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Blade Runner


Dolfan in NYC

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As the original is one of my favourite films and I've seen every cut and fan edit I can get my hands on I have thoughts

Spoiler

I walked out of the cinema feeling a bit deflated if I'm honest. The whole film sort of felt hollow, like a soulless blockbuster dressed up as Blade Runner that was constantly trying and failing to hit the high notes of the original. I enjoyed the K-as-Pinocchio character and the inversion of 'is he a replicant or not' and felt the commentary regarding online relationships reflected by the Joi hologram was great. Roger Deakins once again killed it as cinematographer. I felt Sylvia Hoeks was the MVP of the film, so vicious and calculating behind a veneer of warmth. These are the positives. As for the negatives, as odd as it sounds I could have completely done without Deckard showing up and felt like his appearance was the weakest part as it added so little to the film outside of the touching scene at the end. I'd have preferred an undercurrent of social unrest and upheaval among the replicants and skinjobs going on in the background of the film to reitterate Joshi's concerns about the replicant baby. Completely unnecessary run time too. That said I'd like to see it again as I feel like I missed some bits due to music cues drowning out dialogue at IMAX

 

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I think the relationship with K and Joi was the best and most fascinating and interesting part of the film.  Sylvia Hoeks also stood out as Luv.  Beyond that, the Niander Wallace character was a letdown as was most of that subplot.

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I felt one of the most touching scenes was her 'feeling' rain drops for the first time only to be shutdown so K could answer a call.

As is the norm on the internet in 2017, there's this weird undercurrent of misogyny being labelled at this film by one trick pony commentators due to the whole Joi thing. As a rational human being I saw her as the heart of the film who humanised K's 'lost little boy wanting to be more' characterisation and who was so desperate to love him she merged with a replicant prostitute to feel an inkling of that. But of course, I'm a straight white male so what do I know?

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6 hours ago, TheVileOne said:

I think the relationship with K and Joi was the best and most fascinating and interesting part of the film.  Sylvia Hoeks also stood out as Luv.  Beyond that, the Niander Wallace character was a letdown as was most of that subplot.

I liked this part of the movie better when it was called Her. Joking aside, everything with JOI felt heavily inspired by Her.

I also feel like I didn't allow myself get emotionally manipulated when the movie wanted me to, namely when, ugh, do I have to keep putting shit in spoilers?

Spoiler

When JOI "dies."

However, the impact from that was delayed when K is walking across the bridge and the giant JOI hologram is talking to him and you see it display "Everything you want to see" and "Everything you want to hear." Then K pulls off the bandage and sets off to finish his mission. That was fucking cool. It was just this moment of

Spoiler

"I'm not special, I am just a skinjob, I fell for a hologram that just made me see what I wanted to see and made me hear what I wanted to hear, and if I have any purpose left, it's going to be reuniting Deckard with his daughter."

One of my best friends that I'll talk with movies about it saw and commented that he thought the movie was very boring, but he loves talking about the movie. I definitely didn't think it was boring, nowhere near as boring as Blade Runner, but I certainly love talking about it.

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5 hours ago, CreativeControl said:

I felt one of the most touching scenes was her 'feeling' rain drops for the first time only to be shutdown so K could answer a call.

As is the norm on the internet in 2017, there's this weird undercurrent of misogyny being labelled at this film by one trick pony commentators due to the whole Joi thing. As a rational human being I saw her as the heart of the film who humanised K's 'lost little boy wanting to be more' characterisation and who was so desperate to love him she merged with a replicant prostitute to feel an inkling of that. But of course, I'm a straight white male so what do I know?

That made me think of trying to download some nude pics over dial-up only to get a phone call at around 75%.

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I only see movies in the theater maybe 3 times a year and this was one of them.  The original is a favorite of mine and I tried to go into this with as neutral expectations as possible and really enjoyed it.  While the movie didn't have any truly standout performances like Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty and his famous monologue everyone involved more than held their own.  It was also one of the best looking and sounding films I've seen in a while.  All the set design, cinematography, light and color direction, and the score were incredible.  One of the things that made the original so iconic was the city design which was both parts drab and dystopian as well as chic and futuristic.  They captured that very well here as well as expanding it with the desert and junkyard wastelands.  A real sense of massive scale.  The way they incorporated various weather elements also added a ton to the atmosphere.

As far as the plot goes, it was actually a lot more straightforward than I was expecting.  There's plenty to unpack but I didn't go away from it with a lot of unanswered questions and speculation.

1 hour ago, Craig H said:

I liked this part of the movie better when it was called Her. Joking aside, everything with JOI felt heavily inspired by Her.

I also feel like I didn't allow myself get emotionally manipulated when the movie wanted me to, namely when, ugh, do I have to keep putting shit in spoilers?

  Hide contents

When JOI "dies."

 

 

Agreed with all this.  I found the AI Girlfriend storyline a bit too hackneyed and could have done without a lot of those scenes.  However I realize the importance of that whole angle for K's development for reasons already mentioned.

About the only lingering question I have is

Spoiler

Did the doctor intentionally give K her memory of the horse because she'd hoped he'd act on it and reunite her with Deckard, or at least bring to light the truth about replicant reproduction?

 

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2 hours ago, Craig H said:

I liked this part of the movie better when it was called Her. Joking aside, everything with JOI felt heavily inspired by Her.

I also feel like I didn't allow myself get emotionally manipulated when the movie wanted me to, namely when, ugh, do I have to keep putting shit in spoilers?

  Hide contents

When JOI "dies."

However, the impact from that was delayed when K is walking across the bridge and the giant JOI hologram is talking to him and you see it display "Everything you want to see" and "Everything you want to hear." Then K pulls off the bandage and sets off to finish his mission. That was fucking cool. It was just this moment of

  Hide contents

"I'm not special, I am just a skinjob, I fell for a hologram that just made me see what I wanted to see and made me hear what I wanted to hear, and if I have any purpose left, it's going to be reuniting Deckard with his daughter."

One of my best friends that I'll talk with movies about it saw and commented that he thought the movie was very boring, but he loves talking about the movie. I definitely didn't think it was boring, nowhere near as boring as Blade Runner, but I certainly love talking about it.

I definitely saw the parallels with this subplot and Her.  But I though the payoff for this subplot was also amazing.

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  • 3 months later...

I finally saw this and I thought it was breathtakingly beautiful and great.  Reminded me of when they gave Bond to Sam Mendes and he proved these megabudget action movies can still be objects of beauty (err, the first time anyway).  Of course, it's probably not a coincidence that both were lensed by Roger Deakins.  

It's kind of amazing how Denis Villeneuve has scaled up his ambition with each successive movie but somehow never seems to be out of his depth.  And there are times in this movie where it seems like he's really TRYING to make things difficult on himself.  Even relatively static dialogue or transition scenes have some sort of werid lighting configuration or VFX work that seems subtle but was probably an absolute pain in the ass to get right at all, let alone look as great as they all do.  And that's to say nothing of the big showy stuff he pulls off with Joi or the action pieces.  There is unbridled creativity bursting out of every frame of this movie.

He also did a hell of a job casting all the main female roles, specifically the two lesser known actresses who play Joi and Luv.

And the story is fine!  You definitely get the sense that Villeneuve isn't in a great hurry to get back to Deckard and probably would rather have just made his own story in this world without a direct connection to the original, but it's fine.  And as far as Nolan-esque third act magic tricks go, I think this one holds up.

Shame it was a huge bomb.  Hopefully, someone will let Villeneuve play on this big of a scale again some day anyway.

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22 hours ago, EVA said:

I finally saw this and I thought it was breathtakingly beautiful and great.  Reminded me of when they gave Bond to Sam Mendes and he proved these megabudget action movies can still be objects of beauty (err, the first time anyway).  Of course, it's probably not a coincidence that both were lensed by Roger Deakins.  

It's kind of amazing how Denis Villeneuve has scaled up his ambition with each successive movie but somehow never seems to be out of his depth.  And there are times in this movie where it seems like he's really TRYING to make things difficult on himself.  Even relatively static dialogue or transition scenes have some sort of werid lighting configuration or VFX work that seems subtle but was probably an absolute pain in the ass to get right at all, let alone look as great as they all do.  And that's to say nothing of the big showy stuff he pulls off with Joi or the action pieces.  There is unbridled creativity bursting out of every frame of this movie.

He also did a hell of a job casting all the main female roles, specifically the two lesser known actresses who play Joi and Luv.

And the story is fine!  You definitely get the sense that Villeneuve isn't in a great hurry to get back to Deckard and probably would rather have just made his own story in this world without a direct connection to the original, but it's fine.  And as far as Nolan-esque third act magic tricks go, I think this one holds up.

Shame it was a huge bomb.  Hopefully, someone will let Villeneuve play on this big of a scale again some day anyway.

They want him to do Dune and Cleopatra. Dune is going to be a colossal bomb. White Cleopatra is going to bomb. So yeah, Hollywood's unhealthy obsession with epics is going to good short term for him but bad long term. All money ain't good money.

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2 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Cleopatra, in 2017, seems like a bad idea, with all the cultural baggage. 

Unless it's Cleopatra 2525.

TBH Cleopatra is like 7th most interesting queen at best from Africa. Black Cleopatra doesn't even interest me. So outside of maybe "Yeah, we got Beyonce to play Cleopatra and she's wearing a lot of unnecessarily skimpy outfits", I'm not spending a single cent on that. 

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10 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Funny, my first thought was “will Beyoncé be Cleopatra.” 

As far as I know, it's still Angelina Jolie for the Villeneuve version. I know actors want to play certain roles, but Jolie's obsession about playing Cleopatra is as stupid as Salma Hayek, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Jennifer Lopez wanting to play Griselda Blanco. You can't eliminate qualities and characteristics real life people have and then expect people to give a shit. Maybe they can do the Charlize Theron in Monster reverse makeover (but then again I was never a Charlize Theron type of guy), but fine ass women playing Griselda Blanco makes her rise to power not as important. It becomes your cookie cutter "women in a man's world" type of movie with zero substance and a bunch of awards bait acting. In the same way I don't want to see that, I don't want to see Angelina Jolie play a black woman for I believe the second time in her career. I'm good on that.

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Just now, (BP) said:

That reminds me of when Jared Leto and Salma Hayek played the Lonely Hearts Killers. 

  Reveal hidden contents

lg_a5bc4c-lonely-hearts-killers.jpg

 

I remember on Bill Burr's podcast when Bill and Nia were talking about Argo and then Nia went WTF when they put up the picture of the guy Ben Affleck was playing. The guy looked like Efren Ramirez at the time those events took place.

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