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.

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.

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!

I will do!

I'm intrigued, too!

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

Spoiler »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)

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

Spoiler »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.

Liberty,

Spoiler »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)

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.

Spoiler »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)

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)