Movies BLADE RUNNER 2049 Thread v.2

[Magooglie]

I'm a little slow but can someone explain to me the significance of Wallace wanting to get his hands on the replicant child?

Anyways, saw it tonight and it was good. The only part it sort of disappointed me was the aesthetics. While gorgeous, it didn't feel nearly as gritty as the original, but that's completely a personal taste/bias thing. But damn, the scene with K and Deckard fighting in the showroom was a feast for the eyes.

He wanted to study the replicant child to see if he could make his own reproducing replicants.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

@shadow_priest_x

Well here is the "real reason" why this movie bombed according to a "hollywood insider"

Pretty much the trailers were too confusing for the retarded public to understand and it put them off on the movie

What this really comes down to of course is that the trailers were very much sold on "this is the sequel to Blade Runner" and I think the problem there is that however well reguarded the original is its still ultimately a cult film, maybe its THE cult sci fi film but compared to say Scott's Alien it was not a hit at the time and does not have the mainstream popularity.

That said though I did think the trailers gave you a pretty good idea of the kind of film it would be, more of a plot focused action thriller than the original without becoming too over the top.

Anyway I helped with the box office giving it a second viewing today and generally I would say my opinion remained the same, good sci fi thriller but I think short of the total classic of the original. K's situation in the LAPD and the relationship with Joi just don't get mined as deeply for me, I'm a big defender of Gosling in stuff like Drive to those who says he's just dull but honestly in this case he kind of is for the first half of the film or more.

One suggestion I'v seen made elsewhere is that I think would definitely have improved the film is cutting out the whole Wallace/Luv plot and instead make Joshi and the LAPD the antagonists. I think Robin Wright gives arguably the best performance in the film as it is and would have made a far more interesting adversary saving us from Wallace and Luv's more straight forward villainy.

 

[Bob Weeks]

He wanted to study the replicant child to see if he could make his own reproducing replicants.

Similar to the old bastard in Prometheus, Wallace has that god complex but, in both incidents in 2049 or Prometheus, both are at their limits of their genius.

 

[breadfighter]

Also I will agree with another poster on here that the characters in this Blade Runner just didn't seem as memorable. 2049 felt a bit sterilized which was one of my main concerns when I first heard about the movie. In the original there were the 4 replicants who were all interesting and all posed their own threats to Deckard. Then you had the guy who made eyeballs. The creator. Deckards partner. The whole cast just felt more colorful and alive. I can't really recall any characters in 2049 who I really had an interest in. Even Luv who everyone seemed to like just felt like the evil henchman part. In the original we had Roy Batty who was the main antagonist, but even in the end it was ambiguous as to if you could even call him a villain.

I'm also of the ones who say I hope there isn't another sequel. Even this one probably shouldn't have even be made as great as it was. Part of the charm and mystique of the original was that it left you with more questions than answers. In fact, I think that (besides it's visuals) is a reason it even holds up today.

 

[Guestx]

Even this one probably shouldn't have even be made as great as it was.

 

[xenomorph4prez]

I just picked up on mirroring scenes that may shed some light on the K and Joi relationship.

In the original Blade Runner Deckard is presented as a human and though there are subtle and not so subtle hints that he may be a replicant in the film they don't really matter because Deckard believes himself to be human.

Deckard the human or Deckard the replicant who believes he is a human unquestionably falls in love with Rachel whom Deckard knows is a replicant.

An authentic human falls in love with a synthetic human.

2049 poignantly illustrates this by having Wallace try to entice Deckard by parading out a replicant that looks exactly like Rachel, only it isn't Rachel.

"Her eyes were Green" - Deckard

It wasn't just the eye color that was off though. Deckard knew that the Rachel impostor replicant wasn't his Rachel despite being momentarily stunned at seeing the visage of his lost love standing before him.

She was beautiful and familiar yes but also hollow and devoid of the memories and experiences that Deckard and Rachel shared together that made them "real" despite being synthethic.

It's hard to know for sure if Joi's relationship with K made her authentic or if everything she did for K was just part of her programming to make a lonely guy feel special/loved.

What is obvious though is that K being a replicant fell in love with an AI hologram which mirrors Deckard the human falling in love with Rachel the synthetic human.

The scene where K see's the large nude holographic ad for Joi is a mirror of Deckard being confronted with the Rachel impostor .

K see's the nude Joi ad for what it is. It's a program designed to be a companion for the lonely and lustful. It is hollow and an impostor of his Joi of whom he shared memories and experiences with that made her real to him.

I think all this can be summed up by a seemingly throwaway line from Deckard in 2049 that stuck with me.

When K asks Deckard if his dog is "real" Deckard responds "I don't know why don't you ask him".

 

[breadfighter]

Some things are just better left untouched and unexpanded on. Personally for me, Blade Runner is one of them. Which is not to say it 2049 wasn't great. I just don't think it was necessary. The original was perfect.

 

[Deleted member 429137]

I'm not sure those really count as "plot holes," but to respond. . .

I wondered the same thing about not taking K, but then remembered Luv crying when Wallace killed the girl earlier in the movie. She seems to have no sympathy for humans, but she has sympathy for other replicants. She also seemed to have, maybe, a bit of a crush on K. I think she left him behind because she didn't want him killed.

She also cried when she killed K's commanding officer. I think she struggles with her vast and uncontrollable emotions.

As for the "I have millions" line, that seems a bit of a nitpicky criticism. Apparently however many he has, it's not enough to colonize beyond the nine planets that have already been colonized. Also, when he says, "I have millions" he no doubt also means any that have died.

I don't think that any of the replicants who were part of the rebellion were Nexus 8s. I think they were all older models who were on the run, like Batista.

Lastly, regarding K not being obedient, I think that's a theme of the story. K, against expectations, becomes more human as the story progresses. He goes farther and farther beyond what was intended for him. At the beginning he's an obedient soldier; by the end he's acting like a man who is thinking for himself.

 

[BisexualMMA]

Also I will agree with another poster on here that the characters in this Blade Runner just didn't seem as memorable. 2049 felt a bit sterilized which was one of my main concerns when I first heard about the movie. In the original there were the 4 replicants who were all interesting and all posed their own threats to Deckard. Then you had the guy who made eyeballs. The creator. Deckards partner. The whole cast just felt more colorful and alive. I can't really recall any characters in 2049 who I really had an interest in. Even Luv who everyone seemed to like just felt like the evil henchman part. In the original we had Roy Batty who was the main antagonist, but even in the end it was ambiguous as to if you could even call him a villain.

I'm also of the ones who say I hope there isn't another sequel. Even this one probably shouldn't have even be made as great as it was. Part of the charm and mystique of the original was that it left you with more questions than answers. In fact, I think that (besides it's visuals) is a reason it even holds up today.

Agree that the characters in the original leave a more lasting impression, right down to Brion James, James Hong and my other brother Darryl...but given all the horrid sequels and reboots that are polluting theaters these days, I can't complain about the existence of BR2049.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

Agree that the characters in the original leave a more lasting impression, right down to Brion James, James Hong and my other brother Darryl...but given all the horrid sequels and reboots that are polluting theaters these days, I can't complain about the existence of BR2049.

It does repurpose some elements of the original but honestly I don't really have a problem with that as I'v never had any problem viewing a film on its own merits, Aliens for example I can watch and imagine a "happy ever after" ending that the film sells.

That said though its most definitely not an embarrassment to the name, indeed I do kind of think that a lot of the issues I'v mentioned were partly due to the shear weight of that name. Something as fresh and original as the first film is I think simply going to need to be an original work itself, the likes of Moon, Under The Skin, Her, Ex Machina, etc come to mind.

To gainsay myself though perhaps one issue is that its also been released just a couple of years after Fury Road, that film really was a unique piece of work for me in revisiting an existing franchise and doing something so fresh/vital with it.

 

[sh1tehawke]

I just picked up on mirroring scenes that may shed some light on the K and Joi relationship.

In the original Blade Runner Deckard is presented as a human and though there are subtle and not so subtle hints that he may be a replicant in the film they don't really matter because Deckard believes himself to be human.

Deckard the human or Deckard the replicant who believes he is a human unquestionably falls in love with Rachel whom Deckard knows is a replicant.

An authentic human falls in love with a synthetic human.

2049 poignantly illustrates this by having Wallace try to entice Deckard by parading out a replicant that looks exactly like Rachel, only it isn't Rachel.

"Her eyes were Green" - Deckard

It wasn't just the eye color that was off though. Deckard knew that the Rachel impostor replicant wasn't his Rachel despite being momentarily stunned at seeing the visage of his lost love standing before him.

She was beautiful and familiar yes but also hollow and devoid of the memories and experiences that Deckard and Rachel shared together that made them "real" despite being synthethic.

It's hard to know for sure if Joi's relationship with K made her authentic or if everything she did for K was just part of her programming to make a lonely guy feel special/loved.

What is obvious though is that K being a replicant fell in love with an AI hologram which mirrors Deckard the human falling in love with Rachel the synthetic human.

The scene where K see's the large nude holographic ad for Joi is a mirror of Deckard being confronted with the Rachel impostor .

K see's the nude Joi ad for what it is. It's a program designed to be a companion for the lonely and lustful. It is hollow and an impostor of his Joi of whom he shared memories and experiences with that made her real to him.

I think all this can be summed up by a seemingly throwaway line from Deckard in 2049 that stuck with me.

When K asks Deckard if his dog is "real" Deckard responds "I don't know why don't you ask him".

Good post

 

[SSgt Dickweed]

I just picked up on mirroring scenes that may shed some light on the K and Joi relationship.

In the original Blade Runner Deckard is presented as a human and though there are subtle and not so subtle hints that he may be a replicant in the film they don't really matter because Deckard believes himself to be human.

Deckard the human or Deckard the replicant who believes he is a human unquestionably falls in love with Rachel whom Deckard knows is a replicant.

An authentic human falls in love with a synthetic human.

2049 poignantly illustrates this by having Wallace try to entice Deckard by parading out a replicant that looks exactly like Rachel, only it isn't Rachel.

"Her eyes were Green" - Deckard

It wasn't just the eye color that was off though. Deckard knew that the Rachel impostor replicant wasn't his Rachel despite being momentarily stunned at seeing the visage of his lost love standing before him.

She was beautiful and familiar yes but also hollow and devoid of the memories and experiences that Deckard and Rachel shared together that made them "real" despite being synthethic.

It's hard to know for sure if Joi's relationship with K made her authentic or if everything she did for K was just part of her programming to make a lonely guy feel special/loved.

What is obvious though is that K being a replicant fell in love with an AI hologram which mirrors Deckard the human falling in love with Rachel the synthetic human.

The scene where K see's the large nude holographic ad for Joi is a mirror of Deckard being confronted with the Rachel impostor .

K see's the nude Joi ad for what it is. It's a program designed to be a companion for the lonely and lustful. It is hollow and an impostor of his Joi of whom he shared memories and experiences with that made her real to him.

I think all this can be summed up by a seemingly throwaway line from Deckard in 2049 that stuck with me.

When K asks Deckard if his dog is "real" Deckard responds "I don't know why don't you ask him".

I am never going to understand this film.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

I just picked up on mirroring scenes that may shed some light on the K and Joi relationship.

It's hard to know for sure if Joi's relationship with K made her authentic or if everything she did for K was just part of her programming to make a lonely guy feel special/loved.

What is obvious though is that K being a replicant fell in love with an AI hologram which mirrors Deckard the human falling in love with Rachel the synthetic human.

The scene where K see's the large nude holographic ad for Joi is a mirror of Deckard being confronted with the Rachel impostor .

K see's the nude Joi ad for what it is. It's a program designed to be a companion for the lonely and lustful. It is hollow and an impostor of his Joi of whom he shared memories and experiences with that made her real to him.

I think all this can be summed up by a seemingly throwaway line from Deckard in 2049 that stuck with me.

When K asks Deckard if his dog is "real" Deckard responds "I don't know why don't you ask him".

You do miss out before that scene with the giant hologram the film cuts to the big advert for her following the surrogate seduction very heavily suggesting her nature after which her role in the film clearly diminishes.

Again though I viewed this as a really clumsy piece of writing. Prior to that I think the K/Joi scenes had actually been the strongest sections of the film building up a nice degree of ambiguity as to the depth of their relationship and that scene above was arguably the best in the whole film. To then just cut to a rather basic inference of "nah she was just a bought sex fantasy" by comparison seemed very crude to me. That's not to say that takings things in this direction itself is crude but surely it would have been far more effective to actually have a scene were we see the actors express this?

It does feel like a bit of a kick in the teeth for Ana de Armas especially to build up a character with a good degree of sublty previously then have it capped off in that kind of fashion. Besides being a bit crude generally it also felt a bit dodgy for a role like that to end up being totally defined by the male actors relation to her.

I felt it also damaged the plot with his belief he was the child and discovering otherwise. That was really setup with Joi claiming "specialness" for him from it so having her present was its revealed not to be true seems like it would be much more effective. As it is K really has little to play off of when the revelation is actually made to him having to make do with another giant hologram version of her.

 

[minute bull]

 

[xenomorph4prez]

I've just thought of another mirroring of scenes that the director or writer may have included to ambiguously flesh out K and Joi's relationship.

When K is first introduced to Luv he makes the comment that Wallace must love her or think she is special since he bothered to give her a name.

Later in the movie we have K's Joi trying to convince K that he is special.

She does this in part by giving him a name, Joe.

From K's (Joe's) own dialogue to name something is to love it.

The director or writer leads us to question if this was an authentic act of love on the part of K's Joi by having the Joi advert propositioning K to call him Joe which leads us to believe it's just part of the Joi AI programming.

I think the act can be taken either way and that is what makes the film so great.

It insists the viewer decide what is "real" and what is "authentic".

Things are left ambiguous in order for the viewer to decide whether an AI is just a consumer product or whether it could be more human than AI in the same way Tyrell's slogan for his replicant products (children) was "more human than human".

As viewers we accept K and don't see him as less than because we see his struggles and dreams which makes us empathize with him and makes him authentic despite the fact that he is synthetic.

He has lived and experienced therefore he is more than just the sum of his bioengineered parts.

I don't see why the same can't be said for K's (Joe's) Joi.

She has lived and experienced in a way that the Joi advert that came off as a crude product has not had the benefit to.

Think of a replicant being born in the way we see Wallace introduce the one that he kills in front of Luv.

It is born fully formed but is ultimately a hollow product because other than possibly some implanted memories it has no life experience in much the same way I would assume a new Joi AI would be until she forms a personality based around how her owner treats her.

I can't help but feel like disregarding K's Joi as merely a product is the equivalent of writing off K (Joe) as a replicant, a tool, a slave and to some a skinjob or skinner.

 

[minute bull]

 

[Andersons Foot]

I watched in 3D today. Not a big difference visually. Enjoyed it just as much the second time around as I did the first.

 

[breadfighter]

Agree that the characters in the original leave a more lasting impression, right down to Brion James, James Hong and my other brother Darryl...but given all the horrid sequels and reboots that are polluting theaters these days, I can't complain about the existence of BR2049.

Yeah. Not taking anything away from 2049 as a standalone movie. For me comparing it to the sequel, it was just too sterilized and lacked character. I mentioned earlier in this thread before 2049 came out that in the original Blade Runner, everything felt like it had a layer of dust or grit on it, even the people, and I was hoping that mood and aesthetic wouldn't change as that's what drew me to the original.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

Yeah. Not taking anything away from 2049 as a standalone movie. For me comparing it to the sequel, it was just too sterilized and lacked character. I mentioned earlier in this thread before 2049 came out that in the original Blade Runner, everything felt like it had a layer of dust or grit on it, even the people, and I was hoping that mood and aesthetic wouldn't change as that's what drew me to the original.

Again I think it does fall back rather onto the Nolan style of just making everything crushingly serious rather than looking to make it as interesting as possible, it made a few half hearted attempts like the bald record keeper but really they didn't have much substance to them.

One obvious example of a belated sequel taking a bit more of a risk is Fury Road, I mean that film arguably takes itself more seriously than the originals in some respects but its still full of interesting characters.

 

[Jimmy Needles]

Saw it earlier today. His hologram gf was hot as fuck. atmosphere and music was a great throw back to the original, but I found the actual story uninteresting which sucks because the original is in my top 5