The long overdue _Blade Runner_ thread

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

hate2be smashed through a wall by a hulking angry metaphor

No fair point, robots is definitely the wrong word - but they're stronger and more physically endurant than humans - bones would be the first thing to improve I would have thought.

well, some models definitely are, but we see leto's right-hand woman running down the modifications available for mining replicants with a client - presumably a clerical replicant like rachael doesn't need to be capable of punching someone's head off

back to what mark said tho, yeah clearly they are metaphors for what it means to be human - part of what i liked so much about this movie was that it seemed more phildickishly concerned with exploring this from multiple angles than the original

(even managed to slip a reference to what briefly appeared be a dead twin in there, another dick obsession)

guys, I have an embarrassing almost fanfiction-like narrative interpretation of the ending scenes, from K shooting down the escort cars all the way to the end

it's currently saved as a tumblr draft, on account I don't really use. if I get past my shame and hit publish... idk

going to go store my horrible Terminator ruminations in the same way

you’re such a tease dude

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4IPBiB7SF4
Some speculate the head of development is a gamergater but it looks impressive.

DOO EET MH

I'll hear it mh

You can count on us not to pull the punches either so brace yourself for the searing heat

now deleting for sure, thanks deems

my terminator ruminations are over on that thread though

publish and be deemed

this is why we can’t have nice things

was thinking about this movie some more over the weekend, have some scattered impressions which may or may not make sense

one thing i don't think we've addressed much is deckard and rachael's daughter ana being a super-talented designer of ‘memories’

both movies (and much of philip k dick’s work) are about the blurred, if not altogether erased, line between the real and the simulated

ana is the first ‘real’ offspring of simulated people – the natural-born daughter of either a human and a replicant or two replicants, depending on your opinion of deckard’s humanity
(incidentally, one of the best choices in the movie imo is leaving deckard’s status unresolved)

ana spends her life in an entirely artificial environment, using her real memories to build simulations which help replicants feel more ‘human’ in order to make them more contented workers

however, it’s heavily implied during the scene where k meets the gang of liberated replicants that he’s not the first of their number who has come to believe in the reality of his memories and act on them – so the fake memories that ana builds are having very real effects on other simulated people too, far beyond their intended purpose

there’s another simulated emotional centre in the movie too, of course – k’s hologram girlfriend joi, who becomes incrementally more ‘real’ twice – when k upgrades her and when she briefly merges with mackenzie davis’ character

k’s push to total dissent is vitally supported by joi, an entirely artificial character who encourages k to think of himself as a ‘real boy’, and who k holds genuinely ‘real’ feelings for

k is devastated to realise that joi’s seemingly real reciprocation of those feelings was in fact what she was programmed to do all along – a simulation designed at least partially to help simulated people feel real

but by then his experience of ‘real’ love and ‘real’ memories (those quote-marks are entirely optional by this point, of course) has led him to take on a suicide mission

k gives up his own life so that the biological father of the first real replicant offspring (who may or may not be real himself) can experience love again after living for decades like a ghost in the shattered ruins of las vegas, in itself a patently, deliberately artificial city right from its inception

sorry this is long and rambling and might be super-obvious but I really love the hall-of-mirrors quality of this movie – like I said upthread I think this is a really effective screen rendering of philip k dick’s obsessions, maybe even more so than the original

That's all good stuff

some minor additional brain-dumps:

almost all the pivotal characters in this (k, joi, sapper and luv) aren't 'real' but provide most of the emotional beats

k feels obvious compassion and love and ends up sacrificing himself

joi seems genuinely terrified of being destroyed and her last action is to tell k she loves him

sapper is moved and awed by witnessing a 'miracle'

luv weeps when wallace guts the newborn replicant and when she kills robin wright's character joshi

deckard is deliberately an edge case of course but wallace's taunting about whether his relationship with rachael was 'real' or not is obviously tremendously painful

of the pivotal 'real' characters (wallace and joshi), wallace is heavily augmented with cybernetics ('more human than human' i guess) and basically considers himself a god

joshi blithely tells k he doesn't have a soul but also later that she sometimes forgets he's not human; she also makes a clumsy pass at him

i think there might be a suggestion that joshi herself could be a replicant - her odd impassiveness when luv crushes a glass into her hand made me think of replicants' high tolerance for pain, and is reminiscent of roy batty's self-administered wound at the climax of the first film

one more musing (last one, promise!)

k says to joshi that he's 'never retired something that was born before', and says 'to be born is to have a soul'

he's visibly hurt when joshi tells him 'he's doing fine without one'

it's the crushing blow of joshi's dismissal of his existence, on top of the abject loneliness of his day-to-say life, which causes him to buy the upgrade for joi, accelerating his rush towards the painful, impossible belief he might actually be a real boy

but each of the replicants we see in both movies show unmistakable signs of having a soul of their own - they care for each other, they fight for their own dignity, they are terrified of death, they can grasp the miracle of birth or the terrible beauty of c-beams glittering in the dark near the tannhauser gate

so what's the animating spark, the organising principle, that gives those replicants every appearance of human life as we know it? is it their memories? if it is, why aren't their strings cut by the knowledge that their memories aren't their own?

if they are simulating the appearance of having a soul, if they are 'only apparently real' in the phildickian/sonicyouthian sense, but they feel real to themselves and others then is it a meaningful distinction at all? that's why i'm glad they didn't get specific about whether deckard is a replicant or not

ana, the real offspring of the unreal, works on the psychological interiors of replicants and wallace, the unreal real person, is obsessed with replicants' physical interiors

is that significant? i dunno, i'm gonna shut up now

Memories are more than save points I guess

imo replicant "humanity" or lack of a soul, however you address it is an evolution of self, not some sort of physiological difference between a born human and a manufactured biotech human replica

they feel real to themselves and others is completely right -- the majority of 2049 is K grasping for a soul while feeling unworthy of the attention of anyone more real than a hologram. he's got a facsimile life, including a facsimile wife. he doesn't feel worthy of the attention of a fellow replicant unless she's wearing his holographic companion as a veil so he can lie to himself and somehow make the experience less real

brb got to find a link on my phone

need to edit out the overwrought bits that appear after I have a couple beers and write:
http://supermod3rn.tumblr.com/post/170002056519/blade-runner-2049-the-man-with-two-fathers

yeah 'evolution of self' is a good way to put it - both ana and wallace are trying to make better replicants psychologically and physically but their efforts are kinda misguided and/or unnecessary; replicants seem perfectly capable of bootstrapping their way into a humanity or a soul based on the development of their own experiences and feelings

they've never seen a miracle, wouldn't understand it if they did

ha, yeah

neither of them know that ana is the miracle wallace is searching for, that's for sure

i really liked your tumblr thoughts btw!

I think that's the thing that makes the throwaway "I'm the best one" line from Luv worth something -- she really thinks she's the best replicant, that this Wallace-like disaffectation is the end state of replicant emotion

K's resurgent because he's not the best replicant, he's just a better person

The unspoken thing at the end of the original film is, despite his violence, Roy Batty's the most human character in the story

I really think Wallace was loathsome (and not just for the try-hard Leto acting) because his end goal for replicants really was "like Luv, but can make babies"

as for the home release of this film, I would like the people who put it together to explain why each of the shorts has the Villeneuve intro when he says pretty much the same thing each time

HELLO, DENIS HERE AGAIN. I MADE BLADE RUNNER 2049 AND HERE IS A SHORT INSPIRED BY THAT FILM BY ONE OF MY FRIENDS

yeah, wallace's explicitly-stated goal for producing fertile replicants is so that he can colonise more worlds, more quickly - he has no interest at all in their interior lives beyond using ana's work to make them more docile, productive workers

luv and k at the end are basically polar opposites - you're right, luv wants to be the best servant she can be (but her tears show that she's fighting back her human responses) and k has abandoned the role he was built for in favour of embracing his humanity entirely

The unspoken thing at the end of the original film is, despite his violence, Roy Batty's the most human character in the story

and not just the most human, the most alive - he's crushing the last bitter drops out of his four-year lifespan

'it's a shame she won't live - but then again who does' is a brilliantly double-edged line for that reason

tbh K's facsimile life is a little too human and relatable in its own way

"yeah, wallace's explicitly-stated goal for producing fertile replicants is so that he can colonise more worlds, more quickly "

Well yeah, like all gods