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[MOVIES] OCTOBER 2018 DISCUSSION


Dolfan in NYC

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2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

All that, plus a human had a baby with a robot.  I guess you'd enjoy it if you can look past that key conceit, which I couldn't. 

Well technically Replicants are bio-engineered androids, not robots.  

They are closer in nature to clones or the harvested humans from the Matrix movies than they are to machines, so being able to impregnate a Replicant is within the deranged scope of speculative fiction.

A robot's function determines it's form. It rarely has to be designed to resemble a human in order to do its job. 

As a matter of fact, designing a robot to move as a human does (ie. walking, running) is very inefficient depending on the job it's supposed to perform.

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34 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

First Man would have been interesting if they revealed Armstrong was a Replicant too.

I could see the Replicant Baseline test being a part of the NASA selection process.

You're in a rocket going to the moon.  Moon.

One small step for man. Moon

One giant leap for mankind.  Moon.

It is not made of green cheese. Moon.

M-O-O-N, that spells.  Cells.

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The first Blade runner movie certainly gave me the impression that replicants were more machines than biological constructs. Surely if you manufacture a lifeform with a seven year lifespan, it would start to look a bit old and knackered in the last few months there? Not full of strength and vitality one minute, and stone cold dead the next?

Also, if you can get them pregnant, why would it only happen once? Aren't most female replicants used as sexbots? Or was Sean Young especially designed to be the replicant Virgin Mary? I bet that was actually addressed in 2049 and I missed it because I was distracted by wondering why a blind person would have such interesting lighting designs in his office.

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15 minutes ago, AxB said:

Also, if you can get them pregnant, why would it only happen once? Aren't most female replicants used as sexbots? Or was Sean Young especially designed to be the replicant Virgin Mary? I bet that was actually addressed in 2049 and I missed it because I was distracted by wondering why a blind person would have such interesting lighting designs in his office.

Exactly.  It was hand waved in the film and was pretty ridiculous.  If you didn't just accept the fact that a human fucked a robot and the robot got pregnant, and buy into that whole-heartedly, it made the movie a joke.  They also never justified WHY the entire fate of the world depended on killing or saving this robot baby.  It was a plodding film that relied on a ridiculous central conceit and never explained the stakes.  But hey, it sure looked pretty.

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43 minutes ago, AxB said:

Also, if you can get them pregnant, why would it only happen once? 

Because the writers said it should only happen once?

43 minutes ago, AxB said:

Aren't most female replicants used as sexbots? 

Yes, Priss and Zhora were both pleasure models but they're still replicants designed to be faster and stronger than normal human beings. 

Despite being fembots, both Zhora and Priss kicked the living shit out of Deckard in one-on-one physical altercations and of course it took more than one of those hand cannon shots to kill them.

Most replicants are pre-disposed to be subservient to humans, but renegade replicants tend to "malfunction."  That's why they have to be "retired."

43 minutes ago, AxB said:

Or was Sean Young especially designed to be the replicant Virgin Mary? 

Rachel is a prototype Nexus 7 and she's unique.  Apparently having a natural termination cycle aka she can get old and die was only one of her special features.

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21 hours ago, Technico Support said:

They also never justified WHY the entire fate of the world depended on killing or saving this robot baby.

The allegory of slavery.

if Replicants are genetically compatible with humans then they should also be considered "humans" that deserve the same natural rights and privileges as other humans.

They should not be considered to be property that needs a death fuse embedded in their genetic code.

This idea did not stop slave owners in the 1800's, so I am not sure why it should've worked in 2049, but suffice to say that abolition would've eventually taken root so it would be important to Tyrell to make sure the Replicants = Tools <> People idea remained constant.

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OK, so we're building a Bride of Frankenstein that's capable of sexual reproduction. Maybe we should put some contingency in place, to ensure that both mother and child survive the pregnancy and birth? No, wait, I've got a better idea. Let's not bother. It's not like anything we do now could ever have long term consequences, is it? Nothing can possibly go wrong. 

You'd think a scientist intelligent enough to reverse engineer all of mammalian biology would have enough anatomical knowledge to make his babymachine re-usable. Then again he started with the most evolved lifeform on earth, so maybe he's a crackpot. You're supposed to start your experiments on rats, not people. It's more ethical to experiment on pest species, any fule kno that.

If it rains all the time in the city, why did they build a farm in the desert? And why isn't the city green with moss and vines?

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16 hours ago, AxB said:

OK, so we're building a Bride of Frankenstein that's capable of sexual reproduction. Maybe we should put some contingency in place, to ensure that both mother and child survive the pregnancy and birth? No, wait, I've got a better idea. Let's not bother. It's not like anything we do now could ever have long term consequences, is it? Nothing can possibly go wrong. 

This is the beauty of speculative fiction.  It's speculative.  The success or failure of the core principle is determined by the writers.

If the writer has a cynical view of AI, it will go nuts and blow up the world. 

If the writer thinks the opposite, then you have a concept like the one in the Stainless Steel Rat where there is a planetwide AI that helps facilitate true democracy by providing a virtual construct where all citizens have an immediate say on any matters concerning greater society.

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2 hours ago, J.T. said:

If the writer thinks the opposite, then you have a concept like the one in the Stainless Steel Rat where there is a planetwide AI that helps facilitate true democracy by providing a virtual construct where all citizens have an immediate say on any matters concerning greater society.

That sounds absolutely horrible. 

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16 minutes ago, Player One said:

That sounds absolutely horrible. 

Yeah, imagine Twitter having a immediate say in actual matters.

 

There's actually an episode of The Orville that deals in just that.

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3 hours ago, Player One said:

That sounds absolutely horrible. 

The fact that it sounds horrible to you says more about you than it does about the concept.

2 hours ago, Raziel said:

Yeah, imagine Twitter having a immediate say in actual matters.

There is a reason why these stories are set in a far flung future populated by technologically superior, utopian societies..

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On 10/15/2018 at 5:04 AM, Technico Support said:

All that, plus a human had a baby with a robot.  I guess you'd enjoy it if you can look past that key conceit, which I couldn't. 

The rapiness of Blade Runner gave me no desire to see the sequel.

On 10/14/2018 at 4:18 PM, DreamBroken said:

Made a rare trip to the movies for the first time since Creed a few years back, also to see A Star is Born as a big Lady Gaga fan and thought it was pretty great overall. Gaga is perfect for the role and Cooper was really great in his as well. Absolutely love the music throughout with several of the songs sticking in my head in the days since.

If you dug the music, I recommend picking up Lukas Nelson and The Promise of the Real. They were Cooper's (and are also Neil Young's) band and Gaga even sings back-up on a couple of their songs. 

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1 hour ago, Raziel said:

Yeah, imagine Twitter having a immediate say in actual matters.

The toxicity of twitter stems from the fact that it is simultaneously a news network, an opinion forum and a popularity contest. If it was just a news site, it would be like any other online newspaper. If it was just a popularity contest, it would be a mostly ignored parade of irrelevant exhibitionists. But being both, it encourages rampant sensationalism, hyperbolic overreactions and outrage culture. Add in the star system, where the terms of service are applied heavily to the smaller voices and lightly (or not at all) to the louder ones and it's no wonder everyone's over the top there. You're incentivised to scream fury, even when a quiet word would more than suffice.

Not that I'd know, I don't have a twitter and never have done.

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2 hours ago, odessasteps said:

As always, Twitter is what you make of it. You follow who you want and try your best to weed out the rest. 

(Much like the board) :)

I use the board to edit twitter for me. So I mostly see wrestling gifs and MMA fight announcements.

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Finally got around to watching mother! tonight. Yeah, I suppose not strictly a horror movie, but if you empathize with mother at all, it could be watched as such. I think it qualifies as deep horror. 

I also have no clue why people could have thought the movie made no sense. If anything, it failed to rise above the level of bald allegory often enough to be one of Aronofsky's best movies. Perhaps it was easier to call it a mess than to address how nakedly critical it is of its "source material".

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