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Kittyhawk · October 16, 2017 9:22 am

Apollo XIII - still as good as 20 years ago...

tonnaree · October 16, 2017 6:35 pm

If you are a fan of the original Blade Runner, the sequel is not only an excellent movie but a very worthy successor to an iconic science fiction film.

besleybean · October 16, 2017 6:36 pm

Funnily enough my son was just telling me about this when he phoned yesterday, Tonnaree.
He absolutely loved and strongly recommended it.

SolarSystem · October 16, 2017 8:05 pm

And I totally agree. I would even say that it's the best movie I've seen so far this year. It's visually stunning and pays homage to Ridley Scott's original "Blade Runner" on so many levels... it left me quite breathless. This is the kind of movie you definitely need to see at the cinema.

Kittyhawk · October 17, 2017 9:22 am

Thanks for the tip! Perfect timing, it's on this afternoon at my local cinema... (and even in the subtitled original version )

Liberty · October 17, 2017 4:53 pm

I saw it and loved it, but I have some issues with it - not criticisms as such, and probably this isn't the place to discuss them. But as you have all said above, definitely worth seeing if you're a fan of the original!

tonnaree · October 18, 2017 6:36 pm

Liberty wrote:
I saw it and loved it, but I have some issues with it - not criticisms as such, and probably this isn't the place to discuss them. But as you have all said above, definitely worth seeing if you're a fan of the original!

If you feel like sending me a pm Liberty, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Liberty · October 18, 2017 7:47 pm

I will do!

SolarSystem · October 19, 2017 6:23 am

Liberty, why don't you just post it in here? After all, this thread is also for discussion, if I'm not very much mistaken. I'd love to hear what you have to say about the film.

besleybean · October 19, 2017 6:37 pm

I'm intrigued, too!

Liberty · October 19, 2017 7:28 pm

Come to think of it, another reason for not posting here is that I can't do it without spoilers! But maybe if I put it in spoiler tags ...

... this is just after one viewing of course, so I maybe missed some nuances, but for me a really striking feature was that the central "love story" involved one "character" who kind of existed just to please the protagonist. As I said to Tonnaree, I do realise that this is not meant to be a portrayal of a perfect society, and I also think it's good to show misogyny, etc. on screen, so this is not a criticism (unless it was accidental, but I refuse to believe that!). It's more just that I'm puzzled that this aspect hasn't been more talked about. Joi transformed herself into various versions of the perfect woman according to K's whims, being fun, caring, sexy, etc. on demand, cooking and so on. But that part that really made me uncomfortable was when she/they hired an android sex worker that he found attractive, and she was just used as a kind of body double, with no thought for her.

There's so much on both films about what it means to be human, and I wondered what sort of point was being made - was it about the position of women? Or about these people/AI/androids just being created to serve and how far that strips humanity - or does it? I don't know ... I found it really interesting, and was surprised how uncomfortable it made me feel.

SolarSystem · October 20, 2017 7:07 am

You are right, talking about this might be too big a spoiler, so I'll put my answer in spoiler tags, as well.

I think the fact that you felt uncomfortable with those scenes proves that the film works exactly how it should. Because yes, the way I understand it we are seeing a dystopian world in which humans have pretty much forgotten what it means to be human. Replicants are basically slaves and so they are treated as exactly that. I think it's pretty clear that K has been out of touch with humanity for a long, long time. So he creates his own version of a woman and thereby his own version of a relationship.

And I think that when he brings the replicant home, it works exactly how it should it in the context of the film. K uses the replicant as a tool to really feel Joi - and so once more the replicant is used in a way that is common in that society. But I think that he is as uncomfortable with this, at least initially, as we are uncomfortable watching it.

Last edited by SolarSystem (October 20, 2017 7:10 am)

Liberty · October 20, 2017 8:01 am

I agree. I'd looked for some discussion online, but what I came across seemed to dismiss it, so it has been playing around in my head! And as far as films/books about the future tend to be a reflection on current society, I've been thinking of that too. And also, I suppose,

how much love is real when one participant, just exists and performs for the other. I couldn't think of anything Joi did that wasn't for K - I mean, that it seemed that she just picked up on what he wanted and acted accordingly - from changing outfits to match his mood, to asking him to delete her from the house (risking that she would die), etc. So his feelings for her were also his feelings for his own creation, somebody perfectly attuned to whatever he wanted. I really like your point about him creating his own version of a relationship.

I found some discussion of this online, but it seemed to be a controversial subject! I've discussed with my son, and I suppose the bit we weren't clear about was how much was Joi being "herself", and how much was Joi just responding to K's desires.

For me, the important point about Joi's humanity was to do with that - how much she just reflected somebody else, rather than having her own feelings - and not to do with her lack of physical form. But I don't think the film was 100% clear on that - which is a good thing as it got me thinking! And of course, it raises the question of how much that happens in our own world - how much people feel they have to be reflections of others desires and so on.

I'm hoping to go to see it again, as I feel one viewing probably isn't enough!

Last edited by Liberty (October 20, 2017 8:04 am)

Kittyhawk · October 20, 2017 11:18 am

After only one viewing, and there won't be a second one:

The first thing that struck me was that American values seem to have changed quite a bit: Not so long ago, the guy who rode into a place to kill the people living there - people who just went about their work and never did anybody any harm - that would have been the bad guy!

Then the whole scenario is completely illogical: An overpopulated, underfed world doesn't need human-identical beings, even if they are a stronger and more resistant - they still need air, food and water - all in short supply on earth and even more so in space and on other planets. But okay, the replicants were invented (1982) before human-looking cyborgs (1984), so I'll accept them. I can't accept that breeding them - i. e. 9 months of gestation, 20 years of growing up - would be quicker than having them fall out of a plastic bag fully formed. There the film either showed too much, or much too little: It's quite possible that the production needs some incredibly rare element, or huge amounts of energy, or whatever - but I want to know what! As the film stands, the bad guy doesn't make sense.

So, I don't believe in either the hero or the bad guy - but the film should still be saveable, it has Harrison Ford in it. Unfortunately, no, not really... He appears much too late, and has too little to do.

As for the rest of the protagonists: I rather liked the police commander (even if I don't understand why she believed K had killed the Child without bringing the eye as proof), but maybe she should have pushed an alarm button or grabbed a weapon instead of chucking back a last drink when Luv appeared in her office (and how come a civilian just walks into the morgue and a police office to kill people? And walks out again?) And could somebody clarify: Wasn't it Luv who set the prostitutes on K/Joe - so why did the one who hooked up with him and slipped the tracker into his pocket not report back to her, but instead brought other people to Vegas? If she was a double agent, she'd have deserved more screen time! But for me the absolutely worst sin against common sense was Luv in Las Vegas taking only Deckard with her but leaving K behind. Even if she didn't believe that he was the Child (which I did at the time) - it should be obvious that two people to interrogate are always better than one.

Oh, another thing in the basic situation that doesn't make sense: The Blackout destroying most computer records. How? Well-stored data doesn't disappear without power - that's why we have hard drives (and are told to save our work often...)

And of course the film was much too long and slow. I don't mind long cuts if there's something interesting to see - but water reflections in a room don't cut it for me. Neither does Ryan Gosling - there's not enough showing in his face for the camera to stay on him for several minutes (might have been shorter, but it sure seemed an eternity).

In short: The film is in no way entertaining, and the messages it might want to transmit (slavery is bad, blind obedience is bad, mankind needs to mind its ways before disaster strikes) are neither new nor well-presented.

Tonight I'll have a look at the original Blade Runner (Final Cut, 2007) to see whether I had imagined its greatness.

Liberty · October 20, 2017 12:29 pm

You just reminded me that one thing that bothered me while watching it was K believing he was the Child after going to see (I've forgotten her name) the real Child. All she tells him is that the memory is real - something he already knew because he found the horse. There is no new information to convince him that the memory is his rather than implanted ... unless it's simply that he doesn't believe something illegal could happen. Then there was the fact that the real Child was the one who made memories for implantation - it made sense that the memory would be hers, particularly as she became emotional when she saw it. Why didn't K work that out? Although I suppose in the context of film, it was that he wanted to believe that it was him, that he was special, and that skewed how he reacted to the information.

SolarSystem · October 20, 2017 1:41 pm

Liberty,

In my opinion this works perfectly in the context of the movie. When she mentioned that the memory was real, it at first didn't really register with me that this doesn't mean it's HIS memory. I only realized this a while later (and when I leaned over to my spouse saying "She only said it was real, not that it was his memory", it turned out that it hadn't registered with him, either). I suppose that for K it works the same way it worked for us: He heard what he wanted to hear and so he didn't really listen to what she actually told him and what this might actually mean.
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with this scene. It's actually intended that K only thinks he got some new information when he actually hasn't. I think he is so intrigued by what is going on and what this might mean for his life (or what he thought was his life), that he only sees but doesn't fully observe. He wants this to be his memory and that's the reason why he doesn't work it out.

Last edited by SolarSystem (October 20, 2017 1:42 pm)

Liberty · October 20, 2017 4:56 pm

Oh, I didn't mean there was anything wrong with the scene.

As I said, it's explained later why he would assume what he did: because of his need for that to be the truth. But I think that at the point when you first see it, it does seem odd that he would assume that. (And actually, what bothered me was that I thought we were expected to assume that too - that we were just expected to accept he'd been proven to be the Child when nothing of the sort had happened! So I was pleased when what seemed like a flaw ended up being explained later). In fact, I wasn't really clear about what his purpose was there, and what he thought he'd heard. He knew the memory was real, because of the horse. There wasn't any more reason to think it was his, rather than implanted, after talking to the Child. Just wishful thinking. And of course also because there had to be that scene, playing out the way it did, for the story to end the way it did!

Last edited by Liberty (October 20, 2017 4:57 pm)

Meretricious · October 21, 2017 2:09 am

I just saw Blade Runner 2049 this morning so it's both fresh and jumbled in my mind, and I'm glad to find this discussion. Just want to address a couple of things Kittyhawk said.

The Blackout was an EMP detonation, not a power cut. Read more about this here: https://www.polygon.com/2017/9/27/16374742/blade-runner-2049-anime-short-shinichiro-watanabe

The prostitute was working for the one-eyed lady, not for Luv.

Last edited by Meretricious (October 21, 2017 2:13 am)

Kittyhawk · October 22, 2017 11:54 am

Thanks for clarifying that, Meretricious.

Was it ever mentioned in the movie that the blackout was due to an EMP? The movie was certainly long enough to give all the explanations anybody could wish for... Though I probably would have forgiven the blackout if I hadn't been bored to the point of considering walking out altogether or at least getting a bag of M & Ms to sweeten things.

So I've watched the original Blade Runner, and I still like it. It's a well-made, visually interesting and entertaining movie, with a fascinating production history (I just love bonus materials!) - and all that in under two hours! By now I'm firmly convinced that two important requirements for a good film are runtime and budget limits...

Yitzock · December 2, 2017 3:17 am

I know people often write about recently-released movies that they've seen, but I just watched an older film that I enjoyed. It's Frederico Fellini's film Nights of Cabiria. I had to watch the last couple of scenes over again after I watched it, and they are still puzzling me, but that's not a bad thing. I really liked the film. I find Giulietta Masina wonderful and interesting to watch. Her expressions and her gestures can shift a lot, and can seem a little unusual. I like the way she acts, and her character made me smile in this film, even though some parts were sad. I don't know if this movie is less famous than Fellini's other films (I feel as though La dolce vita is one of his most famous), but I think it's worth watching. I still have enjoyed all of his other films that I have watched more than I did 8 1/2.

Last edited by Yitzock (December 2, 2017 3:18 am)