It does look as if they’ve borrowed from the authorized KW Jeter novels and had the climate flip from constant rain to complete desert. Not sure why they’re still wearing heavy, roll-neck coats, though…
Gosling and Ford are on the cover of the current issue of Entertainment Weekly. The director (who did a very good job with Arrival IMHO, and says he’s seen the original “about 1,000 times”) had a long dinner with Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford, and discussed the movie at length. Scott still thinks Deckard was a replicant; Ford and Hampton Fancher, co-screenwriter of the original movie, are adamant that he was not. No word in the article as to whether the question will be definitely settled one way or the other.
Ambiguity of the premise was central to Philip K Dick’s writing. Take the other popular book, “Total Recall”. We don’t even know whether or not it was all happening or if the whole plot was an illusion. What does it mean to live - really live - or to die? Is it moral to build a machine that is conscious and doesn’t want to die? Is it moral to build a machine that doesn’t know that it is a machine?
But, the whole business about Deckard, as far as I can recall, started when the work-print was accidentally released. It contained a shot of Ford that contained a little “red eye”, because it hadn’t been fixed, because it was a work print. In the official release, the owl’s eyes had some red eye in them. It was probably just an oversight to not fix them. But, once the work print came out, it became a conspiracy that red eye was somehow a tell-tale sign of an artificial life form. Although, if it were, you’d think it would’ve been included on the Voight-Kampff test which featured a GIANT eye ball on a screen!!! Red eye is very common in photos that were made using a flash. It’s not a post-production effect. Anyway, the whole Deckard is a replicant theory is just a retroactive explanation of a shot of an owl that should’ve been fixed an a shot of Deckard that only appeared on the work print. So, it’s either sloppiness or a conspiracy. … and, man, people love a conspiracy.
rats - have since discovered that Vangelis is NOT doing the sequel soundtrack.
Character is dead (or perhaps I’m misinformed by the director’s cut). Still, that would have been good.
A shame also that Rutger Hauer isn’t back, as some sort of older combat veteran of Roy, but I guess the short lifespan is the point, isn’t it
They’re replicants. Nothing to stop Tyrell Co. from making replacements. Complete with memories. But the aging factor is a problem. (Although that didn’t stop them from having Joanna Cassidy re-doing some shots for The Final Cut.)
Of the main four replicants only Brion “Leon” James is no longer with us. Oddly, 3 of the actors who played people that Roy killed are still with us. The actor who played Holden is gone. I guess being hooked up to some tubes isn’t a good long term prospect.
Both Bryant and Gaff (M. Emmet Walsh and Edward James Olmos) are still going. One or both of those would be nice.
Yes! I’d love to have Gaff return.
And if Deckard is still alive, that means…
A. Gaff coming back. It’d be nice to find out what’s the deal with the origami.
B. As noted previously. This might not be the same Deckard.
The possibility that any given returning character is not the same entity as the original will have to be considered when watching this movie.
New trailer out today. I like the aesthetic, and the director gives me optimism. Too many times being burned by bad remakes and sequels makes me pessimistic.
No, not at all. In fact having Deckard be a replicant doesnt work in so many ways.
Why make a 'bladerunner" who is slower and weaker that what he is hunting?
And in any case, just a simple DNA test will clearly show a replicant. Or a drop of boiling water.
I want more screen time, fucker!
A great mash up would be to somehow add MacReady or Childs to the story.
Would probably turn out like AVP, tho…
never mind
Agreed on all counts. And was it just me, or did the man in the last shot, looking down on the book with the ripped-out pages, have a melding of the features of both Gosling and Ford?
:: Golf clap ::
It’s not as central as the movie people and fan conspiracies are making it. There’s no ambiguity in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, that Bladerunner is based on. Nor is there the ambiguity in Minority Report that fans have made of it. In We Can Remember it for you Wholesale (the short story that both Total Recalls were based on), it’s pretty clear that Quail really was an undercover agent (although there are arguably other ambiguities)*.
his isn’t to say that there are lots of “is it live or is it Memorex” moments in Dick’s fiction and the bending of reality and perception. Lots of his stuff features it – but I wouldn’t say that it’s central to his writing (a lot of his stuff has none of it at all), and, as I say, people keep trying to insert it where Dick didn’t really have it.
Spoiler about the cast for the new movie:
Wiki and IMDB.com both say Edward James Olmos will be returning as Gaff. Woohoo!
Very nice look and feel.
You can never tell from a trailer how good the movie is going to be, but I do really like the look and feel. It seems to have a nice blending of a new look, but enough of call-back to the original look and sound. I’ll see it no matter what, being the complete sucker for SciFi that I am.
Sound was good, but visually I was left with a feeling of this having none of the charm the original did, though it might just be Gosling. I really hope I’m wrong.
Much better trailer this time. But it seems to lack the lo-fi grittiness of the original.
Looks like Coke made it to 2049. Didn’t recognize any of those other future brands in the lit and neon logos on the street.
In some of the street shots and the flying cars I thought I was looking at the original film.