Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
From: Delaware, USA
Quote:takemehomegrandma wrote:
@NewSense
Just like you, I’m a true fan of the original. I have three versions on BluRay, watched it perhaps 20-30 times. I have all versions of the sound track, including the unofficial bootlegs. I’d say it’s the best movie of all times, all categories. In short, the movie has meant a lot to me.
So I was deeply very worried when I heard they were planning a sequel. It didn’t help that I first learned about it just after having seen the Prometeus “Alien” movie, which I thought was a huge disappointment. A disaster really, that kind of destroyed the whole Alien franchise by defiling (rather: pissing all over) the legacy of the original two films. I was afraid that a new Blade Runner movie would do the same to the original movie.
But it didn’t.
Their analysis of Blade Runner, of what things made the film so great, was accurate. The moods, the atmospheres. The dystopia. The pace! The film is 2 hours 43 minutes long, and had it been shorter it would have disrupted the pace, and it would have been a worse experience. They truly understood the original, and they treated it with respect. For example: While it is a SciFi film about the future, I like the fact that the film in a way builds on some *1982* vision of a future, despite being a 2017 movie about 2049. It’s in the details, and I think you’ll appreciate it.
Perhaps Blade Runner isn’t for everyone. But if you loved the original, you will really like this one as well. It will by no means replace or eclipse the original (it doesn’t try to either), but it doesn’t defile the legacy, not at all, and creates out of its own strengths a solid place and a right of existence *in parallel* to the original. You could spot the true enthusiasts when the film ended. We were many who remained in our seats when the after-texts started to roll up, trying to grasp and digest what we had just experienced.
If your home theatre doesn’t have a 20m+ wide screen that can fill your entire vision and an audio system that can press you down in your seat, then you should see it in a real cinema. Also, the 3D for is once a core contributor to the experience, rather than a gimmick thrown in for some “wow”-effect.
Go see it!
I'm curious how the cast is going to compare. There were some stellar performances in the original.
I particularly liked Rutger Hauer's comment during the chase scene near the end.
Just that casual laugh and "...where are you going?".
The only issue I have with either movie is the shift in focus to sympathy for the replicants.
It diverges a bit too much from Dick's primary point, that machines would not be capable of true empathy.
After all, Scott is the one that focused on genetically engineered replicants. That is still organic. That wasn't specified one way or another in the original material, just that they were artificial.
Scott really did nail the environment right though. No wheels, Johnny cabs, space craft or any of the other devices Dick used in some of his stories.
But the world is pretty much the way Dick described it in multiple stories, abused, run down, but with glitsy high tech devices and advertising.
There is some commonality here with the near parallel world of Total Recall (aka 'We can remember it for you wholesale).
And the foresights embedded in this stuff are creepy to this day. Customize news delivered to you, ads that follow you, technology increasing our disconnection from one another.
In a country that is now concerned about EMP burst from high altitude nuclear weapons detonation, that deteriorated, just hanging on world looks possible (especially the idea that our implementation of technologies wouldn't slow).
Dick has to be the only author that envisioned a future that wasn't quite post apocalyptic, it was post near apocalyptic and our humanity ( as it always has in the past) was once again being challenged.
Intense stuff. Fritz Lang would have loved it.
[ Edited by Jim 07.10.2017 - 08:35 ]"Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
