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

[Relic]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well yes, but if smart scifi movies don't make money, they wont get made, and then we get 5 more transformers movies.

While watching this movie earlier tonight I found myself wishing that i was watching a 4 part show, that i could step away from when i needed to, rather than a 3 hour movie. 

[Relic]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Robin Wright

Who died hiding something that was discovered 10 seconds after she died. 

[Darth Richard II]

2 minutes ago, Relic said:

Who died hiding something that was discovered 10 seconds after she died. 

....your point being?

[Relic]

3 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

....your point being?

Not sure. Just thought her death was pointless,  and found that the movie world seemed empty of actual women, yet filled with female visages whose sole purpose was to fulfill male desire. 

[Darth Richard II]

Ugh. Sure. Whatever. I'll be in my hole.

[Relic]

Just now, Darth Richard II said:

Ugh. Sure. Whatever. I'll be in my hole.

? Just my random impressions man,  nothing to get upset about. 

[boojam]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well yes, but if smart scifi movies don't make money, they wont get made, and then we get 5 more transformers movies.

THE EXPANSE is smart science fiction , gets a third season , hope there is more. The SyFy channel does not do a good job of promoting it.

 

[felice]

8 hours ago, boojam said:

It's true, and according to current physics they may all be objective reality!

I don't think so; an infinite set doesn't have to contain everything imaginable. The set of integers is infinite, but doesn't even contain fractions, let alone green poodles named Artichoke.

[felice]

5 hours ago, Relic said:

Not sure. Just thought her death was pointless,  and found that the movie world seemed empty of actual women, yet filled with female visages whose sole purpose was to fulfill male desire. 

Well, Luv was following Wallace's orders, but that's an odd way to phrase it; would you say K was fulfilling female desire by working for Lt. Joshi? Freysa certainly has her own agenda, which is central to the film even though she doesn't get much screentime.

[Relic]

4 hours ago, felice said:

Well, Luv was following Wallace's orders, but that's an odd way to phrase it; would you say K was fulfilling female desire by working for Lt. Joshi? Freysa certainly has her own agenda, which is central to the film even though she doesn't get much screentime.

I'll  let this article do all the talking. 

Those who know about advancements in VR porn and sex robots, of example, can't help but shiver at the film's prescient AR billboards with blank-eyed, customizable, naked women promising to be your toy for the right price.

 In 2049, Joi commodifies domesticity and love. Pleasure models commodify female bodies and sexuality.

http://mashable.com/2017/10/14/blade-runner-2049-feminist-environment-patriarchy/#hHWqqAHMkkqy

[felice]

6 minutes ago, Relic said:

I'll  let this article do all the talking. 

Those who know about advancements in VR porn and sex robots, of example, can't help but shiver at the film's prescient AR billboards with blank-eyed, customizable, naked women promising to be your toy for the right price.

Oh, that's very definitely there, to an uncomfortable degree (and it's not meant to be comfortable). But there are plenty of real women as well, more than in most SF films. The replicants are most definitely just as real as the humans (the protagonist is one!) and the people of ambiguous natures (Deckard and Stelline), and whether Joi is self-aware or not is an open question.

[boojam]

4 hours ago, felice said:

I don't think so; an infinite set doesn't have to contain everything imaginable. The set of integers is infinite, but doesn't even contain fractions, let alone green poodles named Artichoke.

Does not have to be the set of integers multiuniverses can constructed as the set of real numbers which is  is uncountably infinite.

[polishgenius]

Yeah, while I can see why some find the film uncomfortable from that perspective (though like felice I think that's on purpose. I mean the entire point of that billboard scene for me was for K to realise that he'd been living a lie), to dismiss the replicants as 'was there even a real woman' is to (1) miss pretty much the basic underlying point of the Blade Runner films and (2) overlook that there are hardly any real men in it either. Apart from the still-questionable Deckard, off the top of my head the only significant ones are Wallace, and the cameo from Edward James Olmos.

[polishgenius]

2 minutes ago, boojam said:

Does not have to be the set of integers multiuniverses can constructed as the set of real numbers which is  is uncountably infinite.

Yeah, but I believe her point is basically that even if the infinite multiverse is real, it'll contain variations on everything that could possibly happen- that doesn't mean that everything you can dream up is possible, even with variations on universal physics.

[Relic]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

 Apart from the still-questionable Deckard, off the top of my head the only significant ones are Wallace, and the cameo from Edward James Olmos.

That's true. On the other hand the movie only shows us female sex holograms and only alludes to a "male" replicant being used for sex once, i believe. Anyway, whatever, just an observation. 

[Fez]

Regarding the off world colonies, I never got the impression they were that great a place to be either. If they were, there wouldn't need to be the constant ads trying to encourage people to move there (which in the original especially always reminded of the kind of propaganda where everyone knows it's fake but it isn't called out due to the consequences of doing so). Nor would there seemingly be huge amounts of combat involving soldier replicants.

 

As for Wallace killing the replicant, my understanding was that making a single replicant is easy, and therefore a single one has almost no value to someone as rich as Wallace. The problem is that there is such massive demand for replicants that he just can't meet the overall production volume needed, and therefore is trying to figure out reproduction. The replicant he examined was a failed experiment and therefore had no value to him (and perhaps do d have proprietary info he wouldn't want getting out), so he disposed of her. And he did it himself to emphasize how little value a single life has to him.

[red snow]

To be fair I'm pretty sure that male versions of Joi exist for people who are attracted to men. It's unfortunate that the film has a heterosexual male as the POV but I'm condident if the female had focused on a heterosexual female there would have been a holographic studmuffin present.

It was unfortunate that there didn't appear to be any male prostitutes in the red light district zone - that's a lot harder to excuse. But the ads we saw could be tailored to K - there was a scene where he dimissed a pop-up, if i recall? It's obviously a case of the film having their cake and eating it though.

I also feel that the Joi "character" was as much about K's isolation and a mirror to how many people today lead isolated lives where an Alexa is companionship as it was about creating sexbots. And it's worth noting they weren't sex bots - they couldn't be touched as they really odd/don't see how that could really work sex scene.

[boojam]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Regarding the off world colonies, I never got the impression they were that great a place to be either. If they were, there wouldn't need to be the constant ads trying to encourage people to move there (which in the original especially always reminded of the kind of propaganda where everyone knows it's fake but it isn't called out due to the consequences of doing so). Nor would there seemingly be huge amounts of combat involving soldier replicants.

 

Why were there so many replicant 'combat' models? Who would want to live in a war zone?

[williamjm]

6 hours ago, Fez said:

Regarding the off world colonies, I never got the impression they were that great a place to be either. If they were, there wouldn't need to be the constant ads trying to encourage people to move there (which in the original especially always reminded of the kind of propaganda where everyone knows it's fake but it isn't called out due to the consequences of doing so). Nor would there seemingly be huge amounts of combat involving soldier replicants.

We don't know how many 'off-world colonies' there are, so it's possible some of them might be great places to live while others are war zones. Given the difficulty of setting up an off-world colony I'd imagine life might not be that great for the general population (even with replicants to do some of the dirty work), although it might be more pleasant for the richer members of society.

[Eggegg]

20 hours ago, red snow said:

To be fair I'm pretty sure that male versions of Joi exist for people who are attracted to men. It's unfortunate that the film has a heterosexual male as the POV but I'm condident if the female had focused on a heterosexual female there would have been a holographic studmuffin present.

It was unfortunate that there didn't appear to be any male prostitutes in the red light district zone - that's a lot harder to excuse. But the ads we saw could be tailored to K - there was a scene where he dimissed a pop-up, if i recall? It's obviously a case of the film having their cake and eating it though.

I also feel that the Joi "character" was as much about K's isolation and a mirror to how many people today lead isolated lives where an Alexa is companionship as it was about creating sexbots. And it's worth noting they weren't sex bots - they couldn't be touched as they really odd/don't see how that could really work sex scene.

I think that the Joi plotline was there to add a humanising element to K and to demonstrate that the replicants experience the same levels of loneliness and a desire for connection as humans. I think without that element Gosling would have appeared almost completely emotionless and would lack an emotional anchor for his actions. I'm not sure I cared much about him outside of the scenes with Joi, which I'd say were some of the strongest elements of the movie.