A quick rundown: Max Payne was a video game as I described - noirish, playful but very dark, and influenced by then-current action films like The Matrix with bullet time game mechanics, as well as comic books. I enjoyed it very much. I actually hadn't seen Payback yet, and I wouldn't see it for a few years. When I did, I felt it was similar to Max Payne. After that, they made a movie of Max Payne starring Mark Wahlberg. It was stuck in development hell for years and, when it finally arrived, this painful process showed. It lost all of the snarky fun of the game and replaced it with try-hard "cool" and "edginess". It didn't feel good. They also cast Mila Kunis as the femme fatale, and between That '70s Show and Family Guy, I just couldn't take her seriously as the sultry siren/action girl she needed to be.
The writing was mediocre, the whole thing was a pretty run-of-the-mill action movie, and it was very disappointing.
From my recent plunge into my noir lists I've accumulated over the years, as well as my old love of the genre, I can't recall it extending into the '60s. It sorta died off in the '50s - in terms of popularity - I guess as colour went in. Of course, as the American world became more optimistic throughout that decade, the desire for the catharsis of noir dwindled, too.
I guess Beatlemania and noir don't mix. I think the neo-noir surfaced as the Summer of Love died at Altamont and Vietnam plodded on and on.
I don't think The Matrix ripped off Dark City. They get that a lot because of similar subject matter (dark dream world, strange overlords, mind-over-matter powers) but the screenplays that dictated thematic similarities would have been in-place by the time the Wachowskis would have been able to see DC. Of course, they might have read the screenplay or spoken to Alex Proyas about it. That's always possible.
I think they get that a lot because they shared sets. But, no, ultimately, I think they were both (or all three, as it were) influenced by the same sources. They both took inspiration from the same predecessors in sci-fi and comic books, and we wound up with similar films. If anything, I’d expect that the Wachowskis would have been influenced by Proyas’ The Crow – or even the original comic book by James O’Barr – as much or moreso than Dark City.
Anderson is a terrific, inventive filmmaker with such a wonderful, unique style. I haven’t seen a film of his I haven’t liked, although I will say that I thought The Grand Budapest Hotel was pushing it as far as “peak Anderson.” Any more indulgent in his personal style and it might get a little tiresome. I’m not saying TGBH was bad – I loved it – just that it was steeped so heavily in Anderson’s quirks that to push further might sacrifice actual story quality.
I can certainly believe you haven’t seen all his films. There are plenty of missing films in my viewing history, and anybody’s, I should think. There are simply too many movies to expect any one person to have seen them all. Goodness, you’d have to have watched a movie a week since 1950 to keep up. More these days, with all the streaming stuff coming out.
I saw Rushmore on an aeroplane. Anderson’s visual sense was still lovely on the small screen. It’s a nice movie, although it’s definitely an early work; it’s not fully immersed in his style. A favourite is hard to pick, but I’m awfully fond of The Darjeeling Limited. I haven’t seen The French Dispatch. I’ll look it up. I also really like Isle of Dogs. I liked that one more than his other animated film, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is also great. Oh, and I think The Life Aquatic might be his funniest film, although perhaps not his best. They’re all great, though.
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