Blade Runner 2049: Rick Deckard is a WHAT

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Blade Runner 2049: Rick Deckard is a WHAT

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

The teaser trailer just came out, so I figured it was time for my most anticipated block-buster of 2017 to have a thread about it.

What you need to know: Denis Villeneuve, coming off a streak of stellar movies, like Enemy, Prisoners, Sicario, and the best sci-fi movie of the year, Arrival, is directing Ryan Gosling, and a certain haggard helicopter pilot from a script from Hampton Fancher, credited with the screenplay of the original Blade Runner, and cinematography by Roger loving Deakins. Ridley Scott is only exec producing this one, so it might fare better than the controversial Prometheus.

The IMDB blurb:

quote:

Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.

Additional photo, with a link where Gosling talks about what Ford's role might entail:

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/12/12/ryan-goslings-funny-story-about-being-punched-in-the-face-reveals-key-blade

Here's the teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDscTTE-P-k

Lot's of things to discuss here, including the fact that I just learned that Jared Leto is in this one as well. Holy lol.

Shageletic fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Dec 21, 2016

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 16:16

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 21:13

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

I said come in! posted:

It's possible however super unlikely that he was built to not have an expiration date, but yeah I am going with he isn't a replicant. Could replicants even be built without an expiration date?

I always thought the dates were a way to control beings that were essentially a better version of humanity.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 16:39

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Neo Rasa posted:

I think it's interesting how if you watch the documentary about Blade Runner on the final cut, what we see in this trailer and read about the opening of the film is very very very very similar to how Blade Runner was originally planned to begin, but with Gosling where Deckard would have been. Which makes me wonder if Harrison Ford will actually be killed off five minutes in.

According to set reports, Harrison Ford was only there for a brief time. I don't think he's going to last too long in the movie.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 20:29

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Bugblatter posted:

A risky choice. He doesn't have much experience as an editor.

That was a brain fart. He's doing cinematography. Will fix OP accordingly.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 00:55

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

What about the new Ghost makes you want to see it? It's.....bland.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 16:28

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

I said come in! posted:

Nostalgia, not gonna lie. Lots of scenes from the animated film are in this movie.

But they've made the scenes they've copied so much more boring. That fight in the ankle deep water just seemed so blase compared to the three shot BOOM of the last kick in the anime.

I'm hoping for the best, but they even seemed to have stuck in a lovely "protaganist trying to learn the truth about themselves" arc in there.

At least the fan edit of the trailer put the original music in there, made it marginally better. I'm pretty much the opposite for how I feel for Ghost v. 2049. It'll be fun to see if my expectations end up getting upended.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 16:45

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Then again, there's never been a good EW photo spread

Genisys.img for example

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 19:13

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Pycckuu posted:

Ryan Gosling will shoot Harrison Ford in the face and nuts and bolts will come out. Everyone will rage on how the unneeded sequel ruined the mystery of the original, none louder than ya boy right here Pycckuu.

*squeak*

Deckard: Oh, sorry about that, need to oil that door.

*drops origami from his sleeve*

Deckard: Oh, how did that get there

*stumbles, dropping a spring from his left trouser leg

D: That doesn't prove anyth-

*pratfalls and swears allegiance to Skynet*

# ¿ Dec 27, 2016 22:05

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Yeah the EU (sorry) really made another one of their missteps by making him a General hero or some such poo poo. He's a not a nice guy.

# ¿ May 12, 2017 18:54

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

GonSmithe posted:

You know it's usually good to have an idea what you're talking about when you say stuff like this. Dennis Villenueve and Roger Deakins absolutely know what they are doing.

Yeah there's alot of assumptions there.

What I do know is that there were a bunch of images in that trailer that I want desperately as the background for my computer. GODDAMN that looked pretty.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2017 19:47

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

feedmyleg posted:

Second short is out:

https://twitter.com/iTunesTrailers/...ave-bautista%2F

There's not much to it, but it's fun.

The colors are my favorite part of it.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2017 19:52

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

feedmyleg posted:

Just wanted to say, this thread title makes me giggle every time every time I see it.

thanks mang

e:

Mordiceius posted:

It was his kids. He didn't want to disappoint his kids.

Skinjobs ~~Wu-Tang~~ do it for the children

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 23:24

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

It looked pretty as all hell. That shot of the buildings lined up the as the truck trundles into view, for example.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 14:43

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

get hype

https://i.imgur.com/F3X6lXL.mp4

But seriously, I'm probs gonna have to duck out of this thread/life to go into this thing clean.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2017 20:03

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

porfiria posted:

[spoiler]Wallace is blind because he's the least human and most overtly villanous character in the Blade Runner universe. He's surrounded by mechanical "bees" (I am sure I read somewhere there's some apocrophya about Satan being surrounded by mechnical/metallic insects but I can't find it anywhere) contra Deckard's real bees.

Beelzebub, depending on where you look, is another name for Lucifer. He's the Lord of Flies.

Anyvay, WHAT is a Deckard Rick? Lov lov lov luv how the movie didn't give you an answer, retaining the ambiguity that's fed and cultivated its particular audience for a few decades, something I can easily see with 2049.

Full disclosure/shame, I've never sat thru a full showing of the original Blade Runner before the run-up to my screening of 2049. I had seen so many parts of the film over the years, disjointed or not, that I always felt that I had gotten its full imprint, but gently caress me if I wasn't wrong catching the theatrical cut a few days ago. Mechanical, with astonishing production values, intense intellectual ideas, and a refusal to spoonfeed its audience over a well-tested narrative frame. Classic Ridley Scott.

This movie is a departure. It wears its emotions on its sleeve much more, its much more expansive than a classic Ridley joint, with characters much more wont to mouth off paragraphs of exposition and motivation in service of a very passionate theme, in this case, like most Villaneuve movies I've seen, the tribulations and eventual glory of welcoming love into your life.

Joi is the key, and thematic point of the whole exercise. Whether she was truly human is almost beside the point, as much as Batty being a replicant affected his worthiness to live. What mattered was what mattered, what seemed real was real. What else is there to be believe in this hosed up irradiated world.

Speaking of Batty, my appreciation for how smart a play it was to make the Batty 2.0 (this time with full bodied wall crashing action) the hero of the sequel, a souped up and prettied-up version (like a newer IPhone) that still pumps out more power and efficacy than previous models. I could have easily seen the movie having K be a supporting character, the robot that again saves a protoganistic Deckard's life in the end, his arc terribly elided. Thank god for new ideas.

The mood, the production, the ideas are what makes this Blade Runner. But the inventiveness and emotional punch is what makes it 2049. From freshly watching the original as a whole, I can say that its relative subtleness (Tyrell watching Rachel being V-K'ed for just a moment, his glasses flashing is so much more of an elegant way to get across his character than Wallace's constant monologuing). But the visuals, and the underlying thematic nugget in 2049, and how it so competently extends the originals ideas, is why it makes it one of the most satisfying sequels of all time.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 18:43

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:

The prostitutes are also a Wallace product. �Syncsex� in this case would be like ... like... an Alexa module, perhaps. Like Linguica said in a post, having actual sex with your e-waifu has got to be like item #1 on a wishlist.

The human factor is what surrounds her decision to perform that act, before and after.

Do we have confirmation that JOI was a Wallace product? I mean the advertising is in another language, I can't remember them explicitly mentioning it, even Luv following her could be regular ol' hacking.

It would make more sense for (my) interpreting the moment when Luv crushed her module, a moment before looking like she was staring in JOI's eyes while saying the line "I hope you enjoyed our product", presumably referring to K.

Speaking of Luv, whooof there's a lot to be said there.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 19:53

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Gorn Myson posted:

He dies. If the acting doesn't imply it, the music does. Its the same song that played when Roy Batty died

Nice pull. He really was Roy Batty 2.0.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 19:55

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

My Lovely Horse posted:

It shows the Wallace logo every time K goes into her menu.

Fair enough.

Can we talk about water positively infesting the movie as a metaphor. From the cool simulations in Wallace's pad, to the crashing waves at the climax. I mean it's obviously a birthing metaphor, water of life and all that. But seeing a high faluting idea like that pervade a movie through visuals alone is absolute catnip for me.

Just such a great grasp of visual language. The sex-sync is prob my favorite scene of the year, goddamn.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 20:18

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Veib posted:

They speak Finnish, and one of them even is Finnish: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1279980/

I can vouch that Dr. Badger was speaking perfect Somali. Makes sense since he's the "I'm the Captain Now" guy. Great appearance, rooting for the guy.

e:

Pedro De Heredia posted:

Would that even work well?

The memory is just an unremarkable memory. It doesn't suggest anything about a miracle or would prime anyone to believe it. K only believes in the miracle because he finds the evidence that the memory is a real one and he's found the bones and knows from physical evidence that a replicant gave birth and seen the date scribbled near where the bones were found. Without the bones and the date scribbled at the burial site, though, it's just a random memory that was based in fact. Only thing you could tell people is 'I know a memory you have', which just means you're a replicant.

It's a memory about a child fighting for her peace of happiness no matter the consequences. There's def a rebellious edge to it, but I'm leaning towards it being just an artist fitting her experiences into her art. One of my fav things about this movie is that what occurred, the larger plot, would have chugged along without K's involvement. He was only trying to stop what his actions threatened to reveal.

e2:

Rageaholic Monkey posted:

Saw it again. Noticed things I didn't notice the first time. It's still great, and I still think it's better than the original. It's captivating throughout the entire runtime. For 2 hours and 45 minutes, I never wanted to look away from the screen (except when K sticks his hand into the box full of bees But it makes sense considering replicants would have reduced/altered pain responses and that probably wouldn't trigger a response with him like with a regular human).

It's a callback to the original's shoving a hand into ice cold mist or whatever.

I can't stop posting about this movie!

Shageletic fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Oct 10, 2017

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 20:20

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

david_a posted:

I love how people's interpretations of Joi are completely opposite too! She's definitely the new "replicant question."

She was in the movie from the first conception

quote:

Fancher: It was just the character of K. I had written a little �Blade Runner� short story about a new kind of blade runner and I named him Kard, with a K. So there was this character who could be investigating something and that could maybe be a through-line [for the sequel]. There was also a romance with a digital woman. So there were certain ingredients, some flavors.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-blade-runner-screenwriters-20171009-htmlstory.html

Shows how integral JOI was.

Hampton Fincher has a way with words

quote:

�The image was this: A handbook turns into a poem through his experiences and his ordeal and love.

He also says this is what happens to JOI.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 20:40

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Al Cu Ad Solte posted:

Could you...explain this please.

A reeeeeeal human beeeeeing

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 21:07

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Serf posted:

Blade Runner shares very, very little with the source material. Remember that the andies were detected because of their sociopathic tendencies, which is basically the exact opposite of Roy Batty and his friends in the movie.

Wanna explicate on this?

And lol at ppl bringing up comic book movies and covenant in this, the best thread in CD so far

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 00:22

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Serf posted:

The androids of the book are sociopaths who treat the chickenhead who takes them in with indifference. They are not the beings capable of expressing emotion that the replicants of the movie are, which is how the test catches them. There the joke is that Deckard is becoming more like an andy, not that replicants are becoming like us.

There's no ambiguity to it really. Replicants bleed and clearly experience pain when heavily damaged and are also able to evade detection through normal means, necessitating the test. This isn't strictly believable, but that's really not the point of the movie.

Also, all those questions are interesting but have the same answer. Much like the question of whether replicants are people, despite not being human.

They treated Sebastian with worse than indifference. They are all sociopaths, lacking facets of empathy grown with age. Except for Batty at the end, who mighy be performing his act of leniency at the end as a point of superiority/witness to his dying speech. Thats one way to look at that.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 01:13

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Sinding Johansson posted:

It was a great film I agree and the scene as a whole was thrilling with all the disorienting negative space and the sinking car but I didn't like Luv the spinning kick lady vs the girly man fight like I did Fassbender v Fassbender, it lacked a certain weight to it considering they were all super strong

Just watched the scene for the first time. Uh they were just throwing each other around on wires man.

Serf posted:

I don't know that I agree with this assessment. Wishing to live, especially when someone very real and physical has denied you a full life, is a perfectly worthwhile motivation. To seek salvation is incredibly human, born out of fear.

There was definite a lackadaisacal lack of value in human life, present throughout the movie. They killed when they didn't need to. Like they enjoyed it. That's pretty human, in a way.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 03:59

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Rageaholic Monkey posted:

I liked parts of the score (not all of it), but goddamn, I couldn't help but think how much this already great movie would've been elevated had the score been done by Perturbator or a similar artist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0kg80jAtI8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgDMsVKOtM

It wouldn't have had to mimic Vangelis' score from the original, just achieve a similar tone that I didn't really feel like the Zimmer score delivered on.

Zimmer's good at certain things and he's used so much in movies because of that, but I don't think scoring a Blade Runner movie was really his forte.

I saw Perturbator live a few weeks ago and the thought that kept recurring in my head the whole time was "Fuuuuuuuuck, I need to hear this type of stuff in the new Blade Runner."

The music, which I love, is extremely nostalgiac (even when the music doesn't sound like the music from the 80s, but what the person thinks from his/her viewpoint as a child, what music was like in the 80s.

The score was extremely offputting and nerve wracking. I've had my problems with Zimmer before, but here it was an effective match.

edit: Perturbator, more than most artists in the genre, would have been a bad match here. Its pulsing and electrifying. Def not 2049.

e2:

HAT FETISH posted:

Ah, this music in this movie is poo poo. It needed more epic Beat's � why didn't they get Pendulum to do it, or the Hotline Miami guy? Also it was too long and they had flying cars but they didn't even end the movie with a fistfight on top of one during rush hour? This, is some loving failery.

haha

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 16:23

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Rick posted:

Wow this post has become kind of a mess, oh well.

Nah man linking snow into the larger water motif is a great point.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 16:45

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

What is the canonical list of movies where people fight by throwing each other through walls? There's Blade Runner and this, the Terminator films and the two Hyams Universal Soldier films. There must be more.

what if....the wall...fought back?

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 22:52

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

But the most wall shatterings in a movie is pretty simple

that Charlie Sheen 9/11 movie

e:quote="Solkanar512" post="477285536"]
The factories/vats/whatever are only ever going to produce replicants at a specific rate. When you start talking about reproduction, you start talking about things like exponential growth. It's not the "doubling every generation" you find with asexual reproduction but it's still a massive and compounding increase in manufacturing capability.
[/quote]

This is esp true for what he needs it for, intellestellar colonization. Presumably taking obscene amount of time to do, you need to warehouse as much resources in-planet as you can, and making babies is an elegant way to keep growing a working labor force instead of shipping more in.

Shageletic fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Oct 11, 2017

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 22:53

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

BarronsArtGallery posted:

Nicholas Cage? or was Charlie Sheel in a secret 9/11 movie that I dont know about

Lol hold onto yer butt

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt4917224/

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 23:13

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

QuoProQuid posted:

I took it much less poetically: Wallace is blind because he lacks vision. He does not see or care about the consequences of his actions and this failure makes him a shadow of Tyrell.

His affliction also makes him look extremely inhuman in a movie largely composed of very human replicants and computer programs.

The gnosticism interpretation wouldn't be outside the realms of possibility, given Wallace's god complex.

Tyrell had imperfect vision.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2017 20:45

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Origami Dali posted:

He's also more boring as a person. After about 15 seconds of pontificating about angels from Wallace, I longed for the frank logistics of Tyrell. In the end, Tyrell was a monster, but a practical one. Wallace is the new wave of the techbro, self important monsters who believe themselves to be the new saviors of the universe.

I was just thinking the same the other day. He isn't really inventing anything new, just good press and a devaluation of labor. Also got a jonesing for star travel.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2017 20:56

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Magic Hate Ball posted:

I really liked Wallace. Tyrell felt like an aging Liberace, while Wallace was like Akhnaten. It was a weird performance but I thought he was kind of fascinating and I wish we'd had more resolution to his arc, it felt like he just kind of disappeared.

Tyrell's interests, from chess to robooots, where shown in the original, his desires easily seen, making him very human.

Wallace bloviated and gave insufferable speeches while inhumanly dispatching his creations.

I think the movie was implicitly judging him, damning him by a lack of interest due to his inhumanity.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2017 21:06

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

MisterBibs posted:

Honestly, we don't need intermissions to come back, studios need to hire someone whose job it is to wield a (clean) flyswatter and apply it to directors who exhibit unacceptable symptoms of auteurism. Like thinking the theatrical cut is the director's cut, blowing the runtime out of proportion.

oh god what's wrong with you

or you just winding ppl up this time.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2017 21:12

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Magic Hate Ball posted:

It absolutely judges him, he delivers all this controlling messianic bullshit and displays a notable lack of humanity, which is why I enjoyed his performance so much.

Oh I def agree with the movie judging him, it's just not coming out and saying EVIL MAN HERE or whatever.

Both movies really did their self a service by holding back on doling out info on the beings truly controlling their respective universes. Tyrell only grows more interesting over time even when he had only like, 10 lines of dialogue in BR?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2017 21:17

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Can we quit it with the spoiler bars already?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2017 16:45

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Blade Runner posted:

To be fair(And I'm 100 percent on the side of Joi being a real being who loved K), I think that's because Priss goes off program by trying to kill Deckard and Joi doesn't. The big issue is that Joi never does anything that goes against her inherent nature as a loving being; she loves K, and continues loving K until she is eventually killed. Compare this to every other being who is seen to ascend to sentience; Roy and K are murderers, made for murder, who decide to save a life when they have every reason to try and end it. Pris is a pleasurebot made to love and give pleasure, and tries to kill Deckard. Even Joi's biggest moment of rebellion is still a moment where she is acting out of love for K; she wants to protect him, and so she insists he break the emitter. She never does anything particularly hateful or outside of her inherently programmed nature.

The germ for her motivations are programmed (to love K), but her resulting actions and decisions can be seen as breaking away from that initial step.

Sentience itself starts from a stew of barely understood gene expression and programmed lower order instincts and reactions. Just because the motivation for something that goes against one's self interest or purpose (to gently caress, to kill, to survive) does that mean anything stemming from that cannot be classified as being sentient or evincing sentience?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2017 16:51

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Sinding Johansson posted:

Smg posts about the movie. A bunch of people post about smg posting about the movie. I'm missing how smg is the problem here. Don't post about posting assholes, post about blade runner.

I for one hadn't considered that while replicants are programmed slaves, the only thing clearly keeping them in line is the threat of being retired. Their being programed people never comes into the picture. You might think that implanted memories or computer girlfriends would be used as a means of social control, but apparently that's not the case.

Did K buy Joi or was she purposefully given to him? Does K have memories that would encourage obedience or deference? Does K have to follow something like Asimov's three laws? I have no idea the answer to any of those.

It makes sense that Wallace couldn't simply just program Replicants to obey. His thing seems to be just redoing Tyrell's ideas with added proclamations of safety. And how to keep their minds in check without then turning them less human than human is such a crazy complicated proposition that using cult like indoctrination and fear seems like a much more plausible shortcut.

Wallace is very much a degeneration of Tyrell while also showing the limitations of taking a franchise and restarting it without any new ideas. The whole entire planet is very much worse than the original, but the Replicants and now Holograms rush to rise is a bright spot in that dank hole.

K, for all purposes, is just a man born in a Jonestown cult, and decides he doesn't want to die on command.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2017 14:01

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Mantis42 posted:

The best Blade Runner game is Snatcher.

Good, I want Denis backed in a corner so he has to do Bond. I'm a selfish person.

Yeah let's have him work on the most generic and overly managed franchise of all time. I'm sure he'll somehow make that obligatory two limpid sex scenes A+ cinema.

And people crowing about this movie doing badly is super weird to me. Like, all his other efforts were good at worst, why limit his choices at this point in his run?

# ¿ Oct 16, 2017 16:08

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

Serf posted:

The baseline tester calling him Constant K and Joshi talking about how she's come to think of K as different imply that he has been around for at least a while.

Yeah seems like an unnecessary level of theorizing to me.

e: we know K is younger than the blackout, which was in 2022 I think. But he's also been in previous cases working for Joshi and at least remembers having to retire other replicants, to the level he evinces a certain level of tiredness with the general idea.

I mean you can say this is all a ploy by Wallace or whoever, but why would they do that? It doesn't have the barebones reasons found in the original for Deckard being a replicant. A replicant being a few years younger than he supposed isn't hardly a shocking revelation or necessary step or whatever.

BTW, I love how loving over the whole idea K was in his first scene, sitting crosslegged in Sapper's kitchen. I thought it was just him trying to seem cool or something, but him being an ultimate killing machine who feels safe despite the man monster that is Batista breathing down on him is a really edifying twist.

Shageletic fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Oct 16, 2017

# ¿ Oct 16, 2017 19:24

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 21:13

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

starkebn posted:

I'm the kind of viewer who just goes with the narrative the film is building, I don't bother trying to "work it out" before hand. Most of the time anyway. I thought K was probably the kid, until he wasn't, and I thought it was told well.

same

# ¿ Oct 17, 2017 17:17

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Blade Runner 2049: Rick Deckard is a WHAT

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