Blade Runner 2

[Rara Avis]

Just back from seeing this ... visually stunning but probably just a bit too long. It was definitely a worthy sequel though imo.

[spoiler] We know that a male replicant was created from Ana's DNA (or with the same DNA) so I assume her memories were implanted in him to make him seem like Blade Runner Jesus. Anyone who did manage to figure it out might think he was the child of Rachel / Deckard and leave it at that. [/spoiler]

[JOE SOAP]

Massive amounts of talent making an incredibly slick and well made film but just not that engaging or memorable in the end.

That's interesting because that was the general gist of the criticism levelled at the original film back in 1982.

"Ford says he originally signed on for "Blade Runner" because he found such questions intriguing. For director Ridley Scott, however the greater challenge seemed to be creating that future world. Scott is a master of production design, of imagining other worlds of the future ("Alien") and the past ("The Duellists").
He seems more concerned with creating his film worlds than populating them with plausible characters, and that's the trouble this time. "Blade Runner" is a stunningly interesting visual achievement, but a failure as a story.
The movie's weakness, however, is that it allows the special effects technology to overwhelm its story. Ford is tough and low-key in the central role, and Rutger Hauer and Sean Young are effective as two of the replicants, but the movie isn't really interested in these people -- or creatures.
The obligatory love affair is pro forma, the villains are standard issue, and the climax is yet one more of those cliffhangers, with Ford dangling over an abyss by his fingertips. The movie has the same trouble as the replicants: Instead of flesh and blood, its dreams are of mechanical men." – Roger Ebert

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blade-runner-1982-1

[dyl]

Doubt this new one will be remembered as ground breaking and influential in 35 yrs though!

I never felt that way about the first one and it's still my favourite film. The new one just didn't grab me like the original.

[Jim_Campbell]

That's interesting because that was the general gist of the criticism levelled at the original film back in 1982.

It's not unfair. I've been trying to put my finger on why, despite my definite desire to do so, I just didn't connect with BR2049.

I think it's twofold.

1) For all that Scott's painterly eye is cold and dispassionate, Blade Runner showed us something we had never seen before. The future had never looked like this. BR2049 just didn't do that. As someone commented upthread, great swathes of it felt like a William Gibson adaption... and Blade Runner's influence on Gibson is well-documented. Consequently, Villeneuve's film feels incremental, rather than revolutionary. That's outside Villeneuve's control, but you position your film in that line of succession, and you set yoursekf up for the comparison.

2) Blade Runner is animated by Rutger Hauer's fiery performance. Whilst Ford's Deckard is subsumed into cypher by Scott's coldness, Batty finds much-needed heat. At the same time, the use of so many lived-in faces of character actors for Bryant, Tyrell, Sebastian, Gaff, et al, at least hints at a depth that the rather plastic supporting cast of BR2049 (Bautista notably excepted) just don't seem to have...

[dyl]

What Jim said! Plus I just didn't find the script as elegant and minimal as the original. Too much explaining. Bautista's have you ever seen a miracle line, most of Robin Wright Penn's lines and of course all of Leto's stuff.

[JOE SOAP]

Doubt this new one will be remembered as ground breaking and influential in 35 yrs though!

I don't think the new film's intention is to break ground but mostly be a continuation and reflection on the original.

Blade Runner is groundbreaking in terms of vision, style and in the matter of factness of how it presents its subject matter, but the story work in the belly of the film I find is lacking in its 2 hour runtime, especially concerning the replicants. I'm all for a slow-burn but there's minimalism and then there's lack of substance.

This is the only time I've ever thought that when taken as one story I think both films together may improve the viewing of each for me.

[dyl]

The other thing was that the score was nowhere near as good as Vangelis's. The score is a massive part of why I love the original so much, the way it's seamlessly woven into the film becoming part of the sound design at times. The new one had some good bits but a lot of it just seemed atonal bwaaaarrm, I'm guessing Zimmer had to turn it around quickly as johansen was let go quite late on.
Anyway I'll stop going on, just feels like a safe place to vent here!

[jacob g]

I think we can't ignore that 2049 is sum of many influences like BR was. While there's still noir, detective story in there, 2049 "is" cyberpunk how we understand the genre today with all that came after original (and original BR is not a "cyberpunk" per se). From mirrorshades, Mike Pondsmith games, japanese manga, to system shock etc. Damn, there are some things in this movie that echoes Jeter s Blade Runner books.

BR was small story in different enviroment than you'd expect from typical noir genre movie, and whole "message" of the movie was just reinterpretation of "broken, washed up detective" trope. 2049 is trying to match story to this huge world around. I kind of admire that. In some ways 2049 feels like Fletecher studied from stories that previously learned almost everything from Blade Runner.

[darnmarr]

feels like a safe place to vent here!

Having let the whole thing 'percolate' in my brain a little, i reckon I probbly haven't been vocal enough about all the really positive aspects to this brave and, well-realised project and that maybe I haven't acknowledged the lovely- immersive experience I had while watching it. I have been recommending it. I have.
I do honestly think that it's both a genuine heartfelt tribute and an innovative and creative expansion at the same time. Gobsmacking. I know I'll watch it again.
But... as lot's of people continue to beam out the positivity, and this does seem like an excellent place to trash out personal niggles...

here's two more:
A [spoiler]Rachel's secret-magic-Tyrell-implanted ovaries.
The tech exists to make sophisticated* replicants  and yet,  only Tyrell could figure out this next step of adding a reproductive system? Really? Just that one guy that one time? For no good reason?
- that ability died with him, and in 30 years of scientific endevour it seems universally accepted that nobody else has/could/or ever will?  Whatever the mechanism is for creating and amending replicants, it's not a 'magic' thing is it?- or is this another  thing explained away by being a religious allegory?
_{*(so sophisticated that they are differentiated from humans not by a blood-sample/x-ray or swab but only by an 'empathy' test)}
This means also Deckard's no longer even possibly a replicant, _{or else Tyrell fitted him with a set of equally rare and magic repli-gonads with no conceivable motive for doing so}.[/spoiler]


B[spoiler]Voice operated interaction with visual display . It's a certainly more 'cinematic' than using
a mouse, or a keyboard or a touch-screen but not practical. One time, for one system is a nice callback to a memorable scene in the first movie (_{made in 1982 when even computer mouse was rare}) but used as often as it was here, it felt like silly fan-service, to me.[/spoiler]

Also I kinda concur with Ebert's ghost; fair criticism.

[darnmarr]

I forgot to ask, [spoiler]was anyone else shocked by the drinking and cursing of Princess Buttercup? It has given me the strange idea that the Blade Runner universe is what happens when Princess Buttercup does marry Humperdink and Wesley actually dies in The Princess Bride.[/spoiler]

Robin Wright for Cheif Judge Mc Gruder!

[JOE SOAP]

A [spoiler]Rachel's secret-magic-Tyrell-implanted ovaries.
The tech exists to make sophisticated* replicants  and yet,  only Tyrell could figure out this next step of adding a reproductive system? Really? Just that one guy that one time? For no good reason?
- that ability died with him, and in 30 years of scientific endevour it seems universally accepted that nobody else has/could/or ever will?  Whatever the mechanism is for creating and amending replicants, it's not a 'magic' thing is it?- or is this another  thing explained away by being a religious allegory?
_{*(so sophisticated that they are differentiated from humans not by a blood-sample/x-ray or swab but only by an 'empathy' test)}
This means also Deckard's no longer even possibly a replicant, _{or else Tyrell fitted him with a set of equally rare and magic repli-gonads with no conceivable motive for doing so}.[/spoiler]

If there's more pointers to support Deckard not being a robbit that's fine by me but as far as replicant [spoiler]procreation[/spoiler] is concerned I think it's following the same form as the original in actually being purposely vague in defining what the hell a replicant is supposed to be and how such a thing functions: an organic robot which is not a human clone or human; has some kind of DNA/genetic sequencing apparently and didn't originally have emotions but after some evolution at the lab, did?

The 'science' doesn't make any sense because there never was much science in it; it's an elastic metaphor in service to a master/slave – creator/creation story.

[darnmarr]

Well yes it was an elastic metaphor in the 1982 fillum; but [spoiler]now,  in this story it's more central and concrete because it explicitly provides motivation for the actions of central characters[/spoiler], ¿no?

EDIT: Just re-read your post and realised that by 'the science' you probably meant 'all of the science' and not 'the science[spoiler] of procreation'[/spoiler] and Now i feel silly.

[JOE SOAP]

Yeah; to me the idea of replicants somehow developing 'emotions' was the motivational crux turning inside all characters in the original so adding [spoiler]procreation[/spoiler] to that doesn't seem too much a dramatic stretch.

[blackmocco]

Massive amounts of talent making an incredibly slick and well made film but just not that engaging or memorable in the end.

He seems more concerned with creating his film worlds than populating them with plausible characters, and that's the trouble this time. "Blade Runner" is a stunningly interesting visual achievement, but a failure as a story.

I'd level that complaint at Scott's entire career. I don't think he cares as much about solid scripts as he does imagining how to bring these worlds and eras to life. Even with the movies he's made I don't like, let's say Kingdom Of Heaven or Prometheus for example, there's always something interesting, sometimes utterly breathtaking, to look at. That's the stuff that gets his juices flowing. The scripts, the characters... ehhh, not so much.

[radiator]

Saw 2049 on saturday. I quite enjoyed it on the whole, but felt that it was massively overlong, to the point where I was getting quite bored at times. In all honesty, with the story as slight as it was I felt that they could have easily cut an entire hour from the running time and had a much tighter, more engaging end product. Having now seen the movie, I'm not at all surprised that it's bombing hard - I can imagine the vast majority of viewers being bored to tears - a friend I was with fell asleep for a good half hour chunk.

I also found the occasional line of dialogue a little ropey, and that it veered uncomfortably into hack cliches from time to time - such as the Dr Evil villain 'I'm just going to leave you here and assume you're dead' trope, which happens TWICE in the space of 15 minutes. The villains in general were a little overwrought and cartoony compared to the rest of the movie.

Conversely, despite my gripes with the running time, I actually appreciated the pacing of the film - it was nice to see a big budget spectacle movie that was confident enough to give itself time to breathe, and really immerse the viewer in its world, and didn't have the obnoxious, whiplash-inducing pacing of most modern blockbusters where you feel as if you're watching an extended trailer rather than an actual movie.