BLADE RUNNER 2049... (spoilers)...

I’ve stepped up to blue ray, so I’m good… thanks though. :slight_smile:

I saw Syd speak in school as well. It was interesting hearing him say he struggled with it because he is such an optimistic person and the idea of making everything so dystopian and run down was difficult for him.

So, I really liked it. I loved the original, but I did really like this one. Not an easy task to accomplish.

I think in a lot of ways this new one is more true to the book. The hugely expansive, more hugely messed up world was something very present in the book, as was the much larger cast of characters. Interestingly, Rachel was actually a villain in the original book, much closer to the Luv character. The replicant underground is present in the original book as are replicant police officers. Int he book the replicants had built a completely counter society that paralleled humans and was indistinguishable with the goal of mixing everybody up. VR simulations and getting lost in them, also in the book (pretty good for something written in the 60’s)

What I did like about the original was the more intimate story. It is in essence a love story between a human (or maybe human, we don’t know) and a replicant and asks a big simple question, what does it mean to be human and does it even matter? All these barriers we create are fictional.

I also liked the original sound track MUCH better. I know a lot of people are going goo goo over this new soundtrack, but it feels like a dozen other movie soundtracks that all of have the big distorted BWAAA! sounds. The original soundtrack was so delicate and spontaneous and was a nice counterpoint to the visuals. Vangelis (the original soundtrack composer) improvised most of the soundtrack with a few synthesizers riffing over a rough cut of the movie. Vangelis also did the soundtrack for Chariots of Fire. Probably one of the most iconic movie melodies ever.

In the end, I thought it was very very good. The acting was excellent. Amazing that they kept so much of the story under wraps. The world building was awesome. I felt like it just din’t have quit the same emotional punch or cliff hanger of the original.Unfortunately it didn’t do well in the box office so we might have to wait another 25 years for the next one.

Also, I love that the new one was as beautifully shot as the original. The left a lot of hang time on scenes to just show off the world. The original had tons shots were they didn’t explain things but just let you feel them, like the shot of all the cyclists or the shot of all the people with light up umbrellas. I liked when the new one did that too. they didn’t explain the world, they just shoed it to you as fact. Some great cinematography.

Just went and saw it again. Some of my favorite ID aspects:

  • Dr Stelline’s ‘CAD mouse’ for building memories - like two big camera lenses mated together with buttons where the fingers rest
  • the ‘raw data’ DNA viewer, with audio feedback in American accented Japanese. Seriously what is it about dystopia movies where design and ergonomics are as bad as they can be?!? Or is it because they are not off-world, where everything is like Wall-E Axiom easy.
  • The wearied sequence of handles and buttons K uses to start up his v.2 Spinner
  • seeing Deckard’s original Spinner
  • the absolute negation of anything ‘technological’ in the Wallace HQ…they have surpassed tech so far that its completely serene
  • gestural interfaces to control autonomous surveillance drones
  • interior of the Wallace spinner-transport, kind of 2001 or James Bond villain retro

I like the way he spoke to the drone as well. Re watching the original there some some pretty good voice activation and control and they continued that.

Harrison Ford just made my day !

I watched the original only this week. I could see the cultural impact the movie had but it felt weak in some aspects. The visuals were amazing, I actually had listened to the soundtrack a dozen times while working and its great. I felt like the big issue for me was that the pacing and plot didn’t age too well. 35 years later, we’ve been exposed to a lot of sci-fi, possibility of cloning, androids, advanced AI which makes the slow pacing of the original movie to let the viewer digest and form an opinion wasn’t really required. This may be a tribute to the impact the film had more than anything…

Where I think the original failed me with its plot and pacing, the new one nailed it. The plot messes with you in so many great ways. It takes your expectation of how the plot is going to unfold and makes you think you were clever for having figured it out and then just spins, several times. The reflective pacing was also quite welcome. As the actors are figuring things out, so are you.

The visuals were great, having different locations made the world feel much more real. I’m a bit disappointed there weren’t more street level urban scenes, I loved those in the original and gave you a sense of the relation of the different characters with their world. They also looked really cool.

I liked the inclusion of snow in the movie. It may just be a Canadian thing but there’s something much more relatable to the heavy and silent yet serene atmosphere of a light snow fall than baking in the California sun.

Like Michael, I was let down by the score. The original is so expressive and melodic. It actually works as a great counterpoint to the desolate landscape. It also puts you a bit in the mind of the characters. This universe is what they know, there’s no shock to riding a flying car above a 30 story concrete maze of people in a super rough situation. Deckard is feeling love and wonder much more than he is feeling oppressed. The new soundtrack while it uses the same synth and has the right textures in some places, it completely misses the mark in terms of melody and moving you. Hans Zimmer seems like an odd fit as he’s one of the least melodic composers out there. Someone like the band Air could have been like a good fit. It seems like they had to change who was doing the score midway through, so maybe Zimmer was a choice more because he’d get something ok in little time more than because he was the best fit.

On the design front. I really liked the brand integration (as there was in the original) and I’d be curious how they happened. The Peugeot spinner, the John Walker bottles, the Sony entertainment system. Its interesting how having those recognizable brands in the movie make the feel much more immersive. While there’s an aesthetic to Blade Runner, its not uniform and seeing the interpretation of the visual language of those brands through the lens of that universe made for some really cool props.

This could also make for an interesting exercise of just running what if scenarios on products and brands. Playing with the history and purpose of products to get new ideas in the process.

Anyhow, it’s cool seeing everyone’s reaction and interpretation is quite different for this movie.

Saw it on Friday, I always thought the original was a bit chintzy because I didn’t watch it until ~20 years later and “Basic pleasure model” just made me wish they’d share info on the “Advanced pleasure models”.

I enjoyed it, but I agree that the pacing while deliberate lost me about 2/3rds through the film where I was ready to just give up. For some scenes the build of the immersion was great, like when he returns home to shower and eat, the little details about water conservation, holographic food were all amazing touches.

I also loved Jared Leto as Wallace - brilliant acting - got chills at one point.

So what happened to the dog?

I mean… if I was living alone as a hermit with only a dog for companionship, then someone came by and blew up my car and screwed up my place, then someone told me my daughter was alive, I think I would go get my dog first and then figure everything else out.

LOL! Great point. Especially being that animals are so rare in that future scenario.

This tells me it wasn’t real.

A clue as to whether Deckard is ‘real’ or not: when the bad guys from Wallace come to take him away, they are all wearing some kind of respirators presumably to help them breathe in the hostile dirty-bomb Vegas environment. Deckard doesn’t need one of these to live full-time there. K doesn’t need one either.

Although on the other hand, the Wallace baddies are 99.9% probably replicants as well. So never mind.

The irony/sadness of a replicant forming a relationship with a ‘massclusive’ lower-level “ones-and-zeros” AI was really nailed home in the scene with the big pink holo-projection. I’m not any kind of Gosling fan, but his under-stated delivery really made me feel bad for his character.

He nailed the look in that moment when he was like “oh, I get it now, I’m a sucker”… he also did well in the moment when he realizes that he was the decoy, not Deckard and Rachel’s child.

I haven’t read the article yet but I figure it could interest some of you:

I can’t say it disappointed but they have tried to make the storyline much more epic than it is. We are nowadays used to these types of topic that were one day mind-blowing to imagine and as a post-matrix film the general public is not used to this kind of pacing. I took this film more as an immersive aesthetic experience a la James Turrell than an entertaining or relevant movie. I am not saying this should have been a Marvel type paced film but I was hoping for more of a feel that the Star Wars films have - still very aesthetic but also great scene cuts, humor and the hustle and bustle of a societal context. I liked the overall design and retro-futuristic feeling of their devices but for me, nothing beat the classic.

The more time I’ve spent away from it the more I realized I enjoyed it.

One theme that hit me on reflecting about it is that you think you are following the path of the main character, like every other movie, but in actuality Ryan Gosling is just a side character. The main characters are Deckard and his child though you barely see them.

I’m definitely glad they did not take a Star Wars like approach. That would have ruined it. If anything it would have been interesting to go the other way and take more of a Christopher Nolan approach.

I absolutely love this kind of stuff. Forget ‘Minority Report’ and floating touch screens. Imagine a future world where digital technology doesn’t exist!

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I guess it is an alternative reality when Jerry Brown and the EPA never existed.

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That is so freakin’ cool. I wanted to be that guy when I was 16.