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

[James Arryn]

2 minutes ago, ants said:

The adjustment bureau was science fiction?  Nothing in it had anything to do with science.  

You missed out the truly excellent Edge of Tomorrow. 

I was going to mention that one but couldn't remember the name. It was lots of fun.

[ants]

Passengers was also pretty good.  

[Werthead]

You could go back earlier on that list.

2006 - Children of Men

2007 - Sunshine

2008 - WALL-E

2009 - Moon (or maybe District 9, depending on mileage)

For 2011 I'd substitute Source Code for The Adjustment Bureau.

[Isis]

Some people in this thread seem kind of...surprised... that they liked Gosling in this film. That maybe they didn't think that much of him prior to this? Am I right in thinking that?

[mcbigski]

Saw it last night for the first time.

I didnt understand the scene where Wallace kills the new replicant.  He gives a monologue about how hard it is to make each replicant and then stabs one to death about a minute after birthing her because he already knew she was sterile?  Surely they have a less hands on/more clinical approach to ending failed experiments besides scalpel to the uterus.

I get that it makes him look like a lunatic asshole, but I really dont understand the reasoning behind it from his point of view.  

[boojam]

4 hours ago, ants said:

The adjustment bureau was science fiction?  Nothing in it had anything to do with science.  

You missed out the truly excellent Edge of Tomorrow. 

That was one of those ok-but-no-cigar SF films. The Ground Hog day time travel bit was interesting but figh-n aliens was a yawner for me.

I gave it a 65.

[boojam]

28 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Saw it last night for the first time.

I didnt understand the scene where Wallace kills the new replicant.  He gives a monologue about how hard it is to make each replicant and then stabs one to death about a minute after birthing her because he already knew she was sterile?  Surely they have a less hands on/more clinical approach to ending failed experiments besides scalpel to the uterus.

I get that it makes him look like a lunatic asshole, but I really dont understand the reasoning behind it from his point of view.  

Yeah I agree, that replicant was a valuable piece of property why not just sell it?

Yeah supposed to make Wallace look 'ononery' ... that's a sophomoric way to do it.

[boojam]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

You could go back earlier on that list.

2006 - Children of Men

2007 - Sunshine

2008 - WALL-E

2009 - Moon (or maybe District 9, depending on mileage)

For 2011 I'd substitute Source Code for The Adjustment Bureau.

Of those only Children of Men which gets a 90% from me, District 9 would get in , not as taken by Moon as some are.

But then the list was from 2010 on.

[polishgenius]

Monsters was the best SF film of 2010. Just saying.

[Darth Richard II]

Ugh, I hate hate hate Sunshine. We haaates it.

Wall-E though is fucking sublime and in my top 5 of all time.

[polishgenius]

The first 45 minutes of Wall-E is one of the greatest films I've ever seen.

The rest of Wall-E was pretty good.


Sunshine was wicked when I saw it in the cinema. I don't know if that's how you did it, but almost universally those I know who saw it that way liked it a lot and those who saw it later didn't, so much. It was a proper sensory experience thing.

[red snow]

5 hours ago, Isis said:

Some people in this thread seem kind of...surprised... that they liked Gosling in this film. That maybe they didn't think that much of him prior to this? Am I right in thinking that?

I can only imagine it's due to his lack of appearances in SFF films??? For me, Gosling is excellent at playing this type of character and he tends to gravitate towards them. I think he must have a clause where he won't do happy endings. With the exception of "The Good guys" where he was very different and still great, but again a film that was criminally ignored by film goers (myself included - i blame the terrible promotion for it as I only checked it out on netflix once people on the board had it in their "best of" lists)

Still haven't had time to lay down my thoughts on the film. But I really enjoyed it. I loved how they came straight out with "K is a replicant" and leading us along with the "K is Deckard's son" in such a way I thought I was working it out but it was actually a red herring.

I also really appreciated the AI side story in such a way I couldn't help but think "humans and replicants have a bigger problem down the road". It made sense that people would make sentient AI and enslave them when they did the exact same thing with humans/replicants. It also fit that a replicant would fall in love with an AI given the way people treated him. The whole thing felt closer to where we're heading than the replicant scenario in the sense the AI was essentially Amazon Echo with a hologram - we'll probably have them in a decade (sooner if it's via VR headgear).

It would be nice if there had been some indication of people giving a fuck about replicants but I guess I have to accept that this is a reality where social justice and sentimentality simply doesn't exist. You'd think there'd be humans appalled by the treatment of replicants but the film suggested the only people who cared about replicants were replicants.

Denis Villeneuve is a modern classic director without a doubt. I can't wait to see what he does with "Dune"

It's just a shame the film has underperformed. Not sure what that says about the general consumer of film. Probably just means with the insane production costs of films nowadays that they are essentially forced into make a crowd pleaser. I'm hoping it does well in the awards season and I'm pretty sure it's a film that will do well in blu-ray sales. I'll certainly be looking for the version with the most "how this beautiful film was crafted" features.

[Darth Richard II]

My problem with Sunshine is the actual science stuff is Michael Bay level. Just..no, that's not how the sun or space work.

[polishgenius]

2 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

My problem with Sunshine is the actual science stuff is Michael Bay level. Just..no, that's not how the sun or space work.

This sorta thing normally bothers me if a film feels like it wants to be hard SF like that film is, but I didn't even notice.

I thought it was a better wannabe-2001 than Interstellar.

[Ran]

Sunshine was more of a wanna-be Event Horizon than a wanna-be 2001. 

[Corvinus85]

^Agreed.

[Darth Richard II]

15 minutes ago, Ran said:

Sunshine was more of a wanna-be Event Horizon than a wanna-be 2001. 

Oh I'm going to use that.

Sunshine was promoted by the company and director as "hard scifi" at the time also, so, that did not help.

(In fact if you go to wiki and look up hard scifi films its listed there, and there's some hilarious wiki wars over its inclusion)

Interstellar would have been fine if they chopped off the last 20 mins.

[polishgenius]

4 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Oh I'm going to use that.

Sunshine was promoted by the company and director as "hard scifi" at the time also, so, that did not help.

(In fact if you go to wiki and look up hard scifi films its listed there, and there's some hilarious wiki wars over its inclusion)

Interstellar would have been fine if they chopped off the last 20 mins.

I liked Interstellar well enough but it was a load of cobblers. A relatively accurate depiction of time dilation (and even there I recall some handwave about why the beacon seems to be working to tempt them down) doesn't excuse it for every other piece of nonsense.

[Theda Baratheon]

2 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ugh, I hate hate hate Sunshine. We haaates it.

Wall-E though is fucking sublime and in my top 5 of all time.

Wall-E is fucking ace. Love that film. 

 

Anyone thought of it during the municipal waste scene in blade Runner 2049? LOL

[Werthead]

Quote

 

Some people in this thread seem kind of...surprised... that they liked Gosling in this film. That maybe they didn't think that much of him prior to this? Am I right in thinking that?

 

He's always seemed like a reasonably decent actor. I'm not sure why some people really hate him. Maybe it's because he doesn't just stick to one thing? He's made a musical, thrillers, comedies and now a big epic SF thing, he doesn't just repeat himself.

Quote

 

Sunshine was more of a wanna-be Event Horizon than a wanna-be 2001. 

 

The ending does weaken the film, although Even Horizon is a perfectly fine piece of schlock hokum nonsense as far as it goes.

The hard SF background to Sunshine is interesting but they dropped it from the film itself (it's on the features on the DVD and Blu-Ray, and in the commentary I believe). They proposed a Q-ball (a type of soliton) would enter the Sun and start eating away at its mass, with reignition by a neutronium-based device being the possible solution (this is the same type of device Peter F. Hamilton uses in The Neutronium Alchemist, so it's certainly precedented in science fiction). They agonised over the fact that the Sun's gravitational field and density is insufficient to stop a Q-ball (which in reality would pass through it without anyone knowing it was there), the Sun would have to be much denser, but then they thought fuck it, because they needed a maguffin for the story.

There's also the rationale that when it comes to mass and gravity, things really keep not working the way scientists think at first. I'm reading an excellent science book on planet formation and the number of times the scientists were completely stymied by the problem of there not being enough time for planets to form before a start destroys its protoplanetary disc is quite amusing. Every time they came up with a solution they found it didn't work, until they found one that did (which keeps having to be adjusted as extrasolar planets seem to keep breaking the rules).

So although the hard SF explanation for Sunshine is dubious, it at least makes a half-arsed nod at it. Unlike the FTL, blue space baby, 'shroomtastic ending of 2001, which from a strictly hard science fiction standpoint is pure bullshit