Blade Runner 2049: Seen it (Open Spoilers after the first post)

Cafe Society
81

I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that Wallace, one of the only lead characters who is a human (presumably, although the film does a lot to make that term a dirty word), in addition to being blind, had a very odd way of moving. It was, in a word, robotic: unnaturally smooth and precise, like industrial robots, or those little Asimo robots when they’re programmed to dance.

The message being that humans are the soulless monsters and replicants are the real people, I guess.

Like one other poster upthread, I was constantly bothered by the fact that replicants have been engineered to bleed, grow whiskers, and age, just like humans. Why? Why go to all that trouble? If you need a worker who looks human, not like a robot, none of that is necessary. It wasn’t an issue the first film had to deal with (as much), but it bothered me throughout this one.

82

I assumed that because the “base” stock of replicants is human DNA, all that kind of stuff would come with it (bleeding in particular might be impossible to get rid of if their anatomy is human). I think these are closer to test-tube babies (even if they’re “born” as adults) than robots. And since we’ve seen no sign that aging has been eliminated for the rest of humanity, they presumably can’t get rid of it for replicants either. As for whiskers… why not keep them?

83

Right, the replicants are artificial humans with some modifications, not robots. They bleed because they need blood to live, just like regular humans. What they are exactly isn’t clear in either movie, but they are organic, and so indistinguishable from humans that you need a complicated test to see what they are.

Why not robots? Neither movie answers that. The original book was more of a fable, exploring what it means to be human and the nature of empathy, than a serious look into the future of automated labor.

84

Saw it today and… p-tui!

I will only mention in passing the too loud (in spots) music, the bad sound mixing that rendered some dialogue needlessly hard to hear, the overall length and general slowness. These did not add to my appreciation of the film, but I am willing to regard them as relatively minor nuisances. However:

There’s no way Ryan Gosling stands a chance against Bautista in a fight. And note that this happens before Gosling shoots him.

If the replicants are so worried about the baby being discovered, why weren’t Rachael’s bones destroyed instead of being buried?

Why does Wallace slice the belly of the replicant he has presumably spent time and money creating? This seemed only to establish that he’s a bad guy and as such, came off as gratuitous.

The villainess clips a police lieutenant in LAPD HQ and no one notices? WTF?

The water lighting was okay… once. I felt it was overused. The alternating light and dark which enshrouds Deckard and Wallace during their meeting was senseless. Much of the film seemed too dark with backgrounds receding into black. This was not the case in Blade Runner where, despite the darkness, BG details were visible.

Near the end, the spinner carrying Ford and the bad girl goes down in the water, but because it’s too dark, we never get a sense of the location. I found that this detracted from the peril. Also, I saw the bad girl take out her knife and slice Gosling, but I was not certain which of them took out the second knife or who sliced whom with it. Bad filmmaking.

Putting aside questions about Deckard’s origins in Blade Runner, what makes him a sympathetic character IMO is that he is an ex-cop, ex-Blade Runner, ex-killer, which establishes that he has a sense of humanity (if belated). He is leveraged by M. Emmet Walsh into returning to work; it is not a willful decision. What makes Gosling’s character in any way sympathetic or appealing? That he has feelings for a VR girl programmed to please him? If so, that was a fail for me. Given that his facial expression rarely changed, I found it impossible to empathize with Gosling’s character, and consequently, did not care about him.

I am not a huge fan of the original, but I found BR 2049 unengaging and all-but-humorless for most of its running time.

85

You are correct that Dave Bautista would crush Ryan Gosling in a fight. But we weren’t watching that. We were watching Blade Runner K fight Sapper Morton. K is a recent model specifically designed to hunt and destroy older model replicants like Sapper Morton. I’m sure his physiology was designed to be superior in close quarters combat.

Sentiment.

She couldn’t do what he wanted, create more replicant children for a slave race. He was a creepy narcissist, and wanted to poeticize his disappointment.

OK, I gotta give you that one. It bothered me too.

86

^The villainess says she’s going to tell Wallace that the cop was going to shoot her or some such thing. I thought the point was to establish that Wallace is so powerful that he would take care of it.

I stepped out to the washroom just after the scene where neo-Rachel got shot and came back just as the vehicle was trapped in the water, so maybe I missed a key explanation: but didn’t taking Deckard to meet his daughter thoroughly put the replicant rebellion at risk?

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No, there was mention that because of the crash, Wallace would believe Deckard to be dead and as such, he wouldn’t be followed.

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Deckard, the Police lt, the Corp guy with the weird eyes.

89

Yes, I did hear that line. It just seemed to explain away the issue - there’s a dead fugitive replicant on the steps, there’s surveillance everywhere, and so I can’t imagine Deckard’s visit isn’t going to go unnoticed. I was totally into the movie until that point.

90

Did they ever explain why there were so many replicants on Earth now? Previously they were only used off-world, for stuff too dangerous to risk humans. Blade Runners looked for the rare instances of a replicant loose on the planet, where they are clearly a danger to ordinary humans. Despite that, they seemed to be everywhere - it’s not like there’s “3 Laws” protection built in.

Also, what happened to the time limit (7 years or so?) K was encountering replicants from 30 years previously - all of those models except Rachel should have been long dead.

91

I think the rules about replicants on Earth were repealed because, after the ecological collapse and the blackout, there weren’t enough humans left on Earth to rebuild. The scrawl at the beginning says that Wallace replicants “obey,” but the exact mechanism isn’t explained. It’s something to do with the test that K takes a few times in the movie. My take on it is the false memory implants - which were brand new in Rachel - are the key. Wallace corp. used implanted memories to create people whose personalities would lead them to accept being used as a disposable underclass. It’s not a hard-coded Asimovian “Three Laws” thing, though. They’re still people, and experiences can change how they react. That’s what the test is for - if their personality starts going too far off the “base-line” (their personality is evolving away from the docility they were born with) they’re disposed of and replaced with a new model.

They mention at the beginning of the movie that a bit before Tyrell Corp went under, they released a line of replicants that didn’t have the age cap. K is hunting down the last remnants of that line.

92

There were only three people in the police department who knew about Rachel and her baby - K, the lieutenant, and Coco, the lab tech that Luv kills when she steals all the evidence. The cops are going to find a dead replicant at the steps of the facility where the woman who designs replicant memories lives. They’ll probably assume he went there to kill her after he murdered Wallace’s assistant, as part of some plot against Wallace Corp. They may even pin the lieutenant’s death on K - one rogue replicant is a lot tidier than two.

Deckard’s going to have a reason he was in the air car with Ana and why K took him along, but it should be too hard to come up with a convincing lie.

93

Did Wallace and Luv not know about the baby? Before Luv killed Madame, didn’t Madame say something like “K took care of it” - i.e., killed the offspring? And I thought Wallace made reference to finding “the child” several times. Wasn’t that why he was taking Deckard off-world to torture him? The other point is the head of the replicant revolution was so concerned about Deckard leading the enemy to his daughter that she wanted K to kill him, so it was set up as a Really Bad Idea™.

I’d like nothing better to believe that there was nothing wrong with Deckard getting to meet his daughter, but it just seems that it was misplaced kindness on the part of K and the beginning of the end for the replicant resistance.

94

That might have been more than private theater. Wallace has all those floating eyes that are plugged into his nervous system. I think that might have been an actual medical examination. Wallace was checking to see if his latest attempt to create a fertile replicant had worked, and then disposed of her when he found out that it hadn’t.

95

I may be misremembering this, but I think they were going to take Deckard off-world to torture him so he could lead them back to the resistance, not to Rachel’s child - who they thought was dead based on what the lieutenant told Luv.

I don’t know that they’re doomed, necessarily, but K’s choice was definitely a rejection of their faction. It’s really a lot like the ending to a Deus Ex video game, where you have to choose between all these competing interests who are trying to get you to shape the world to their liking. There’s Wallace, who wants a grand future of never-ending slavery; the Resistance, who want rights for replicants; the lieutenant, who wants it all burned. K’s choice is to screw all of them, and reunite a father with his daughter.

Wallace is still a potential danger, but his ability to act unilaterally has been curtailed. His right hand is dead, there’s a big pile of humans who have been murdered by one or more replicants, and Deckard’s now back on the radar as being part of an investigation into these events. It’s going to be a lot harder for him to black-bag Deckard and haul him off planet, then when he was a forgotten ex-cop living out in the wastelands.

96

Didn’t someone (Freysa?) reveal that Sapper Morton deliberately lost the fight and got himself shot?

97

The music during that scene was using the “tears in rain” motif from Blade Runner. I thought it was a well-done callback to Roy’s death and that K did quietly die.

I was really loving the film until it just.wouldn’t.end. But that’s mainly because after two hours or so my back started hurting (and I don’t have a bad back). I couldn’t get comfortable and wanted it to be over. Maybe I’ll go back to watch only the last hour because I just couldn’t appreciate it.

98

Yes, watching that scene my thoughts were “Like tears… in snow”.

99

Maybe when you don’t have to worry about an afterlife, death is easier.

100

This is more fantasy than speculation, but when the film ended, K was quietly dying on the steps of the one place that could plausibly capture his memories and re-implant them in another replicant, with or without editing them for convenience. This shows how deeply and thoroughly replicants were enslaved; they don’t even own their memories. And yet, the only possession that K seemed to value was Joi, a personality construct whose very existence and identity he controlled. Joi was K’s electric sheep.