Bladerunner: 2049
Nov. 15th, 2017 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightI don't have an icon of the sequel and can't be bothered to try and make one.
That probably gives you a bit of a clue what I thought of it.
Spoilers behind cut.
I am -as some of you may have gathered - a huge fan of the original movie. To this day, it remains the only film I've ever gone to see by myself - not just once but several times. I loved it - even the original cinematic version with the voiceover and the tacked on happy ending. The version that was released a few years back - the Final Cut, was it? -is the definitive version, obvs (though I could have done without the extra violence), but even the flawed original was a great, game-changing movie.
IMO, though, the same can't be said of this sequel. To the extent that I've already dismissed it from my mind as a complete irrelevance. The original still stands alone. It didn't need a sequel in the first place, but the sequel that we've got doesn't spoil it in retrospect the way, say, The Matrix is spoiled by its sequels.
This is not to say it's a terrible film or anything. It looks amazing, the soundscape (don't know what else to call it) is brilliant, I loved the shout-outs to the original movie, and Ryan Gosling is fine as K, the replicant bladerunner of the title. But it's all just...so unnecessary. Plus, the film suffers really badly from an inexplicable lack of diversity in casting (the cast of the original couldn't be described as diverse, I know, but that was 1982), and - unlike the original - has, IMO, a really unpleasant misogynistic undertone. There's way, way too much female nudity, most of it completely gratuitous. There's also what I thought a quite sickening scene of female degradation and torture (yes, I would describe it as that) which served no purpose whatsoever, IMO, except to show us what a total bastard the villain was, and I think we already knew that. None of this is offset by the fact that Deckard's and Rachael's miracle child turns out to be a girl, or by the fact that K's main physical opponent is a female replicant. In fact, that makes it worse since she seems to be just as sadistic and cruel as her creator. At least with Zhora in the original film, we knew why she was violent. She wanted to survive. This Luv (was it?) is just nasty for the sake of it.
In fact, unlike the original, which is anything but, this film is emotionally cold all the way through. And this extends to K's 'relationship' with his cyber girlfriend. I know we're meant to feel upset when Luv grinds K's USB stick containing all he has left of her under her boot-heel but honestly? I felt nothing. I didn't care at all. And you should care.
The characters in the original made you care. Even the replicants. At times, especially the replicants.
Also, as the film progressed, it became more and more obvious to me that the PTBs behind it were planning more than one film. So much is left unexplained, including where the hell Deckard got those bee hives from. Not to mention the dog. Plus, the Replicant Underground is introduced so late in the film that it's hardly worth them turning up, and I felt way more interested in them than in Mr Creepy (Jared Leto's character) and would have liked to learn more about them -not least how Deckard and Rachael met up with them in the first place. But the film hasn't done well at the box office and is likely to make a loss, so I suspect there won't be any more, and IMO that's probably a good thing.
A trilogy of these films could have killed the power of the original stone dead.
Or, to be fair, they could have shown in further films that there was an in-story reason for the problematic aspects of this one, progressed from it, and made something amazing out of it.
However, I'm not sad that it looks like we'll never find out.
ETA: I should add that this film does do one thing I'm glad about. It makes it completely clear that Deckard is human. Good. Deckard as a replicant never made any sense to me.
That probably gives you a bit of a clue what I thought of it.
Spoilers behind cut.
I am -as some of you may have gathered - a huge fan of the original movie. To this day, it remains the only film I've ever gone to see by myself - not just once but several times. I loved it - even the original cinematic version with the voiceover and the tacked on happy ending. The version that was released a few years back - the Final Cut, was it? -is the definitive version, obvs (though I could have done without the extra violence), but even the flawed original was a great, game-changing movie.
IMO, though, the same can't be said of this sequel. To the extent that I've already dismissed it from my mind as a complete irrelevance. The original still stands alone. It didn't need a sequel in the first place, but the sequel that we've got doesn't spoil it in retrospect the way, say, The Matrix is spoiled by its sequels.
This is not to say it's a terrible film or anything. It looks amazing, the soundscape (don't know what else to call it) is brilliant, I loved the shout-outs to the original movie, and Ryan Gosling is fine as K, the replicant bladerunner of the title. But it's all just...so unnecessary. Plus, the film suffers really badly from an inexplicable lack of diversity in casting (the cast of the original couldn't be described as diverse, I know, but that was 1982), and - unlike the original - has, IMO, a really unpleasant misogynistic undertone. There's way, way too much female nudity, most of it completely gratuitous. There's also what I thought a quite sickening scene of female degradation and torture (yes, I would describe it as that) which served no purpose whatsoever, IMO, except to show us what a total bastard the villain was, and I think we already knew that. None of this is offset by the fact that Deckard's and Rachael's miracle child turns out to be a girl, or by the fact that K's main physical opponent is a female replicant. In fact, that makes it worse since she seems to be just as sadistic and cruel as her creator. At least with Zhora in the original film, we knew why she was violent. She wanted to survive. This Luv (was it?) is just nasty for the sake of it.
In fact, unlike the original, which is anything but, this film is emotionally cold all the way through. And this extends to K's 'relationship' with his cyber girlfriend. I know we're meant to feel upset when Luv grinds K's USB stick containing all he has left of her under her boot-heel but honestly? I felt nothing. I didn't care at all. And you should care.
The characters in the original made you care. Even the replicants. At times, especially the replicants.
Also, as the film progressed, it became more and more obvious to me that the PTBs behind it were planning more than one film. So much is left unexplained, including where the hell Deckard got those bee hives from. Not to mention the dog. Plus, the Replicant Underground is introduced so late in the film that it's hardly worth them turning up, and I felt way more interested in them than in Mr Creepy (Jared Leto's character) and would have liked to learn more about them -not least how Deckard and Rachael met up with them in the first place. But the film hasn't done well at the box office and is likely to make a loss, so I suspect there won't be any more, and IMO that's probably a good thing.
A trilogy of these films could have killed the power of the original stone dead.
Or, to be fair, they could have shown in further films that there was an in-story reason for the problematic aspects of this one, progressed from it, and made something amazing out of it.
However, I'm not sad that it looks like we'll never find out.
ETA: I should add that this film does do one thing I'm glad about. It makes it completely clear that Deckard is human. Good. Deckard as a replicant never made any sense to me.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-15 07:08 pm (UTC)Unlike you, while I've seen Blade Runner I never got why it became such a cult hit. I liked it well enough (and I've read a number of fanfic fusions with it that, to me, just highlighted how many stories since have elements of it). But it didn't really grab my imagination, maybe because it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted to see more of. (It's not an optimistic story after all)
no subject
Date: 2017-11-15 07:29 pm (UTC)I never got why it became such a cult hit.
It's probably the look of it more than anything. It was the first sci-fi movie, to my knowledge, to have that kind of noir, dystopian aesthetic. Certainly, I had never seen anything like it before.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-15 07:33 pm (UTC)I agree with you about the look of the film though -- especially at its time of release it was a real break from what had been seen.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-15 07:36 pm (UTC)Also, having read that review you linked to, I'd say it's pretty fair. I didn't mention the rather unpleasant emphasis on reproduction in the film only because I felt I'd already ranted enough about its misogyny - which is not something I think the original is guilty of, btw. The women in the original are characters, not cyphers.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-15 08:08 pm (UTC)Yes, as long as it was I think the women in the original film were memorable, probably more memorable than the men in fact.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-15 10:41 pm (UTC)Please do. I certainly wouldn't want to read fanfic about the new film whereas I'd be tempted to give fic about the original at least a glance.
Bizarre. I'd never even considered that other people might have been writing it.
probably more memorable than the men in fact.
Yes, apart from Batty. He's pretty memorable. But even then, part of the reason why he is is because Roy is so clearly in love with Pris, and neither of them are meant to be able to experience that emotion.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-15 11:02 pm (UTC)In discussing the latest movie with a friend, I looked the fanworks up on AO3 and discovered that the Blade Runner (1982) tag as well as the new Blade Runner 2049 (2017) tag have been merged together into a general tag called "Blade Runner (Movies)." This means that there is no way to sort out works on the original 80s film from the new one. I wanted to suggest that this decision be changed so that the 1982 and 2017 films are subtags of the Movies tag rather than being considered to have the same meaning since they are not simply variations of the same canon (and even if they were, people might well prefer to see works about the original versus a remake such as with Beauty and the Beast, redone with very few changes this year)."
Given there already looks to be a number of works for the new film, best they catch this quickly before it becomes difficult to separate out. Speaking of the Beauty and the Beast film, I watched part of it yesterday and can't fathom why they bothered making a live action version of this. One can still do more in an animated movie, (and in this case must given all the magical transformations), and I didn't notice any significant changes.
Well, there haven't been a lot of works but given that they are planning more Blade Runner films, I could imagine there being a lot more works down the road and that could affect things like Yuletide eligibility etc.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-18 07:13 pm (UTC)They were, it's pretty clear, but I'm really hoping that the failure of this one at the box office has killed that idea stone dead. I certainly don't want to see any more.
I'm seen the live action Beauty and the Beast and I agree. I enjoyed it well enough but it all seemed pretty pointless.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-17 08:36 pm (UTC)Thanks for asking about these Blade Runner fandom tags. The Tag Wranglers, in an attempt to reduce the strain on the servers, are reducing the complexity of fandom metatag connections. One of the main methods they're using to do this is to create a single tag for sources that are connected. While the guidelines do allow for subtags, they're meant to only be used if the separate works in the series are very distinct; the Wranglers do not feel that this is the case, as the second movie is a direct sequel to the first.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-18 07:13 pm (UTC):Gloom:
Thanks for trying anyway. I for one will probably not even bother looking now.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-18 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-19 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-16 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-18 07:14 pm (UTC)