The long overdue _Blade Runner_ thread

i guess jared leto

i saw this in the theatre in 3d and it looked and sounded very good but it was just a load of blah. really washed over me.

Does Deckard's daughter count as a non-replicant? She wasn't manufactured.

yeah but Leto has some kind of trans-human brain stem implant

I'm sure he really does, and that it's long since on the fritz.

I finally got around to seeing this on two nights ago. Visually lovely, if sparse - the original had a claustrophobia that's absent here. Loved the nods to industrial landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky. The screenplay has issues, trimming would have improved matters. Not so sure its misogynist (there are impactful female characters with their own motivations), but it does cater to hetmale eyes.

Mostly just came here to post this promotional ephemera, which offer post BR/pre BR 2049 vignettes, the first in very Ghost in the Shell anime style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DEPwVo8xZ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgsS3nhRRzQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ9Os8cP_gg

some discussion on those upthread

the whole movie shoulda been about bautista bot.

i actually loved this. i got complaints but they’re all minor

Yeah same. I want the art book.

I'm amazed I'm not seeing more writing about the backward sexual politics of this thing, despite the foreseeable "child" countertwist.

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Sunday, November 19, 2017 10:11 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Morbs, it's out there, if not via the highest-profile outlets.

qualms were essentially:

- filters filters filters. i feel like the first one had way more variety of color
- the final action setpiece was exciting and all but everything just felt a little bit off. *harrison ford struggles to get out of handcuffs for ten minutes*
- the dialogue wasn't bad generally but i feel like robin wright especially had to struggle through some clunkers
- narrative is tied up a little too neatly for my taste

however:
- jared leto wasn't so bad after all imo, the labored delivery worked for me. i guess it helped, as other people of mentioned, that he's only in this movie for ten minutes
- ford was really, really excellent
- beautiful shots, beautiful scenery, all of which take 1000 years to get through = my kind of movie

For those who might not be familiar with Burtynsky (visually quoted in the San Diego junkyard/orphanage scenes):

http://artsintherightplace.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/tpg-7-eb.jpg

I wouldn't mind an entire movie set in these sort of spaces. Alas BR 2049 had an aesthetic that worked in the landscapes, but was just too sparse and uninhabited in many of the interiors.

mark s mentioned him upthread iirc (or maybe i am just remembering our chat after seeing it!)

this is the best thing i’ve read about the movie so far http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/10/14/the-poetry-of-blade-runner-2049

agree with brad (got to read that article)

https://itself.blog/2017/12/12/2019-the-voight-kampff-test/

A still of Beijing's Pangu 7 Star Hotel enshrouded in smog, 2013. Photo by Zuma Press: pic.twitter.com/HC5siGdAmR

— Ryan Stewart (@crsryan) October 17, 2014

nice

saw this last night, ended up kinda loving it to my surprise

the dialogue often isn't great but it's utterly beautiful to look at and in its themes and atmosphere it felt really properly philip k dick in a way that i don't think anything other than a scanner darkly has onscreen

Yes after being on a pkd binge last year I too thought this was more akin to his style than anything I've really seen on film.

Oh boy!

http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/blade-runner/news/a846834/ridley-scott-has-plans-another-blade-runner-sequel/

(This after he complained in another interview that 2049 was too long...which I agree with.)

dude can’t make anything that’s a) under 2 hrs long or b) doesnt require a 3hr directors cut rerelease to “explain” it original intent so idk maaaaaybe pot calling the kettle black

I hope it all just collapses into a full Alien/Blade Runner crossover and Michael Fassbender patiently explains to Jared Leto that he will do the fingering.

Slash Runner 2286

i hope it takes more of a “mr hollands opus” approach complete with a full orchestra of recorders

god, still haven't watched this. just never got around to it in theaters, and the past few weeks have been feeling hesitant about it due to length and people being kind of 'meh' on it. maybe bite the bullet tomorrow night.

it comes with the bizarro gazzara guarantee!

It's long, and every scene struggles to know when to end, but it's kinda beautiful and dreamy too.

Oh boy!

http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/blade-runner/news/a846834/ridley-scott-has-plans-another-blade-runner-sequel/

(This after he complained in another interview that 2049 was too long...which I agree with.)

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, January 7, 2018 5:08 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude can’t make anything that’s a) under 2 hrs long or b) doesnt require a 3hr directors cut rerelease to “explain” it original intent so idk maaaaaybe pot calling the kettle black

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, January 7, 2018 5:53 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ya in light of his recent complaints about indie darlings getting Star Wars budgets this comes off like a hilarious ego trip

akm please to listen on headphones or a system turned up loud

imo whatever chemistry ridley had was not related to the things he thinks were the prime ingredients

2049 was good and I'm glad I checked it in the theaters. Soundtrack was excellent, best thing I've ever heard from Zimmer. I think at home the length will not be an issue.

"time… to die"

https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mc9jm5TpB81qdhps7o6_r1_250.gif

smash that motherfuckin flag post button fam

got the impression a lot of the soundtrack was Benjamin Wallfisch using Zimmer's instrument collection, but I'm sure it's been written up

I didn't look that closely into it- I'm sure you're right. It's a bit of faint praise saying it's the best Zimmer's done but certainly the best thing I can recall his name being on... I know they used the Yamaha CS-70 a bunch. They probably should have given Vangelis a credit line while they were at it.

I was thinking they used the original, but apparently "Tears in the Rain" was a cover so there is a Vangelis songwriting credit on one song, at least.

yeah the ‘tears in the rain’ melody shows up in the final scene with ryan gosling on the stairs in the snow

i appreciated the restraint in the vangelis callbacks, made its eventual return that much more effective

it really felt like an extrapolation of modern soundtrack themes into Vangelis moods, or possibly vice versa, enough that the inclusion of 'Tears' felt natural

the most effective moment was the start of the end credit roll

wtf you acolytes smokin'

can-d iirc

Don't think this has been posted and it's fantastic: https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/blade-runner-2049-behind-the-scenes-michael-green-journal/entertainment

some deets on the score

http://www.factmag.com/2017/10/20/hans-zimmer-wallfisch-blade-runner-2049-interview/

For Zimmer and Wallfisch, composing in reverence to Vangelis was never a question; Zimmer even considered bringing Vangelis in on the project. Hints of the original score are most present on cues like ‘Mesa’ and ‘Joi’, but a hardware choice – the use of a Yamaha CS-80 – was more influential than his actual sounds. The CS-80, a temperamental 200 lbs. analog synth put on the market in 1976, was one of the key pieces of equipment Vangelis used in constructing the score for the original Blade Runner, as well as for Chariots of Fire. Zimmer describes it is as “the most over-designed, complicated, and unwieldy” piece of hardware. “One of its famous design faults is that if you plug the pedal in the wrong way, it will start catching fire and burst into flames,” Zimmer says. “The magic of it is, and what Vangelis embraced so brilliantly, is that it’s a real musical instrument. It responds to your touch, it translates your soul and your musicality the way a musical instrument is supposed to.”

“It’s so the opposite of how we make music in the modern world with a mouse on a screen,” Zimmer continues. “You always have to break your musical thought because your eye has to go and find the cursor as you move the mouse. You’re going right brain, left brain, as opposed to getting the old beast out.”

“We tried to create the intention of a more contemporary sound using 40-year-old technology,” Wallfisch says. “It’s a lot harder but the result has soul.”

“It’s got a little dirt under the fingernails,” Zimmer adds.

The CS-80 was part of a coterie of synths. They also used the u-he “wireless” modular plugin Zebra, as well as the company’s Diva softsynth, which was designed by Urs Heckmann based on Zimmer’s favorite Minimoog; Wallfisch was able to bring out a DSI Prophet-12 he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to use; a SoundToys Crystallizer granular synth altered compositions and then pieces were put through tape delays and covered in reverb before being processed again with the Crystallizer. “One of the things we talked about was the idea of ‘more human than human,’” Wallfisch says. “When you’re creating, you play a chord, and then all these machines take care of this extraordinary, strange, replicant-style advancement of something acoustic.”

I saw this in a few weeks ago in a double feature with the final cut of the original, and wow that did not do this movie any favours.

So: the joke with the flame-gouting towers replaced by quiet silent solar farms is pretty good, and Dave Bautista is as noted a treasure, but right after that things start to turn into bad fic - we need a shot where we zoom into a nano-signature because there's one in the original, and we get one, despite there being no reason for K to do this. Also, if you're building a robot, why would you give it bones made of bone?

Leto was terrible, his 10 minutes feel like a half-hour. There's an interesting tension when he meets Ford, but only because they appear to be from completely different films. Ford apparently got massively grumpy at Leto's dicking around with wearing opaque contact lenses at all times - though to be honest, Ford's been undergoing extensive method training for his "the same character but grumpier" roles. NB Ford is still completely great in this.

Also I don't think I was hallucinating from boredom yet, but when they had the remake of Rachel appear, I thought oh that's nice, they're using footage from the original, at least Sean Young will get paid - but apparently that was just a dream and a few minutes later they had someone who doesn't look much like Sean Young sashay out.

I may have been hallucinating during the twist, so many thanks to mh for laying it out.

The car fight was a decent microcosm of the film - it was astonishingly beautiful but that's all it was. In the original, the conflict between Deckard and Batty is resolved, after a well-situated pursuit through a recognisable space, by Batty moving from physical superiority into something philosophical. K vs Luv is resolved by.. K realising it doesn't count if you stab him?

The sex scene was pretty unsettling, and intentionally so, and very PKD (and obv specifically very A Scanner Darkly - the "wtf" expression on K's face is possibly because he's concerned that a bearded Keanu is going to flicker onto one of the faces) but I was actually annoyed that they decided that this was the point where they were going to be prudish, cutting away / to over K's shoulder after the bra comes off. The movie is otherwise swimming in tits - the bomb appears to have gone off during a James Bond title sequence - but tits mustn't unsettle.

i just remembered that deckard has a very nice grand piano in his hideout, and -- presumably hoping instantly to find a further clue -- K plays a single note on it

i like the idea that replicants can play the piano and apparently often do

This is from the original - Deckard plinks out a tune, and then Rachel plays a piece when she's back at his later and remarks on how she can remember how to play it but the lessons she remembers are fakes AND THEN THEY PLAY 'THE ENTERTAINER' TOGETHER AND THAT IS HOW THE SCENE ENDS.

Also, if you're building a robot, why would you give it bones made of bone?

i don't think it's ever made clear that replicants are robots per se, is it? i'd always assumed they were some kind of heavily genetically modified clones

Ford is still completely great in this

yeah after spending all his post-the fugitive movies sleepwalking he really seemed to give a shit in both this and the force awakens - the long shot on his face during his scene with leto where he slowly loses his composure is a fantastic bit of subtle acting

i mean the opening crawl refers to them as 'advanced robot evolution' but they are 'born' in some way, can bleed, can (at least once) reproduce... i don't think of them as robots like hunter-killer terminators or whatever

but then it also says they're 'virtually identical to a human' so why wouldn't they have bones?

it's a metaphor