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.