The long overdue _Blade Runner_ thread

Differences / blade runner vs do androids dream of electric sheep

San Fran, not l a
2021, not 2019
Animal simulacrum subplot
Deckard is married
Monorail, not flying cars
Holden survives !
The voigt empathy test was developed in the Soviet Union
Rachel is tyrells niece (family name is rosen)

One thing I liked about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep that wouldn't have really worked in a movie I think, is that Pris and Rachel were the same model android, so they actually looked identical

Also the whole bit with the fake police station is so good

came across this a couple of days ago and found it interesting

Studio Notes to a Test Screening of Blade Runner, January 21, 1981 pic.twitter.com/AGWU252v1O

— 41 Strange (@41Strange) November 10, 2019

now i really wanna see a black and white version

thx also matthewk for posting that weta video and thus introducing me to 3d modeller 'jake evill', the most metal of all 3d modellers

>KTLA illegal firework footage is trending
>multiple comments about how "congratulations, we've literally become Blade Runner"

Me, a video editor with the soundtrack: pic.twitter.com/X1nchJGadb

— Mach Dent (@Mach_Dent) July 5, 2020

Awesome

damn that is beautiful

I'm seeing Atari Star Wars arcade tbh.

Wow - yeah. Nice job senpaku

Bay Area sky turns bright orange, some areas see 'snowing' ash https://t.co/SHo2ZulCV9 pic.twitter.com/fs3IOKVR46

— SFGATE (@SFGate) September 9, 2020

I have to admit, my reaction to the sky yesterday was a reconsideration of 2049 as better than I thought

Waking up today though, just low level terror

The pictures don't capture the glow, or the way light reflects differently off of surfaces when it's all soft red

Yeah as soon as I saw this pic I thought I should re-consider 2049 not lol we're fucked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_m9TUP_t_Y

that shot of the bridge, wow

^^^

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tbT75Qve6s0/Wgu1uxdpkpI/AAAAAAAAVZA/cBxzOjePYNoIYB8so8I6LUD6lyv4hFzXgCLcBGAs/s1600/Crisis_on_Infinite_Earths_Oblivion_Upon_Us_087.jpg

i rewatched 2049 a few weeks ago and it's still fuckin great

I wish there was a cut where Leto's head comes off and they play soccer with it

My brain just jumped through some weird hoops with that comment and the trailer this week for Villeneuve’s DUNE

thankfully did not cast Leto as Leto

Had no idea about the origin of the original director's cut in the 90s (thread):

Director’s cut of Blade Runner accidentally shown instead of the theatrical cut. I then mounted a campaign to get it released. And succeeded. https://t.co/lTShwIgVVQ

— Bruce Wright (@heybrucewright) February 4, 2021

absolutely wild, and that showing launched an entire revitalized fan community

Blade Runner notes from the producers to Ridley Scott. pic.twitter.com/ZnI1HvyZIS

— Will McCrabb (@mccrabb_will) April 20, 2021

you can kind of suss out who forced them to do the voice over (and finds it dreadfully delivered) and who didn’t like it at all

lol @ "this movie gets duller every time we see it"

No intention to be pedantic, but the actual quote being "gets worse every screening" makes it even funnier.

both quotes are in there! presumably they meant it gets worse after each recut of the film, since this seems to be notes on version 4

but you can see how we arrived at TikTok and reality TV, these dudes seem to think anything that isn't constantly stimulating the audience needs to end up on the cutting room floor and their instincts don't really seem to be wrong when it comes to popular entertainment

even though theyre wrong, tbh its also funny to me how the real time/proto-livetweeting feel of the notes captures that feeling of how when youre watching something thats really irritating you, every new element can feel like a fresh offense: "THIS guy again? MORE slow motion? what is this, synagogue music?"

"for fucks sake, is he a goddamn robot or not, already??"

"movie suddenly ended when they got in the elevator WTF?!?!?!"

xpost - ha, I missed OEO's quote in my first pass, sorry!

To be fair, the film wasn't exactly a huge success upon release.

I'm sure David Toop was at that first LA screening. He wrote a piece for The Face about a very early screening of the new cut.

Need the full set of notes from the prior screenings imo

i am quite ambivalent about blade runner. the world-building, atmosphere, and the transformation of the filming locations - many of which have been used before and since, but never in remotely the same way - is great, as is rutger hauer's roy batty. from a story point of view it is a little inert. a neo-noir but our detective doesn't do a lot of detecting (i think harrison ford said something of this nature about the film). there's not much in the way of plot points.

I saw 2049 again, at home this time, but on a very nice TV and sound system, and I loved it again (and it reminded me of the nice time i had with mark s at the cinema the first time around). The sound and the image are tremendous. Both pretty important things when watching a movie imo

When you already know the story though the flaws tend to stand out a little more. The story is pretty clever until you realise it relies almost entirely on coincidence. Leto is so dreary that it puts a ceiling on how great the movie can be. I would have loved Wallace to be a nerdy bureaucrat, a can-do zealot with efficiency spreadsheets. They went in a different direction - they wanted a kind of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, impatient, dolorous chaplain with a frustrated messiah complex. Sure. But choices have consequences and while Leto may have "nailed" what he was going for it sucks the movie into quicksand. Ford also barely registers. I'm sad to say that Robin Wright - also terrible!

On the other hand the love story with Joie is fucking amazing. Leto's henchman, Luv, is awesome. All the violence is so brutal and tense and close-up and painful. And Ryan Gosling is so good it pretty much makes up for everybody else who is bad

How’s the TV????

I never understand why Deckard is doing fine in the irradiated empty city of Las Vegas

because robot?? or maybe antioxidant properties of wild honey

Leto just ruins the role. He's putting on performance and none of his attempt at understated menace is convincing or believable.

Comes across as a Meisner Acting School student's mid-term acting assignment

Luv rules. Her brutality when she kills Lt Joshi is awesome

i'm the best one

honey and Jack Daniel’s. not sure where the bees are getting their pollen mind you.

i almost forgot to mention the truly godawful CGI of Rachel. if i was Villeneuve i would want to get a “special edition” out toot sweet. use your own money if you have to.

the TV is outta sight. tbrr. I have gone into some detail on the New TV thread.

I watched Black Rain the other week and realized it's a better Blade Runner movie than 2049 is.

Also loved Luv. Terrific baddie. I’m surprised it didn’t get seen as a breakout role (unless I missed something - and I suppose the movie hasn’t been that popular anyway)

Science Fiction Encyclopedia has a good article, incl this passage, which I found helpful:

The numerous cuts of the film are essentially minor variations on three main versions: (i) the workprint version, originally shown to preview audiences only, but given a limited theatrical release following its chance rediscovery in 1990; (ii) the studio version, with new voiceover and happy ending grudgingly added for release; (iii) the unicorn version, without voiceover or post-getaway scene, but including the bizarre unicorn reverie which seems to confirm that Deckard himself is a replicant. (Scott was firm on this notoriously contested point; Ford and producer Michael Deeley roundly rejected it; Fancher wanted it to be ambiguous; Peoples had Deckard understand himself as a merely metaphorical replicant, escaping into a belated true humanity.) The last is now the authorized version, first seen in a now-lost preview cut, but only released to audiences with the misleadingly branded Blade Runner: The Director's Cut of 1992 (actually an edit by other hands adding the unicorn sequence to a tidied-up recreation of the workprint version) and definitively realized in Scott's own digital Blade Runner: The Final Cut of 2006, which like its predecessor also restores some of the more brutal sequences seen originally only in the UK/Europe release.

Also mentions making-of doc being incl. w later DVD releases.

I watched Black Rain the other week and realized it's a better Blade Runner movie than 2049 is.

one of the main plot points in gene wolfe’s “book of the new sun” series is the existence of aquaestors, which are beings created by superior intelligences from the memories of other characters. they are made of some sort of energy field (generally described as light, although they seem to have mass and substance and can pick things up, etc) and can be more or less autonomous. i suppose the best way to describe them is like holodeck characters who are free to wander the universe. over the course of the series, wolfe (who is catholic) repeatedly makes the point that even “real” people and objects are ultimately no less ephemeral (deepak chopra and other people who like to point out that “we’re just empty space filled by fields of energy, maaaaaaan” would probably agree)

this is all to say i like peoples’ interpretation, and it seems to me to match the themes and characters in both movies. sure the replicants have a limited lifespan, but so does jf sebastien, is leon kowalski’s casual disregard for life any more inhuman than harry bryant’s, etc. probably old hat for the purposes of this thread but “we’re all metaphorical replicants” is a good summation of why i’m no longer hung up on the question of whether deckard is a replicant or not

i’d never heard the term “metaphorical replicant” before but i sure do like it!