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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.

[Rachel's secret-magic-Tyrell-implanted ovaries]

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.

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.

I don't know how it'll play but from a cursory look that is an ugly looking film.

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

I s'pose the element I found OTT... [spoiler] Deckard and Rache become adam-and-eve of new replihuman age..[/spoiler]. it just reminded me a bit of the way Darth Vader changed from film to film

It's definitely a salient point but both films are allegories about creation in life and art. The original film had strong biblical overtones too: Sebastian and his Methuselah syndrome, Roy Batty ascending a pyramid asking for more life from his father/creator and paraphrasing lines from William Blake's America: A Prophecy about fallen angels etc. so I suppose amongst the primitive culture of replicants and their masters Deckard & Rachael would be seen as mythical after a period of time.

but when the story becomes a story of [spoiler]the most important people EVER (not just on nine planets but the whole universe, mind you)[/spoiler] something thematic and fundamental,... something of 'the substance' is  broken with.

For those particular characters it probably would be that important but maybe not not to the fella in the pawn shop.

[romance]

1[spoiler] The Tyrell-replacement villain was just awful. What was he doing with his face and his voice and his eyes and his body- and why didn't they re-shoot all of his scenes with a different actor after they saw what they looked like on film? (I wasn't impressed) [/spoiler]

I thought Leto was miscast; they intended the role for Bowie so you can see what they were thinking of.

2[spoiler]
3[spoiler] They made Deckard/ Rachel's romance so central to the big story.
I say 'Nay' .
'Nay' I say!
For- when you cast your mind back, Deckard and Rachel weren't exactly the 'love-at-first-sight' star-crossed couple retroactively depicted in this story.
Is it just me or does the repeated audio of VK test seems to be regarded as the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in this universe? That aint right I tellsya!  Think back!--

In a world where people can perpetually obsess over apparently recorded intentions and emotions isn't revisionism part of the subtext? But having said that, Tyrell, being a patron of replicant evolution, admittedly by his own design put Rachael forward for the VK test because of her 'specialness' and attractiveness for the very purpose of subverting Deckard's bias – she's literally manufactured to play the role of the Gitanes smoking femme fatale in black opposite the cynical gumshoe – so based on that tropish bit of seductive theatre, the conclusions drawn by Wallace's character in 2049 as to Tyrell's motivations aren't too much of an extrapolation, even if it's just mental provocation aimed at Deckard during the coercion to extract information, which Wallace seems to imply.

Their one 'love scene' in the original fillum is spectacularly awkward, and, quite frankly, a bit 'rapey' (which makes a kind of sense if you're of the belief that Deckard himself is a recently-created emotionally-underdeveloped machine- a notion completely dispensed with by this story btw- which means now it's just 'rapey' again).

It's still a bit rapey either way you interpret it. From the original film I gleaned that Deckard was a profoundly dehumanised individual because of the years he spent making his living from killing what he believed were supposedly artificial 'subhumans' rather than he himself being literally, a new-born replicant, and that his only default positions when dealing with replicants is either interrogation or violence. His resultant awkwardness is due to regaining his feels from the very thing he hunts.

In the original film Deckard and Rachel just seemed like small, emotionally stunted, unimportant cogs in a vastly bigger dystopic system; they were just small- fry that Gaff could, on a whim, afford to let go: [spoiler]But in this universe they are the parents of the 'star-child'* equivalent (*from 1983  V  miniseries on 'telly). This is a shift and I hate this. I really do[/spoiler]

There's always a certain amount of buy in to any fantasy film and a lot of people could never buy into the blurry concept of replicants in the original, [spoiler]but the idea of Deckard and Rachael, and the vagueness of her 'specialness' as the centre-piece of this specific segment of the 2049 world, isn't that far-fetched when it's a conflict played out between a egomaniacal industrialist and his/Tyrell's historically rebellious product[/spoiler].

[Vangelis]

no Vangelis was a serious blow.

It's remarkable that in this day and age most of the scenes in such a gargantuan budgeted film have no muzak soundtrack at all and that it really works. The 'big' music is kept for the more panoramic passages/montages and for punctuating revelatory moments. The general theme stuff, especially the end-title music, does feel uninspired and in need of the Vangelis treatment but for the most part the film has a superior sense of sound design. It says these are people who know what they're doing and had enough confidence in the work to use silence and ambience rather than leaning on the ubiquitous mood music – no saxaphone themes this time.

It's a different film than the original and whereas the first feels more an evocation of a future scenario with dense music and tableaus, the second has a stripped-down aesthetic, but with more meat in terms of portraying the implication of that scenario. In many ways the sequel has a lot the original lacked and a more active, noirish investigation.

As a drama, BR2049 is better written and directed than the first and apart from a prolonged end-fight and the inclusion of a certain element in the final sequences that might've been better served as something purely hinted at than seen [spoiler]– underground replicant army for another film –[/spoiler] I think it works brilliantly as a reflection on and conclusion to the Rick Deckard story.

I'm with Tordelback, though - I'd rather have seen those events rather than just heard about them, but I wonder might the whole thing have been more effective had those episodes been shown in flashback and scattered throughout the season's episodes, slowly building up the backstory? Tough call.

This was more what I was implying – start with the prison ship docking with Discovery then conflate those first 3 eps into a 2 hour pilot integrating the more vital incidents of the war and Michael's transgressions. I think it might be more impactful but as you suggest, the pilot may have been a late addition and the series did originally start with Isaacs etc.

They've dropped the misappropriated aping of Abrams stylings in the direction which results in showing-off the production design so much better - this really is the best Trek has ever looked which is not the impression the previous eps left me with. Jeremy Isaacs is burning up the screen with an intensity that feels like the Federation put Tommy Lee Jones in charge of his own ship and I'm liking the more amoral aspect to the mission, even if everyone acting like a prick was over-played.

I had a notion while watching that Michael quoting Lewis Carroll was a way for her to count/pace her movements through the shaft but the lack of a set-up made it seem odd even if the pay-off meant something personal, so it just comes across as a literal stating of some vague metaphor about her character's situation that got lost somewhere along the way or is waiting to be sublimated elsewhere.

I enjoyed Ep. 3 a lot more than the first 2 and despite the contrivances to get Michael on-board and on-side as some kind of tension builder, it hangs together fairly well. With some added fleshing-out of Burnham, this really could've been a debut episode without the need for the wasteful 2 hour backstory of the pilot.

Pretty sure Origins had that happening in 2131.

I don't think the year the stories are set in disputes that auspicious date.

other writers tend to stick to stories that don't drive the larger story of Megacity One forward.

They should try IDW.

I remember looking at SJ covers on Comicvine half a year ago, around the right time frame, for clues to the issue in question. Of course it was in a seasonal special, and of course the cover appears to have been on ComicVine since December 2016, with Dredd's mug right there!

It never seemed to turn up on Mandarake, ebay or anywhere else that was easily searchable, even with all accurate details, but I eventually found the cover in this July 2016 tweet – which I assume is the original source image comicvine eventually ended up taking – and possibly the only findable image of it, I believe, on the web at the time.

Knowing the cover and the full Japanese text of the issue's title I filtered variations of them through google images looking for any references and also online Japanese vendors. This took a long time to come up with the exact issue – possibly due to low print runs as the seasonal specials ended the next year, or them getting binned as disposable comics. Eventually I found one copy in a shop but had to buy it through proxy buyer.

Given how they've redesigned almost every element of the uniform, it's interesting that the eagle still looks pish.

The jelly-mould has long been a symbol of fascism.

Correction: the artist and writer are more likely Matsumoto Taiyō & Mitsuyoshi Kenji, not Hitoshi Matsumoto & Mitsuyoshi Takasu...I think.