone home, so it maybe never occurs to us that, because he can "tune," he's as "at home" as he ever needs to be.

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after rewatching this after many a year I just realized that the premise for the aliens was rather short-sighted They can traverse space and time but can't extend their mortality so they use the very short-lived and biologically dependent human race as lab mice to figure out the secrets of immortality? Maybe if they were working within the framework of human faith and religion and how the aliens found this aspect of humanity very puzzling because then it would make sense that they were intrigued by the belief in a supreme being that can control space, time, and immortality?

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