Blade Runner 2049

Honestly, I wouldn't if I were him. SHF isn't as bad as some places, but it still has its share of rudeness. This thread is no exception.

 

If anyone wants spoiler tags to cover stuff up, just say the word and I'll hide the juicy bits. I enjoyed the movie and don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet...

I didn't dislike that "underground" plot thread, but it made me feel like I was suddenly watching a Matrix movie. And, as soon as it's introduced as a thing... It's gone. That's part of the reason I feel like this was intended to be a longer movie. Granted, you may be right and this is setting up for a franchise, but it sort of begs the question - with Deckard still around at the end, would they be able to get Harrison Ford on board for at least one more movie?

And yeah, that's specifically the part of Wallace's plan that I didn't get. Ok, you want breeding replicants to be some sort of evolution... But you treat them as disposable things and kill them left, right and center. Again, he just feels like a pretentious dork who strangles kittens while delivering monologues.

Only evidence against that is the fact that it's been about 30 years and the daughter ages appropriately in that time. Stands to reason more that a replicant that is the first of its kind to be capable of natural reproduction might not have the "bugs" worked out. Granted, the part that stretches disbelief for me is that this was anything other than Tyrell just doing it because he could (seemed to be his character based on the first movie). It was a proof of concept idea more than anything having to do with business interests or profits - again, why I don't get Wallace pouncing on it.

 

Having now given this a listen, and not finding anything terribly objectionable about it - though I can imagine the piano sounding richer - I now believe that including this version was intentional and meant to provide insight into the crappy tech (which apparently was not affected by the Blackout) provided by HoloJukebox companies in Las Vegas before it was wiped out by climate catastrophe (ya know, in that other universe ).

 

The soundtrack CD contains the 1998 digital remix from the reissue CD of the Capitol album, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (mastered by Bob Norberg). Heavy noise reduction and other processsing. It may match the echo-filled acoustics of the hologram jukebox scene, but I'm sure it appears here only because it is the current in-print version from Capitol/UMe. There are much better sounding versions of this recording.

Not wanting to again be accused of "nonsense and muppetry," I'll just leave links to the SHF album thread and @MLutthans' website, for those who may be interested in other sources:

Sinatra / Capitol Sound Quality, etc.: "Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely" (1958)
Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely - 1958

 

Then you have to make one and kill it to make one?

 

SPOILERS



Saw for the second and it seems last time on IMAX Wednesday night, and the Wallace thing is something I'm trying to pin down as well. At one point he says if he had milljons he could do billions and take the universe, storming Eden, as it were. Then, he tells Deckard he has millions of children. Take the ostensible error from BR, where they were 6 replicants off-world and 4 were loose and one got fried in the security system-leaves one, and folks, even before the Director Cut, used to present that in argument that Deckard was a replicant. The book Future Noire explained what happen in the final creation of the movie, accidentally leaving in that error. This one, IIRC from the movie, is a million-fold from that one.

But, that's an aside from my real proposition: Wallace (and I actually liked the portrayal of the character) has a huge god complex. That malarkey about enhancing the speed of planet acquisition is just a cover, maybe a subconscious one, for his true goal: He wants to be God: All that angel rambling is not just rambling. If he can perfect self-replicating replicants, he is the Creator of a race of actual beings, not just one-shot individual units. Eventually, he would like the replicant race he created to replace the original human stock. That's what this is all about for him. He is willing to go to great extremes and commit great evil and cruelty in pursuit of his master race, wrapping his mad vision in the Christmas paper of economics and advancement of the human race.

 

Sir, you are a music Animal!

 

The Sinatra hologram was my favourite part of the film. Just sayin'

 

Basically, he seems to be the mouthpiece for Ridley Scott's obsession with God - pretty much the same as the Weyland / David characters in Prometheus & Alien: Covenant

 

They should of had a Don Rickles hologram

 

I'm going to venture slightly off the reservation here, but as I started to read this, I hit two quotes that seem symptomatic of everything that's gone wrong with how we approach art now. Basically, there's musing about whether women somehow wouldn't like the movie because of the depictions of female characters and a weird fixation on the movie's emphasis on "the woes of white guys." I've never heard such a sexist and racist load of garbage... Actually, never mind, I hear it a lot. Point being, what's actually being said here? Women can't enjoy stories that don't involve women who are exactly like they are? People who aren't white need stories that directly reflect their own skin color or they tune out? Christ, do we have common humanity and the ability to empathize or is this one big ghettoized pen where stripes stick with stripes and spots stick with spots? I get the desire to see yourself in the characters laid out in front of you, but give the audience a little credit here!

Sorry to rant, but this really torques me off and it's infinitely more demeaning to women and whatever demographic group you'd care to name than a movie that *gasp* dares to have a white male protagonist who goes through some stuff.

It probably wouldn't even feel so absurd if it weren't for the fact that you'd never hear the opposite. A movie with a female protagonist would never be examined with, "Well, maybe if they'd try to appeal to more men, the sales numbers would have been higher." Likewise, I don't recall watching Will Smith in I Am Legend and saying to myself, "Gee, this movie would be so much better if he was white." Ugh. Some people are a bloody sewer...

Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

From this angle, I definitely understand the character better, but it doesn't change my feeling that Leto was awful in the role. It just feels like someone either needed to go full psychotic or fully detached and inhuman. He tries the second, but fails miserably. It comes off like some high school kid who discovered Blake for the first time.

It's also possible that someone else could have brought an entirely different edge to the character, which would have been interesting. Something else that may be worth a look is that (at least to me) Leto looks too young to be convincing as this brilliant empire builder. He would have been a teenager during the events laid out in the opening that lay out his rise to prominence.

 

Yeah, it sounds like crap.

 

I acknowledge your observations on Leto's performance but still appreciated it. He was pretty much psycho killer on the female replicant new model that fell short of his expectations, FWIW. I also saw a significant degree of detachment from the character. But I think the bottom line for me is that I do not see the need for "one or the other": The fact that the performance has me thinking about it is evidence that it was not a failure.

 

I am not very knowledgeable about Scott in that respect and haven't seen the other two movies but am now curious (of course, since it might support my interpretation-now I feel so petty!).

 

One part I did NOT lie-at the "revolution reveal" very near the end, the replicant prostitute saying "more human than humans"-just didn't work for me.

But...when that character insulted the hologram character, about how there wasn't that much to her, interesting-one artificial life form's disdain for another-the chapter in the dialogue?

 

They used that line in the first film anyway.

 

I know that (White Zombie used it too-no relevance but just throwing it out there.). If they hadn't used it, and if it wasn't such a central theme, if not THE theme, to the first set of movies (with the different cuts I have a hard time saying 'the' first one) it wouldn't have annoyed me so much. It came across as a useless echo from the past, and assuming humans in 2049 weren't all infertile, not even accurate.

 

Right, there was enough tipping of the hat to the first film already.

 

All that is fine, but he still overacted himself into caricature. If Steve Jobs or Elon Musk acted like that, they'd be in the looney bin and not head of a company. I believed Joe Turkel as a genius and head of the Tyrell Corp; Jared Leto's Wallace character doesn't exist in real life -- only in bad action movies. If he had been wearing a S.P.E.C.T.R.E. octopus ring, his character would have made more sense. He was the one false note (well, Sylvia Hoeks came close, adding a bit too much super-villain's henceman to the mix) in the film. In a sci-fi film that goes to vast pains to create a believable future, the last thing it needed was bad villains from a cheesy Bond film.

 

That the female characters don't actually have a narrative arc but serve the male characters' arcs. I agree with this sentiment and it makes a difference to me. That's all I'll say on this subject.

To be fair for those who may not have read the article, it covers more ground than this.

 

Again, I acknowledge the points, but...this is not today's environment---a lot of people think they would die with their Apple or Microsoft or whatever, but in the movie reality people were starving, so we don't know what they could get away with. We don't know how Jobs or whomever are away from media, and in BR 2049 I presume Wallace may not necessarily be out in the media to even begin with-apparently, he spends a lot of time off-world anyway. The performance is different but believable in my opinion in the given context. He didn't seem like a postmodern Blofeld to me at all=rather, someone who was in a position of absolute power-he feeds the world and runs the cheap labor for ALL our worlds in that future-he is arguably somewhat isolated by his blindness, and he has persuaded himself of the righteousness of his quest. He doesn't even need many actual non-replicants around him, so he is even more isolated. I understand Hitler acted pretty strangely at times, but by the time persons around him felt urgency to do something, it was kinda difficult.

 

If that's all you're going to say, response is rendered moot.

 

I've really got to get some work done, but I can't resist...

We are defined in great part by our interactions with others. With whom do we see Wallace interact? Two replicants, his main assistant, "the best angel," and briefly with the one he slaughters. With Decker, briefly trying to seduce his cooperation and then, aw screw it, time for horrible torture. This is likely who this character is, a very strange and mostly forcibly subdued one, who does get hammy in his god pretensions. Is this what was requested of Leto? I see that as reasonable. And, we could say the makers failed but not putting Wallace in more interactive scenes-says who? If this is who they saw in their vision, if this is what they wanted, it arguably makes the point-superpowerful and super-rich, I guess super-smart, and got bat-dip crazy pursuing his vision.

And I don't think Luv got that cheesy-her nuances were interesting. Her awkward attempt at seducing "Joe" in their first encounter, her tears in the scene with the slaughtered replicant and when killing the Lt., her copying Wallace's good-bye kiss he used on the female replicant when she thought she had killed "Joe," her pride on being the "best one" as she brags to "Joe" while walking back to Decker...a super smart and strong, quite elegant life-form, still seeking out her emotions.

 

It's a polite way of choosing not to get into an openly political discussion - something not allowed on these forums.

Men telling anyone what is acceptable or moot is an old, tired story. Please, feel free to carry on.

 

Understood. I would like to discuss the topic but you are correct about the political issue. But, if you are trying to unilaterally impose some label of misogyny on me, I resist same. The moot did not refer to your opinion, which we apparently shan't discuss, but that I had commentary. If you choose to interpret otherwise, you are trying hard to make a point that is not there. I can't help but notice that one's posting "I'm saying this but I'm not talking about" is akin to hit and run but, please, feel free to carry on.

And, back on track, i enjoyed the Lt.'s character-good performance of a hard-nosed hard-driving character who was raised with the prejudices against skinjobs but feels something for "Joe," seeing him as a person now and then, trying to protect him as much as possible, even desiring him in her "search for something real." The hologram-Joi?-was very good, inviting curiosity as to the nature of the very nature of that mechanism. Luv was well-played: I've already discussed that in another response on this thread, I believe. And the whole story, in practical terms, is actually about the daughter, who does quite well with the limited screen time. There are more, but I thought the entire cast did well and created compelling characters.