Please spoil the fire out of Bladerunner 2049 and explain to me what I saw.

October 15, 2017, 08:13 PM

I went. I saw. It conquered me.

I'm as lost today about what I saw as I was before I entered the theater.

Please explain the original and this one, and tell me what I'm "missing."

Edited to add

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Gqjjq1nic

This is starting to explaing things...

Thanks in advance.

Jake

October 15, 2017, 10:15 PM

Prefontaine

Best explanation: watch again.

October 16, 2017, 01:35 AM

DanH

It would also help if you had some specific questions we could start with.

October 16, 2017, 05:50 AM

imadat

Gentlemen,

Thanks for the replies.

Prefontaine, I'll watch it again, thanks.

Dan, I had no idea what was going on. Trying to make heads or tails of what was happening and why it was happening.

One thing I can't get my arms around. Replicants are supposed to be close to human robots, right? Somehow this movie is implying that replicants reproduced the way humans do. Is that the case?
The guy with no eyes, is he Terrell?
Are replicants hunting each other down? Is Harrison Ford's character a Replicant?
Mostly I want to understand what I saw, and why people think this is an "important" movie.

Best,

Jake

October 16, 2017, 06:12 AM

AllenInAR

I'll take a stab at this......

The guy with no eyes is Niander Wallace. He's sort of the successor to Tyrell. The Tyrell Corporation from past movie is now defunct. The Replicant uprising (shown in a short on YouTube) led to the banning of all Replicants and they went out of business.

Apparently around the same time, Niander Wallace comes along with a viable way of feeding everyone on an increasingly barren Earth. He also has a vision of humanity escaping Earth and populating the stars. He believes that each great advancement is accomplished "on the backs of a slave race", and uses his food production monopoly to force the government to allow him to start building Replicants (new and improved with more obedience and built-in memories!!!) again...the Nexus 8 models in the new movie.

So.....as some of the "Deckard is a Replicant" proponents point out, running around offing things that are almost human would be hard on a human, so now they have guys like K doing the dirty work.

While tracking down Bautista's "Sapper", K stumbles across the buried skeleton of a female Replicant who appears to have undergone a C-section and died. This nugget of info freaks the hell out of the government (what?? Our slave labor force can reproduce?!? This upsets EVERYTHING!!!) and makes Wallace ecstatic (What?? I can have my huge slave workforce self-reproduce and spread humanity beyond the stars?? Oh, and satisfy my god-like egomania as well?? Win/Win!!!). The rest of the movie is basically K wrestling with the idea that he may be the child of that female Replicant, opening the door to thoughts of relationships, does he have a soul, why did Dad ditch Mom and I, etc. etc.

I don't think Replicants are "robots" as that implies they are mechanical. I think they are something like clones. Grown from manufactured cells/tissue samples/Slurm.

I also don't believe Deckard is a Replicant. The only person who said he is was Ridley Scott. He's clearly aged, a trait we're told is only shared by the new class of Replicants. The first movie points out several times that Rachel was "special" (in apparently more ways than one) due to having implanted memories and an open-ended life span. Are we supposed to believe Tyrell also made Deckard "special" then handed him over to the LAPD?

As for why the movie is "important".....I dunno. The first movie is more of a cult classic. As I recall, it did not do well at the box office, but those who liked it REALLY REALLY liked it. Blade Runner 2049 is for those people. If you never saw the first (or only saw it once or twice), you're not going to "get it". It really is a wonderful follow-up. And if you like "pretty" movies, this will do it for you as well. I am not a big fan of westerns, but I love Open Range just for the look of it.

Anyway, hope this helps some.

October 16, 2017, 06:39 AM

CD228

Allan did a great job of breaking it down.
I'm in the Deckard is not a replicant camp.

Another thing to know is that K's memories of the orphanage are implanted.

I found that blade runner is a bit like Dune in that it takes some effort to understand the storyline and you have to piece it together.

October 16, 2017, 07:04 AM

maladat

Ridley Scott is on record as saying he considers Deckard to be a replicant.

Phillip K. Dick, who wrote the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" that the movie is based on, is on record as saying that the whole point of the book is that the robots are becoming more human while Deckard, a human, is being dehumanized hunting them.

October 16, 2017, 07:47 AM

CD228

quote:
Originally posted by maladat:

Phillip K. Dick, who wrote the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" that the movie is based on, is on record as saying that the whole point of the book is that the robots are becoming more human while Deckard, a human, is being dehumanized hunting them.

The short story is drastically different from the movie though. So is Dick's Total Recall.

October 16, 2017, 08:06 AM

Kevbo

quote:
Originally posted by Kevbo:
I think Ford is on record saying he also thinks Deckard is a replicant.

I'm undecided, but leaning to him being human

The storyline with K and Joi clearly shows they have capacity to love

If you can love and reproduce, that's along way towards having a soul....

I think the point of the movie is that not only humans can have humanity, if that makes sense...and if the replicants display the same things that set humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom..well....and in this movie they display the best and worst humanity has to offer...from K's love and loneliness, to Luv's malice and psychosis

The interactions between Wallace and Deckard intentionally imply one then the other to remain obtuse on it

One of my best and oldest friends, who I saw the original with, is squarely in the Deckard as a replicant camp, snd thinks the significance of the movie shows that replicants can reproduce with each other

I disagree....I think it shows replicants are so human that they can reproduce with a human

Deckard also doesn't display any of the physical traits of a replicant...l.most obviously he almost drowns because he cannot break his restraints...something every replicant from Roy Batty to K could do easily

October 16, 2017, 08:32 AM

AllenInAR

I think Ford said he played Deckard as a human.

As for K’s orphanage memories, at the time Hannah (that was her name, right?) confirms to K that those ARE real memories, not constructs.....that’s when K starts really thinking he could be born, not made. I assumed Hannah was crying because she was thinking “Here is this poor guy who has been told he was a Replicant”. Of course, we learn she’s crying for a different reason altogether later on.

October 16, 2017, 08:43 AM

lyman

quote:
Originally posted by imadat:
Gentlemen,

Thanks for the replies.

Prefontaine, I'll watch it again, thanks.

then watch it again, and again, little bits pop out as you see it more

quote:

Dan, I had no idea what was going on. Trying to make heads or tails of what was happening and why it was happening.

One thing I can't get my arms around. Replicants are supposed to be close to human robots, right?

more human than human, that was the Tyrell motto

quote:
Somehow this movie is implying that replicants reproduced the way humans do. Is that the case?

yes, at least once, but apparently just once (Rachel, from the original

quote:

The guy with no eyes, is he Terrell?

remember Tyrell was killed in the first movie, and the history of the company and Wallace are in the opening scenes

quote:

Are replicants hunting each other down? Is Harrison Ford's character a Replicant?

yes, and depends,

quote:

Mostly I want to understand what I saw, and why people think this is an "important" movie.

Best,

Jake

October 16, 2017, 10:25 AM

maladat

quote:
Originally posted by CD228:
quote:
Originally posted by maladat:

Phillip K. Dick, who wrote the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" that the movie is based on, is on record as saying that the whole point of the book is that the robots are becoming more human while Deckard, a human, is being dehumanized hunting them.

The short story is drastically different from the movie though. So is Dick's Total Recall.

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is a novel, not a short story. I do agree that there are plenty of differences between it and Blade Runner, though.

Of course, Hampton Fancher, who wrote the "Blade Runner" screenplay, made similar comments.

http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/intfancher1.shtml

quote:
Q: Is Deckard a replicant?

HF: No. It wasn't like I had a tricky idea about Deckard that way. Until the last draft. It kept ending in different ways. We were already in pre-production when I wrote the last draft. In the last draft, which wasn't in the movie, I finally came to the last and best conclusion about the ending of the movie which was that Rachel is going to die. And they're in love, and he's become kind of human through this. He was less human than the people he was after, because they were machines. He was more of a machine. And he becomes less of a machine through the ordeal of falling in love with her.

This includes the idea that Deckard lost his humanity hunting the more-and-more human replicants, but takes it as the starting point, and adds the idea that he regains his humanity as a result of falling in love with a replicant.

October 16, 2017, 12:46 PM

PASig

The "K" character's name is a reference to Philip K. Dick, no?

October 16, 2017, 01:13 PM

pony220

I thought it referred to Kafka's K.

October 16, 2017, 02:41 PM

lyman

or he is #11

October 16, 2017, 05:01 PM

Strambo

I definitely don't think Deckard is supposed to be a replicant after watching 2049. I mean, he's an old guy now who keeps getting his ass beat by replicants (in both films).

October 16, 2017, 07:05 PM

Mars_Attacks

I can sum it up in a single sentence.

I'm not the daddy's baby.

October 17, 2017, 07:49 AM

Mars_Attacks

The soundtrack was SUPPOSED to be channeling Vangellis, but fell way short. It was as if they just didn't give a shit and gave some meth and acid to Skrillix and DeadMau5 and let them beat each other to death with saw wave Moogs.

October 17, 2017, 02:45 PM

lyman

quote:
Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
The soundtrack was SUPPOSED to be channeling Vangellis, but fell way short. It was as if they just didn't give a shit and gave some meth and acid to Skrillix and DeadMau5 and let them beat each other to death with saw wave Moogs.

alrighty now, that was funny,

I thought some of the sound track was spot on, as far as 'channeling Vangelis', then for whatever reason, sections seemed to be a bit loud, and industrial,

overall still a damn good movie

October 17, 2017, 07:08 PM

konata88

quote:
Originally posted by AllenInWV:
I'll take a stab at this......

I didn't see the movie. Not sure I will.

Don't take this the wrong way - this is not a comment on your ability to summarize. But What???? I don't get the storyline / theme at all.