The long overdue _Blade Runner_ thread

so is everyone smoking up before reviewing this or what

Trendacosta's review at io9 seems a little more sane than the rest (I fear to imagine what I would have read if it had gone to Lussier):

https://io9.gizmodo.com/blade-runner-2049-is-gorgeous-long-brilliant-pretent-1818967999

Two representative bits:

The plot is straight-up a Blade Runner fanfic. That’s not a criticism; I love fanfic. But the savvy fan is going to pick up on plot cues faster than the average person. And while the first movie’s actual plot is easy to describe, the sequel’s so sprawling, so world-changing, that it defies a two-sentence description. I am not going to spoil the plot, but down to sly references and cameos, the whole movie feels like a fan getting to play in their favorite sandbox.

...

There’s no way to excise to the not-great parts of this movie from the great parts. Blade Runner 2049 is a gestalt, and while some will be enchanted by it, others will not. There are a number of reveals and twists that worked and fed into the themes of consciousness, identity, and connection that the first film explored. And there’s at least one major moment that felt a bit like a cop out. Everyone is going to react differently to this movie—everyone’s going to have some things they love, and some things they can’t stand. I’m still not sure if it was worth all of the time it demanded, but the fact that I can’t stop turning it over in my head is a point in its favor.

Which, fine, I'll go with flawed though watchable as opposed to "OMG NEXT LEVEL GENIUS." She also credits the actresses with the best roles/performances.

I somehow missed the second "short story" clip by Luke Scott, possibly because I was turned off by Jared Leto in the first. It's good? Dave Bautista is a real gem in recent movies, a hulk of a man who has this emotional vulnerability. Looking forward to seeing him in 2049, at least.

The plot is straight-up a Blade Runner fanfic. That’s not a criticism; I love fanfic.

yeah this is definitely going to suck

so it's robot porn?

things ridley scott never had (except possibly briefly and entirely inadvertently)

1: a "revolutionary cyberpunk sensibility"

exhibit A:

https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/alienanthology/images/a/ab/Engineer.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120630195433

so it's robot porn?

we can but hope

Never have I been so suspicious of so many positive reviews.

idk maybe this is actually pretty decent you guys, yeesh

y'all almost as bad as nerds who pile on critics who give a bad review to the nerd movie they haven't even seen yet

og Blade Runner is a brilliant and visionary aesthetic achievement that also happens to be a zzzzzzz movie imo so maybe i don't hold the same protective reverence

y'all almost as bad as nerds who pile on critics who give a bad review to the nerd movie they haven't even seen yet

― circa1916, Saturday, September 30, 2017 4:08 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes one of these things is definitely almost as bad as the other

it's too bad they didn't make an all-female blade runner

y'all almost as bad as nerds who pile on critics who give a bad review to the nerd movie they haven't even seen yet

― circa1916, Saturday, September 30, 2017 4:08 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes one of these things is definitely almost as bad as the other

Well I CONTEND... that it almost is?

those nerds routinely send death and rape threats so uh maybe not

yeah, we're used to disappointment and we only blame ourselves

Well who really knows what kinda shit Ned’s been e-mailing these ppl.

xp

jk Ned <3

Tsk.

The Strange Case of Dr Raggett and Mr Ned

https://media.giphy.com/media/yR84fJ0VVBHeE/giphy.gif

Of course.

http://lwlies.com/reviews/blade-runner-2049/

well we have one dissenting voice at least

that's weirdly reassuring

up to 4 dissents on RT, including the AP

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/review-gorgeous-2049-breaks-blade-runner-spell-50176968

Do RT scores tend to peak early and decrease over time? I heard something like that for one movie recently, where the explanation was that critics who are interested enough (or invited) to attend advance screenings are also more likely to give positive reviews.

yes that almost always happens

this is one of the many, many reasons RT is terrible and should never be used by anyone

it is completely unreliable and there are often gaping holes in many of its filmographies. I can't think why I use it more than imdb, but for some reason I do.

This still of Harrison Ford accidentally punching Ryan Gosling for real during a Blade Runner 2049 scene is amazing. pic.twitter.com/3uKIxHo1AT

— Toucan Dan (@GolazoDan) September 30, 2017

friend saw it last night and said it was pretty but a bore and descends into the usual scifi action punchy punchy shooty shooty cliches

Gosling has little about him that suggests android, unless future scientists are planning to work extremely hard on a "charmingly bemused" setting.

lol

(xps) "accidentally"

but that is the disposition I naturally ascribe to most robots. I think

more bemused than human

Yeah, that's basically Data.

Gosling in Drive seemed androidlike

thx 4 nu-screenname mh

Drive seemed like it was directed by a Tony Scott replicant as well.

speaking of Tony Scott! NYT review:

“[Warner Bros.] has been unusually insistent in its pleas to critics not to reveal plot points. That’s fair enough, but it’s also evidence of how imaginatively impoverished big-budget movies have become.

“Like any great movie, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner cannot be spoiled. It repays repeated viewing because its mysteries are too deep to be solved and don’t depend on the sequence of events.

“Denis Villeneuve’s film, by contrast, is a carefully engineered narrative puzzle, and its power dissipates as the pieces snap into place. As sumptuous and surprising as it is from one scene to the next, it lacks the creative excess, the intriguing opacity and the haunting residue of its predecessor.

“As such, Blade Runner 2049 stands in relation to Blade Runner almost exactly as K stands in relation to Deckard before the two meet: as a more docile, less rebellious ‘improvement,’ tweaked and retrofitted to meet consumer demand.

“But now and then — when Ryan Gosling‘s K and Harrison Ford‘s Deckard are knocking around the old gambling palace; when K visits an enigmatic mind-technician played by Mackenzie Davis — you get an inkling that something else might have been possible. Something freer, more romantic, more heroic, less determined by the corporate program.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/movies/blade-runner-2049-review-ryan-gosling-harrison-ford.html?_r=0

Like any great movie, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner cannot be spoiled.

truthbomb

sometimes a classic movie gets a sequel that isn't too shabby. 2010 is not bad at all, and The Two Jakes is a bit of a mess but it's interesting and occasionally outstanding (and features a terrific supporting performance from Harvey Keitel.) I'm hoping this is similar to that, and less along the lines of what Ridley was doing w/his recent Alien followups.

"Good news! It's the best thing since The Godfather Part III!"

apparently i said the exact same thing upthread! anyway...

If you want to know how ridiculous Rotten Tomatoes is, the Scott review is categorized as "fresh." Low expectations run the world.

Ned otm

David Edelstein is even more ambivalent than Scott ("I thought it was okay") but I'm not sure I ever read this before:

It’s permissible to answer the question, “Does Blade Runner 2049 have any more connection to the paranoid visionary Philip K. Dick and his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? than Blade Runner?” A bit. It’s a little less noir, a little more philosophical. Dick didn’t think Blade Runner was very Dick-ian. He didn’t live to see the movie (he died of a stroke at 53 in 1982), but he got hold of the script after Ridley Scott said in an interview that he’d found the novel too difficult to read.

Dick’s approval of the screenplay had more than a touch of irony. “It was terrific,” he wrote. “It bore no relation to the book. Oddly, in some ways it was better. What my story will become is one titanic lurid collision of androids being blown up, androids killing humans, general confusion and murder, all very exciting to watch. Makes my book seem dull by comparison.” He added, “As a writer, though, I’d like to see some of my ideas, not just special effects of my ideas, used.”

http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/blade-runner-2049-cant-match-its-predecessor.html

xxxxxxxxposts RT is just fine if you do more than just glance at the numerical score and actually read the linked reviews in a "all in one place" setting.

it's just too many people mistake it for a score that an individual "Rotten Tomatoes" panel gave it

or think the % reflects the level of enjoyment rather than the % of critics that RT determined "liked" the movie after reading the reviews

Absolutely, it's fine as an aggregator of current reviews