The long overdue _Blade Runner_ thread

possibly this is where my "pickle jesus death scene" reading was pointing to (except without all the reading and thinking joining A to er Q or whatever)

Sports presenter on World Service this morning trying to do an introduction this morning: "we've heard a lot about Blade Runner 2014"

This was very good, but I agree with the problems mentioned here. Too long, too slow. Villeneuve seemed to want to match that aspect of the original, but I didn't like that much about the original either. The visuals and score were excellent - so many gorgeous sets and musical moments. The plot seemed secondary, as in written to showcase the sets, but was still interesting enough. The nonstop advertising of real-life companies was weird. I'm having a hard time putting into words why, but usually you see that kind of thing in more satirical, less serious scifi

sorry of this is dimm or literal but how come deckard's alive if he's a replicant? did tyrell make him "special" too? in the trailer i thought for sure that was primary among the "questions" K wanted to ask ol' ironsides

"too bad she won't live! but then again who does? present company excepted naturally"

(little-noted variant in one of the many cuts of the original)

the original film's nexus six models had built-in obsolescence. which is why poor roy survives a brutal fight only to flicker out like a candle at the end of its wick

I think there's a surprising amount of wiggle room in 2049 on the Deckard replicant question. Wallace postulates that his entire existence was a set-up for the destiny he had, and the base assumption is that if a replicant has a child it has to be with another replicant, but there's pleasingly no "AND THAT'S WHEN I FOUND OUT THAT I WAS A REPLICANT, TOO" dialogue

that would explain why they made a point of bringing olmos back, to help underscore the possibility that deckard could still be alive as a human, too

I kind of want to watch this again but don't want to leave the house, hrrrm

The olmos scene seemed more to raise the idea that Gant is also a replicant. It's replicants all the way down!

His retirement home looked pretty comfy for a run-down dystopia.

the police unions still make sure they have a pension plan, even if the rest of unionized labor broke down

yeah as a cop he's not one of the "little people"

the police station building reminded me a little of judge dredd comics

to the extent that either of these blade runner movies is "about" anything they seem less to do with their ostensible subjects (what separates humans from robots etc) and more about memories, and the function they serve, and about photography as a proxy for memory. photos are sort of like fake memories. reproducible, mechanical versions of memories. but in some ways these fake memories are even better than the original: they can be studied in detail, they don't fade (or at least not much) (and in the OG blade runner they can even be expanded, angles discovered that weren't there). in the new movie they extend this: the memory-maker, creating memories from whole cloth (usually) uses a device that looks essentially like a very high-end camera. the memories she creates are, like photographs, transferable, reproducible, exchangeable, they can enter into an economy. in the OG blade runner this is said to give the creators of replicants control over them. (how much is debatable?) but it seems like ana's thrown a monkey wrench into this system of control. she's inserted a real memory (illegally!) that destabilizes K, makes him question himself..

the read on the last bit would then be that rather than be exploited by the revolting replicants, and kill deckard for the sake of the saviour chld, in the process probably 'dying for a cause', what he does is again to side with his wish, or fantasy, of deckard being his father, even though he recognizes that he is not. it's because of a memory that's not his and a father that's not his, but he somehow acts as if that doesn't matter, as far as the realization of his desires is concerned.

still gotta work that out.

― j., Saturday, October 21, 2017

but but but he does die for a cause. and you've named it. he knows deckard's not his father and whatserface isn't his sister, but giving his life for them makes it so. et voila, he becomes a real boy.

tbf that's more a faith than a cause

(unless he actually IS robot jesus)

don't feel a strong need to split hairs but "in the service of life" strikes me as qualifying, causewise. it's not for nothing that the score pulls out that particular cue when he lies down on the steps.

i was laying emphasis on 'cause' being political, and his purpose, as he puts it to deckard, is, 'go meet your daughter', i.e. personal, private.

ok, looped in two friends and saw it again

i am the best replicant

rewatched blade runner 1 today -- the ending is good & iconic but overall the sequel is better imo

i just remembered the scene back at the farm when K spots the wonky piano key. v "clue from silent hill iii". i expected a triangle to appear hovering in mid-air with "ACTION" written above it (this is no bad thing)

something grim and nihilistic has happened to the subsequent generations of replicants. the new ones, like K, are still given memories, presumably to provide the same "psychic cushion" that Nexus 6s were. but they seem, unlike Rachel, to know quite well that those memories are false! can you imagine the cold depression that would envelop you??

i just remembered that deckard has a very nice grand piano in his hideout, and -- presumably hoping instantly to find a further clue -- K plays a single note on it

i like the idea that replicants can play the piano and apparently often do

knowing how wd be quite a useful fake memory tbh

like joe 90

an impression i had from the first third or so was that K's humanity made him a better detective. the depiction of his perceptual capacities clouds this somewhat, but even apart from that it just seemed as if he was much more of a noticing type (dolly in 'bleak house': 'I had always rather a noticing way—not a quick way, oh, no!—a silent way of noticing what passed before me and thinking I should like to understand it better.'), because of the interest he was taking in things.

re photography and memory, it seems as if the structure of their hunts for replicants assumes a kind of primacy of seeing it with your own eyes: the telling detail is the sight of the serial number. so i wonder what it means to have that be a detail that is visible only with instrumentation, typically only after death?, and at that typically only noticeable by replicants with heightened senses.

i am the best replicant

― mh, Saturday, October 21, 2017

she's a replican!

lol i almost made this joke earlier

clearly this should be the motto of freysa's resistance. it is snappier and frankly better in every way than the somewhat plodding "there is nothing more human than to die for a cause you believe in" which, you know, let's face it, could also be the ISIS slogan

"there is nothing more robot than to crush tiny humans"

about to finally see this, maybe 25 or 30 people here for small theater Sunday afternoon matinee, not bad.

i've crushed heads you people wouldn't believe...
https://i.imgur.com/UmfJY4F.png

Huh, flagging app ate everything I wrote.

Anyway, I loved this, utterly engrossing and hypnotic/dreamlike, which reminded me of some atmospheric horror films more than sci-fi. (Thinking specifically of movies like Near Dark, for some reason.) A million times better than I ever would have expected. I can totally see how someone might reasonably say this is better than the original, with the obvious caveat that without the original there would be no sequel.

There were times I felt it was a little too in love with its own ideas, but there were a lot of ideas, mostly really good, and the few bad ideas were generally fleeting (like anything with Leto and the rest of the very Matrix-y uprising stuff, none of which gets much screen time). At the very least, the hologram love scene was one of the most beautiful things I've seen in movies in a long time.

Avoided almost all spoilers, too, which was satisfying. Now to catch up on reviews!

(Overheard a couple leaving the theatre, with the woman telling her partner "Wow, that was pretty futuristic!")

nice

i believe you that the sync sex scene was beautiful but i was too busy getting absolutely SQUICKED OUT to appreciate it. truly unsettling

Well, that, too.

There is so much to unpack in that sex scene. An AI hologram who is human in almost every regard but physical who hires a physical replicant to more or less shut down and become the AI so that the AI can interact with a replicant who is beginning to think he may at least be part human (thanks to, in a nice twist, memories he thought were implanted that turn out to be more or less real).

Come on, it was the worst sex scene in a movie since the cave rave fuck in the Matrix sequel.

Well, at the very least they cut before they had sex. And also there was no rave. Or cave. And it was not in the Matrix sequel. And it was initiated by robots designed to do exactly what they were doing. So ...

(BTW, I am assuming there is such a scene in a Matrix sequel, because I can't remember shit about the other two except ... albino twins?)

...this was a slog, folks. A total fucking slog.

it was great. best looking + definitely best sounding movie i've seen in a long time. unbelievable sound

is this the third movie you've seen this year?

second

...see more movies.

i would if most of them were as enjoyable as this was!

Of all the criticisms one could levy, "a slog" seems pretty silly to me.The slog is the point. I wish it was twice as long. I mean, "see more movies?" Most big budget Hollywood movies (if we are talking those) are just as long, ten times as loud, and 100 times stupider. I'll take this slog over those.

i almost fell asleep in "death of stalin" but not in this fwiw

The slog is the point. I wish it was twice as long.

I...I ask this earnestly. I am in deep concern for your health. Are you suffering from insomnia?

To quote a wise man: see more movies, Ned.

it's true, i (man of many movies) have never seen a movie this long that didn't leave me squirming or checking my watch. this movie earned its length

I was for a tad fooled into thinking this would be the third (right?) franchise reboot thing with Harrison Ford reuniting with his son.

Anyway, hated it, loved it - I'll take this over "Tron: Legacy" for oddly analogous sequels. So there's your low bar, short attention span theater goers.