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


Kalbear

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13 minutes ago, boojam said:

I see , curious thing, they seem to use exactly the same milieu as the film, am guessing they did.

It would have been a nice fit to have included it.

The shorts were all commissioned by Villeneuve and the 2036 and 2048 ones written by Hampton Fancher, the same writer involved in both the original and the new film.

I thought it was a nice idea to have freely available shorts introducing some of the characters and situations in the upcoming film. It seriously hyped me up for it and gave a bit of background to things that had happened since 2019.

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I did not keep up with the films 'detailing' , I did not know this. The Bautista piece was particularly engaging , I mean, I didn't pay attention and thought this was part of the film.

One thing about it, Sapper Morton is a totally sympathetic character , and seemingly would have stayed that way even in the presence of K. I could have seen that character not acting in haste and having a long conversation with K, in fact K having left him alone, but the  Wallace corporation coming after him. The meeting with K seemed to be of off-note.

By the by , Wallace? Does not have the same tang to it as Tyrell ! Wonder why they picked that name? Could have been called the Smith corporation!

By the by was very impressed with  Jared Leto's conversation with Deckard. Leto did a masterful job of acting in that sequence.

 

 

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5 hours ago, boojam said:

*Some whimping out on date-of-story, BR1's 2019 'look' is not here , it might look like that in 2049 but I am guessing not. I really don't understand why holliwood has such a problem with setting date to close to the present. BR1 and BR2 seem to be taking place in an alternate universe.

 

They are taking place in an alternate universe. The look of Los Angeles in Blade Runner was already a bit of a stretch in 1982 and 2049 is explicitly set in a different timeline: Pan Am is still around, Atari is still a big thing and, most notably, the USSR still exists.

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This movie was a work of art. I haven't read back on all these pages, but K was such a compelling character with an amazing performance from Gosling.

I think he actually was human, or the weird miracle child that came from Deckard and Rachael. The girl is yet another misdirection and it all dies with K; I do not think the dream author would risk inserting one of her memories into those models when it's stressed that it's very illegal. I think she cries out of sympathy for K's condition as a replicant- He died believing he's not a human; and that's an incredibly powerful moment for me. Either way - he proves his humanity. He's analogous to Roy.

I'll need to rewatch this since a few scenes were cut at the theater I went to; such a poignant piece on the human condition.

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40 minutes ago, Werthead said:

They are taking place in an alternate universe. The look of Los Angeles in Blade Runner was already a bit of a stretch in 1982 and 2049 is explicitly set in a different timeline: Pan Am is still around, Atari is still a big thing and, most notably, the USSR still exists.

Alternate universe, for sure, I don't know why film makers don't think to put that up front. For instance the initial Wikipedia article on Gravity listed it as an 'alternate universe' story, which is perfect! They removed that description for some idiotic reason.

I have noticed that some people were confused about Man in a High Castle when it came about, boy sure easy to notice that , that, is an alternate universe!

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8 minutes ago, boojam said:

Alternate universe, for sure, I don't know why film makers don't think to put that up front. For instance the initial Wikipedia article on Gravity listed it as an 'alternate universe' story, which is perfect! They removed that description for some idiotic reason.

 

 

Why would they need to put it up front? It seems fairly self-explanatory.

I'm not sure what was alt-universe about Gravity except in the sense that the physics clearly weren't those of our universe.

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56 minutes ago, Werthead said:

They are taking place in an alternate universe. The look of Los Angeles in Blade Runner was already a bit of a stretch in 1982 and 2049 is explicitly set in a different timeline: Pan Am is still around, Atari is still a big thing and, most notably, the USSR still exists.

And no way are we colonizing other planets in the first half of this century.

Also, I highly doubt LA will be getting the amount of rain it was shown to get in the old movie in 2019. :P

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Arthur C. Clarke liked to point out that the Vietnam War, Gulf War and the US military budget in the late 20th Century in general would have paid for everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that when we got to 2001 the technology was actually much better than what he though it was going to be. The problem was application at scale.

But yes, this is going to happen as we overtake the dates in movies. Roy Batty got a Twitter birth celebration last year (since his inception date is 2016 in the original movie).

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1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

Why would they need to put it up front? It seems fairly self-explanatory.

I'm not sure what was alt-universe about Gravity except in the sense that the physics clearly weren't those of our universe.

There is no  Tiangong  in this universe , it may be there in 2025, or maybe not. The Shuttle 'Explorer', never existed and will never exist. The Manned Maneuvering Unit use was discontinued .long before the Shuttle program ended. So even as future fiction in this universe objects exist that don't exist.

Alternate universe.

Interesting about the physics, most they are problems of impossibly small probability instead of impossible. The multi collision debris cloud is actually impossible, but I give it an artistic license by.

On the other hand zero g is done almost perfectly , one questionable sequence depends on unknown initial conditions. ISS and Soyuz have almost perfect interior representations . Very authentic re-entry ... no sound in a vacuum!

Note: Alfonso Cuarón asked the JPL consultant for film to give a 'fix', it was 80 pages long! He chose not to use it since it would have made the movie much more than 90 min. long.

 

 

 
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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Arthur C. Clarke liked to point out that the Vietnam War, Gulf War and the US military budget in the late 20th Century in general would have paid for everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that when we got to 2001 the technology was actually much better than what he though it was going to be. The problem was application at scale.

But yes, this is going to happen as we overtake the dates in movies. Roy Batty got a Twitter birth celebration last year (since his inception date is 2016 in the original movie).

As long ago as the 1930's SF prose authors hedged by putting high tech stories 200 to 300 years in the future, especially those with interstellar flight, this always seemed like a comfortable and logical fit.

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3 minutes ago, boojam said:

As long ago as the 1930's SF prose authors hedged by putting high tech stories 200 to 300 years in the future, especially those with interstellar flight, this always seem like a comfortable and logical fit.

That strategy can have its own problems, when you get stories set a century in the future where everyone is still using slide rules to do calculations.

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4 minutes ago, boojam said:

 

Interesting about the physics, most they are problems of impossibly small probability instead of impossible. The multi collision debris cloud is actually impossible, but I give it an artistic license by.

Nah, the multi collision debris cloud was one of the few things in that film that could actually happen... though it wouldn't be that fast.
What it gets wrong is the entire nature of orbital mechanics, how the space stations relate to each other, and how it'd be impossible to get from one to the other just by jetting across. The space stations themselves might be rendered realistically, but that ain't a question of science.

I mean, I didn't like that film for other reasons, if I'd actually enjoyed it the innacuracies wouldn't have bothered me much (although it's always a minor pet peeve when a story presents like a hard SF but isn't really), but while all the stuff is plausible in context- there's no serious suspension of disbelief required unless you're an actual expert on the subject- it's not realistic.

Anyway.

8 minutes ago, boojam said:

There is no  Tiangong  in this universe , it may be there in 2025, or maybe not. The Shuttle 'Explorer', never existed and will never exist. The Manned Maneuvering Unit use was discontinued .long before the Shuttle program ended. So even as future fiction in this universe objects exist that don't exist.


Well okay but by those standards everything fictional is 'alternate universe'.


 

 

14 minutes ago, boojam said:

As long ago as the 1930's SF prose authors hedged by putting high tech stories 200 to 300 years in the future, especially those with interstellar flight, this always seem like a comfortable and logical fit.

 

 

This is fine if you're just exploring pure big idea sciencey concepts but a lot of SF wants to invoke something socially, politically or otherwise -ally relatable to us, and there zooming to 300 years away makes that harder to do. It wouldn't have made an enormous difference to the story of Blade Runner to move it further forward, I suppose, but it'd have made it difficult to capture the same vibe- things like futury adverts for recognisable companies was a big part of the setting.

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27 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

This is fine if you're just exploring pure big idea sciencey concepts but a lot of SF wants to invoke something socially, politically or otherwise -ally relatable to us, and there zooming to 300 years away makes that harder to do. It wouldn't have made an enormous difference to the story of Blade Runner to move it further forward, I suppose, but it'd have made it difficult to capture the same vibe- things like futury adverts for recognisable companies was a big part of the setting.

I would of had no problem with BR1 having been set in 2119.

Another and more clever ploy used by science fiction writers is to give no date at all. Why does one need a date?

Some future date , up to one's own imagination, or , more nowadays, an alternate universe next door satisfies my tenability feelers.

 

(After all this forum is devoted an alternate universe medieval world.)

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30 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Nah, the multi collision debris cloud was one of the few things in that film that could actually happen... though it wouldn't be that fast.
What it gets wrong is the entire nature of orbital mechanics, how the space stations relate to each other, and how it'd be impossible to get from one to the other just by jetting across. The space stations themselves might be rendered realistically, but that ain't a question of science.

 

You are probably thinking of Cascading Debris cloud, known as the Kessler effect.

In the case of the film the initial cloud could have be created , but orbital phasing would be off due to a non spherical earth next pass, beside they move to the ISS's orbit putting things even move out of phase. By the by another alternate universe thing , for the film , the ISS and Hubble are in totally different orbital inclinations in this universe. A thing which made Columbia rescue impossible.

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I thought they had a good story narrative as why Rachel did not appear, except as a simulacra. Tho it felt as a little cheat , since , with more imagination Sean Young could have shown up as an aged character. But it's ok. I would like to hear more than I have about Sean Young's involvement , little hazy about her being coach. Interesting that the real 1982 Sean showed up on video, keep thinking that would not happen.

Young and Edward James Olmos sure get prominent listing in the end credits. Omos, man that was way to brief.

Others have noted there is just a little too much of Gosling , to the exclusion of story narrative about almost any other character. I knew it would be brief but Ford really seemed to have a truncated story in this film.

So it goes.

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6 hours ago, boojam said:

You are probably thinking of Cascading Debris cloud, known as the Kessler effect.



Well yeah, that is literally what I linked to.

I also mentioned the ISS and Hubble etc not being lined up, orbitally, but I think of those things as 'bad science' not 'alternate universe'.

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On 7/10/2017 at 11:28 AM, Kalbear said:

I really didn't like Joi that much. I thought the sex scene was exploitative, I thought her reaction to the prostitute after was really odd - why would she be jealous?

Was she jealous? I got the impression that she was reacting to the prostitute taking an interest in the horse, and wanted to get rid of her because of that. She/it was one of the most interesting things in the film.

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5 hours ago, polishgenius said:



Well yeah, that is literally what I linked to.

I also mentioned the ISS and Hubble etc not being lined up, orbitally, but I think of those things as 'bad science' not 'alternate universe'.

That why an alternate universe setting would fix that. That would not be bad science. Long long ago the plan was that the ISS would made in a low inclination orbit , but it was easier for Russian to access the high inclination one it is in due to the location of their launch site. The Shuttle had more energy than the Soyuz so could reach the orbit it is in. So in an alternate universe one could have the films orbital configuration no violation of physics there. In fact this fictional ISS, Hubble and Tiangong could be reasonablly configured that way. All one needs is a universe slightly next door.

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Did I see this in the initial screen info? There were other Replicants , like Rachel, who had no prescribed life span? I thought I read that?

Sapper was one of these? Sapper had been around for ~30+ years doing no harm at all, so why was he hunted?

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