The long overdue _Blade Runner_ thread

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.

xpost -- why, though? Seriously, what did it earn? How did it earn it? I have no problem with longueurs per se but I sure as hell have problems with forced dullardry, especially when intoned by Jared Leto being an asshole.

let's just pretend those parts weren't in it, that's what I've done and I'm much happier for it

It would be a start.

I just assumed Leto (whose character just vanishes?) was there in case of future "Blade Runner" sequels. Right? Because he and the barely there resistance both set up something much bigger than this movie, and Ridley has threatened just that. But both are so inconsequential in here they were easy to overlook. I mean, I didn't like Robin Wright much in this, either, but all those minor characters, they're not much of this. It'd be like saying "man, this was OK, but Dave Batista and the Somali pirate guy from 'Captain Phillips' really ruined it."

Per forced dullardry, I really did watch it as a sort of waking nightmare, just people left behind in this worthless world, where there's no longer a huge hurry to do much of anything but wait out the clock (which is sort of the replicant's life right there).

A couple of other details I loved. Gosling lowering his gaze as he passes his (antagonistic) co-workers, or him asking Harrison Ford if the dog is real and Ford being all "I don't know, ask the dog." Which really gets to the crux of the film's whole real/not real internal dialectic. Is it being born that makes you real? Having kids? Having a "soul?" Was the VR AI "real"? Also, it's pretty well implied that *all* of the replicants have some degree of free will, so what is it that keeps them in line in the first place? Is it just a sort of fatalism? Lack of ambition? These are the kinds of ambiguities that keep me intrigued rather than having me cry "plot hole."

Dr. Badger is one of the best characters in the film. He could get you a horse.

btw, on second viewing, if people really care about the technical replicant lifespan junk: the serial number on Rachel’s bones begins with N7, meaning she was a Nexus 7

technical nerdery like that is all fun for fandom obsession but doesn’t do anything in service of an enjoyable plot, but that should stop people from acting like it’s a plot hole

the other thing that was really obvious after rewatching was the JOI marketing: “Does what you want” and “Says what you want”. She was never a person as much as we want to think she’s experiencing something great and human, especially in the rain scene. She’s echoing all of th insecurities K has voiced back at him in a comforting way. I also wondered why I blanked on the musical cue the first time — the little announcement ringtone for Joi is Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf

Yeah, I caught that (referenced in my link, below, too). But before that, there's a lot going on with JOI. Like her self-sacrifice at the end, is she doing that because it's what she wants, or ... what he wants. There's also the implication that she learns and evolves as an AI, too, and that after spending long enough with a owner/user, she more or less becomes unique. Which is to say, more human. But yeah, her empathy/sympathy ... was she playing a role, as programmed, or ever anything more than that? She's not a person, but was her reaction to K making her more human, per the rain scene, just for his benefit?

I just read Anthony Lane's review, and props to him if he was, unaided, able to figure out that the robot-delivered interrogation Gosling gets requires him to quote back broken up bits from Nabokov's "Pale Fire." A book that, obviously not coincidentally, Gosling has in his apartment and his AI offers to read even though, by his own observation, she doesn't like it. I'm not smart enough to parse what this may or may not mean, but this person took a stab:

https://medium.com/@mariabustillos/blade-runner-2049-is-revealed-through-the-novel-pale-fire-dd9f04768439

More data, more questions, via Gosling:

The Baseline was always a scene to me that held the key to understanding K. I wasn't sure what that key was during the preparation period of the film. In the script, the character was meant to read a small passage from Nabokov's Pale Fire, but there wasn't any insight as to why.

In order to better understand the meaning of the passage and to give it a personal meaning, I enlisted the help of a wonderful vocal coach named Natsuko Ohama. She suggested a technique called 'Dropping In.' In this technique, you explore the meaning of each word of the text by exhausting every conceivable context in which the would could be used.

The process is very long and repetitive, but it has a trance-inducing effect that can be very powerful and unsettling. I felt that if that technique were extrapolated into K's experience, it could be used to penetrate his psyche. I believed we could learn through a process of psychological erosion what his true emotional state was.

I was very grateful to Denis for incorporating it into the film, because it unlocked my understanding of K, but also provided insight into the state of mind of those who would force this burden upon him."

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Going to see this tomorrow. Last thing I watched at the cinema I think was The Thing (prequel).

Guy who I'm going with is the biggest BR fan on this planet, so can't wait for his ultra sonic tantrum in the car journey afterwards (based on info from this thread)

He'll love it.

A book that, obviously not coincidentally, Gosling has in his apartment and his AI offers to read even though, by his own observation, she doesn't like it.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, October 22, 2017

The Bustillos piece is way too literal to work and Pale Fire "reveals" nothing imo, but it does offer an interesting lens, and obviously significant. It's in Joshi's office as well.

re phones mentioned upthread, his digital girlfriend doubles as a phone so wtf

actually I found this to be the single most affecting scene in the moving

*movie

Saw this last night. Loved it.

There are some minor points I could complain about, but it would be nitpicking. The visuals, the sound, the deep world that they created for this movie were amazing. This is why I go to the movies.

well, mk2 stayed awake throughout, and talked about it all the way home.
said he loved it.
i'd call that a much better result than i expected.
i thought it was just wonderful, and a really good way to continue the storyline from the original.

What a grand lark to STILL NOT TELL US FOR SURE if Deck is robo-Deck or not. A brilliant wheeze that, i bet Hampton Fancher was pissing himself.

It was everything I wanted it to be without knowing it. I even liked Hans Zimmer's contributions for once – much like Villeneuve himself, Zimmer and Wallfisch struck an ideal balance between homage, imitation and continuation. And Fancher managed to augur a third instalment without cheapening the plot. I'm glad I temporarily overcame my irrational, newfound – well, it's only been ten years or so… – aversion toward movies and TV series in general.

yeah i haven't been to a movie in years, that probably helped, even if my showing did get dumped in the 'little theater' rather than the big room where i saw it

Theater sound mixing is so weird now -- the second place I saw the film was way too loud, and the bass crossover was off so dialogue almost got lost in the rumble at times, but there were certain parts where the spatial mix was amazing. The scene where K's in the Las Vegas street and hears the piano was actually obvious! In my first viewing you couldn't quite hear the piano, even when he went inside and could hear Deckard playing upstairs.

There were also some parts where there was music playing from a source in the background and it really sounded as if it was coming from the corner behind the characters.

The transition scenes in the car were extra BWAAAAAAM

yeah, I actually wonder how much my enjoyment of this movie is due to seeing it on in an Imax theater which had a very good (and very loud) sound system.

A significant part of it, I'm sure, but there's nothing wrong with that. It's vision and sound, after all…