Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

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flyonthewall2983
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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#176 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:51 pm

It still may not be enough for anyone to want to approach it as a franchise, which I'm fine with. I don't see the potential for a third film to be as powerful as this. A big part of that power admittedly is the 35 years in between the two, in that this feels all the more special because it's picking up where something special to a lot of us left off. And, maybe rightly so, as this film may not be as so starkly influential in people's lives, another installment would seem to be doomed to diminishing returns.

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aox
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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#177 Post by aox » Sun Oct 15, 2017 3:16 pm


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zedz
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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#178 Post by zedz » Sun Oct 15, 2017 3:49 pm

I was never a big fan of the original movie in any of its versions / revisions (a milestone in art direction, sure, but dramatically inert), so I actually preferred this sequel.

Visually, I thought it built on the world of the original in a thoughtful and interesting manner. Its vision of the city isn't as immersive (we've already seen that, however, and the more impressionistic take on it this time around evokes the original in a pragmatic way rather than re-engineering the wheel), but the view we get of the areas outside it offer a lot more visual variety than Scott's film, and is far better considered than the coda of the original (a scene so conceptually dumb it squanders a lot of accrued goodwill).

I feel like this film also did more interesting things with the key concepts of the film, as has been alluded to in a couple of the more thoughtful posts above:
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There's a very nice use of misdirection with the 'predictable' twist that K is The Chosen One, when he turns out to be Just Another Replicant. Supposedly, he's been biologically programmed to follow orders, but he manages to overcome that the moment he believes he's Not Just Another Replicant - and, more crucially, even when he realises this is not the case. It's the cast-iron programming that turns out to be the illusion, and so the replicants' docility and submission is 'outed' as hegenomy, not biology. That's a rather powerful and timely political idea to find in a Hollywood blockbuster, and I find it more subversive and interesting than the simple and sentimental homilies about the nature of the human in the first film.

There's even an interesting secondary fake-out sitting alongside it in the film in the form of K's girlfriend, a Wallace Corporation creation you keep expecting to betray him, however inadvertently. In fact, I was mildly annoyed for some time at how stupid K was to continue confiding in an app designed and owned by the evil corporation that's out to get him. But in the end, she's the one that stays true until the bitter end, setting an example for K of an even less 'human' intelligence behaving selflessly. Bizarrely, this turns out to be the most important emotional relationship in the film.
It's always a shame to see any film of any complexity 'resolved' by a fistfight, and I couldn't see how K could imagine his parting gesture was a good idea (it's a script doctor's idea of a 'good idea', but not this character's), but I enjoyed the film and admired its relentlessly glacial pace.

I also thought some of the esoteric film references were hilarious. It will be a long time before we see another big budget Hollywood film pay homage to Fellini's The Temptation of Dr. Antonio, and can promise you this is the first and last time you'll see a fight scene inspired by The Decay of Fiction.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#179 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sun Oct 15, 2017 6:14 pm

My read of K's final gesture is:
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He's being empathetic via projection- he has imagined himself to be a replicant with a parent, and has filled himself with a need to meet his family- I think when he finds out that Deckard is not really his family, his conclusion is that the real born replicant must have the same need for Deckard that he had felt, and that likewise Deckard must have the same need for his daughter. Meanwhile, he has lost the only real emotional connection he has left- the AI- and is despairing upon being confronted with her simulacrum, the unreal her that the base state AI comprises. Which parallel's Deckard meeting the unreal Rachel.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#180 Post by zedz » Sun Oct 15, 2017 7:30 pm

matrixschmatrix wrote:My read of K's final gesture is:
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He's being empathetic via projection- he has imagined himself to be a replicant with a parent, and has filled himself with a need to meet his family- I think when he finds out that Deckard is not really his family, his conclusion is that the real born replicant must have the same need for Deckard that he had felt, and that likewise Deckard must have the same need for his daughter. Meanwhile, he has lost the only real emotional connection he has left- the AI- and is despairing upon being confronted with her simulacrum, the unreal her that the base state AI comprises. Which parallel's Deckard meeting the unreal Rachel.
I agree with this, and the development makes sense emotionally for these reasons, but
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at the level of plot logic, considering he was trailed to this place the previous time he went there, it feels like he's not just leading whoever's watching to both Deckard and The Replicant Messiah, but exposing the connection between the two. Deckard's deliberate separation from his daughter was explicitly to protect her, but now a literal lifetime of planning and subterfuge is thrown away for the sake of a tidy emotional resolution. Unless you assume that nobody is watching and nobody will find out, and I don't believe that film's given us any grounds whatsoever to think that. On the other hand, we do get the handsome image of K lying down in the snow to die, which is nicely done. I find the ending satisfying in one sense, but illogical and frustrating in others.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#181 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sun Oct 15, 2017 7:48 pm

Oh, I see what you mean- plotwise
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K says Deckard is 'dead' now- presumably to other replicants as well as to the cops and corporations, who had thought he was dead before- and I think that as Joi is gone, and the Lieutenant is gone, the forces we've seen putting tails on him are therefore inferred to be gone. Which seems a bit easy in a world as paranoid and surveillance conscious as this one, but it was papered over enough that I was ok with it, given that I thought it was fairly powerful thematically.

Of course, one could also just assume K fucked up really badly, which wouldn't be all that out of character.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#182 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Oct 16, 2017 11:01 am

This film certainly did something I wasn't expecting: it quickly became Children of Men set in the world of A.I. Artificial Intelligence! That sense of derivation (such as the aforementioned scene borrowed from Her) was off-putting and, combined with some questionable plotting, dampened my enthusiasm. Still, the central theme of "K"'s plight worked as it should in a science-fiction film of this sort as did the myriad of well-realized gadgets. I was happy Blade Runner 2049 was more than a retread of the 1982 film, but a simpler concept may have been more effective.
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Introducing the renegade band of replicants who have little impact on the plot so late in the film seemed like something tossed in to base a sequel around. Also, I'm not entirely clear what Wallace's motives were. Was he trying to acquire Deckard and the "miracle child" in order reverse engineer Tyrell's Nexus 8 (?) model in order to have replicants birth their own replicants since he was bemoaning the fact that he couldn't keep up with demand for replicant slave labor? Is his shortage due to his maniacally killing the few replicants we see him create? So much of the Wallace material seemed superfluous to me on first-time viewing that I feel I must have missed something.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#183 Post by Feiereisel » Mon Oct 16, 2017 11:33 am

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There’s a lot going on in the scene, which might work against it because it’s argualby so baldly functional. By my estimation it:

1) Reveals the replicant army, which could serve as a template for a potential sequel;

2) Serves as an ideological counterpoint for the Wallace scenes by introducing the replicant army intent on thwarting Wallace’s intent to use reproducing replicants to claim more off-world territory;

3) Resolves the plot business that begins when Mariette is told to approach K on the street;

4) Definitely resolves the K side of the replicant child mystery;

5) Adds to the “wall”/“flood”/“tide” metaphor by emphasizing the importance of the replicant child;

6) Continues the film’s “eye”/“vision” motif with the reveal of Freysa’s missing eye (and for some reasons listed above);

7) Provides context for K’s actions in subsequent scenes by giving him a “mission” that he doesn’t technically complete, which then influences how the viewer reads the ending of the film.

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zedz
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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#184 Post by zedz » Mon Oct 16, 2017 2:45 pm

I agree with Feiereisel's functional analysis, but also agree with Roger Ryan that it was a perfunctory element. Has that trope ever been used well in science fiction?

As regards RR's second question:
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It was a big gob of exposition with a lot of echo, but as I recall, the issue was that the (or indeed any) industrial process for manufacturing replicants could not keep up with the outlandish demand he anticipates, but self-procreating replicants would be able to proliferate exponentially (like rabbits!) Of course, Wallace can't see the downside to that because he still naively believes the company line that replicants are now 100% reliable and obedient. He thinks he's already built the wall, but the wall is imaginary.

I don't think it was made clear whether he'd considered that Deckard may have been one half of the 'miracle'. In terms of how the plot operated, the emphasis was entirely on torturing him for information on the whereabouts of the child (which he honestly didn't know).

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#185 Post by Feiereisel » Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:19 pm

"Perfunctory" is an apt word for it. I saw the film again yesterday, and still think its overall tidiness is its primary weakness, even though it didn't irk me as much the second time through*. So, while I can't move myself into the "masterpiece" camp, I do think 2049 is quite a remarkable and, in terms of thoughtfully extending Blade Runner's complex dialogue about humanity, successful film when all is said and done.
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Regarding the perfunctory elements of the story, I feel like it's of a piece with K's "artificial" nature. Though the thematic concerns of the film are rich and particularly dense, especially when compared to other recent films with comparable budgets, the neat-and-tidy arc of the story reflects his manufactured nature in the form of 2049's clearly articulated and resolved narrative threads. By contrast, the much more garbled, and fitfully-paced narrative of the original film mirrors Deckard's fundamental questioning of his own nature.

Although...it could just as easily be me giving a bland story that uses dull storytelling of contemporary blockbusters a little too much "artistic" leeway. :wink:

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#186 Post by zedz » Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:33 pm

I think my take on the film is similar to your reservations. It seemed to me like a smart film that was often compelled to behave like a big dumb blockbuster, such as
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- employing the tired trope of the grimy rebel army to tidy up various plot points;
- having a climactic fight to wrap up a plot that was never especially about physical confrontation;
- introducing otherwise inert plot elements in order to seed potential sequels;
- Wallace flamboyantly destroying his failed creation (can't she just go and work in the kitchen or something?) even though he's, in his terms, the only person there;
- characters not bothering to explain themselves so that conflict can be extended (e.g. K not attempting to defuse the situation when he first meets Deckard);
- having a tidy, arc-completing ending that potentially compromised a whole lot of plot.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#187 Post by Mr. Deltoid » Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:09 pm

Saw this last night. A big Blade Runner fan since I saw it as an impressionable teenager about twenty years ago, but this sequel just left me cold. And bored. So, so bored. The narrative is so devoted to the mythology of the original film that 2049 felt less it's own creation than, well, a rather stream-lined replicant upgrade. Iconic production-design to one side, I feel that the reason the original weathered through it's initial harsh critical reception to become a cult-classic was the way the viewers loyalties shift from Deckard to Batty in it's final third. That moral-ambiguity is a tough thing to pull off in a script and, I think, the reason why it rewards repeat viewings to this day. Blade Runner 2049 doesn't offer anything as resonant as that, despite Gosling's surface similarity to Deckard as a character. There are actually no real villains in the original, just two tribes encircling each other in mutual incomprehension (at least until Batty's final gift of redemption to Deckard during the climax), whereas 2049 much less interestingly resorts to standard 'Evil Genius broodingly plots while his Evil Hench-woman acts according to type'. The film is also dull beyond belief! A considered pace is one thing, but try considering my arse next time? The film strains for pathos at every opportunity, but comes up short each time. Gosling broods impressively, but for all the hologram-sex and anguish over 'false' memories, there's nothing that comes close to the relatively sparse sequence in the original where Ford, whiskey in hand, looks out over his balcony at the ugly, glittering cityscape below, retreats inside, tinkles a few notes on the piano and succumbs to a Unicorn reverie.
This all sounds rather sour on my part (and yeah, I am a rather hard-to-please, miserable bastard) but I'm just bewildered at all the praise this film seems to be getting. It's Mad Max: Fury Road all over again. :D

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#188 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:34 pm

Regarding two things brought up lately:
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Regarding the underground army of replicants: I quite like that K has no idea they exist until 20 minutes before the movie ends. Why would he? He's the most dangerous thing in the world to them, and it's vital to them to stay hidden- and K has been following this conspiracy plotline doggedly that, to me, leads more to them than it does to the actual Children of Men woman. Once we know that they, like K, are capable of rebelling, it follows logically that he must not be the first to rebel; it again undercuts the messianic overtones, too. I don't see it as the setup for a sequel, because I don't care or want to know what happens next- but I do like knowing the world we're seeing is one in which shackles can be thrown off. Without them, it would feel too much a movie that accepted endless slavery as a physically inevitable condition.

Regarding the Leto character- I think he worked for me as part of the family theme the movie develops; what it means to have family, to have a parent or to be a parent, what it means to form a connection. Leto is the bad father, the father who wishes to have children only to warp and destroy them, and his casual, almost sensual murder of a child in front of another makes that clear in a visceral way. He is opposed to Robin Wright- another parent figure, one who is loving but misguided- in that he too wants to blur the lines between replicant and human, because the more human the replicants, the more of a god he becomes over them. It is true that he is evil in a way that has not hitherto been present in the series, for all its violence and murder, but I think localizing evil in that figure- a genius and a culture hero, a man who made earth livable and brought replicants back from the dead- is particularly interesting.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#189 Post by Ribs » Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:40 pm

I think there's some of that weird TV show feeling where for some reason the pilot episode always needs to be the most important episode and almost every key event later in the show needs to tie back directly or indirectly into the first episode for that reason. I would honestly have so much preferred this sequel to just be 30 years on, with no Deckard, and nothing directly tying it to the first movie other than the fact it's set in a world with blade runners. I totally get why that's wildly impractical, but doing something like that would have far more easily established a theoretical new ongoing series of Blade Runner movies than the particular direction they took.

I find all of the hemming and hawing people are having about whether or not they should have been as tight-lipped about the plot to be mildly hilarious considering the first film is essentially plotless - the entire plot is clearly established in the opening title card, and it only slightly deviates from that. In contrast, this is narratively dense with layered reveals and delayed explanations and deliberate misdirects; just struck me as an interesting change. This is actually an element I appreciate as I think it's an interesting other way to build upon the first movie, but it struck me that people never really even cared about the plot of the first one to be complaining so much about how this one was revealed.
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I'd have appreciated just a hair less handholding with some of the reveals, with less cutting-to-flashbacks-to-express-what-Gosling-is-thinking. I really see no reason why we need to see him figure out who the real child of Deckard is, when the movie answers the question definitively 15 minutes later and it was relatively simple to figure out on our own considering the whole law of economy of characters.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#190 Post by Feiereisel » Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:27 pm

To me...
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K's ferrying of Deckard to his child is a strong resolution of the film's themes of purpose and self-determination. K, who cannot question (and ultimately is not allowed to) question his physical nature, is instead made to question a different sort of nature--his purpose. In choosing not to retire the child and Deckard, he casts off his design as a blade runner assert an individual identity based on what he decides is important to him.

It's seeded throughout the film, beginning with his resignation at being forced to retire Sapper, and carries through the film with Joi's arc, and culminates with the fight on the wall just before the end of the film. Joi leads K to believe that he is the child, and even though he is not, the process of imagining himself as a unique leads him to the understanding that despite being a synthetic, he can still be an individual.

One can even read his exchange with the holographic Joi as the catalyst for his choice to preserve the "real" (i.e. Deckard's family) rather than to keep trying to make real his own revealed-as-empty fantasies. This is further reflected in the contrast of original film's unicorn with 2049's more ordinary horse--an animal associated which, depending on context, can be associated with freedom...or conveyance.
Last edited by Feiereisel on Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#191 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:35 pm

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I don't like the implication that his relationship with Joi is in any way unreal, and I don't think K understands it as such- the Joi he is confronted with is not his, but a false version, and he is understandably horrified and driven somewhat to despair. I think reading Joi as 'fake' implies that K and the replicants are also therefore fake, which would be ignoring most of the thematic weight of the movie.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#192 Post by Feiereisel » Mon Oct 16, 2017 6:04 pm

matrixschmatrix wrote:
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I don't like the implication that his relationship with Joi is in any way unreal, and I don't think K understands it as such- the Joi he is confronted with is not his, but a false version, and he is understandably horrified and driven somewhat to despair. I think reading Joi as 'fake' implies that K and the replicants are also therefore fake, which would be ignoring most of the thematic weight of the movie.
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The relationship itself is absolutely real in the same way that the replicants, though not biologically human, are human in terms of consciousness. My "revealed-as-empty" bit is indeed off the mark because I fail to specify that K's fantasy is not of his relationship with Joi being real, but instead his conclusion that he is the replicant child, a role he's projected himself into for much of the film.

The exchange with the big--false--Joi does, as you write, cause him to despair and confirms both the importance of him charting his own course and the authenticity of the relationship with his own Joi. Because K loses his Joi and realizes how special and unique the experience was, he elects not only to save Deckard from Wallace, but then to reunite him with his child.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#193 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:04 pm

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Yes, I think you're right- it's also a place where he is mirroring Deckard himself, however unconsciously (as Deckard had just been put in the same, despair inducing position) and therefore reinforcing the empathetic bond that makes him take a risk to save Deckard and give him the fulfillment he cannot have. I think making K's relationship with Joi the most powerful in the movie was an absolutely brilliant choice- it keeps threatening to undercut that, to give K a 'real' relationship (Mariette, the Daryl Hannah looking sex worker replicant, even remarks that he doesn't like 'real' girls upon seeing the widget Joi lives in- which itself has some depth, given the questions of real or unreal the replicans themselves face) which would have undercut the whole key theme of the film.
It's funny- the movie moves pretty far from Dick, as none of this has any direct plot relationship to anything he wrote (and his Deckard is only kind of the central character of his version) but one of Dick's key themes was that humanity is defined by empathy- including empathy for those that cannot return it. In the original, the question isn't so much the humanity of the replicants, who are somewhat less complex and more cruel figures there, but in whether it's possible for people to kill them without losing their own humanity- and whether treating them humanely might be what creates the central spark of humanity in them. I'm not describing it well, but his moral calculus is deep and interesting, and the original film picks up on it and plays with it- the false memories concept is more prominent elsewhere in Dick's work, but used brilliantly there, and the questions of what defines a human become more about fear and otherness than about facing a genuinely uncaring foe. It is, maybe ironically, a warmer movie in that respect, despite the coldness of the world and of Ford's performance.

This one picks up on that warmth, and makes the full spectrum humanity on display in K very clear- without taking away how much he does not think or interact with the world exactly as we do. The calculus becomes one about power, about those below and those above, and even about class consciousness- while still hanging on to the mirrored mirrors of simulacra, false memory, made things that are nonetheless as real as organic ones. It feels like a world that is soaked in some of what made Dick's work most humanitarian, and while it admittedly drops some of the headier loops within loops, it puts his concepts into a living world, one that moves beyond his conception of it. As a long time Dick fan (har!) it's really powerful to see.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#194 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:23 pm

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I liked how almost casual it was revealed that K is a Replicant towards the beginning. It undercut the expectations I came into it only having seen trailers and reading some interviews, trying to avoid as much as I could about the plot.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#195 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:08 am

matrixschmatrix wrote:Regarding two things brought up lately...
Thanks for this. While these two aspects of the film were the clumsiest for me, you've provided effective interpretations for both.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#196 Post by RIP Film » Wed Oct 18, 2017 12:56 pm

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I would have appreciated it far more if Deckard/Rachel didn't return, whose characters could have been easily changed out. I think part of the appeal of the original was that Deckard was just a regular guy, but the sequel sort of makes him more than that. Hollywood always apes the past like this though, it can't be a sequel unless a character from the previous film is in it. Ultimately though you just end up drawing unwanted comparisons; the original is a masterpiece, why put yourself in its shadow? The central arc by itself is respectable, it's a little film that takes it's time. But for all its moments, those Hollywood cliches keep peeking in and sort of distance me from it. Those goddamn producer type decisions, 'member this?... hey 'member this? Why did Gaffe need to show up, in a nursing home no less? Unnecessary.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#197 Post by R0lf » Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:58 am

zedz wrote:
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at the level of plot logic, considering he was trailed to this place the previous time he went there, it feels like he's not just leading whoever's watching to both Deckard and The Replicant Messiah, but exposing the connection between the two. Deckard's deliberate separation from his daughter was explicitly to protect her, but now a literal lifetime of planning and subterfuge is thrown away for the sake of a tidy emotional resolution. Unless you assume that nobody is watching and nobody will find out, and I don't believe that film's given us any grounds whatsoever to think that. On the other hand, we do get the handsome image of K lying down in the snow to die, which is nicely done. I find the ending satisfying in one sense, but illogical and frustrating in others.
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Yeah. I was distracted by this as well. Considering that Wallace was the one after Deckard and the child there was no reason to believe that because the hench[wo]man had been killed that he wouldn't continue.

It would have been super easy to resolve this plot point as well. Just change the meeting with Wallace and Deckard to have Deckard reveal that Rachel wasn't special and that replicants become sexually active when they reach a certain age - she was just the first to ever reach puberty.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#198 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:34 am

Ribs wrote:I think there's some of that weird TV show feeling where for some reason the pilot episode always needs to be the most important episode and almost every key event later in the show needs to tie back directly or indirectly into the first episode for that reason. I would honestly have so much preferred this sequel to just be 30 years on, with no Deckard, and nothing directly tying it to the first movie other than the fact it's set in a world with blade runners. I totally get why that's wildly impractical, but doing something like that would have far more easily established a theoretical new ongoing series of Blade Runner movies than the particular direction they took.
RIP Film wrote:
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I would have appreciated it far more if Deckard/Rachel didn't return, whose characters could have been easily changed out. I think part of the appeal of the original was that Deckard was just a regular guy, but the sequel sort of makes him more than that. Hollywood always apes the past like this though, it can't be a sequel unless a character from the previous film is in it. Ultimately though you just end up drawing unwanted comparisons; the original is a masterpiece, why put yourself in its shadow? The central arc by itself is respectable, it's a little film that takes it's time. But for all its moments, those Hollywood cliches keep peeking in and sort of distance me from it. Those goddamn producer type decisions, 'member this?... hey 'member this? Why did Gaffe need to show up, in a nursing home no less? Unnecessary.
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I see it a different way, that without those characters (with obvious emphasis on Deckard) there would have been more temptation to just "replicate" the original, for the filmmakers to hit the same beats and give whoever the lead is the unnecessary burden of essentially doing one of Harrison Ford's signature roles over again. As it is, this is a very different movie in some respects to it's predecessor, and Ryan Gosling is doing something quite different to what Ford did before.

And for what it's worth I thought the Gaff cameo was a nice touch. It's kind of funny to think about him in a nursing home (not too surprising since the character originally walked with a limp, pointing to some sort of minor or major physical ailment) still doing his origami. I would have liked to have seen M. Emmett Walsh reprise his role, actually.

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Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#199 Post by zedz » Wed Oct 25, 2017 4:23 pm

I ended up seeing this again because we had a houseguest who wanted to see it and the cinema's only five minutes' walk away.

I liked it as much a second time around, not more or less (which kind of surprised me slightly), but I think I admired its sheer craft more this time around. That climactic fight remains an awkward way to resolve the film, but it is at least well-executed, for example.

Two thematic / plot things I noticed and admired this time:
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Joi is set up as a Jiminy Cricket figure to K's Pinocchio (with an obvious dash of Tinkerbell), and indeed helps him to become a 'Real Boy' in spirit - which is what counts - even though he fails to become one in flesh, but she's also set up subtly as a Pinocchio in her own right. When K deletes her files from his home computer, he worries that, if anything happens to his Emanator, she'll die. "Like a real girl," she says. So the moment when she is destroyed is also the moment when she, in her own terms, becomes 'real'. Which also ties into the "most human thing" that K does at the end of the film. All this reinforces the idea that Joi's story is a mise en abyme of K's.

Also spotted, and kind of related, is that K's "real name" Joe isn't real at all. It's a pre-programmed generic come-on used by all the Jois, as the giant poster Joi at the end of the film calls him by the same name. Another nice touch.

I also realised that the basement headquarters of the replicant rebels is designed and shot as a bargain basement version of the Wallace headquarters (watery reflections on the ceiling and walls, lighting by moving shafts of light), which I take as art direction code of a greater equivalance between the two manipulative opposing factions than might be apparent on the face of the plot. Which certainly puts that 'rebel army' trope in a more interesting light.

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dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

#200 Post by dda1996a » Wed Oct 25, 2017 4:39 pm

Apparently a few reviews stressed Joe-K as a riff on Kafka's Joseph K. I don't know if this is intentional or not but I couldn't really fit it into the storyline except maybe as the never ending fighting between what is real or not.

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