Dark City
by Frank Luria
Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks
ISBN: 0-312-96343-2
Rating: 6/10
Novel adaptations of films are hardly literary. Most of them tend to be somewhat silly and contrived and except for a few good books written by talented writers, hardly worth the print they are written on. Despite its intriguing subject matter, Dark City–a novelization of the 90s cult classic of the same name–continues in the same vein, featuring almost scene by scene duplications of the events of the film. The result is an empty shell of a book that fails to engage the reader’s mind, leaving them wanting something more.
Like the movie, the book revolves around a main character, John Murdoch. Waking up in a tub one evening, he spots a dead woman in his bed. Terrified, he flees the hotel where he is staying as he tries to hide out from the police, particularly police inspector Bumstead, who believes him to be the infamous ‘Mad Killer’ who is slaying prostitutes. With the help of a doctor Schreber and Murdoch’s wife, Emma, he slowly comes to realize that the city is held captive by an alien race, called the Strangers, and that only he has the key to the human race’s survival. Racing against time–and his own feeling of inadequacy–Murdoch struggles to expel the Strangers, and return the city to its former glory.
Written by Frank Lauria, who wrote the 1977 book Communion (not to be confused with the Whitney Strieber book of the same name), the novel holds true to his trademark synthesizing of H.P. Lovecraft and Raymond Chandler (hint: the plot has a lot to do with the stealing of human souls). But whereas Lovecraft and Chandler were able to take their own ideas and environments and ‘make them new’, to quote Ezra Pound, the two-dimensional characters and clichéd noir dialogue of the novel reduce the book to little more than a parroting of the pulpy films of the 1930s and ’40s that screenwriter Alex Proyas faithfully tried to recreate. While this is an adaptation and not a paperback original, the purpose of a novelization is to expound on the characters of the movie, not reproduce the film page by page. In contrast to his original works, including the Doctor Orient series, this feels like sort of a let-down.
At $5.99, “Dark City” the novel is worth donating to Goodwill.
John Winn – Staff Writer
Buzzy Multimedia- Sci-Fi & Fantasy Audio Books & Funny T-Shirts
Thanks for giving us the heads up on this one. The movie seemed to have had unfulfilled potential and it would have been great if Frank Luria could have taken it to the next level.
Darryl G,
I agree. But adaptations of anything in general are mostly bad (with some exceptions–Dexter, for example). Those that do it well, like the Colletons with the Dexter series, tend to know how to shape and craft the story and characters, sometimes far better than the original creators (this has been one of the main criticisms of Jeff Lindsay’s work on the novels).
Generally, original content is good. But there are some stories/adaptations out there that are really good. Just look at some of the fan fiction on the Internet. Emphasis some.
I remember seeing this movie when it came out and i thought it was terrible but saw it because the star was cute. the city moved around at night on its own and any progress the guy made to figuring out what was going on was always coming undone. and then it got rediclious when they said it was all about aliens.
Juliet,
I agree, Kiefer Sutherland is a good actor. But the script was kind of rote(Think “Mirrors”). I think if they had better writers then perhaps it would’ve have been nearly as bad. If you want to see Kiefer at his best, check out “Beat” (About William Burroughs, and no it’s not sci-fi, but Courtney Love is in it!).