Blade Runner 2049

I'll be seeing this Thursday, the trailers have looked awesome so I hope I've not watched all the good parts already

Don't tell me the ending, just if it's good

Going to try to sneak a viewing of this on Thursday too!

Yes it was very good, not going to say any more

Re-watched my copy of the original need to arrange my self to see this.

Excellent except for two things: (a) it could use half an hour chopping out, and (b) I'm bloody certain the sound designers and mixers didn't intend it to make the audience's ears bleed.

<rant>
Dear cinema owners, turn the fsking thing down a bit, perhaps to a level when your output amps aren't clipping and people can hear the dialogue.
</rant>

What is the draw about sci fi films like blade runner? Seriously, it's a pretendy film, a lot of films are pretendy, but what's the big deal here? Just asking...

*Every* film is pretendy, no?

Even a romcom chickflick is discussing a made up world, but it's not really asking you to think about it. A thud and blunder James Bond/Jason Bourne whatever invites you to put yourself in the place of the protagonist; a level more involving.

Space opera - most science fiction - is just cowboys and indians in space, or (surprisingly often) even older stories translated - the Odessy, the Aeniad, pirates.

But *good* science fiction (I favour Cambell's definition: it's a science fiction story if it doesn't work if the science isn't there) poses a question 'what if', builds a consistent world, and then drops the protagonist in the middle of it and lets him get on with it.

Blade Runner was taken from (inspired by?) a book called 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' by Philip K Dick. That was written in the sixties (so it's as old as you and me ) at a time when thermonuclear extinction was looking a serious likelihood; when the space race was on and no-one had got further than low earth orbit. The hippy thing was still going strong, as was racial separation in the states (and a lot of racial abuse over here). WW2 was a strong recent memory. Dick was living a hand to mouth existence, with his only income from his writing and according to his autobiography, eating cat food (illegal in the states).

And yet he wrote, at that time, a number of very thought provoking books concerning the nature or conciousness, of perception, and of reality... is what I see what really happened, or something that has been implanted in me? Am I really who I think I am? And who tells me what to think?

In 'Do Androids..' he describes a world where artificial people are created to do the more dangerous jobs in society; deliberately made stronger and more resilient than normal humans, but with the same drives and instincts. And a very short lifespan, years rather than decades; they're slaves. And some of them don't want to be... they rebel, and they get hunted down.

But hunting them down is a difficult and dangerous job itself - so what if the hunter is an android himself? And he doesn't know whether he is or not... how are his actions changed by that; what are his thoughts when he starts to wonder about it?

And to a large extent, unusually for Hollywood, Blade Runner got it right. A lot of the draw is from the action sequences; a lot from Ridley Scott's *amazing* vision of LA (apparently, in the 21st century, it rains all the time!); but they're just window dressing on the struggle of the main character. It's a film in which the audience is involved; the outcome is by no means obvious nor the way in which it will be achieved. And like many excellent films, it didn't crash the box office when it was first released but has generated its reputation in the forty year since then.

(I deliberately haven't discussed 2049 to avoid spoilers, but it takes the same themes and enlarges them.)

Where SF helps is that the authors can investigate issues and ideas without being constrained by current reality.

Films that were entirely realistic could potentially be incredibly dull and mundane viewing. I'm struggling to think of one. So it's all a matter of degree.

I did ask, yes.....


Just to add, I do like pretendy films by the way..

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

Despite Joe falling asleep, my wife falling asleep, and jake falling asleep... I really enjoyed the film. Once we had removed the dribble from the OAP's.
The sound design was good but perhaps a little OTT on levels on a few occasions. I really enjoyed the cinematography. I found the plot a little, well anemic. Evil corp wants to do something that may, or may not be bad but villain is suitably evil and I saw the plot twist coming from quite far away.

The thing is, it tried, it tried to re-capture and expand the original theme and make it relevant to today. I suspect a great many people didn't watch the first and probably wont and you could get away with out doing so. It wanted to be about morality, it wanted to raise questions about the not to distant future. If you have watched the animatrix historical file I would argue it contains most of the premise for the film.

It wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, it had problems and was probably overly long and its passing was very slow, then quite fast then all of the things at once. But it was still good and just about worthy to contain blade runner as a title.

At nearly 3 hours I'm not sure even this would tempt me back to the cinema but I'm looking forward to the blu-ray release.

I recently got this poster so that'll have to do for now:



All of Denis Villeneuve's previous movies that I've seen have been great (well, apart from Arrival but that wasn't a problem with the direction). Sicario, Prisoners, Enemy, Polytechnique and Incendies, all well worth a watch.