Often, how a movie is reviewed says more about the reviewers than the movie itself. For example, the usual suspects are raving about Chocolate Charlie and the Wakanda Factory for all the obvious reasons. Rotten Tomatoes is literally enforcing a zero tolerance rule for reviews. Love it or else. You can be sure every reviewer will praise the movie as the next Star Wars, for fear of reprisal. Everything around the movie appears to be designed to confirm everything said about the modern age by the Dissident Right.
The new Blade Runner is not a social statement, but the reception does say something about the people who love it. I am specifically talking about the alt-right, which has embraced the movie. The film critics generally liked it, because it is an extremely well done science fiction movie that is made for adults. Most of what passes for sci-fi these days is either made for kids, like Star Wars, or it is just not well done. The new Blade Runner is an exception, so the reviewers seemed to like it on artistic grounds.
Knowing that the alt-right embraced the movie, I watched it the other night expecting to see some pro-white subliminal messaging, but it is just a good movie. In fact, it is better than I expected, in terms of the video presentation. Like everyone, I am conditioned to expect whiz-bang special effects in everything now. The cool thing about this movie is the special effects do not impress you so much as convince you. The look and feel of the movie goers a long way toward transporting you to this alternative reality.
Remakes, of course, are usually terrible. The filming is updated, the story and characters are downgraded for stupid people. This is an exception. It is a movie for people who like thinking about the meaning of certain aspects of the story and discussing the overall significance of the tale. The original Blade Runner was like that too. It was a plot driven action story, but in the end, you thought about what Harrison Ford’s character had gone through and what it meant. It was a movie about what it meant to be human.
The remake is similarly a contemplation of what it is that makes us human. Unlike the first one, this version operates under the assumption that the audience is aware of the robot revolution going on just out of sight. In the first movie, Harrison Ford was a human charged with hunting replicants that had gone bad. In this one, Ryan Gosling is a replicant, a new model, who is designed to hunt down defective replicants. Like the first movie, this movie starts with our hero being set off on journey that will reveal himself to himself.
The thing about this movie, something you only ever notice these days when it is missing, is it is devoid of the sort of casual degeneracy we always see in pop culture. There are no 20-minute, soft-core porn sex scenes. There is no grand chase where half the world explodes. That is the thing about modern movies. They rarely treat the audience like an adult. It is assumed that everything has to be explained, the ending must be positive and, like horny teenagers, the audience demands extended sex scenes set to bad music.
That does not mean it is not a modern film. The original Blade Runner would not hold a modern audience, because of the slow pace and lack of plot spoilers. This film makes sure to keep the story moving. That is to be expected. In this age, all of us have lower attention spans, mostly due to being bombarded by mass media. No one these days has the patience to let a story unfold. The new Blade Runner does just enough to keep an adult audience, with a three-digit IQ, interested in what is happening on screen.
Now, the reason the movie is popular with the alt-right. It is entirely possible, if you are a young person seeing this film, that it is the first movie you have seen that is not overtly anti-white. Older people remember when movies were made to be good and would avoid celebrating multiculturalism. This movie does exactly that. It has white men acting like white men, not foils for the magic negro or as sidekick to the female star. In fact, the only black guy in the movie is a minor character who has a small role in the story.
The other big reason the movie is popular with the alt-right is the central message of the movie. If you hate spoilers, then look away at this point. The thing our hero in the movie learns is that being human is about making copies of yourself with another human. It is not what you do or how you feel. It is that ability to make more people who look like you that makes you human. Not even God can do that, or at least the character who imagines himself as God in the film. It also means you are who made you. That is your identity.
That is also what makes it work as a great sci-fi movie. This central question that gets resolved in the film is not in your face. Most movies with a message beat the audience over the head. That is bad film making. Blade Runner lets you enjoy the story arc of the characters and when you get to that final denouement, it all makes sense. It is not perfect and I think the ending could have been much better, but you do not come away feeling like you just spent two hours in diversity training either. It is a well told story.
One final thought on the alt-right angle. I have written before that the alt-right are romantics, but updated for the current age. Theirs is not a nostalgia for a forgotten era or just a rejection of the sterile, materialistic present. There is some of that, but it is more of a nostalgia for a future that will never come. There is a temporal disjunction in the way the alt-right frames the world. They talk about the 1950’s, for example, not as an ideal, but as the start of a descent down the wrong path that has led to this bad current.
In Blade Runner, that aesthetic is on display. The movie picks up where the old one left off and imagines how that world evolved. You get the sense that everyone in the movie wished the past had never happened, which is why the replicants are implanted with fake memories of a past that never happened. The movie seems to say that what happened was terrible and what comes next is not good either, but the green shoot, the bit of hope, is that fact that our people can make more copies of ourselves and make a different future.
For some reason Chinese is no longer spoken in Los Angeles 2049, but Korean. The Asian influence is there but of a different type, meaning what exactly?
A bit of Dissidence:
The black guy was a slave master of hundreds of white orphans.
Try watching the new Star Trek.
-Main star of the show = black woman.
Current acting Captain = white guy from a race of prey – in other words, -he’s often scared. He’s a white man though so must be replaced by a man/woman of color when they pick the new Captain next season.
-The charismatic white male captain turned out to be eeeeevil and had to die.
-The first Captain in the first episode was an Asian woman. A tiny thing that kicked ass. Gotta have a woman, preferably of color, who KICKS ASS. She died and they brought her back in ANOTHER universe to KICK ASS again.
-Obligatory gay couple (two men – one black). They killed off the black guy though. I bet they bring him back through Trek magic.
-Temporary love interest for main star: Arab dude who is a total Beta male.
-White female crewmember who is in every episode is either on the spectrum or just totally socially awkward or inept. Or both.
-One of the later episodes, when people transported to the ship, the transporter clerk? black. When a later scene took place in Sickbay – the doctor: a black female.
The show is a SJW’s wet dream. My spouse, a fan of the original show, refuses to watch it. Perhaps that is the right call.
Modern TV/movies have no place for regular white people. We’re either stupid (if used at all) or replaced by Superior People of Color.
Great review, Z-man. As a child of the 70’s, I think Blade Runner was my favorite Sci-Fi flick (saw the original Star Wars trilogy in the theaters; was never a fan). I’ve since seen only a handful of films of that genre that I can say were “good”. I may watch the new Blade Runner. Or not. But I appreciated the thoughtful analysis.
Since no one commented on your interesting observation about the hero’s revelation, I will… You made the point that the protagonist discovers “being human is about making copies of yourself with another human. It is not what you do or how you feel. It is that ability to make more people who look like you that makes you human. Not even God can do that, or at least the character who imagines himself as God in the film. It also means you are who made you. That’s your identity.”
*You are who made you. That’s your identity.* What a poignant statement. I think you’ve accidentally stumbled upon the truth!
What if the Scriptures actually taught that very thing? What if God’s main purpose in creating the universe, and particularly, Man (“Adam”) was to REPRODUCE Himself? I bet less than one in a thousand Christians even contemplate that. In fact, the Creator—the God of the Bible—did indeed make creatures “who looked like Him”… “Let us make Adam in our own image, after our likeness(!)”. The word “Adam” comes from the root word for ‘blood’, and it literally means ‘showing blood in the face’. In other words, Adam was the first White Man, thus, “made in the IMAGE of God”. There were certainly other types of “man” here before Adam, but no one denies that the received archeological and historical record affirms that ‘Caucasians’ appeared *suddenly* about 6,000 years ago, and (coincidentally) so did ALL CIVILIZATION… Exactly as the Scriptures declare. Weird, no?
Notwithstanding the compensational fantasies of the dusky races who claim ‘dey wuz kangs,’ and built the pyramids long before White Man ever appeared, the evidence (need I say it?)… overwhelmingly disputes their narrative.
So, what exactly happened in Central Asia, somewhere near the Tarim Basin on the north of modern Tibet, approximately six or seven millennia ago? What New Thing appeared on the earth? What was the Source of this surprising intellect, technology and DOMINION which suddenly sprang—out of the ground—and immediately set about taming the “beasts of the field” and terra-forming all of the known world?
What does the Replicant really represent? And what was his intended purpose?
Learning what it means to be human prefigures learning that… “It also means you are who made you. That’s your identity(!)” Are you listening to yourself, Z-man? As sons of Adam, THAT is our sojourn on this earth… Perhaps the entire history of our people is learning what it means to be sons and daughters of God. That IS our Christian Identity.
On second thought, maybe I will watch this new movie. It may well have concealed within, the kernel of a Kingdom Parable! The grand question asked—and answered… Who is the White Man?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23TaMJcpWeY
close but no cigar,,white men were here many years before Adam,,who built all the pyramids etc ?? Adam and his descendants were only a part of the white race..this story is only a branch of the tree,,not the tree..
Well, you’re entitled to your opinions, of course. However, there is no credible evidence (zero) for a ‘race of primitive white men’ that inhabited the pre-historic earth. (Unless you get your history from the Flintstones).
Perhaps you are a Kevin MacDonald fan. He does not possess a particularly gifted intellect, nor is he a Christian believer, though follow him if you must. Caveat emptor.
The Scriptures simply do not teach that God created any OTHER race of men besides Adam. Read that again carefully before you accuse me of being of being ignorant. God MAY have created them in a prior age, but He does not explicitly tell us this (and I think the evidence is against it). The origin of the pre-Adamite races still remains a mystery, though a number of competing theories have been constructed which appear to “fit” the Biblical model, variously. Your guess is as good as mine. Scientifically speaking, no one has a clue.
What I said makes the most sense of the historical evidence, and it not only does NOT contradict the Scriptures, it faithfully concurs with them in every sense. Be a good student and test what I said. God bless you in your journey.
Creepy.
I watched this last night.
The big disappointment for me was as “K” lie on the steps in the snow I really really wanted the bad ass saxophone from the first movie to start up.
The problem with the Romantics is that they believe there is value in a world of 50% infant mortality rates and where your teeth rotted out of your head by age 35.
Infant mortality was quite high but somehow we went from a few thousand a billion in 1840 and good teeth while not uniform were pretty common
As for the past, it had one value we don’t have . A future. Peoples lives, families, traditions , cultures carried forward. Not always, not forever but most of them time.
Modernity is a suicide pact.
Most modern movies are thinly disguised propaganda that aid in the memetic infection of the masses and work to reset the social mindset with a Progressive worldview. An intelligent thoughtful movie appeals to the individual mind of the viewer and both stimulates and exercises cognitive brain function. The latter is the antithesis of brainwashing.
Movie-based propaganda is an effective tool because it is largely subliminal and insidious. It is the slow but steady road to mental decay, and the loss of brain function is often imperceptible. In an environment of real hardship, this mental handicap would seriously inhibit your survival prospects. In an affluent society populated by dependent sheeple, it is a self-reinforcing necessity.
What struck me the most about “BR Part Deux” were implications concerning the relations between man and machine; questions concerning artificial intelligence, ethics, morality, genetics, and the concept of the “soul”. In the story, Ryan Gosling is an AI robot (Nexus 8 as compared to the defective Nexus 6 models in the earlier film) who appears to suffer disappointment and melancholy at not being “real”, yet simultaneously seems to appreciate life; even apparently awestruck by the simple wonder of falling snowflakes. But is the cyborg’s wonderment “real” or mere “personification” by way of human consciousness (i.e. – in the eye of the beholder)?
One element of the storyline in “BR 2049” is cyborg Ryan Gosling’s “love” (and sexual attraction) for a female AI hologram. In one scene, as the two are viewing genetic code on a computer, the hologram tell’s Gosling that she has two fewer DNA sequences than him. He responds by saying something like: “Yeah, but yours are far more eloquent.” Can a hologram one day be fused with DNA to operate in three-dimensions? And does this give credence to the “universe as a simulation” argument? If so, could there one day be God in the machine? Does the “singularity” cometh? And what does that mean exactly?
These are the things I was contemplating when viewing the film. Overall, I would give the sequel a B- compared to the A+ of the original version. Furthermore, I thought the flying cars were awesome and, in fact, want one so bad it hurts. The automobile represents freedom and autonomy. A future without them would suck in my opinion. But – I would be on board with a flying space suit as long as it had a good sound system and some cool tunes.
Your analysis was good except for one part of the movie that I believe you misinterpreted.
When Gosling and Hologram Girl are viewing genetic code, what she says is that humans and replicants are basically the product of a long mix of 4 symbols: A, T, G and C, the letters we use to “write” (better said: “represent”) DNA …
… while she is composed of a long mix of only two symbols: 0 and 1, i.e.: binary code. She´s software, and that´s what software is made of.
She says she has two symbols less, not two DNA sequences less.
IMO, if the recent Wonder Woman movie had been filmed with the Amazons going about “sans cullotes” it would have definitely been an A+ movie.
Except for Gal Gadot, they’d have had to recast the entire film to look more like that Mel Gibson film “The Bounty”.
Based on some of your previous recommendations (…just finished season 2 of Fortitude. Very good by the way. Danke!) I’ll make a point of seeing it.
I’ll also recommend a few of older ones we recently enjoyed courtesy of Pirate Bay torrent.
“Short Circuit” (1986), which is clearly made for kids, but has enough subtle adult humor that older people can enjoy it too.
“Grand Prix” (1966) with James Garner. Probably the best racing movie of all times,
“The Robe” (1953) which, speaking of movies Hollywood wouldn’t dare to remake, was very good. Although with most of the movies of that age, the acting is clearly stage theatrics in front of a movie camera. But the story is very good. The movie “Risen” (2016) followed a similar story line, but I still prefer the classics like “Ben Hur” and “The Ten Commandments”.
“So let it be written, so let it be done!” Try that line in the conclusion of your next business meeting. Always get a laugh!
Ok my German friend, did you see the Netflix series “Dark”? Your countrymen’s contribution was better than most except too many loose ends and sidetracks.
I’ve used the line from Ben Hur, “We keep you alive to serve this ship, row well and live”. Fun to say to new employees.
Other Karl, what do you think of “Berlin Babylon”?
The more the SJW idiocy unfolds, the more I am convinced that we are living in our own version of the Cultural Revolution that plagued China in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Everything fits the template, from the rewriting of art and history, to the shaming of professors by wild-raving students.
If this is the template to follow, the best course to follow I believe is to stand still and wait for it to implode. China’s leaders in the Politburo understood that to challenge Mao was suicide, so they simply hunkered down and plotted. When Mao died, the Politburo was able to overthrow Mao’s clique and bring things under control.
Of course, the crimp is immigration. China didn’t have an immigrant problem as we do. If hopefully Trump is able to bring this under control, then we may be able to push back against the SJW idiocy.
I am a simp that loves a good story. It doesn’t bother me to imagine Chocolate Charlie being an elite leader from an advanced race any more than it does for a white guy. Our swashbucklers and heroes overcame overwhelming strength and odds with the villainy – if Wonder Woman does the same and the gals are entertained I am fine with it. All I want is a STORY – something to take my mind off the day to day crap, something I can lose myself in for awhile.
I think that’s all the alt-right types want too – entertainment. Stop rubbing my nose in your sexuality, your inferiority complexes, your neurosis, and your anger. Is there anything racist/sexist/homophobic/hatey in that…? It’s not just movies either – you can’t buy a fuggin novel that isn’t full of Chocolate Charlies and butt blasting Bills and Harridan Helens. I don’t go to the theatre much anymore, and I don’t buy books either. I will NEVER buy a book that is written by a woman either – they are the worst ones for pushing this shite and consuming it.
For some reason, reading that post made me appreciate more than ever that 125% of my three score and ten are behind me.
“In the first movie, Harrison Ford was a human charged with hunting replicants that had gone bad.” Harrison Ford was a replicant, not a human. See the movie again and you’ll notice the clues (origamis, dialogues with Tyrell and Rachael, final scene with Batty, etc.). The key clue is the unicorn origami that matches the unicorn dream (implanted memory), but lots of other things fit once you get the point.
See here for more details. I just realized that the director’s cut is clearer than the theatrical cut. Also, apparently Philip K. Dick wrote him as a human, the screenwriter thought it could go both ways, and Ridley Scott made him a replicant. So the story makes sense either way, although they are different stories depending on which way you go. https://www.quora.com/Was-Deckard-a-replicant-in-Blade-Runner
Director’s Cut movies are just an exercise in self-indulgence.
Han shot first.
That’s what Leia said (bitterly)!
You know, it has been a while since I’ve seen and I have forgotten this. I think though the point was he was not sure, not that he was a replicant. Maybe I’ll watch it again over the weekend.
Ridley Scott did not cop to that story line of Deckard being a replicant until years later after all the over analysis of the fans.
All that was “added in” via interpretation; i.e. the original movie had Deckard as a human. In the source story by PKD, Deckard is explicitly determined to be human.
Oh, I do love reading Rotten Tomatoes when a new movie comes out. “Wonder Woman” being a relatively recent example of the 15% Social Justice Rule. It’s a B- movie with an A+ review score. We already had a better period-piece about a hero with a shield. The other one that springs to mind, since I have kids, is “Zootopia” which I think still is at 98% on RT. The movie is total garbage. PC effing multiculti garbage. My kids asked me to rent it because their friends at school said it was good. When the credits rolled, they asked me what I thought. It is not easy telling your 10 year old daughter that the movie she just watched is nothing short of political indoctrination by a bunch of Marxists. So, I mocked the shit out of it, pointing out all the multi-culti nonsense, as well as the movie’s biggest plot hole: the entire society in Zootopia revolves around the idea that every creature (i.e. every race) can simply get along by choosing to do so. The movie undermines itself by reminding the careful viewer the BIOLOGY RULES THE DAY.
Of course, the heroes overcome biology to make the socially correct choices, and they sweep biology under the rug. But there BIOLOGY is, in all its glory, and the society of Zootopia congratulates itself in its incoherent message that we should accept everyone from everywhere but we should simultaneously reject anyone from anywhere who doesn’t comply.
That’s why it’s a 98% on RT. Total and complete garbage of a movie targeted at children in order to indoctrinate them.
The thing I plan to tell my kids about Black Panther? The ONLY way to create a wealthy, technologically advanced, civil society in Africa was to invent one out of whole cloth and hide it behind an invisible dome where nobody would ever find it. All the other Marvel films ask you to suspend disbelief about super powered people living in a world that we know already exists. Black Panther asks you to accept that, while simultaneously ignoring everything you know about black society on Earth.
The interesting thing about Zootopia is the extreme effort it goes to avoid the movie that was not made. It comes right up against so many taboo subjects. In fact a lot of scenes were created following an early plot where all the predator species wear control collars to tame their aggression. Donning these collars has become a coming-of-age ritual among predators and there’s a scene where a young bear is having a party to celebrate his collaring that is just heartbreaking.
Taming party: https://youtu.be/fJj1OkH-6Dw
NIck’s tame collar: https://youtu.be/mnnVhvhHeNs
It was some much stronger stuff that they were afraid to make, but traces of it linger in the original: the idea that the predator instinct is real and that it’s just beneath the surface in the “civilized” predators.
As many people smarter than me have observed, political correctness is a war against noticing things. The final product goes to great lengths to ensure you don’t notice things. They’re there, if you have a sharp eye, but the final product largely attempts to blue pill you into compliance.
In any case, it certainly isn’t a 98% movie.
Steve Sailer wrote a couple interesting blog posts about the production process Zootopia went through. The final movie is not the story the writers wanted to tell. Hints of that come through.
I’ve not read his piece, but I can see how the writers were going for something more along the lines of “The Incredibles” which is very antiPC including a very Hillary Clintonesque feminist scold at the beginning.
Probably why all the hints about biology get swept under the rug. The truth is in there, but like everything in the PC world, it gets buried and blue pilled.
Incidentally, Altered Carbon is showing on Netflix now, and it’s pretty good. The author is a complete fanny though, calling himself a feminist, and this comes across in the second two books of the trilogy where the bad-ass hero spends half his time white-knighting for women. The book of Altered Carbon is great though, well worth a read.
Altered Carbon was a magic negro vehicle. The object of veneration for the main character was a negro female, his back-up guy was a negro married to a White woman, the negro’s daughter was eventually a badass that comes in at the end and saves the day, and there was a large number of orientals in the series. Fits perfectly with the converged diversity philosophy of Netflix.
Maybe. It seems to me, after watching a few episodes, that the bodies are just worthless vehicles. So, reading anything into the ethnic makeup of the cast misses the point. The weird combination of meat suits is supposed to underscore that point. That said, it really is just a cop show overlaid with an imaginary world. It’s Magnum PI in a bizarre future world.
But, the series, like all TV and movies, is aimed at creating a reality that you will superimpose on what you believe the world to be. Humans are very visually oriented and get the majority of their information through the eyes. While those that think can view a flick and conclude, “Oh, he’s just temporarily in that body. Who knows what his original body was”, that is just on the conscious level. Your mind also operates in a subconscious mode and the intended message is that there is no difference between the races and, in the future, nobody notices or has any problem with race. There were other subtle things that most people would gloss over, like the fact that the perverted ruling class of meths were almost all White, the black backup guy worked with computers and had a White wife, and with the exception of two orientals, the only “bad guys” were White.
“Oh, he’s just temporarily in that body. Who knows what his original body was”,… there is no difference between the races…
Huh. There’s an interesting thought. Since there are biological differences between the races would the “mind” of someone of one race comfortably inhabit a body of a different race.
We know that lots of behavior traits have a genetic component. If a conscientious, future-oriented white man has his consciousness put into the body of an impulsive, aggressive, low-future-orientation black body, what affects will that have on his behavior and thought processes?
I don’t think it’s going to work for the simple reason that your brain isn’t some independent piece of your body. It is an integral part of the body. It’s the indivisible chicken and egg problem.
That said, it really is just a cop show overlaid with an imaginary world.
That’s exactly right, and the book is a standard, by-the-numbers, noir detective story set in a futuristic world – which is why it was good. In the next two books, Morgan tries to write stories he’s dreamed up all on his own and they’re shite.
I started watching it. The concept is clever. The main character is not very compelling as an actor, but he’s not overtly gay, which about as much as you get these days.
Yes, I’m not especially taken with the main actor either, but he’s not terrible. The concept is very good, and provides the strength of the whole trilogy.
The kick ass midget cop and the omnipotent black ‘queen’ make it a disaster and that’s before the woman sleeved as a man…how topical.
I made it through and it was ho-hum. The amount of nudity, language, and sex was offputting. Yes, people are naked when they shower. I don’t need to see it all just like I don’t need to see people use the toilet.
The concept is interesting. However, I was never quite sure about where, except for the clones, they got all of the spare bodies.
I found the lady cop to be almost completely unlikable. About the only likable character is the Poe AI.
I will say that the ending at least ties together nicely.
**** SPOILERS ****
The whole main character still loved by the cop chick is really stupid. Did she just love him for his body because that’s all he is. His personality is someone else’s.
The ending, while it ties together, is a deus ex machina. There is no reason the one girl could suddenly invade the system of the sky platform. Also, the platform can be crashed by pulling three levers? And it hovers over a city?
The first hour and a half of the film was excellent. The visuals were stunning and the story builds slowly something, as you say, which is rare in blockbuster films these days. That said, it was too long, probably by half an hour. There were some scenes which could easily have been removed: the police chief turning up in K’s apartment drinking vodka, for example. The character of Wallace could probably have been dispensed with almost entirely, or his scenes cut down; they didn’t add any value for me.
I don’t think they should have brought back Harrison Ford as Deckard, either. We’ve already had a film where Harrison Ford turns up as an old man, reprising a role from when he was a cool young buck in the 1980s: Star Wars: The Force Awakens. (You could even argue that this is the third time, if we count the God-awful Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). Ford looked practically the same in each film, with the same mannerisms and way of speaking, to the point I felt like I’d seen these scenes already. If Bladerunner 2049 wanted to be a masterpiece it probably shouldn’t use a similar plot device from another film using the same iconic actor.
The other problem was I thought the film lost its way at that point. The fight between K and Deckard was unnecessary, as was most of the subsequent dialogue. The scene in the bar with the whisky was cute, but seemed out of place and undid much of the film’s painstaking work in building up a tense, surreal atmosphere. I felt from then on the focus on Gosling, which had been wonderfully intense, became diluted as the scriptwriters were forced to include Deckard. I get the impression the producers thought writing in such an iconic figure would be a good selling point, but in doing so they weakened the film. Personally, I thought it went downhill from the moment he entered the story. Overall it was good, though, and brilliant in the cinema.
Yeah, the end has problems. It had the feel of a committee stepping in and telling the director, “You need a kick boxing chick, a long fight scene and some explosions.” The fight between Ford and Gosling was pointless. It really did get weird at that stage. As you say, they could have chopped all of it or maybe had that be the point where Gosling realizes he is not the miracle miracle child, just another piece in the puzzle.
Isn’t that really how these big projects are made? Running by multiple endings before a selected audience.
The police chief was in K’s apartment trying to get laid. K (subtly) turned her down. There’s a message there.
As a movie fan I do judge based on what I expect from a film. For example I have enjoyed some of the Marvel movies for what they are – film versions of comic books. As pointed out the problem today is that so many movies skew towards the “comic book” mentality there isn’t a lot else for the 3 digit IQ people to watch. Just like my sportsball though I don’t want to see anyone’s politics (right or left) preached in my entertainment choices.
Humble brag, I made the automatic knife that offed Harrison and ryan . Other than that the movie was a touch to long.
Would white liberals please march down to the nearest ghetto and take a really sharp axe and chopping block with you? Then finally the rest of us can get on with civilization.
Conservative people are going to have to make this happen
Unless the Conservatives can find a way to get the gumption together to force people to behave properly, that is using government guns , the future belongs to the Left until in some decades maybe3, 5 maybe more society turns 3rd world
The American Conservatives and I’m not counting you among their numbers typically are just yesterdays liberals and conserve nothing .
The ones that aren’t are Libertarian Loons
They all have to go and be replaced with an authoritarian Right willing to set by force moral standards and who puts social outcomes above being wealthy .
Taking the cheap out, hoping for a collapse , expecting another religious revival against all evidence and trying as generations have before, to cheap out on the cost of society isn’t going to work any more
As I remember the original, it, and apparently the new one, too, had the insidious subplot that eventually the Chinese inherit the Earth. The first Blade Runner implied that Western culture was doomed to be “assimilated” by Eastern culture. That was a precursor to “The future is brown and gay! Hooray!”
I get the different movie versions mixed up with the book in my head now. I think in the back story was most of the useful people had already migrated off Earth. What was left was kind of a a waiting room of rejects.
No, everyone who was not damaged by the pervasive pollution has moved off world. Only the rejects are left behind on Earth.
We are usually just multiculted to death anymore. Most of our type here are not their audience anymore. I asked my 20 year old niece what she watches and she said only Anime.
I really enjoyed the first Blade Runner, this one not so much but I still appreciated much that was offered. C+
On the rare time you watch a recently made movie and it doesn’t follow the diversity check list or have bad ass 110 pound women , you wonder how that got made. Who screwed up?
I’m not one who thinks movie can be art, so my scale is a bit more generous. The original Blade Runner was a great movie, that I have seen dozens of times. This one, for its era, is also a great movie. It’s not as good as the original though. Harrison Ford is a better actor in the role of Blade Runner. Tyrell is a way better villain than the new guy, because Tyrell was neither good nor evil. He was amoral. Of course, Rutger Hauer was a great foil for Ford’;s character.
Hmm…why do you reckon Niander Wallace (Leto) doesn’t fit the description you ascribe to Eldon Tyrell? How is Wallace explicitly evil?
Wallace is pretty much just a Bond villain. Weird looking. Knows he is evil and revels in it. Tyrell was just a guy who had no sense of right and wrong. It is the banality of Tyrell that makes him evil. There’s also the the fact that Wallace is weird for the sake of being weird. His character is largely irrelevant so it does not take away from the film, but he would have been much more monstrous if he was more like Mark Zuckerberg than Ernst Blofeld.
Wallace used his genius to revolutionize food production, staving off mass starvation; not exactly the work of an evil man, even if his motivation was profit alone. Without Niander Wallace, the world of Blade Runner 2049 would look a lot more like that of Mad Max.
Having saved millions, perhaps billions of human beings, his attention then turns to self-replicating replicants–Tyrell’s final breakthrough prior to bankruptcy–envisioning frontiers inaccessable theretofore. For one, replicant reproduction allows for a superhuman component in Von Nuemann Probes.
From high atop the pyramid, he’s contemptuous of the great unwashed, of those who could not save themselves. Naturally. Beyond that, he’s a difficult character to judge IMO.
It just felt like his character was there because, welp, we have to have a bad guy.
Wallace went on to found the Soylent corporation, to distribute his food.
“They talk about the 1950’s, for example, not as an ideal, but as the start of a descent down the wrong path that has led to this bad current.”
I really enjoyed many of Heinlein’s stories about interstellar space travel and moon colonies, etc. Even though very dated today, they speak about possibilities that are never going to happen now. We’re never going to have a real colony on the moon, let alone colonies on the other planets. Nope, we’re in a civilizational death spiral.
Never is an even bigger word than If.
Equatorial continents can still be colonized along the previously used North American model.
We have all the parts of the equation except the will. This too will change, and when the tumblers all align it will occur again as it has before.
The same with walking on the moon. Happened once, will more than likely happen again. I just hope we get there by burning the homeless as fuel. Now That would be Progress!
Did you miss the Falcon Heavy launch the other day? There will be Mars colony within 20 years.
Doubtful. The developed world will be fortunate not to be in ruins in a couple of decades
Also having a heavy rocket that is maybe reusable does not a colony or even an exploratory base make . Its small improvement on an old technology
We don’t even have tech that can get people to Mars without them basically dying of cancer nor can we get them back
The Space Future sorry to say is White and Analog and the real future isn’t .
Werner Von Braun had one planned for 1984. The Moon colony was expected by 1975.
This was prevented.
Whites were the breakaways, escaping the nest.
On the government dime, in the middle of a Cold War. There were lots of reasons why it didn’t happen.
SpaceX, Bigelow Areospace and the rest are private industry hell-bent on building settlements in space.
It’s not worth going into the details here when you can easily type a pithy response expressing a negative view. Go to Space Review online and dig deep.
That specific type of nostalgia is probably best described as saudade.
Ben: I learned a new word today, although I am not sure why “saudade” has its own Wiki page.
Sincere thanks for that.
It’s a shame anything made before 1999 is inaccessible to young people/adults today. They simply cannot watch or listen to anything older than 10 years or so. Like they have no cultural memory. But maybe being cut off from the past will force them to make a new future that is better than it would have been…
As a millennial born in 1982, I was an avid movie junkie, going to the movies every Friday or Saturday. Some time around 2012-2014, I started going less and less, eventually stopping at 2014. It wasn’t the remakes or sequels that did it, though they did play a part. It was the increasing shrill PC material in any of the original movies.
The movies I do see these days are original ones like these or ones where the PC content is dialed down (The Girl on the Train for example — a PC movie about men abusing women, but not as blatant compared to other movies). Netflix and Amazon Prime are also great. There is some PC, but not as blatant as in the movies these days.
I suspect these changes came about due to more and more millennials starting to work for Hollywood. A combination of nostalgia for the old movies, the PC snowflake culture they brought with them, along with decreasing intelligence due to the decline of education in our country. Also, I suspect the movies have more action and less intelligent dialogue to satisfy the market in China, which is the largest next to the US. The PC culture in the end though will alienate China. Just look at the reception China had for The Last Jedi, a movie that had empty theaters in China in the 2nd week.
Perhaps this will cause Hollywood to go bankrupt and reevaluate itself, but one can only hope.
The dumbing down is definitely due to the audience. Simple plots, cartoon dialogue and lots of CGI make for movies that can be sent around the world. Fast ‘N Furious works in any language, because it is too stupid to require much dialogue. There’s also the fact that the movie goers in America are not that white anymore. Hispanics are wildly over represented and they like predictable shoot ’em ups.
The real mind bender is to watch an old movie like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. You will struggle for the first 30 minutes because it is so alien. By the end, you’ll enjoy it and realize just how much things have changed.
It is indeed the best movie of 2017 and perhaps even 2018. And it is the best for precisely the reasons you describe – the understated lack of diversity and the overall filmography. The main character’s relationship with his digital girlfriend was a throwback to another, more romantic time.
I look forward to the Hollywood alternative. It’s coming.
Definitely true on the changing ethnicity of the movie audience. Most people I see going to the movies are those of the lower classes: blacks, hispanics, and the working class whites. I hardly see any sophisticated people anymore, unless there is a history movie. Even then, you’ll have to watch out for PC material.