Netflix Seeks Its Own Star Wars, Harry Potter-Esque Movie Franchise | Hacker News Reader

Netflix Seeks Its Own Star Wars, Harry Potter-Esque Movie Franchise

cbr.com

13 pointsilamont8 comments

> If you have that kind of imagination — like the Wachowskis with The Matrix

I'm hesitant to say "based on", but the movie Dark City from 1998 (a year before The Matrix) is remarkably similar to it.

I only saw it around 2005 and the plot points for the first half of the two movies fit so closely I went looking to see if it was acknowledged anywhere. Other than people noticing the same thing, I don't recall finding anything, though.

Dark City is one of my favorite movies. Other than the color palette and genre, it has almost nothing in common with The Matrix. The plot beats are very different between the two movies.

What beats do you think are the same or similar between the two?

It was, as I said, around 15 years ago (and I haven't seen either one since then), so the details on why I thought that are rather fuzzy. It was strong enough that it's still the first thing I think of when seeing a statement akin to the one in the article.

A handful of points from comparing the Wikipedia plots and how I may have linked them together:

* Guided by the Doctor / Morpheus (or Trinity?) remotely (phone/computer prompts)

* Pursued by seemingly-supernatural Strangers / Agents (with subnote of how the Matrix alters the world in the Agents favor, and how the Strangers do the same directly themselves)

* Persistent feeling of the world being "wrong" somehow

* Getting their powers (vague memory: I think Murdoch used his powers more like how the humans did in The Matrix, than how the Strangers used them in Dark City)

1998-99, there were at least 5 movies about simulations: Dark City, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Existenz, and The Thirteenth Floor.

> George Lucas created Star Wars [...] we feel like we're the place to take the chance on those types of innovative ideas and filmmakers.

I'm glad he acknowledged this. Great stories don't arise from committees. All of the great ones I can think of came from one or two people. Even so, I did not expect the final trilogy of Star Wars, groupthought up by Disney, to be that incoherent!

That seems to be a unique and market differentiating strategy.

This article is interesting because of its fluff level. What did the PR firm think they would accomplish with this? Was Netflix not seeking to emulate the biggest film franchises of all time?

Anyone here think that the 80s book series from the UK called "Tim and the Hidden People" would make a good movie series?

Don't we all

Reply on news.ycombinator.com