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Blade Runner 2049 - more human than human [Spoilers!]


Kalbear

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I thought it was jarring that an important character like Freysa turns up just once and that kind of briefly. This is one of those puzzles about this film with such a running time there were plenty of opportunitys to elaborate and ... nothing. 

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The opening credits established that the replicants had rebelled, leading to the collapse of Tyrell corporation. It was only when Wallace created obedient replicants that they were built again. The old replicants were hunted down, likely due to prejudice as much as anything. 

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10 hours ago, boojam said:

I like Leto. I thought his scene with Ford was one of the best dialog delivery's in the movie.

I didn't understand , given that his character was supposed to be a genius why he didn't know before hand that tempting him a a 'new' Rachel would not work. Plot has small slips like this throughout.

 

No he was okay I'm just being nitpicky. That scene was fantastic. I GASPED when I saw Rachel. 

But I don't see why he would know that he's not exactly a good people person lol

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30 minutes ago, ants said:

Is Freysa that important?

I am interested how she and Sapper became involved with Deckard and Rachel , and how and why there is a 'Replicant -Underground'.

Seems odd with it's implied omnipotence they seem mostly ignorant of the android underground, who actually seem to have human members.

So Freysa was a product of the Tyrell corp, or not?, .... that true of all the rebel replicants?

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28 minutes ago, ants said:

The opening credits established that the replicants had rebelled, leading to the collapse of Tyrell corporation. It was only when Wallace created obedient replicants that they were built again. The old replicants were hunted down, likely due to prejudice as much as anything. 

How come there are so many 'old' replicants left? I don't mean because of their extended life spans.

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47 minutes ago, boojam said:

How come there are so many 'old' replicants left? I don't mean because of their extended life spans.

Isn't that down the the Blackout in 2022 detailed in the anime short? As I understand it they destroyed the Tyrell database of replicants, making it near-impossible to identify them. I think it was suggested in BR2049 that Deckard helped organise the destruction of the database to help protect the pregnant Rachael.

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1 hour ago, Dolorous Gabe said:

Isn't that down the the Blackout in 2022 detailed in the anime short? As I understand it they destroyed the Tyrell database of replicants, making it near-impossible to identify them. I think it was suggested in BR2049 that Deckard helped organise the destruction of the database to help protect the pregnant Rachael.

Yeah it sounds like the story connecting 2019 to 2049 is more interesting than the story we see in 2049!

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6 hours ago, boojam said:

This is a sophisticated story , maybe they understood they were no fitting popular tastes in current film goers and didn't add anymore sophistication to the story.


This is gonna come off possibly a little rude, but you seem to be complaining of a lack of sophistication and depth in a story which you've either misunderstood or just plain missed an awful lot of. Almost all of your nitpicks so far have had fairly obvious answers, and the others are pretty much 'it wasn't that important to the story'. Like seeing more of  Freysa and the underground- you could have tripled the length of the film by including an in-depth plotline about the Replicant rebellion, but that's not what this film was about. You'd have been sidelining the K-and-Deckard stuff or awkwardly forcing then into situations they didn't need to belong. It's stuff that leaves good room for a potential sequel to explore, if this film eventually reaches the iconic status the first one did coz the box-office probably won't generate a sequel, but it didn't need to be in this one.


I'm just saying, it seems a bit odd to be criticising a film because you were apparently not paying attention to it.


 

6 hours ago, boojam said:

On the face of it , it seems too crude, so Deckard is supposed to spill the beans as to where his daughter* is form seeing a replicated redlicant?

*From the story , he didn't know where his daughter was.


We know this but they didn't. And in any case they wanted any clues he could give them, not just the straight-up location.
And it wasn't about supposed, they didn't know how he would react or if at all but it seemed fairly clear that Wallace was checking his just-seconds-previously-stated theory that Deckard was a replicant programmed to fall in love with Rachael, which would have been information they could use to manipulate him even if he didn't just blurt out whatever he knew on the spot. But they got the eyes wrong so the question remains unanswered.

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Yes, Wallace believes Tyrell engineered Rachel to be able to give birth. He called "Tyrell's final trick." But it is unclear whether or not that means she was also engineered to die once giving birth. 

Another interesting aspect of this is with regards with the Wallace character. Wallace talks like he considers himself some sort of god, with the ability to make angels, yet when faced with with what the replicants, themselves, call a 'miracle', he reverts to a more mundane status, simply crediting Tyrell with this achievement.

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1 hour ago, polishgenius said:


This is gonna come off possibly a little rude, but you seem to be complaining of a lack of sophistication and depth in a story which you've either misunderstood or just plain missed an awful lot of. Almost all of your nitpicks so far have had fairly obvious answers, and the others are pretty much 'it wasn't that important to the story'. Like seeing more of  Freysa and the underground- you could have tripled the length of the film by including an in-depth plotline about the Replicant rebellion, but that's not what this film was about. You'd have been sidelining the K-and-Deckard stuff or awkwardly forcing then into situations they didn't need to belong. It's stuff that leaves good room for a potential sequel to explore, if this film eventually reaches the iconic status the first one did coz the box-office probably won't generate a sequel, but it didn't need to be in this one.


I'm just saying, it seems a bit odd to be criticising a film because you were apparently not paying attention to it.

 

O I loved this film. I think the story in it is better than the one in Blade Runner.

I do think the first film had a much much better score ,  Villeneuve apparently had a score by Jóhannsson but engaged  Zimmer and Wallfisch for a more 'Vangelis' score. Did not work for my ear, was not an awful score, but sure was not anywhere as magical as Vangelis. Wonder why they just didn't talk to Vangelis?

They sure put their money into atmosphere and had a great Future-on-a-chipped-Plate look , like Scott created,and did as good as Scott could on his budget.  I do think Scott's on-the-ground milieu was more engaging than this film ...  I loved the odd street vendors from a examining snake scales to sellers of artificial snakes to the bar sequence in BR!. I absolutely loved the 'vendor' who examined K's wooden horse that was a gem! (By the by I don't know if they got it from there by the idea that wood would be as valuable as gold , in a future like this, that was used in a novel back in the 1950's called The Space Merchants, by Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth.)*

You mean you are not at all interested in Freysa's story? She is an interesting character. I found a lot of K's story minutes that could have been better used as exposition of early events , no extra time added to the film, just swap out. I don't mean flash backs.

Deckard, Rachel, Freysa and Sapper's story is more than the 'replicant rebellion' but we get little of it, I am interested in it since it propels the plot we do get.

*An observation I made back in 1982 about Blade Runner. Scott is a reader of science fiction prose so in picking a Phil Dick story he also shows his familiarity with Cyber Punk before there was Cyber Punk science  fiction of the 1950's. In particular Galaxy Magazine, where Dick appeared often. The domesticated super science one sees in BR1 and BR2 is a direct product of many SF writers. in particular Alfred Bester, The Stars my Destination, Pohl and Kornbluth's Space Merchants and Gladiator at Law. Scott also a fan of french artist Jean Giraud who in turn was influenced by the great magazine illustrator  Ed Emshwiller. Familiarity with story and image , from the page, is one thing that makes the Blade Runner films so pleasing for me. And by the by the whole story of Androids seeking rights as humans has many antecedents in science fiction prose.

 

 

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13 minutes ago, Фейсал said:

Wallace saying she was engineered for that very purpose? unless you want to believe the amazing convenience that Rachael's life span ends just when she gives birth to a child and not a second before.

I assumed she died because she was having a difficult birth and had a caesarean delivery performed by a combat medic on a farm rather than by a doctor in a hospital. 

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34 minutes ago, Leofric said:

I assumed she died because she was having a difficult birth and had a caesarean delivery performed by a combat medic on a farm rather than by a doctor in a hospital. 

I agree with this .

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1 minute ago, Фейсал said:

K is the  center of the film and the protagonist you can't really swap out his scenes for what amounts to background noise to the setting.

Right. Plus it's the story structure, same as the first. In that the movie both benefits and suffers. Everything is about K (just like everything is always about the detective in Noir movies), and as a result everyone else revolves around K. This is good because Gosling does a great job, and it's a great study into his character - but it means everyone else is mostly about how they interact with him - and they don't interact with anyone else to any real degree. 

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On 10/7/2017 at 3:06 AM, Werthead said:

Battlestar Galactica is probably the most significant TV show or film since the original Blade Runner to deal with the same questions about humanity, AI, artificial humans etc (and BSG resolutely nodded at Blade Runner several times with its "skinjobs"), so I thought it was great that they brought back the one actor who was in both.

I'd say S1 Westworld tackled the problem better though it has a ways to go.

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7 minutes ago, WarGalley said:

I'd say S1 Westworld tackled the problem better though it has a ways to go.

I know i'm veering off topic here but past the half way point I couldn't really take Westworld too seriously. I still dug it but it started to veer into cheesy, convoluted territory which is why some of it's philosophical tirades felt somewhat jarring.

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1 hour ago, boojam said:

I do think the first film had a much much better score ,  Villeneuve apparently had a score by Jóhannsson but engaged  Zimmer and Wallfisch for a more 'Vangelis' score. Did not work for my ear, was not an awful score, but sure was not anywhere as magical as Vangelis. Wonder why they just didn't talk to Vangelis?

What? I didn't know that. Considering how part of the score sounded similarly to Arrival's, I was sure it was Jóhannsson. He and Villeneuve worked together on several movies.

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