The documentary is pretty fascinating. Jodorowsky managed to put together a stellar team, among them H.R. Giger, Dalí and the script writer who would later write Alien.
I see this kind of the comment--legible, complete sentences, no grammatical errors, but otherwise totally missing some basic element in what they're replying to--from time to time, generally only on HN, and I wonder if they're edge cases from some kind of bot school.
Parent obviously read the comment (which doesn't mention any particular movie in its text), but didn't follow the link, assuming it was about Dune (which was the context that started the subthread).
Jodorowsky has said he’s only taken psychedelics once. There’s also overt criticism of drug use and dependence throughout his body of work, including in Holy Mountain itself, so that seems like a self-limiting conclusion to come to.
Holy Mountain is hilarious. I always think about the scene where the President's advisor says they need to kill millions of people to save the economy lol
I think that was pretty widely accepted? Not sure if total drug use was higher than it is now but especially hallucinogenic drugs were much more popular than they are today.
I don't think the colourful styles of the 60s/70s were a coincidence either, no :)
By the way: the very author of "Golden Brown" stated that creativity is an effect of lucidity - intoxication limits it.
"Golden Brown" is a riddle: how many individuals may have thought (as the original poster supposes) that it takes «lot of drugs» to compose it?
(Of course, "riddles", "artistic work" and "non-literal descriptions" remain distinct. Though for all of them, in general, if you have to suppose a reduction to "fantasies" you probably have not understood them.)
I think it's not uncommon for recreational psychedelic users to have a disdain and aversion to actual junkies, if using the 1970s sense of the word, would literally mean heroin addicts. Big dividing line between the two sorts of drug users.
I cannot remember if he used 'junkie' or 'drogado' or other terms when referring to those actors that had been a dangerous nuisance in the filming process. Surely he was fuming and rightly, commonsensically contemptuous remembering the episodes (one almost killed him and left scars).
Whatever the drug, it is the exact opposite of what that work stands for. The "sleeping intoxicated bum" is the very beginning.
It must be crazy for Jodorowsky to see how his concept art defined so much of space sci fi , at least this was the angle presented in the documentary. But imagine the treasure trove George Lucas must have come across
Dune is unmakable. Always will be. It is the definitive book that is too big for the screen. The story and themes are too vast. Adaptations can be good, be entertaining, but every one is a shallow attempt at the impossible.
But that's the thing, jodos dune came as an aggregate of "non-movie" mediums, because jodorowsky was not a cinematographer by trade he was an avant garde theater person, giger, Dali, moebius, Foss, neither of them "were part" of the "movies" medium, they all and the rest of the crew were painters or writers or musicians, comic book artists, not cinematographers per se, in that sense what jodorowsky set to do was not even a movie as we might think of one today, but an agglomeration of different types and styles of art with all their own individual Influences mixed in
I think today, it would be nearly impossible for "works" to exist and not have been inspired themselves in some degree by the downstream effects and inspiration that jodorowskys movie had, just think that starwars itself is inspired by it
But anyhow, it is a quite interesting food for thought
If anyone knows of some niche modern scifi books or works which might not be influenced by this failed dune movie let me know, I love this stuff
Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake seems to derive very little from classic science fiction. Perhaps this is because she’s a woman, and thus less drawn to teenage male fantasies like those found in Dune.
Even without leaving Scott, Alien seems to have been at least as visually influential as Blade Runner. Plus of course Star Wars and Star Trek...
Blade Runner is fairly distinctive even today (outside of Cyberpunk, most other post-82 sci fi that I can think of is definitely more influenced by other things) which IMO is a sign that it isn't as universally influential as other 70s/80s sci-fi films.
Off the top of my head, do any of BSG, Babylon 5, Mass Effect, Jurassic Park, Inception, Terminator, The Expanse, Interstellar, Independence Day, or The Matrix have particularly strong ties to Blade Runner's aesthetic compared to their ties to other early film sci-fi?
Totally! And one of the few English language films I’ve seen that retains the humour perfectly dubbed in German. In fact the bomb is possibly even funnier in German :)
I especially like how his cityscapes tend to show a skyline that would be familiar to anyone living in the last century, and then absolutely dwarf that skyline with megastructures, which themselves don't look particularly alien, just beyond our abilities. It's not hard to imagine those structures existing with (sci-fi level) advances in materials and construction techniques.
Yeah, Isao Tomita and Tangerine Dream come to mind. Contemporaries of Vangelis (the composer of the soundtrack of Blade Runner) from the 70's. Very similar vibe.
Jean Michel Jarre as well, though he had more of a beat. I like Morton Subotnick and the seminal album "Silver Apples of the Moon" it's more out there and experimental but it definitely it had a similar texture.
I was going to suggest jean J.M Jarre, but hard to get the ambience of Bladerunner as its quite curated.
But as an aside, there was these synthesizer compilations in the late 80s / early 90s that introduced to my to a bunch of Synth artists. Most of them have quite a range of styles they do on synth, some quite bladerunnerish (including Vangelis). Anyways, the albums are "Synthesizer Greatest 1,2 and 3". Spotify has them as a playlists, as do most other music providers.
I fell in love with Tomita's classical reproductions as a child. His sound textures took about 25 years for anyone else to come close. Crazy to think that he played almost every part on his keyboard. All he had were early analog sequencers, and had to multi-track everything because polyphonic sound had not yet been created. If you haven't heard, listen to his take on Pacific 231 by Honegger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjxbwZG20Wc
I saw Jarre live in the London Docklands in 1988 - I was a poor student that lived within walking distance (Woolwich) The rain gave it an ambiance that worked, and the location was abandoned industrial location - now redeveloped
The difference between London in the mid 80s to now is stark, but it’s not quite fully Bladerunner
I remember every detail... even the smell of the diesel generators. And the very-wet synthesizers (it was pouring with rain!), and - carefully edited out of the videos - the different tracks that veered out of sync, seemingly heading for disaster...
Actually Blade Runner is actually pretty much it's own music genre. Hop onto Bandcamp, and you'll find a lot of indie electronic artists (mostly German as far as I can tell) making music that sounds like Vangelis' Blade Runner synth stuff (less so for the non synth stuff).
Same vibe, no. Vangelis was one of a kind. But somewhere in the same galactic neighborhood:
Maurice Jarre (The Witness, Gorillas in the Mist)
Bear McCreary is mostly orchestral, but the "Cult of Baltar" cue, for example, seems to me cut from some of the same corners of the world/ambient universe.
Cliff Martinez has done a ton of great ambient synth stuff (Traffic, The Neon Demon, Drive).
Other synth soundtracks you may already know, but should check out if you haven't: Wendy Carlos's TRON and Daft Punk's TRON: Legacy; Brad Fiedel's Terminator; Tangerine Dream's various soundtracks.
Take a listen to Perturbator, Carpenter Brut, and Daniel Deluxe. The genre of "Dark Synthwave"[1] in general tends to have BladeRunner/Cyberpunk vibes.
Second Carpenter Brut, even though i think it is quite different from Vangelis. The album Leather Teeth [0] has some great videos, but they are absolutely NSFW.
If "more Blade Runner" would suffice, there's a bootleg soundtrack available in all your favorite piratey places that includes virtually all the music from the movie, most of which never made it onto any official soundtrack.
Things you might look for are "Esper" or "Retirement" edition.
My experience of Blade Runner 2049's music was that the only memorable bit was the explicit use of "Tears in Rain" from the original. Everything else seemed very generic and ephemeral.
I'd give at least the next 10mins of this mix a listen imo.
https://youtu.be/5vHRUsP20dQ?t=1830
Its a bloody good mix in its own right anyway!
I dont think you would or could find much with the same vibe as Blade Runner, its kind of unique and stands out on its own, but a DJ who could do a mix which is close to a Blade Runner vibe would be Maceo Plex and it would be this mix imo.
Alot of the German/Berlin industrial vibe would be too extreme or hardcore for a Blade Runner vibe, and whilst it would seem natural to look to a German DJ for a Blade Runner vibe, I think Maceo Plex has pulled a Blade Runner vibe perfectly in this mix.
Anything else by Vangelis. He died a few weeks ago but his music will likely live on for a long, long time. Try: Soil Festivities (personal favorite), Spiral, and Jon & Vangelis.
Other artists: Johan Timman, John Kerr (Moon). Brian Eno.
I tried to impress my 11 year old with the opening sequence; flames belching over LA, Vangelis, etc. -- which I've always found aesthetically stunning.
That's the caveat of groundbreaking works. They may hold up over time and still be strong works. But the things they did that were new and jaw-dropping end up riffed upon and will no longer be as surprising to new audiences.
I will likely never have the talent to do so, unless I retire early, but assuming I do retire (the way the UK is going you never know eh, maybe by 77) or just have some spare time and money I'd love to have some reconstructed miniatures of scenes from blade runner.
I guess someone has probably done this already, but I've never been able to find anything with first-order googling at least.
The visual style of the movie is influenced by the work of futurist Italian architect Antonio Sant'Elia.[51] Scott hired Syd Mead as his concept artist; like Scott, he was influenced by Métal Hurlant
So, err, no. Métal Hurlant was 1974, cyberpunk itself started in the 1960s.
It's based on a book from 1968 after all. Judge Dredd first came out in 1977.
It didn't come up with the aesthetic, it popularized it.
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you're saying "Blade Runner wasn't an enormous influence on 40 years of sci-fi, because it also had influences and we should credit those instead." I don't think that's how it works. At worst, Blade Runner took an aesthetic that had been the domain of some relatively obscure (if excellent) comics and brought it crashing into the forefront of global pop culture.
Also, "cyberpunk itself started in the 1960s" is...pretty questionable. It was certainly heavily influenced and rooted in New Wave sci-fi of the '60s and '70s, but cyberpunk as a literary movement is very much a thing of the '80s.
In any case, New Wave sci-fi and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? were very much textual media. They were a huge influence on the themes and stories of what would become cyberpunk, not so much on the visual aesthetic.
"The main difference between what Ridley views this all in terms of and what I view it all in terms of is as follows. To me, the replicants (or androids, if you will) are deplorable because [inaudible] they are cold, they are selfish, they are heartless, they are completely self-centered, they have no empathy, they don't care about what happens to other creatures, and to me this is essentially a less-than-human entity for that reason. Now, Ridley said that he regarded them as supermen who couldn't fly. He said they are smarter than humans, they are stronger than humans, and they have faster reflexes than humans. Well, then I said 'well, gee Ridley, I mean, holy smokes, uh, golly,' and that was about all I could think of to say, you know. That's rather a great divergence, you see: we've gone from somebody who is a simulation of the authentic human to somebody who is literally superior to the authentic human. So we've now flipped all the cards on the table, you see, when we do that: in other words, all the cards that were up are now down and all the ones that were down are now up. And I was at a loss at that point, you know, to respond, I mean. I said, 'okay, now the theme of the book is that Rick Deckard is dehumanized in his job of tracking down the replicants and killing them, that in other words he winds up essentially like they are.' And Ridley said that he regarded that as an intellectual idea and he was not interested in making an esoteric film."
Good quote. For me what distinguishes the film and makes it better than the original story is exactly the elevation of the replicants into fully sentient beings. Batty started out as a grifter in the original and became the center of the story in Ridley Scott's film.
I was surprised that the question of sentience and what it means to be a human was actually less pronounced in the original story than in the film. I would have expected something more challenging (if that's the right word) from Dick.
Maybe androids in Electric Sheep have almost a Capgras Delusion quality, especially in the scene in the fake police station. They seem human but they're lacking an essential emotional quality that makes them 'real.'
>they are cold, they are selfish, they are heartless, they are completely self-centered, they have no empathy, they don't care about what happens to other creatures
Are we sure that there aren’t a lot of replicants walking around already?
I hated that movie the first to I saw it. I was bored with it.
Now I love it. I really enjoy how much time they spend establishing the atmosphere and characters. It all feels very real and has depth.
I loath the speedy sci fi that tries to touch on atmosphere and then hurries along with their paper characters and so on. So much sci fi I encounter now feels little more than a long trailer with no idea how to end.
Now that I think about it, the first time I watched it, I was a little bored with it, too. It was hyped up so much that I think I was expecting something very plot-heavy that moved quickly and was mind-blowing that way.
Since that first viewing, some 20 years ago, I've watched it a few more times without those initial expectations and really love it. I love slow-paced films where you can really soak up the atmosphere. That kind of thing isn't for everyone, though, so I can see why others wouldn't enjoy it.
> I loath the speedy sci fi that tries to touch on atmosphere and then hurries along with their paper characters and so on.
Post-Blade-Runner movies can spend less time developing their aesthetic and setting specifically because they can "import" the Blade Runner vibe "by reference", as it were, while Blade Runner had to build up the whole thing from scratch.
To fair, importing a setting this way isn't necessarily lazy: doing so allows the derivative film maker to spend more time on the things that make his film unique. There's only so long an audience will tolerate.
This is also a film that most people probably have to watch 2–3 times to really understand the whole plot (much less notice all of the symbolism, etc.).
I tend to recommend to people who've not seen it, to watch the Theatrical Cut first. Then watch The Final Cut, and keeping watching The Final Cut, and never re-watch the Theatrical.
The Theatrical Cut obviously adds the narration, which for first-timers helps with the comprehension. However once you know the story. The Final Cut is just pure bliss and I never tire of it.
The Final Cut of the movie ruins the original look of the film. I'm amazed more people haven't commented on this. For example, compare the shot of the outside of Chew's lab:
I'm the other way around. I loved the atmosphere and the slow pace when I first saw it. But ever since I read the book I can't enjoy it the same way. I feel it just doesn't do it justice.
I love the movie. And I enjoyed the book many years later. But they are completely different. The book has an atmosphere of 1950 dry, dusty, empty suburbia and deals a lot with the status of owning real pets and what real really means.
The movie is literary much darker and takes place in a claustrophobic decaying chaos of a enormous city. I has the slow pace of a 1940th film noir and while the theme of what real really entails is central, it just one part in the whole vision.
I'm another way around: I read the book then watch the movie not long after. I slept.
And everytime I try to watch it I get bored quick.
I think I would have much more apreciate it, the atmosphere et all, if I hadn't read the book before. And I realy regret it because I know it's a good movie.
The book has a level emotional depth of that is not matched in the film. The first dialogue between Deckhart and his wife (yes he is married in the book) is really clever and meta. I was extremely disappointed by the film (I first saw it 2 years ago) and it feels very dated and has that 80s men-women cringe-portrayal. I agree, read the book it is awesome!
I watched it the other day, along with its recent 2049 sequel, and felt much teh same thing about its portrayal of women. Really ... dated. There is so much stuff that is emotionally more intelligent these dayson Netflix or Amazon.
I still enjoyed both films but that aspect of them (both) really sucked.
He's one of my favorite authors. While he wrote a lot of great science fiction my favorite of his works is "The Man in the High Castle". It's quite different. No space travel or aliens. It follows a few different characters in an alternate history world where the axis won WW2.
I've tried to watch the movie multiple times, always get bored in the beginning and abort early. Once tried to watching with a friend and we were both bored fairly quickly.
To be fair I don't watch movies / TV shows often because I have a low attention span for this stuff, but this is a movie I really wanted to like because I love the genre, but it's too slow paced for me. I do know that pacing was generally slower in older movies (eg. I recently watched "Roman Holiday" because so many older people love that one, and found it incredibly slow).
Obviously not a mind blowing suggestion and cinemaphiles will recoil at the idea but have you tried watching it at 1.5 speed?
I watch some stuff like this because while the Directors vision might require 3 breaths to get the point across I am happy to accept the premise being suggested in 3 seconds. Cinema is a communication medium, not a recreation or simulation of events.
Spot on. Not a movie to watch for the plot. True to the source in this. With Philip K. Dick's novels, reading for the "story" alone is totally missing the point.
Same for the Prime TV series, The Man in the High Castle. Again, true to the source in that the plot is moth-eaten lacework, but who cares? The world-building is great.
It is possible, of course, that you saw an inferior cut of the film. It's notorious for having been recut several times over the years. The Final Cut is the one to watch.
I just saw the movie for the first time and had quite some expectations. It was the directors cut. And while the overall setting was interesting and there were quite good scenes in it, for me it was just too long and I found it quite boring. Mainly the awfully stretched fight at the end put me off.
Not sure if I should or want to revisit it after some time. As I also did not really find the sequel that convincing.
But it got me thinking in what people see in these movies which I can’t.
I accidentally started rewatching a different cut after having only ever watched the final cut. When that noir style voice over started going, I was so confused. It was so bad I was sure it couldn’t have been part of the film I had previously enjoyed. Researching it after lead me to the same conclusion as you.
Same for me- I also found it boring the first time. Or rather, I found it amazing, but the final battle comes a bit too late. After rewatching I kind of learned where the lulls are, and tend to break it up around those.
I saw it on opening day in 1982. I was pretty disappointed in it. But the original theatrical release was actually not good, and really did need the re-edits. Maybe not six re-edits, but still.
There are three things that are important to the movie.
- Pacing so you don't get bored.
- Thematic depth
- Atmosphere
A lot of pretentious people like to ignore pacing as if their brains are made up of pure IQ and anything related excitement is beneath them. Make no mistake, we are all human and we all get bored. Pacing is important and it takes a lot of effort (and intelligence) for a director to maintain that level of momentum for a movie.
Let's face it, Blade runner really screwed up with pacing. Ultra slow pacing is understandably sort of required for the atmosphere but while it scores very very very highly in the other areas; there is absolute truth to the statement when someone says that movie is in general quite slow and boring. If your brain is too big to comprehend why Blade runner even has the possibility of being boring then I'm likely too stupid to be communicating with you, you should go read other comments of higher intelligence.
The MCU scores highly in pacing and probably is the greatest paced franchise of all time, with 10 years of momentum and a payoff unlike anything ever seen before in cinema. But because of pretension, in general a certain crowd looks at the entire franchise with disdain; even though it's actually much harder and challenging to create good pacing then many of the more serious thematically deep movies I've seen out there.
Inception would be movie that on average has the best high balance on all three pillars. Good pacing, thematically deep, well established professional/corporate atmosphere. Though I would say in terms of theme and atmosphere, while quite high, it's not quite high enough to get past certain pretentious attitudes. I would even argue that sometimes if the pacing is too good, the movie becomes too popular and thus "not good" to the elite crowd.
At the same time, sometimes if the pacing is too good, the themes and atmosphere get copied by dozens of other movies. The audience sees too much of it and becomes more sophisticated. Now the stuff that use to be high concept to the general audience becomes quite boring. Directors and movies producers are always playing catch up to increase sophistication and bring you stuff you've never seen before.
@duxup, I think this is what's happening to you. Bladerunner is so boring that it wasn't copied too much. But the other sci-fi stuff get copied to hell and now the cookie cutter sameness doesn't do it for you anymore. So you turn to the thing that's most different.
"Let's face it" - anyone who brings their preferences to the table as indisputable truths held by all reasonable, i.e. non "pretentious", folk, could probably do with some long expository chats with other film fans in a good cafe around the corner from a good cinema.
There are things that are general truths though. Opinions held by such a high majority of people that such opinions are very close to the truth in the sense that often people talk about such opinions without using "speculative" adjectives.
I would say the things that I talk about in my post belong to those "general truths." I would also say fans of Blade Runner don't belong to the majority crowd. Their opinions are well outside mainstream and they <often> view that sort of opinion as superior. I personally view that sort of opinion as "alternative" and I despise people who view it as "superior."
Not saying you are such a person, nor many of the people on HN. But you have to admit; such a crowd does exist.
So to summarize: you despise fans of the original Blade Runner because they so often view their own opinions as superior. And you see no irony in this. Got it.
That's very closed minded of you to say that. Because I never said this.
Probably a better way to put it is this. If you like Blade Runner AND the MCU, or at least understand why from a mainstream perspective the MCU is a work of art that stands on the same level as blade runner, then I don't despise you.
If you like Blade runner and you hate all forms of movies that are mainstream blockbusters like star wars, MCU, or all the other stuff and think those things are beneath you... then yes... in that case I despise you. I actually think you don't have the sophistication to see why mainstream cinema is just as great if not often greater then the obscure stuff.
It's easy to hate the mainstream. It's enlightenment to like the mainstream after hating it. Those elitest people are just at level 2. They don't realize there's a third level that brings you back full circle.
I would know I watched hundreds and hundreds of movies. More then your average person and I started at a very young age.
> A quality that makes a film commercially successful is not automatically a quality which makes a film great art.
Agreed? Why are you telling me something I completely agree with?
>Popular is popular. Art is art.
The problem here is that for people like you, most of the time:
"Popular is NOT art",
it's this elitist attitude that "art" is above what is "popular" that I hate. We divide wealth into classes and now we have to divide tastes. Looks like your part of the 1%.
>Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
May I ask why you decided to write some stuff in French for no fucking reason? Pretty low likelihood that I'm French or readers on HN are French so what's your goal here with putting some French here?
It's like a cartoon. You're not trying to sound elitist but your genius French kinda shows the world how elitist your headspace is. Wow French!, we're dealing with a true art critic here folks.
I'm not art critic enough to know even half of what's been written about the meaning of this painting, but I know that it's considered significant, and I immediately recognized the reference.
Can't speak for him, but I guess the reason for including it may have been as an example of a work that was decidedly not Popular but (after much discussion) very much Art.
The other thing it could be used for is as a reminder to not mistake the map for the territory, but I don't see that fitting into this discussion so it's probably not that.
The Treachery of Images, as I understand it, is a visual/linguistic joke on the multiple definitions of being.
By distilling language down to a most basic, simplified statement, the artist (Magritte) is seducing the viewer into a first impression ("This is a pipe") and then contradicting it, on the basis that a picture of a pipe cannot be used for anything which a pipe can (e.g. smoking).
So yes, similar lines to the Borges map fable.
I included it because at a base level, parent seems to be stubborn about the definition of terms, on which it seemed to opine.
See this here with more French when I obviously called you on it is called trolling.
Nobody look up that French or ask about it... it's a trap so he can lord it over you with an authoritative expose and explanation of his expansive knowledge of French wisdom while eating a croissant.
Try to stop assuming that everybody here shares your exact experiences and background. English has acquired many loan words and phrases from French and many people from British and Commonwealth backgrounds learned some French at school, to the extent that Franglais is both a joke in itself and used to make jokes. Saying "I don't speak French" in French is that sort of absurdist/wry joke, not the least because often that is the about only thing a traveller learns of a foreign tongue - how to apologise for not speaking it and to ask whether they speak English.
So although I'm a monoglot Kiwi I'm neither baffled nor insulted by a snippet of French, and although I know little of the history of art the fame of that surrealist painting precedes it. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" has passed from being a painting to a concise reference to an idea, and like all jargon its succinctness is both useful for those familiar with the field and can be forbidding for those who don't.
Most people don't know about this painting nor do most people know French... I'm sure you and him are aware of that.
It could be that whatever the painting represents fits his point. But you have to look deeper then that because he is fully aware that most people on this site don't know about that painting nor do they know French. So why post it at all? His intent definitely wasn't communicating anything understandable to anyone here.
I'm Chinese, so if quoted some famous quote from Confucius, and to top if off I wrote that quote in Chinese, then of course my intention isn't communication. I know most people on HN can't read Chinese, so then why would I include the quote?
I would have included it to make myself look intelligent, educated and well versed in Chinese philosophy. This is basically the gist of what's going on here.
The alternative is he just didn't have the brains to realize this is an English site and most people don't speak french nor do they have an understanding of French paintings.
I would say the former reason is much more likely then the later.
That's why I said it's almost like a cartoon. I'm talking about elitism in movie tastes and here someone tries to counter that claim with a carbon copy circus act of exactly the snobbery I'm talking about. I don't think he picked up on it, and hopefully this explanation helps you realize what I'm talking about.
I've been following this thread, and you seem sincere and not trolling, so I will share with you that I think most people reading this thread can tell you are missing something big. It's OK not to understand everything, but to say you despise people who claim to understand something you don't us... actually despicable.
This site is for people to discuss and learn, and curiosity is basically a core value of it. It's OK to be young and immature if you are also curious.
BTW, if you share a Chinese saying that people can Google and be educated and delighted by, I think it would be welcomed. Even in Chinese.
Lol we both know the intention here was snobbery. Just reference the painting in English instead of communicating with terminology everyone has to Google.
Your very narrow minded to assume that just because someone has a different opinion then you it's from a person younger then you.
In fact talking to someone in such a patronizing tone isnt itself exactly the overly polite tone dang seems to ask for from users on HN. I offer hard controversial opinions with no cushion, you treat me like a child lol. We are both bending the rules here.
If you ever raised a child past his teens, you will know treating a teen like a child, patronizing him is not only a surefire way of making that person your enemy, but it's also wrong and in itself very immature. Shit like "it's ok to be curious and immature when your young" is raw venom cleverly disguised as advice. I will tell you the truth. By saying shit like this you display both immaturity and you show that you are manipulative. Immaturity can be "fixed", manipulation cannot. Don't fuck with me bro.
>BTW, if you share a Chinese saying that people can Google and be educated and delighted by, I think it would be welcomed. Even in Chinese.
The proper way to do this would be to share it in English, and explain it. Thats proper communication. Leaving it in Chinese and expecting you to Google it is a very unnatural thing to do by someone who's intention is to communicate. So obviously there's a secondary intention here.
What this person is doing raw snobbery. You just happen to likely agree with this persons initial opinions on blade runner and the MCU, so during your little team up here your supporting his every move his every tactic, however obviously snobbish.
My tip for you is to always stay neutral. This is the internet so unique to the internet you can take a position where you Have no allies and have no enemies and only offer your raw opinions for everyone to agree and disagree with. At times everyone can disagree with you, at other times everyone agrees with you.
If you find that everyone is agreeing with you all the time... then you're just not a very original person and your not learning anything.
When I offer a controversial opinion occasionally I'm flipped. I'm changed. The other side convinces me and my entire outlook on a topic moves to another dimension. That's what I live for and that's why I offer hard hitting opinions. Because I want people to offer them back.
I will actually apologize for being patronizing. I was annoyed by your tone, and after careful consideration, I hit enter on a post that I knew would annoy you back. I shouldn't have.
Hard and controversial opinions with no cushion are fun in person with a friend. That's not what this place is. We need more nuance in our discussions, not less. It's not as fun, but it is more constructive, and it helps us see other people's points of view instead of making it into a contest.
I will say, I have no idea how old you are, and you have no idea how old I am. But whether I am 15 or 50, my words speak for themselves, as do yours.
Hum. The reality is that almost every big budget movie today is targeted at a international teenage audience. And goes for the lowest common denominator across the US, Europe and Asia. That doesn’t leave much for originality and atmosphere. Superheros with cartoonish SFX and violence, violence and violence. And some occasional fart jokes. That’s pretty much it.
No the reality is many big budget films are targeted towards AS MANY PEOPLE AS possible. It doesn't make business sense to target one demographic. Business people target qualities that hit as many demographics as possible.
In short you could say that the mainstream general audience is what the big budget move is target-ted towards.
Something like the MCU which is over a decade old doesn't fit your thinking. If the first movie IRON MAN, which "targetted teens" is a decade old then most of those teens who watched END GAME that another movie that targeted the people who watched the first iron man are no longer teens. They aged out. If iron man targetted teens then end game didn't. So most likely all these super hero blockbusters are just targeting all demographics. Don't be so shallow in thinking that only teens are "dumb" enough to like super hero movies. Plenty of other demographics and "smart" people appreciate blockbuster entertainment.
End game had clear nostalgia references to people who watched the first iron man and his death only had emotional meaning to those who followed him for over a decade. Younger people in fact tend to think of the MCU as stupid, because iron man came out when they were too young to be interested. I've found people in their early 20s have this attitude and I'm guessing that's you. To me someone in their 20s is practically a teen.
Older people appreciate the MCU because their memory stretches back further. They don't see the MCU as a decade of cookie cutter copies because that decade only takes up a tiny fraction of their own cinematic life time. They see that everything that came before the MCU was different and the MCU is unique. Meanwhile young people who've seen the MCU all their lives see it as stupid because that's all they've seen their entire short lives.
Maybe. The problem is the majority of the population has the exact same taste I'm talking about. Everyone loves summer blockbusters while Bladerunner is a niche.
So am I rationalizing something or am I trying to explain something to a stubborn elitist minority?
I think we're both intelligent enough to know that the later reason is the actual reality and that I'm not the one actually rationalizing things.
Top Gun just crossed a billion dollars, and while I haven't seen it, I'm sure the pacing is frenetic as fuck. Nobody needs to rationalize a billion dollars, but somebody definitely needs to justify a niche movie like blade runner.
Top Gun Maverick’s pacing, while nowhere as meandering as its ‘80s predecessor, was actually not frenetic until perhaps the terminal velocity climax. It’s a very character-based film, not only a special effects extravaganza. It harkens to a slightly older type of action flick.
I'm just reusing the other guys' terminology. In general I'm just talking about the pacing of blockbusters, and the guy said I'm rationalizing really bad movies with "frenetic" pacing.
I think your definition of frenetic is different from his. When he's talking about frenetic, he's talking about the new Top Gun and MCU blockbusters and such and such. He thinks that level of momentum is bad and too way too quick, which is a deviant opinion from most of the general audience who loves these blockbusters.
I get what you're saying (I worked in fiom and tv for eons before switching out), but you can't really do it like that. Comparison needs to include both what the movie was built on, leading to it, and then also to consider directors own body of work leading to it. That takes into account period of work and release as well. What came after (not immediately) is not relevant to the work itself since it's out of period (in future). To even start talking in this direction you'd have to invoke, serially, works like Clockwork Orange, American Graffiti, Taxi Driver, and then Midnight Express to even start outlining the silhouette of what is to come.with Blade Runner.. and that's just a start since Ridley Scott's path is a bit unusual, and that movie's genesis especially so (see Legend he did sonce it's close to the period). That only covers the basics of the basics of discussing of what and specifically why this particular work is the way it is and why emulating the moves later (2049) didn't yield the same.
Edit: typing on mobile. Screw it, I hope it's at least somewhat readable.
Excellent comment. Makes me feel "less guilty" for being bored to bits by Blade Runner (and 2001, similarly). I "feel guilty" because I consider myself a big sci fi fan, and while they are visually brilliant movies, they just drag ass. I have see why they are widely acclaimed in concept, but also felt like I was not not "getting" something.
The new Dune is long, dense, cerebral, visually brilliant, but is paced way better in my opinion. There's a continuous forward drive.
De-emphasizing pacing is just as bad as de-emphasizing any other important facet of cinema. But we have this dichotomy that action is "cheap" and not as "smart", because it has wider appeal.
I think neurotype plays a lot into this. I have ADHD, and the snobby cousin comment about "digital detox" is exactly the elitist garbage that rubs me the wrong way. It attaches value to "not being bored" as if that's something I have control over.
Remember, it's "elitist" because the people who think this way are in the minority. Your and my preferences are actually the norm, just not in this thread. Most people will get bored and that is completely normal.
Although I will say that I can empathize with why people like blade runner. The good parts are good, but the mainstream audience just places a higher bar on pacing.
I also suspect that many people in the "elitist" group also get bored. They just don't admit it.
I agree with some of this, including that there is value in a pacy story.
But there are some stories that simply take time to be told. And if you keep trying to hit plot points or make every moment superficially entertaining, you won't be able to tell certain types of stories.
Nowadays, when a movie is critically acclaimed and I am bored watching it, I actually get excited. What is it about this movie, that I'm bored by right now, has gotten so many people so excited??? This attitude has gotten me into many movies that I love that I don't think I would have had the patience for as a child or young adult.
The same attitude has led me to spend most of my reading time on classic literature, which has also been a blessing.
I'm sure this comes off as pretentious, but I assure you it is not.
"Pretentious- attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed."
I care about other people and want them to share in the beauty of the world. When the importance actually exists, it's not pretentious.
What I find pretentious is when you love the slower stuff but hate all the popular stuff and dismiss pacing as even a relevant factor.
Many many people have this attitude and they actually dismiss MCU stuff as raw garbage, too base level for their intellectual tastes.
I repeat. Your post is not pretentious to me at all. It's what I come here for. Thank you.
I agree with you there are movies that require a huge slow as hell build up in order to deliver a huge pay off. I agree and I like those movies despite the slow pacing. But those movies imo would benefit from better pacing regardless. I've seen people quit watching before the payoff and forever have their opinion of that movie forever tainted.
> comprehend why Blade runner even has the possibility of being boring then I'm likely too stupid to be communicating with you
Step away from the sugar drinks and try a digital detox. :-)
People paid to see Vangelis sound and light shows, when there wasn’t even a movie rolling. Surely with a movie attached, the sound and light isn’t that dull?
Buried in that thread is a pushback to your premise about MCU, a video that actually excerpts from Inception while taking down those “MCU scores” (pun intended) in particular.
Nobody can hum from Marvel movies because they play it safe (aka boring)!
I appreciated a quote from that discussion, tying back to your hypothesis: “People do not remember safe choices. Only bold, original music.”
Blade Runner wasn’t safe, though they almost ruined it with the release voice overs trying to make it safer…
Interestingly if you go down the rabbit hole, a reply video to that one points out the Star Wars theme everyone remembers was “copied to hell” from countless old movies before it. That response goes on to say the problem is, roughly, digital production sameness.
> there is absolute truth to the statement when someone says that movie is in general quite slow and boring
Well, no. Boredom comes from within. When you have too many thoughts, or too few, to focus, boredom happens.
Blade Runner is an experience, the pacing makes room to take it in. If you don’t open your mind to take it in, if your mind wanders off, or loses the plot, you will miss the excitement that builds from an authentic experience.
> Bladerunner is so boring that it wasn't copied too much. But the other sci-fi stuff get copied to hell
This line suddenly makes me wonder if you were just messing with us. Hmm.
Instead of engaging, here’s a bite sized listicle: How to Be Less Boring and Less Bored.
TL;DR: Lay off virtual sugar, digitally detox, open the mind…
- appreciate interestingness
- hang out with geeks
- enjoy quietude
- get out of a rut
- read long form
- try three things you’d never, three times each
- regain a sense of wonder
> Well, no. Boredom comes from within. When you have too many thoughts, or too few, to focus, boredom happens.
> TL;DR: Lay off virtual sugar, digitally detox, open the mind…
- appreciate interestingness
- hang out with geeks
- enjoy quietude
- get out of a rut
- read long form
- try three things you’d never, three times each
- regain a sense of wonder
> And remember, “Boring is as boring does!”
This is all rather patronizing and has some major wowthanksimcured vibes. Yes, I can overcome the nonlinearity of the response of my dopamine receptors by simply laying off "virtual sugar" and doing a "digital detox".
Bottom line: different people have different neurotypes, and folks are allowed to be bored or stimulated to various degrees by whatever media, without attaching value to how easily one is entertained, or not.
>TL;DR: Lay off virtual sugar, digitally detox, open the mind…
Probably hit a nerve here as I think you're one of THOSE elite-st people.
You missed the point. I understand the elitist crowd and where they come from and why they like what they like.
What I am saying is that they are too dismissive of mainstream opinions. There is no logical rule that says just because something is mainstream it sucks and just because something is not mainstream it's great.
>> Bladerunner is so boring that it wasn't copied too much. But the other sci-fi stuff get copied to hell
>This line suddenly makes me wonder if you were just messing with us. Hmm.
The contemplative tone in bladerunner is rarely copied, because the pacing is so slow. If you're talking about superficial aesthetics like the setting. Well I didn't realize you were so mainstream and that razzle & dazzle special effects mattered so much to you. Go watch the MCU for that sort of stuff. Yes those things have been copied to hell, but superficial aesthetics should be the least important thing according to your group think, no?
> - hang out with geeks
I'm the geek of geeks. I'm one level and one dimension above you. You can't comprehend the way I think because you haven't nerded out enough. I actually have a zero sugar diet. Z.E.R.O. Once you hit that level of discipline you reach enlightenment. I don't hang out with geeks, I'm what the geek worships and aspires to be.
> Probably a better way to put it is this. If you like Blade Runner AND the MCU, or at least understand why from a mainstream perspective the MCU is a work of art that stands on the same level as blade runner, then I don't despise you.
> If you like Blade runner and you hate all forms of movies that are mainstream blockbusters like star wars, MCU, or all the other stuff and think those things are beneath you... then yes... in that case I despise you.
Lovely.
> Go watch the MCU
FWIW, I own _and enjoyed in theater_ all the MCU films, and all the BR releases.
Great. Then you're not the elitist group I'm referring too. I'm basically talking about the difference between MCU style blockbusters and br. The pacing is a huge delta.
Calling it the "greatest of all time" seems like a total exaggeration. That being said, I've found it interesting that a film that in many ways seems so dated manages to have such a hypnotic effect on me every time I watch it. I think it's just one of Ridley Scott's directorial gifts that he manages to conjure up such an infectious mood in so many of his films. Of course, the other example is Alien. I definitely love a good viewing of Blade Runner when I'm content to chew on some slow paced sci-fi.
I can't say which films were the most influential, but here's a list of ones which were at least as influential IMHO and also sort of stand on their own: Star Wars Trilogy (epic sci-fi), 2001: A Space Odyssey (hard sci-fi), The Thing (body horror sci-fi), Alien (body horror/dystopian sci-fi), Mad Max (post apocalyptic sci-fi), E.T. (family sci-fi? lol), The Terminator (post apocalyptic), Howard the Duck (still reading?), Predator (dunno?)
Beautiful opening, great story in the middle, utterly incomprehensible ending.
Kubrick was no doubt a genius and mystery is a part of storytelling, the entirety of Eyes Wide Shut leaves so much room for mystique and interpretation that we can debate and discuss it forever but I did not find similar in the ending of 2001, it seemed like confusion for confusions sake with little deeper meaning.
Arthur C Clarke is one of the greatest sci fi authors of all time and wrote the book in conjunction with the movie with Stanley Kubrick. They are meant to be consumed together. Read the book and the movie makes a lot more sense. There is virtually zero ambiguity if you read the book.
Came here to say this. The book is fantastic in itself too and I view the movie more as a "visualization of the parts that Kubrick found the most interesting". I see those two as slightly different art pieces and love them both. The second book was also great but I think it lost a bit of what made 2001 special by the 3rd and 4th books.
The books are actually quite easy to read and as much as I adore the movie of 2001, I think the book's ending is even more visually spectacular. Highly highly recommended.
I believe the ending had more abstract inverted color visuals, as special effects at the time we're not capable of depicting what Clarke described. I agree, I would have loved to see the scenes in the book.
He made it all the way to Jupiter, and figured he might as well check out the monolith despite the disaster of the mission so far. He took the pod to check it out. He was then taken through a portal in the monolith to the home system of the aliens that created the monolith. There, he was put in a simulation as best as could be created based on TV signals from earth. The simulation was of a hotel room in a particular TV show. The alien machinery then downloaded his mind, hence the aging sequence. He was then inserted into the substrate of spacetime, allowing him to move around the galaxy like an omnipotent god. He decided to go back to earth to help out humanity, but he was still very new to this upgrade, so he was like a baby, hence the fetus over earth, which was just metaphorical. His upgrade was the next step for humanity, just as the upgrade for the man-apes was, giving them the ability to use tools.
This was all explained in very plain English in the book.
Thanks for bringing this up. Arthur C. Clarke was devastated at how the movie removed most of the explanations of what was going on, and walked out of the movie during the intermission:
"Without consulting or confronting his co-creator, Kubrick cut a huge amount of Arthur’s voice-over explanation during the final edit... As it turned out, Arthur did not get to see the completed film until the US private premiere. He was shocked by the transformation. Almost every element of explanation had been removed. Reams of voice-over narration had been cut. Far from being a pseudo-documentary, the film was now elusive, ambiguous and thoroughly unclear. Close to tears, he left at the intermission..."
I'm honestly glad Kubrick didn't go with Clarke's narration. Kubrick was a filmmaker and Clarke was a writer. While abstract and nearly impossible to understand without the book, the movie and book work amazingly well together as a unit. With concrete first order explanation at the end the sense of profundity wouldn't have been there. The aliens and their machines are vastly beyond human comprehension, and the arc of man's evolution was absolutely poetic. It would have been dated and corny with direct visual and vocal explication. The movie drew me to book, not the other way around.
Thanks for sharing your opinion. Probably you could tell from the tone of my comment, but I don't like the movie the way it is. I agree with you that the movie and the book work well together but I wish the movie worked as a standalone piece of art.
I think Kubrick and Clarke could have perhaps found a compromise. For example, I remember liking the ending part of the movie "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" by Spielberg which had a similar situation to the last sequence in 2001. I don't recall if that movie had any explicit explanation of what the beings at the end were but it was pretty clear who they were and what they were doing from the way the movie handled things.
Yeah I'm not hard headed about it and get that it's not for everyone. I'd be open to other possibilities for how the ending was handled. I definitely don't think direct narration would have worked though. The voiceovers in the theatrical cut of Blade Runner are almost universally disliked. Some less subtle hints like you say could have worked.
I thought Spielberg ruined AI btw. But that's a different topic. I thought the final scene was the only good one in the movie. The imagery and implications stuck with me for decades.
I agree with everything in your comment, including about AI. The last 30 minutes of that movie amazed me but I didn't like much of what came before that.
I've always felt the movie conveyed at least the essence of this very well. I basically got it on my first watch as a highschooler.
If you make the connection that "monolith = jump in tech" then the ending, for all it's surreal imagery, follows as a jump so massive that of course a normal person couldn't understand, and it's all visualized in a super creative manner.
I wouldn't have guessed it was literally the aliens downloading his brain or whatever and that he'd chosen to go back and help earth, but the general gist is more than there. And i love the idea that it basically conveys what you need to understand, while also conveying what it would be like for a human to crash into something so phenomenally beyond what we've ever understood or experienced.
> Beautiful opening, great story in the middle, utterly incomprehensible ending.
I'm really glad to read this. Kubrick really lost me at the end. I thought I was just not getting it. The first 2/3s though are as good as any film I've ever seen.
But I wouldn't call it 'great'. A great movie has some weight to it, it establishes a world, has a deeper story. It's original and exceptionally well executed.
Spaceballs was great fun, good gags but it was still a parody lifting on the success of star wars. Without star wars it would not have been very funny at all.
Fun and entertaining and great are not necessarily the same IMO.
i liked brazil, but it, blade runner, and 2001 weren't nearly as good as delicatessen. delicatessen is so darkly funny and deliciously memorable (ha).
city of lost children, which came a little later by the same directors, is my all-time favorite in that dystopian future genre. it's probably a top 10 movie for me. plot, characters, the world you get sucked into, all top-notch. plus, you get the "brain in a vat" years before the matrix (which is also miles better than blade runner, 2001, and brazil).
I've never seen Delicatessen but if it's like these other films, I'll check it out. Anything I need to know (culturally, or whatever) to fully appreciate it?
It's a different style of movie, not really science fiction.
I really like it though, really strong atmosphere. The city of lost children as well has a unique atmosphere
If you like Brazil, I would also recommend The Zero Theorem. It's sort of a spiritual successor to Brazil AFAIK. It's maybe not as memorable and iconic as Brazil, though, but worth at least one watch.
I don't think you can ever call anything the greatest ever. It's subjective and you can't make an apples to apples comparison when it comes to art. Blade Runner was brilliant. So was 2001, Star Wars, Star Trek, Contact. All brilliant in different ways.
I had a professor in college who was obsessed with Blade Runner and had us watch it in class. I just didn't get it. I mean I love sci-fi, but Blade Runner was just OK. Maybe in the context of its time it was great, pioneering, all that stuff. But in the context of now, or even back when I was in college (closer to the release of Blade Runner than present day, yikes), it didn't seem that special to me.
I guess now that I have kids I'll soon be on the other side trying to convince them that the old stuff I like is cool and special, and they'll prefer the new stuff.
I think if you saw it in the context of movies of its time you would understand the appeal, if not appreciate it. So many things imitate it that the most original parts seem like cliches.
The other thing is that it holds up for most people, so that it is better when you go back to it because you see thing you missed the first time.
This is literally what “Seinfeld is unfunny” trope is about. The original, groundbreaking work gets quoted and used so much that a modern viewer doesn't see anything original in it anymore.
Some things survive this process, though, and some don't. For example, I didn't see Alien until after I saw Blade Runner. I see Alien as more influential and copied than Blade Runner, yet I still think it's great.
To wit: I just watched Close Encounters on a plane. Surprised at how much Spielberg himself quoted from it. It feels like a mashup of ET, Indiana Jones and even Schindlers List.
>> now that I have kids I'll soon be on the other side trying to convince them that the old stuff I like is cool and special
Nope. Kids today have access to everything under the sun. The classics still resonate with them. My kid loves Queen and Zepplin. Enjoyed the hell out of "They Live", the Matrix and many other classic movies. Not so much John Carpenters "the Thing" which even I found a bit slow these days.
A lot of this was discovered without my introduction too. Music in particular.
Share the movies without explanation. Classics are universal.
I would argue that we have much more original content today than ever before and so it's far more difficult to actually make anything truly groundbreaking. The narrative landscape today is far more complex, diverse, and refined than from even the early 2000s, let alone anything prior.
I mean the 2022 one. The 1984 one has not aged well. I'm quite the fan of the 2000 tv mini-series one though.
Maybe it will rise to the levels of great sci-fi, maybe it will not, I won't judge it till I can see the complete picture. It has the correct aesthetic and the truly shiver-worthy moments are yet to come.
I'd say the exact opposite. The 2022 version - it's nice; I could fault it here or there, but it has a lot of going for it. But... it only goes so far. It doesn't reach the dramatic heights of Lynch's creation, and the mystique of the design.
(Of course one should try and watch one of the longer cuts with more of the dialog and establishing scenes.)
IMO the 2000 mini-series had great acting and actually followed the books (a rarity in today's book to TV conversions) but the low budget really killed it. Many of the desert shots were painful to watch and the sets had a very cheap vibe to them.
The desert shots were shot with a technique called translights.
You're right that they couldn't afford to shoot on-location for the desert scenes so instead they painted desert landscapes and scaled them up then printed them on 40-foot-high by 200-foot-wide transparencies and put bright lights behind them to illuminate the scenes.
They don't look anything like real life but they weren't really trying for realism as much as they were trying for artistry.
I think that when you view things through that lens, what they did craft was beautiful.
> I guess now that I have kids I'll soon be on the other side trying to convince them that the old stuff I like is cool and special, and they'll prefer the new stuff.
Absolutely, hehe. (I love the old Blade Runner, not at all the new one)
> I had a professor in college who was obsessed with Blade Runner and had us watch it in class.
To balance that out, our religion teacher showed us The Exorcist ( https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/9552-the-exorcist ) - sounds hard but to be fair anybody who did not want to watch it was allowed to leave the room & come back later.
There are pros and cons to the theatrical version, so I think your opinion has merit. The original script had vo, and that fits with the noir movie style they were trying to achieve. Unfortunately Harrison Ford was not into doing vo. But it is a more concise version.
The theatrical version is punchier because it's beating you over the head. For a film that's so heavily into metaphor (I mean, Rutger Hauer's character releases a dove at the end, maybe he just likes birds, we will never know since the VO doesn't explain it) it's quite boring to just be outright told what you're supposed to think. And even if you like your scenes explained in the most anodyne manner possible, it's well known that Harrison Ford was phoning it in for the overall performance but particularly the VO, so it's not even a well-done VO in terms of literal recording.
Hardly a 'diehard fan', I like the aesthetic but it's an incredibly slow film, but I hate that VO with a passion.
If you can find a copy 'out there', [2] the 1980 film version [1] of LeGuin's novel 'The Lathe of Heaven' has something of the BR 'feel' to it. (Made by WNET it was aired on many PBS stations at the time.)
I just spent some time reading about this film amd trying to buy the dvd. Its on ebay for about $60. It's also on the thepiratebay.org with 6 seeders. Thanks for the recommendation.
Thinking about what was possible to make in 1982, it's pretty amazing. It's an absolute classic, up there with the best of the noirs (the actual film noirs), such as The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity and The Third Man; the logical answer to the Neo Noir Body Heat the year before. It's like a legacy moving onto such things as Ghost in the Shell and even The Matrix.
I disagree. I'm a big fan of Chandler and his monumental creation, Philip Marlowe. Deckard is quite a different character.
Just comparing the two, Deckard's role is to be a witness to Batty's dawning humanity (as well as Rachel's I suppose). I think that's one of the things that gives the movie the feeling of extraordinary redemption at the end. There's no such sense of redemption in Chandler--the Marlowe storylines revolve around the struggle to keep a moral compass in the midst of societal corruption, in line with the common definition of the Noir genre. [0] (I'm thinking particularly of The Long Goodbye but it's common to all the Marlowe stories.)
Just my $0.02. It's definitely fun to think about.
I am one of the 11 people on Earth that hates coffee. "Hate" isn't strong enough. Even "despises" I'm not sure goes far enough. It tastes disgusting to me. I can't even stand the smell. This has led me at times to wonder if I'm crazy or if everyone else is. I do notice a ton of people consume a ton of sugar in their coffee so it seems like many don't really like coffee. They like sugar. But I digresss.
I have the same "am I crazy?" thoughts with Blade Runner. Unlike coffee it's not bad (subjectively). I just don't get the hype.
It's a product of its time too. I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket where the noir surroundings and mega corporations are a product of xenophobia, basically. There were genuine fears the Japanese were "taking over". And Blade Runner reflects this zeitgeist. In Blade Runner it's the Tyrell Corporation. In Aliens it was the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.
Rutger Hauer did give a good performance and there were some good lines [1] but I'd never put it in my list of top films. Not even my list of top sci-fi films. It is better than Interstellar though, which is trash, so there's that.
I first saw BR in a theater the month it originally came out. It's hard to appreciate from today's perspective just how revolutionary it was. The film itself, especially the original cut, is flawed due to the studio making last minute edits which the director, cast and writers were against. Yet, it is still the one science fiction film that has been more visually influential than any other. It changed everything that came after it.
I also saw Blade Runner in its original theatrical release, and it's still the version I prefer. In this case I think the studio heads did Scott a backhand favor by ending the film as they did.
Spoilers:
If, as depicted in the original release, Deckard is human and Rachael is a replicant, then the movie is a true love story. The message of a true love story is that the Other is as deserving of love and dignity as I am. It's the message of Romeo and Juliet, Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird, to name three offhand.
Whether your allotted lifespan is four years or threescore and ten, if you understand that you don't know how much time you really have, then you are entitled to the full measure of decent regard and respect the melancholy of that understanding earns. Batty bought that respect for Deckard and Rachael's sake. Thus the original ending is moving, and completes the film's overall themes.
If Deckard is also a replicant, as subsequent versions try to establish more and more explicitly, then of course he's going to want to be with Rachael. It's a no-brainer, it's no sacrifice, and there's no moral revolution of the characters. In which case I don't really know what the movie is supposed to be about. Boy robot meets girl robot, boy robot loses girl robot, boy robot gets girl robot? Boring. Definitionally cliché.
I suppose the realization of it is supposed to be some kind of shocking twist, but to me it simply empties the film of meaning.
I also don't like late-hour attempts to suggest that Deckard is a replicant. It cheapens Batty's finest act of forgiving him and sparing the life of his enemy who was trying to kill him.
even if Deckard is, I don't think that Roy would necessarily know - there's no indication that they can recognise their own (and if they could, that should be the basis of any test, rather than the psychological test they have to use).
I think i heavily disagree given the entire point of the movie is "what is life anyways". Roy choosing to spare deckard isn't becaus of some programming, he's real. He's a person. And like wise so is deckard and rachel, even if they are/aren't human.
It's a really fascinating look at tech that's gone so far we really don't know how to identify the difference, or it's more than possible at that point there isn't one. The sentient AI isn't some super machine that's going to build the singularity. It's "artificial" people forced into short lived slavery in a world that couldn't begin to give a damn about it.
We know he's a replicant, but I don't think he knows with any confidence: all he knows is that Gaff has an uncanny degree of insight, and that a definite replicant thought he was a man and spared his life to share the end of his own life with him. So he faces even more puzzles than them: if he isn't human then he had less free will than the other replicants since then he was created to unquestioningly retire them. Is he now going to enjoy that freedom and flee with Rachel, since he "owes her one", does he even know what his plan is as the lift doors shut?
The BR that I watched was more that an atmospheric sci-fi flic. It was an epic parable of the human condition. In the beginning it juxtaposes humans and replicants, but what you're supposed to realise along the way is that the life of a replicant is just an accelerated version of a human life: However long or short a lease on life you have been given, the common factor is that it is limited, and what matters is not what species you are, but how you approach life. Deckard, who is a coward unable to live the life that he has, has a life lesson to learn from the replicant who "does not go gently into that good night".
Of course, if Deckard is a replicant, then that interpretation goes out the window, and BR is just another forgettable sci-fi plot twist movie. And since Ridley Scott seems to think so, the movie is now ruined for me -- I have never watched the sequel, because it is just too painful to watch the original movie that I loved be destroyed.
I saw a movie that wasn't just a new visual style for 80's cyberpunk, it was so much more.
The reply saying Deckard is human in the sequel is wrong. In the sequel Deckard says he does not know if he is human and does not care. That is the only time the topic comes up.
The article mentions the earlier influence of Alien to this genre, at least in the sense of this future dystopia. But even if we accept the premise that BR was groundbreaking, groundbreaking != good.
Larry Niven, for example, was a pioneering sci-fi author over many books but most of these books aren't great. Ringworld, for example, was one of the earlier works to talk about megastructures and the efficiency of living area per unit mass. The structure itself doesn't make sense (ie it would be torn apart by centrifugal force) but it's an important idea.
Neuromancer gets mentioned a lot in this particular genre. It too was groundbreaking but it's actually not that great of a book. Still, the groundbreaking aspect feeds into nostalgia, particularly if you read it when it came out. I feel like a lot of the BR hype falls into this same bucket. That's really all I'm saying.
And Neuromancer! although the movie is 1982 and the book is 1984 - I put these two together as the founding fathers of cyberpunk entertainment, albeit the FATHER of Cyberpunk is PK Dick...
BR created the visual dystopian cyberpunk world of the future without focusing on internet/online things...
Neuromancer changed and set the tone for the internet to come.
The thing is, that at 47, MANY MANY MANY of my contemporaries and peer grew up in the 80s with these concepts for which they said "wouldn't it be cool if...." <--- and then we went about building all this shit.
Its the nerds of the 80s that have all worked to make the cyberpunk-esque current systems we have, and the evil corps as described in both have come to pass.
So relieved I'm not alone in this. BR was top of my to-watch list after years of recommendations from friends, family, and the culture at large. And I finally sat down to watch it and it was downright bizarre. I read the book it's based on a few months prior and maybe that skewed my expectations. It was nothing at all like Dick's original story. The stakes were never explained and the visual language was incredibly gaudy and overemphasized.
Then again, I do think this is a case of the "if you'd only seen it at the time!" I saw 2001 A Space Odyssey recently for the first time, and while I really appreciated the practical effects, compared to fast paced, exciting movies made in the past 20-30 years it was boring and utterly baffling. Time passes, things change, the fact is not everything is for everyone, and assertions of "Thing X is the greatest of all time" are and always will be nonsense.
> Then again, I do think this is a case of the "if you'd only seen it at the time!"
I'm not sure about that. It definitely would have been more interesting if I saw it when it was novel, but the biggest fans of it always say I'll love it if I just watch cuts that came out a lot later.
What are you trying to say? I saw his films. Why should I know anything about a director to make a judgement on the film I watched. It looks like you are trying to pool one fallacy or another failing to address the points in my comment directly (it says in their favor).
The xenophobia angle is really interesting to me. Despite being born after the movies release I always loved it. But I am also a huge japanophile and am unusual in the regard that I badly want cities as they are in Blade Runner and other Cyberpunk fantasies and was thus blind to the xenophobia, since I see the intended negative as desirable.
I agree, maybe some author had this xenophobic side, but not all of them, and Gibson, which is made, arguably, the first Cyberpunk book, introduced the "japanese" tropes, and he did out of admiration.
When it came out, Blade Runner was truly something else and rode in on multiple deep cultural vibes of that era (e.g. Japan, Vangelis's synth music, etc...).
The thing is : on top of that, amazingly enough, the visuals / art direction has aged rather well, going from what was a futuristic vibe at the time to something that now looks steampunk-ish.
I must confess to being boringly average when it comes the Blade Runner: I do love the movie, and it is certainly in my top ten sci-fi movies list.
FWIW, Blade Runner (like some other films e.g. Apocalypse Now) weren't considered as anything special at the time but were more appreciated as the years went on with or without director's cuts.
There were definitely other Vietnam War and related films like Platoon and Coming Home which were probably more highly regarded at the time but haven't had the staying power of Apocalypse Now.
It was moderately successful at the box office ($100m worldwide) after a very troubled production but it only won sound and cinematography Oscars. Whereas Platoon for example won Picture, Director, Editing, and Sound. Coming Home won Best Actor and Actress.
Apocalypse Now wasn't a flop and had a reasonably good critical reception at the time (although Brando's performance was criticized) but overall it was seen as pretty middle of the road among Vietnam War and Vietnam War-adjacent (e.g. Born on the Fourth of July) films. Being seen as a great film by many mostly came after its initial release.
Tyrell is of Scandinavian origin, Eldon Tyrell was played by Joe Turkel, the name in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep was the Rosen corporation. I figure it was more fear of Germanic people than Japanese.
yes, nor does the movie. Eldon Tyrell is not Japanese, Tyrell is not a Japanese or even an Asiatic sounding name, Rachel is not Japanese.
Yutani is a Japanese name, Weyland-Yutani sounds like the merger of an Occidental and Oriental firm.
I was not supporting the Japanese xenophobia zeitgeist idea vis-a-vis the names, I was indicating that the name itself (in Blade Runner) did not support it and indicating that from the source material of the book it was not supported.
> I figure it was more fear of Germanic people than Japanese.
Probably a combination of both to represent the Axis, in the book even the Soviets are also still around and the Cold War actually went hot, which is what lead to thermonuclear WWIII that left Earth increasingly inhabitable.
The only reason I give people like you a pass on hating on Blade Runner is I, personally, can't stand The Matrix -- which has made me a pariah with my peer group for over 20 years now.
I liked Blade Runner, but one thing that bothered me was the lack of flat screen technology. All the screens are CRT, even the ones in the vehicles. You'd think the artists in the 80's would have easily imagined flat screens would exist in the near future. Chroma keying a flat square should have been a trivial effect.
Okay, but I recall Superman used much harder blue-screen trickery, and was earlier than Blade Runner. They had to key out a man with flapping cape and wind in hair.
Even if not keyed, the rear projection would have worked too. Doesn't matter I guess. I didn't realise 2001 had flat screens! Good pickup.
> It's a product of its time too. I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket where the noir surroundings and mega corporations are a product of xenophobia, basically.
This is a super interesting critique of basically everything cyberpunk, that I've only recently come across. I still don't totally buy the xenophobia angle, because to me it just came across as a projection of hyper-corporate/capitalist. Like it's an extrapolation out from where we were, but the problem isn't that it's foreigners, it's that it's hyper-capitalist. In blade runner the world has been globalized to the point where we don't recognize downtown LA, but that's not actually what's wrong with the world - big faceless corporations and environmental destruction are what's wrong with the world. While the environment itself is heavily influenced by asian imagery, Tyrell and Weyland-Yutani aren't very strongly coded asian. i.e. Tyrell is run by an Elon Musk type engineer-ceo, and Weyland is a decidedly white name to go along with the Yutani part.
I'm still digesting this idea tho, I definitely need to re-watch with this in mind. There is definitely some playing with xenophobia there, just... how much? and is it re-enforcing it, or is it challenging it?
Listen, if I've managed to get this far without discounting the movie despite the blatant and jarring non-consensual sex scene presented as a love scene, I'm not about to let some mild xenophobia stop me.
Some of my favorite pieces of art are deeply flawed. What's important is understanding what ideas they contain, so you don't just uncritically and subconsciously believe those ideas. The xenophobia in cyberpunk idea is jarring to me because I wasn't really aware of it, and if it is there, it means I have some unexamined biases that hid it from me.
Do you also have moral dilemmas about the violent shootings, murder and other nasty things the fictional characters get up to? Or is it just the kiss that rattled you?
When a movie is presenting coercive behavior as good, yes it does bother me. Yes within the story his behavior is validated - it was what she needed blah blah blah. That’s fine. But how many people were assaulted by men thinking they were deckard? It’s not zero
> how many people were assaulted by men thinking they were deckard? It’s not zero
It's zero.
Why aren't you getting your moral radar in a spin about the numerous violent and aggressive scenes in this or any movie? The real world has a huge problem with violence and guns after all.
I presume you eat popcorn as people or replicants are shot and killed on screen, or when poetic, philosophical replicants crush the skulls of their maker humans.... but draw the line at a coercive kiss? That's when you put the popcorn down?
Fiction movies are not real-life benchmarks or instruction manuals for life. Characters are flawed, scenes shocking, stories twisted. Deckard is not Dr Richard Kimble. Deckard is a "killing machine" in a dark sci-fi movie. His pre-kiss tantrum was him as Mr Nice Guy relative to his other actions.
> Weyland is a decidedly white name to go along with the Yutani part.
British Leyland was a car company which broke up shortly after Alien came out. The implication in the W-Y name is pretty clear: A Japanese company bought out Leyland.
Whilst freak examples of effective period Japanese Anglo Saxon industrial cooperation have been known, [0] surely British Leyland is stretching too far. In fact BL's board did claim to Thatcher that they were going to build a new small family car with Honda about this time, but management only wanted more money to avoid hassle with the shop stewards.
I love Blade Runner, but I find the detective to be a useless entity, like an ant walking in a deeper world that makes him meaningless. And the idea of them not being able to discover which are the cyborgs makes no sense.
A fairly ineffective detective protagonist teasing at the edges of something much bigger, and mostly getting steamrolled by it, is a common noir thing. Not universal, but a frequently-used trope.
I mean we could replace Deckard with a pizza delivery guy, or even a camera drone, and the story won't change a lot. Try changing Neo in Matrix, Dave on Space Odyssey. And there's nothing wrong, the main character is the spectator, which makes it a more deeply philosophical movie, the replicant captcha is performed on the viewer. "What's meaningful" the movie asks.
You are right, and that's what's so brilliant about it. Deckard barely shows emotions nor connections to the world. At times it feels like his detective persona is just an act, just like his humanity could just be an act - no matter whether he is human or a knowing or not-knowing replicant.
My view is a little more negative because of all the hype it gets but only a little. It's just a bad movie.
SPOILER WARNING
To understand the plot structure (such that it is) in Interstellar, you have to start with the writer's desire for the emotional ending of the main character with his daughter, who is now old. Everything that happens in the movie is a really forced way to reach that outcome.
The whole watch time-travel thing was more of that illogical nonsense in service of that conclusion.
The time dilation to make all this happens just doesn't work that way. You have to get to a significant percentage of c before time dilation becomes really noticeable. For example, at 0.9c you're still only at ~2x time dilation [1].
The gravity effects of the black hole don't make sense either.
The "science" of Interstellar is no more realistic than Star Trek or Starship Troopers.
I mean I agree, on the other hand if it's no more realistic perhaps this means that the fiction part of science fiction actually takes precedence despite coming second and thus is actually not any sort of evidence of its being a bad movie.
Odd. I didn’t like interstellar either, but time dilation in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole is way, way less controversial than being able to build a wormhole large enough for a ship to get through.
Possibly you’re confusing stellar mass black holes and super massive black holes?
Time dilation doesn’t only occur at high velocities, so your link focusing entirely on velocity is accurate, but I think not really relevant.
The physics was pretty reasonable for the time dilation. Possibly off by an order of magnitude or so, but not ridiculous on its face.
I'm with you. Arrival is an absolute classic. BR2042 needed some suspension of disbelief IMHO, but it was as good as you could hope for in a BR sequel. Dune pt. 1 ... it's one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made.
I didn't love Interstellar the first time I saw it.
When I watched Inception for the first time I walked out of the theatre in love with that movie (and I still am), but, leaving Interstellar I felt confused and underwhelmed.
Perversely I think I was actually very overwhelmed by Interstellar because after seeing it many times in the almost a decade since it came out (oh my god how has it been 10 years) it's become one of my favorite films, but, there is just so much going on that it was difficult to connect with it on the first viewing.
I had a similar experience. It is one of my favorite scifi movies, and it gets better with every viewing. I think it also resonates especially because I have a young daughter myself. The soundtrack though, that clicked right away. I never get tired of that soundtrack. In fact, I would say it is my favorite soundtrack of any movie ever made.
you sound like those type of guys that try to be 'cool' by disliking what other people like.
Blade Runner is a great movie for its time and it has inspired a lot of artists. It is a Noir (Sci-fi), and the type of movie that only adults would appreciate, due to its storyline. If you are under 25, probably it is not a good movie for you.
Same with 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came much earlier. any other movies of the time.
Also Interstellar is very unique in one major aspect: They had to model true science (and maybe made a discovery) when they modeled the look of light around the super massive Black Hole.
5 years later, the real black hole halo pictures came out, and the movie got it spot on.
You might not like the story, but good movies like that try to predict the future. They often miss, but sometimes get it right. Blade Runner deals with AI, Androids, and the question of 'What is human'.
We might face this issue if General AI becomes a thing 50 years down the road.
I can only recommend "The science of Interstellar" book as a great companion to the movie, explaining the physics side of it.
As for Interstellar itself, I watched it the year it came out and I thought it was a pretty cool science-fiction movie. I rewatched it last year sometime after my father died of covid and I appreciated it from a whole different angle. Suffice to say, I don't remember the last time I cried watching a movie.
Blade Runner is one of those movies that gets better every time you watch. First time I watched it, I was thoroughly bored. But over the years I seem to appreciate the deeper meaning under it. It tries to present some fundamental questions - "what separates humans from robot/AI?, Is it the act of humans giving birth to other humans or feelings or deeds?, Is robot/AI superior to human or vice a versa?"
For those who find this movie boring, I'd recommend reading the book - "Do Androids dream of electric sheep" and maybe then watch the movie.
I was born after it was released yet I find it's imagery unique even now. Every frame feels like an elaborate painting/artwork. I can imagine how innovative might've been when it was first released in early eighties.
The strongest point of the movie was really the question of what makes us human. Given that it's stated that Rachael was a replicant, there's the contrast of her character with that of Deckard, who we are led to believe is human.
Rachael, being a human creation, is made to embody what we think makes us unique and precious, the best version of ourselves we could think of. A worthy successor even.
The tension with Deckard is that you have to question if his, say, minimalist expression of those qualities disqualify him as human, even though we know well enough that he's perfectly within the range of human expression in reality, and you would only doubt his humanity in light of the existence of artificial humans who visibly display a greater, more intense range of the human experience than him. Not that they have a choice, either.
Of course then comes the filmmaker to state his intention with it, which takes away the mystique, but eh the artist having a more boring opinion on a work than the people who enjoy it is something that has been quipped about since antiquity.
Blade Runner suffers from the same problem as every other important classic.
Younger generations who see it today have already seen 100s's of movies and TV-series, anime etc. that are based on aesthetics and narrative of Blade Runner. The original has little originality left for new viewers because it has been endlessly copied and they have already been immersed in it.
Another great example is Friz Lang's M (1931). It has influenced everyone from Hitchcock to everything in Film Noir. If you watch it now it's almost comical. It has every trope of serial killer movie. Except everyone else is copying M. Even if you have not watched the movie, you have already seen the movie thousands of times.
Couldn't freaking agree more. My favourite movie, undisputedly. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it the first time, it is all so perfect, the actors, the atmosphere, the soundtrack, the story, the ideas. "Memories. You're talking about memories!". And although I am also a big fan of P.K. Dick, it is good that the movie does its own thing and that there are no electric sheep in it.
Hampton Fancher I think once said the question is more interesting than the answer, I'm inclined to agree, although once you notice the nudging in the sequel it's more funny than anything else.
They were stuck in the sequel, needed Harrison Ford (who has aged dramatically) to be in the film for financial reasons, and also needed to pay lip service to the supposed answer. So I think there's one scene that outlines how it could be possible that made no sense but was clearly shoehorned in there.
I think that was more of a nod to the writer's and I assume director's respect for but disagreement with Ridley Scott's thesis.
They don't actually think Deckard is a replicant, but they're more than happy to channel the idea of him being a replicant, but it's through Gaff where it can either come across as subtle misdirection, a hint to a wayward soul (K), or just playing tricks on someone that presumably took over his job - "something in his eyes".
When I first got really into Blade Runner, having first seen the original director's cut, I enjoyed the question as a puzzle to be solved. Really got into fan theories online and the unicorn dream was the smoking gun, and wasn't that so clever! So cool.
Then I read a compelling essay online (that I can no longer find) that pointed out the entire film's thematic weight only exists if the opposite holds. I also saw the original theatrical cut and read interviews with the screenwriter and Harrison Ford and it became clear that the unicorn dream was basically a retcon by Ridley Scott and it really makes no sense for it to be there. So my version of Blade Runner is basically the final cut without the unicorn dream, that is a perfect film, ambiguous without that "smoking gun."
(don't worry I read your essay...and now THAT is a fan theory)
I have a love/hate relationship with that show. I love the unique weird concepts throughout. And the actors portraying the androids were phenomenal. But many of the script/screenplays were just bad? Despite being bad, I really wanted to see where the concept was going!
The first couple episodes were phenomenal, and the world building / acting was top notch all the way through.
I was willing to tolerate some of the meandering story lines / characters, since they were clearly leading to something in season 3. I felt like it was one of those shows where subplots / characters seem like filler, but then, in hindsight, you realize there was nothing they could cut. Unfortunately, that means that much of season 2 is setting up for ??? in cancelled season 3.
Sometimes I wish shows like this would be open to doing other stories with the same settings and actors. Like, you already have all the resources, so why not remix them? This kind of thing could work really well for Fantasy stories - you already have the locations, costumes, practical FX, actors - it seems like the script (and the setups) are just about the easiest thing to change. Meanwhile all the rest, music, editing, lighting, catering...it's already setup! Has anyone done this before? Is it a terrible idea?
The actors would need to learn the new characters and lines? That takes time they rehearse a lot. Or are you suggesting the same characters are used? But then you'd have yourself a regular series with different adventures each episode.
>The actors would need to learn the new characters and lines?
Yes. Or, maybe you could find a different set of actors with similar physical measurements to use the same costumes. If you were on a sound stage and could limit yourself to 12-hour sessions, you could theoretically shoot two completely different stories for only the cost of the second set of actors, directors, writers.
I really liked RbW but didn't want to get too invested because it felt like it wouldn't even get a second season. Then the second season was released, got me really invested, and now this, booh!
At least the second season of Foundation is still being filmed, looking forward to that and hopefully that will last past two seasons.
The Three-Body Problem is getting a TV show on Netflix, heard good things about the books, maybe the show can live up to them.
Yeah, well ... very interesting series, with lots of unusual/interesting ideas and really creative visuals, but sorry to say, the storyline was a complete mess and unexciting and depressing.
Not surprised it was canned: however much makeup you put on a pig ... it's still a pig.
It was better than all other recent sci-fi shows, I mean it was a serious conversation about religion, I felt like Im treated like an adult for a change. Foundation failed to be both serious and entertaining / engaging
I really enjoyed the aesthetic of it, I enjoyed the tone and even many of the major story elements but I found it so hard to track the story.
It's unfortunate because the show had the great thematic elements (Mithraic vs atheist war -- mother as a godlike angel etc) and had amazing small details but lost itself somewhere in-between. Why was there a giant worm and why did everyone forget about the giant worm in Season 2 ?
This might be a Ridley Scott problem, because, everything I said can also apply to Prometheus.
> I really enjoyed the aesthetic of it, I enjoyed the tone and even many of the major story elements but I found it so hard to track the story.
Yeah this is exactly what Ridley Scott has done for the past couple decades. It always feels like his stuff is supposed to be twice as long, and we're only getting half the story.
Ridley Scott is a middling, hit and miss director who has said that if something does well he'll follow up with sequels. It's a kind of throw it at the wall and see what sticks approach as opposed to committing to a vision and knowing when to let it end.
Blade Runner was an ambitious, pretty, ambient but also boring film. To refer to it as the GOAT is hyperbolic. To call Scott a genius etc. because of Blade Runner is also unjustified because all its strengths trace directly to PKD, Syd Mead, Jordan Cronenweth etc.
It's one seriously overhyped film. All subjective of course, but then so are such articles and they arguably add to the hype.
I agree, and Blade Runner is very dated (80s fashion and music). Alien on the other hand hasn’t aged a bit, and along 2001 and Star Wars really defined scifi movies. The same guy reinvented peplums with Gladiator, and war movies with Black Hawk Down. I think it’s enough to justify all the misses.
You can download IMDB’s database as flat files. It is interesting to see the evolution of imdb ratings over a director’s career. Some are remarkably stable like Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese. Some others falter like Brian de Palma. Ridley Scott has some ups and down but is fairly stable over a long career.
From my experience all atmospheric films are like this. Some people love them, some people find them boring because they are more about visuals/sounds/music/feelings rather than plot lines or action scenes.
Just an incredible film. Even the slow parts, and there are a lot of them, have so much rich setting to marvel at.
The love scene comes across as nonconsensual and it makes me uncomfortable every time. Whether that's intended discomfort or an artistic regret, I don't know.
Other than that, it's one of my all time favorites for the reasons others are mentioning. I recommend the 2007 Final Cut.
If you are a true connoisseur of cringe, see if you can find "The Eiger Sanction" with Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy. There's a part in that flick where Clint Eastwood's character pretends to be a gay-coded deliveryman with a package of dental floss. "What am I gonna do with this boxth of floth?" Unforgettably bad but mostly unforgettable :)
That's because Deckard is lying to her (poorly). Remember, he's not that good of a detective. They use him because he's willing to do dirty work and is expendable.
It’s long been my favourite film, so I guess that makes it the GOAT. That soundtrack never fails to resonate. The moral ambiguity of everyone is so well balanced. The set design and props. Everything, really.
My favoritest movie of all time. Blade Runner 2049 was a really good movie, but I don't consider it canon, Scott's endorsement notwithstanding. They were both awesome science fiction. The original was transformative, brilliant, hopeful and had a sense of humor; by contrast the sequel was dour, gloomy, pessimistic and despairing. Still, I am glad it was made, and I think Villeneuve is a phenomenal director. Arrival was amazing. Dune has been brilliant.
Bladerunner was great and the sequel was also enjoyable.
but you know, these 80 sequels that have their characters stop and watch clips of the original movie are in the worst possible taste. it’s an admission that the current generation of directors are unable to compete w the former. this generation appears to be very much living in the shadows and riding the coattails of the last. it’s sad. I was expecting some off the wall novelty. for the most part, it’s CGI vomit with a regurgitated plot on the side
2049 choosing to include Joi elevates it a little beyond the original in that regard for me.
Replicants are more of a question about dehumanization whereas a true AI (with the projection to help the audience along) is much trickier. There's no flesh to hold and yet it seems to feel
2049 did so many things well (great visuals, great acting, waaaay better love story, better detecting!), but the main story sucked so much. The messianic human/replicant hybrid and the foreshadowed uprising seemed so cheap. The original asked hard questions that's why it's still talked about, the sequel took it away and answered it itself and quite poorly IMO.
I thought the story was fine. Blade Runner's story honestly isn't all that good, the concept of the memories and K's self-discovery is arguably better than the original if you imagine that the original barely has a story as per se (but does have a better defined set of plot-beats).
2049 feels like it asks less questions, but wait until we have better AI in 10 years and watch how prescient including Joi rather than a new replicant character is.
I saw 2049 when it came out. I didn't like the original film much but of course was still curious about the sequel since I liked the original novel.
One problem I have with both these movies is that the whole "memories" thing doesn't have anything to do with the point the original novel was making. The main point of the original novel is that the replicants are fake human beings which are not only deplorable due to their lack of empathy but are also rather dangerous, and that real human beings will likely become dehumanized ourselves in our eventual efforts to eradicate them. I'm paraphrasing Dick in that last sentence but you can hear the more full version in this interview: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=3d7XMnmPgUk
Anyway, I agree that 2049 has more of a plot than the original, but I lost most of my interest in the movie as soon as I realized that the main character was a replicant (which unfortunately happened pretty early on). Great cinematography though.
Authentic replicants like the book wouldn't work on screen, I feel.
The movie tells you K is a replicants within the first few minutes, it's not ambiguous like deckard (eh), the point of K is that he has meaning handed to him on a plate - he might be human.
But then once the second half starts, it really feels like whole scenes are just omitted from the movie, it’s kind of all over the place (indeed, Ridley Scott says the whole film is over 4 hours).
I would disagree and posit that 2001 is the GOAT. Most scifi is heavily influenced by it. The artistry is unsurpassed. The scope and depth of the story is mind blowing.
I was at lunch talking with coworkers about scifi movies. None of them even heard about 2001. It was quite shocking to me. I was the oldest at the table, but I'm not that old.
2001 is a very different type of film though. Blade runner is a film I could get my marvel-loving friends to watch, they would not watch 25 of chimp on chimp action
Blade Runner is best viewed on the biggest screen you can get. First time I watched it was on VHS on a small CRT and I didn’t get it. Now, on the living room big screen, it’s immersive and sublime. A theatrical environment makes all the difference.
Same thing happened to me with Ghost in the Shell. I didn’t appreciate it until I saw it on a big screen.
As a slight aside, isn't it amazing that art exists?
I like to just stand back and appreciate that humans both make and love art. And it's not one thing, it's so. many. things. I especially like that some people like some art and not other art. It means there's complexity to it. And we can harness it to make beauty.
I have a personal opinion about voice-overs that were removed in later editions. Typically, people hate them, and truly, they are somewhat out of place when you hear them.
However, they get much better on subsequent viewings of more modern cuts, when you don't hear them, but you remember them.
Just want to say for the record that I prefer the versions where Harrison Ford is narrating in his Sam Spade style voice over. It was the first version I saw in the 80s and I just like the nostalgia of it. Plus, when I first saw it, I was too young to realize how cliche it was, so it had the intended effect of "being inside the mind of a hard nosed investigator", and explaining the bewildering plot of course. But for me it was the feel of the narration that I liked.
Ron Cobb is my absolute favorite "hidden influence" on how 70s-80s sci-fi/fantasy turned out. He was a designer on Dark Star, Alien, Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian and even the unproduced Dune helmed by Jodorowsky that has become a shibboleth with some nerds.
Nothing he did felt dogmatic, referential or with ego, it was just the most appropriate thing for those productions.
Even though he didn't work on Blade Runner, I'm sure a lot of the esthetic comes indirectly from him.
I share a lot of thoughts with the RLM re:View of Blade Runner. It seems that Ridley Scott misunderstood his creation, much like George Lucas with Star Wars. It's one of those strange times where the vision of one is much weaker than the sum of many visions amalgamated.
Thanks for posting that, it was hilarious. I'll definitely re-watch the part where they're quoting him directly again when I need a good laugh.
I wouldn't say he misunderstood his creation, I would rather say that he didn't care about the source material and made something different, with themes that weren't really thought through too well. I agree that the sum of the visions amalgamated is better than the vision of the director in this case.
“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
For me probably the best monologue in movie history.
About 20 years ago I ripped the DVD audio to MP3 so I could immerse myself in the amazing soundscapes from this film on the go. The soundtrack is great, don't get me wrong, but I think the sound is magnificent.
I was bored with it when I first saw it, I'm still bored with it having seen it again recently. It's just so....full of itself. Like oh my god, you think you're trying to say something deep and meaningful, but you really aren't. The cinematography is still incredible and the film deserves all the praise in that department. But the whole philosophical argument being made there has the depth of a teaspoon. I just laugh when the villain makes his monologue at the end, you can almost feel the writer behind those lines straining with all their might to write something, anything that would be interesting in any way, and just failing completely.
I like Blade Runner but I don't think it has aged particularly well, it was very much a product of its time even though ironically enough at the time it was very much unique.
What made this really clear to me was the sequel which I think was way too literal about the aesthetics. Flying cars and CEOs living in ziggurats and CCCP banners made the new movie almost seem like a caricature. It's retrofuturism, like Back to the Future almost rather than science fiction. And that has somehow impacted my experience of the original now too which seems more dated to me now.
What does stand the test of time though is Rutger Hauer's performance and the humanism that he has given his character, something that was absent in the sequel.
Deckard being a replicant makes for a good sci-fi twist, heavier on the technological aspect of sci-fi rather than the reflection of our worries that it commonly poses, and an interesting solution to The Question as a puzzle.
And also cheapens the plot and the questions it poses by a lot, a lot. The movie leaves you with more after watching it if he isn't, or if it's just ambiguous.
It's ambiguous in the film and far more interesting if he's not, as it becomes an interrogation of what makes us human, and forces us to accept our imperfection and that of our fellow man.
Well, besides that you know, the obvious implications for the rights of intelligent beings, natural or not, but since we won't have strong AI for a while and it wasn't about animal rights no matter how much you stretch it, we're left with questions about our own nature and how we relate to other humans.
> The originals are good movies but only empire is truly great and even then it's just a good flick. It asks almost no questions of the audience.
Star Wars (as in, "Episode IV: A New Hope") gets a lot of points on the greatness scale for basically inventing the multi-genre pastiche film, and for being a pretty good example of the practice. Empire's a better movie in a lot of ways, but less ground-breaking as far as the storytelling goes.
But yeah, no Star Wars films are high art. The first two, especially, though, get a lot of basic stuff right and have fairly straightforward plots, so they make for excellent examples for illustrating many of aspects of film story-telling: mood, plotting, characterization, foreshadowing, setup/payoff in general, et c.
That's a fair assessment. I like them, I don't like the mythology of star wars movies. And not even the originals, people actually think the prequels are some misunderstood masterpieces...
No it's not. You're just getting too technical. Star wars is science fiction.
Because in the same vein you could call LOTR science fiction too because the fantasy elements are just natural properties of the created world. The "magic" can technically be technology as well.
The aesthetic is what defines the genre. There's tons of garbage technology in other sci-fi works that are beyond what's even speculative. Star wars is not the only art work that does this.
Midi chloreans (The technical/scientific explanation for the force) are way less speculative then alot of the sci fi that's out there.
midichloreans didn't exist in star wars cannon until 2007 in a 'making of' book - star wars was conceived without midichloreans and were retconned in later.
Lucas in 1981 said being a jedi was like doing yoga - anyone can do it, but only people who work at it get good. see the citation here:
The story of star wars is a fantasy story complete with magic. You can shift the entire thing to ancient china and adjust all the set pieces for the time and it would still work.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep started as speculative fiction and is still speculative fiction after its transition to the screen.
>Somewhere, someone is rolling their eyes because they are saying my entire argument for proving that Star Wars is science fiction is based on the fact that populism changed the definition of science fiction because of Star Wars. And to that eye-roller, I'd like to just say: That's exactly what I'm saying.
Ya, but he's wrong. It's like a library putting a fiction book in the non fiction, and because its popular, redefining non fiction because the fiction book is popular. He's got an opinion, and I disagree, and we're equally valid.
>Bro, I'm chinese. Ancient China is neither Fantasy or Sci-Fi. It's a whole different genre called Wuxia. Fantasy and wuxia are not compatible.
That's not an argument, that's a conclusion without any supporting arguments. Dismissed as nonsense as easily as posited without effort.
By your arguments if it got popular it would redefine wuxia and now wuxia would include it.
>That's not an argument, that's a conclusion without any supporting arguments. Dismissed as nonsense as easily as posited without effort.
This is HN not nature. It's not a scientific debtate, just a general conversation so the level of proof is not super high.
You just have to trust me that I'm born in China, and Fantasy is not Wuxia. Just like you would have to trust a black person when he says he's not white. Don't go calling a black person white and don't go around saying you can move fucking star wars into Ancient China to a Chinese person who knows the culture and the genre.
Actually don't listen to me. Go ahead and say whatever you want to people. When a black person tells you he's not white, demand a scientific inquiry to prove he's black.
Either way agree to disagree. I think star wars if sci-fi. You don't.
But I will say, if you ask most people, most people will say star wars is sci-fi. At least we can agree on that point.
I’m going to jump in here because I started this fight (tho i’d never heard the term wuxia before so maybe I’m unqualified) - but here we go - from the wikipedia definition of fantasy:
> Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the respective absence of scientific or macabre themes, although these genres overlap
So perhaps I was overly dismissive. Narratively, it seems to me that star wars shares more in common with fantasy stories than sci-fi (chosen one, magic, battle between good and evil, sword that is your birthright, etc), but the setting is a sci-fi one (interplanetary war, clones, androids, space fleets). As wikipedia say “these genres overlap”.
>And, decades before Elon Musk looked set to take over the world, Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corporation (and indeed, Alien’s Weyland-Yutani) was inspiring evil empires (...)
These journos just can't help themselves, can they. Why are you so willfully blind to all the other much worse ways the world is already "taken over" and focus so much on mean twitter man.
Blade runner isn't even that good, thematically. But I get why it's considered the best.
It's because in most sci-fi movies a lot of effort is spent on the setting and thus the story while many times is good, often lacks the depth of their non-fiction counter-parts.
Bladerunner is one of the few movies that has blockbuster level visuals while maintaining a very serious story with a lot of depth. Gattaca is another sci-fi movie that achieves this as well, though the visuals in Gattaca aren't blockbuster level.
Most of Gattaca is shot indoors and the sets have a very minimalist aesthetic. It looks futuristic, but since their budget was quite low* it was also a way to keep costs down. The visuals bear no comparison at all to Blade Runner. It's an incredible movie nevertheless.
* I quite enjoyed how astronauts wear a suit and tie even on spaceship launches. Out-of-universe that was probably because they didn't have the budget for spacesuit costumes. But in-universe it is still legitimately a "space suit" and might be a nod to how formal the Gattacca workplace setting is (I've read too much r/moviedetails).
Nothing against Andrew Niccol, who wrote and directed Gattaca, but the same film with the same actors, directed by Ridley Scott, is really something to contemplate.
Ridley Scott isn't a director that just does contemplative movies all the time. A lot of his stuff flat out just average (Prometheus for example) and he even does raw action blockbusters like gladiator that are very far away from being as thematically engaging as BR.
If ridley scott did Gattaca, there'd definitely be more of a budget on the sci-fi setting. It'd be more grounded and gritty with less of an 80s aesthetic.
As for whether it'd be as good as Andrew Niccols' version well... that's hard to say given Scotts hit or miss track record.
If you enjoy it's worth digging into the work Syd Mead - the film's concept artist - created:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/5642443624/in/...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/5642443252/in/...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/5641873923/in/...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/5642441904/in/...
Syd's work in general is worth a deeper investigation if interested ->
https://sydmead.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/40143737@N02/albums/7215762290...
https://www.iamag.co/the-art-of-syd-mead/