Blade Runner 2049

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  • #16
    Re: Blade Runner 2049

    Saw it, liked it ok, but didn't love it.

    I thought it was very long in the tooth and many scenes were unnecessarily long. This could have been a 2 hr running time (or less) easily if they had cut the fat off.

    Honestly, I nodded off a bit during the first 2 hrs. Was hard to stay awake mainly because the film's slow pace made it too relaxing. The music was nice too which added to the snooze factor.

    Not enough Jared Leto.

    I did see the original years ago, but didn't remember enough about it to have it influence watching 2049.

    Visually it was pretty nice. But the digital youngification of Sean Young's face was weird looking and it moved wrong.

    I can see this doing very well in the Chinese/Asian market. But they may blur out all the naked.

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    • #17
      Re: Blade Runner 2049

      So I just viewed it.

      Awful. Just awful. And I say this as a long-time and avid fan of the original, which I consider to be a masterpiece, and the viewing of which I regard as one of the formative cinematic events of my life. (I saw it in a cinesphere theater at the age of 12. A more mind-blowing visual experience I can hardly imagine.)

      [spoilers below]

      Certainly it goes on for far too long, in a way that mars its basic entertainment value. Some films benefit from a stately pace (e.g., 2001). This one suffers badly for it, because its themes are so trite.

      And what do those themes consist of? Some old-school, shopworn Marxism that is about as creaky and rusty as the machinery in the film’s industrial wastelands:

      “Child labor is . . . bad!” “Slavery is . . . bad!”

      *gasp* What novel, futuristic concepts to tackle. No one has ever thought of giving episodic lip service to such ideas in a movie before.

      /sarc

      Beyond that, Gosling’s acting is very flat and one-note. Yes, I realize that he is attempting to perform the “reduced emotional response” of the replicant, but still, most of his expressions are one and the same: a sad-puppy-dog look in the eyes. That gets very old, very quickly.

      The retconning that this film does to the original movie is unforgivable, diminishing an infinitely superior work in ways that rival Lucas’s tampering with his original trilogy.

      The new pseudo-Tyrell is a trite waste of a villain: another flat, one-note performance, and a character who doesn’t actually do much, apart from a gratuitous knifing scene and a pro-slavery speech, both of which are Snidley-Whiplash-worthy moments that essentially announce, "Hey, look at how eeeevil I am." What a come down from the far more interesting original Tyrell.

      Even the storied visuals of this film are overrated, especially in comparison with the first movie; more closely resembling Mega City One from Dredd than the unique environment of the first Blade Runner.

      But one particular aspect of the film utterly ruined it for me:

      This movie has only one sympathetic character, and she is very sympathetic indeed: the hologram girl that is Gosling’s erstwhile girlfriend: Joi. The performance by the actress is engaging and endearing. She is obviously attired in ways that echo the traditional image of the homemaker, but beyond that, she is authentically vulnerable, graceful, truly cares for Gosling, and emotionally supports him, in the way that a genuinely loving wife might do.

      In other words, she is the kind of character that is all but banned in cinema these days, except when she is made an object of ridicule.

      So what happens? She is killed halfway through.

      That would have been bad enough to have ruined the film for me, given that she was, as I said, the only sympathetic character in the movie, so when she was gone, I had no more interest in it, no emotional stakes in anyone else’s fate.

      But what’s worse is that subsequently, the film defiles her character by implying that she was just a manufactured commodity, and had only been agreeable to Gosling and cared about him because she had been programmed that way.

      Basically, the movie trivializes what had begun as an interesting exploration of the emotional limits of artificial intelligence, and instead chooses to resort to another tired old Marxist theme, practically drawing it in crayon: "See? See? The traditional homemaker of the ’50s was just a product of ‘false consciousness.’ [ugh] Only when each member of the proletariat sacrifices himself for the glorious Revolution is he doing something authentic.”

      I think CCCP cinema would have been embarrassed to wallow in paint-by-numbers propaganda this way.

      All in all, shallow, lethargic, poorly acted (with the notable exception of Ana de Armas's turn as Joi), and a blot on the original. Pass.

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      • #18
        Re: Blade Runner 2049

        Beautiful to look at (production design, lighting and color palette, cinematography),

        Sounds amazing (love the soundtrack, sound design and sound mix),

        Beautiful people - I'm a straight male, but I have to say that between Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto and Harrison Ford they are some mega handsome dudes. The woman who played JOI not only put on a great performance, she was stunning as I couldn't take my eyes off her.

        But in spite of all this eye and ear candy, the story just wasn't quite there. Felt languid and confusing (even though it's not that complicated of a story).

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        • #19
          Re: Blade Runner 2049

          Well I loved it. My filmgoing companions and I talked about it for hours afterward, and I'm still thinking about it days later. For me, the themes were (among others) what does it mean to be human, the power (and pain) of hope, what responsibility do we have to lives we bring into the world, what is real and what isn't and if you think it's real does it matter if it is or not?

          I didn't think it attempted to retcon anything, in fact I thought it was practically reverent towards the original, but maybe that depends on what version of the original one watched, and what interpretation one had of it.

          I found K to be very sympathetic and thought Gosling did an excellent job. I was gutted for him when he realized he wasn't who he was - when he had only just given himself permission to think he might be.

          As for Joi - yes, one interpretation could be that she was only ever programmed to be what K wanted, but I think there's textual evidence that she (like K) developed self-awareness - her delight at being able to leave the apartment, her jealousy of the prostitute, her selfless sacrifice in demanding that K erase her from the home unit. One interpretation of K's expression when he encounters the Joi ad is certainly that this is the painful realization that, like everything else in his life, she wasn't real. Another interpretation might be that he realizes that his Joi was so much more than this ad - and that he is so much more than the skin job without a soul that the police department thinks he is or the tool that the replicant rebels want him to be.

          Btw Joi wore a "traditional homemaker from the 50's" outfit for about one minute in one scene, so I'm not sure where the idea that she was meant to represent that "ideal" comes from. And far from saying "Child labor is bad" the child labor was barely remarked upon. K got what he needed from the orphanage and didn't do squat about the circumstances of the orphans, nor did anybody else. They aren't even mentioned again. "Slavery is bad" was also one of the themes of the original film so I'm not sure why it's deemed such anathema here.

          But anyway, if you hate it, you hate it. I'm not going to talk you into liking it, and you're not going to talk me into not liking it, so that's that.

          I do agree that it could have been shorter.

          I'm not surprised it's not doing well financially- if anything I'm surprised the studio apparently thought it would.

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          • #20
            Re: Blade Runner 2049

            It looks pretty faithful to the original, i.e. a plotless special effects demo.

            On a side note, I wish people would stop buying into Ridley Scott's BS about the theatrical cut of the original not being "his" vision. Blade Runner's screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples has Deckard's voiceover and the ending with him and Rachel driving into the countryside. It was the film Scott agreed to make. The studio didn't force those changes and Deckard was never meant to be a replicant. That doesn't even make sense. Scott made that up in the 90s to help sell the movie on home video, which was becoming increasingly popular at that time.

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            • #21
              Re: Blade Runner 2049

              I liked it a lot. Nicely paced, intelligent and beautifully acted. And it gave a big middle finger to people with a short attention span, which I found refreshing and nostalgic.
              TimeStorm & Blurred Vision Book info & blog: https://stormingtime.com//

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              • #22
                Re: Blade Runner 2049

                Blade Runner has a simple detective story plot: replicants escape to Earth, Deckard is tasked with hunting them down because he's the best at it, and then he hunts them all down (while also falling in love with one of them). I followed along perfectly when it was first released in 1982. And I was only 12 years old

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                • #23
                  Re: Blade Runner 2049

                  Everyone I know absolutely loved it.
                  I was bored out of my brain, and I definitely liked the original.
                  The only thing I liked about it was Joi, who happens to be played by one of my favorite actresses.
                  She was the only spark of life or emotion in the entire movie.
                  The rest was epic, bleak and overly self-important. Void of all emotion (except for Joi). I hated it.

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                  • #24
                    Re: Blade Runner 2049

                    I finally got to see it and loved it. A couple of things I might change but nothing major.

                    Sometimes as a treat after a film I read out your "insights" to my friend and we laugh our asses off and become increasingly frustrated in equal measure. Keep up the good work.

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                    • #25
                      Re: Blade Runner 2049

                      Seriously-- I have a friend who pretty much has the exact same taste as I do in movies, TV, comic books, etc. He's seen the movie like 3 times now and can't figure out why more people aren't seeing it. I can't for the life of me figure out why people love it so much.

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                      • #26
                        Re: Blade Runner 2049

                        I meant the board not you in particular. Genuinely didn't mean it as a personal jab, it was aimed more at earlier posts but I wasn't very clear about that. My apologies.

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                        • #27
                          Re: Blade Runner 2049

                          Having watched it, I think the premise is ridiculous. Loved the first ten minutes, then it all went downhill from there.

                          If Tyrell Corp was so afraid of Replicants running rogue that they installed a 4 year life span in them, why would they also have given them any sort of reproductive capabilities?

                          It's been 30 years and technology has not advanced to create child-bearing Replicants? I find that hard to believe.

                          It seems so easy for Luv to sneak in and out of the LAPD HQ without detection. She also could just waltz into the commander's office and kill her so easily. Where's the security?

                          Many unnecessary scenes like the Bees. Not sure what it's supposed to symbolize and it's an example of many parts that could have been cut to reduce the long runtime. Same for when K and Deckard meet; They embark on a ten minute pointless fight scene.

                          The final battle at the end is underwhelming. Plus Luv never kills K several times when she could (In Vegas and at the dam), which does not make sense given her ruthless personality.

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                          • #28
                            Re: Blade Runner 2049

                            Dark, introspective Sci Fi is right up my alley and I was disappointed. It was very flat to me from the get go, wasn't a fan of the dialogue, scenes didn't pop, the world didn't come together for me. Absolutely didn't need to be 2 hours and 45 minutes. Best parts were in the last 25 minutes. I just wasn't gripped and I knew this pretty quickly, so it was tough to get through for me. Please I agree with a lot of Goliath's comments above about the premise.

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                            • #29
                              Re: Blade Runner 2049

                              (I wasn't offended, if that remark was intended for me.) I just seriously am amazed at the night-and-day reactions to this movie.

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                              • #30
                                Re: Blade Runner 2049

                                Originally posted by Goliath View Post
                                Having watched it, I think the premise is ridiculous. Loved the first ten minutes, then it all went downhill from there.

                                If Tyrell Corp was so afraid of Replicants running rogue that they installed a 4 year life span in them, why would they also have given them any sort of reproductive capabilities?

                                It's been 30 years and technology has not advanced to create child-bearing Replicants? I find that hard to believe.

                                It seems so easy for Luv to sneak in and out of the LAPD HQ without detection. She also could just waltz into the commander's office and kill her so easily. Where's the security?

                                Many unnecessary scenes like the Bees. Not sure what it's supposed to symbolize and it's an example of many parts that could have been cut to reduce the long runtime. Same for when K and Deckard meet; They embark on a ten minute pointless fight scene.

                                The final battle at the end is underwhelming. Plus Luv never kills K several times when she could (In Vegas and at the dam), which does not make sense given her ruthless personality.

                                - Reproduction was referred to as a miracle MANY times, so no: not intended.

                                - ^^^^ Again, this ^^^^ So yes, if Tyrell couldn’t figure it out (it’s a “miracle,” remember?), stands to reason Rayon would have difficulty too

                                - She’s good, is Rayon’s right hand, and likely has a crapload of clearances and corporate ($$$) respect, so not buyin’ that.

                                - Bees, forever a symbol in the public consciousness (for those who don’t sleep under rocks) of our fragile environment, and teetering on the brink of extinction, SYMBOLIZE LIFE (duh!). Just as the “miracle” was repeated several times, So was the fact that Deckard’s neck of the woods was highly irradiated (i.e., not likely life-sustaining. Hmmm, and replicants procreating, there’s LIFE again. Wake up).

                                - If I was hiding out in an irradiated wasteland in fear of my life, I’d probably also fight. Longer than ten minutes

                                - Luv is nuts. We know that. But maybe I’ll bite on that last one

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