![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
they don't advertise for film critics in a newspaper
The short form is I think they had the makings of a great film and they made an okay film. It's like if someone made Bladerunner based on what they thought 2017 audiences would like, rather than if they'd made Bladerunner. Very few of my quibbles are about visuals; the visuals of Bladerunner 2049 are gorgeous.
The movie has a batch of really interesting plots they could explore, and they kinda poke at them... and then they're on to the next point, which is more about their main plotline of Replicants being able to reproduce, and what that means to the Tyrell Corporation's replacement and to the burgeoning Replicant Uprising.
1) there's the "Blackout" mentioned in the movie. What does it mean to be human or Replicant when memories, one of the biggest things that differentiate the two, are gone for *everyone*? Later there's the discussion about real memories being about feelings more than detail - this is awesome stuff! I wanted more of it!
2) there's the question of who's actually human, which is really genre, and even more pertinent with the latest generations of Replicants controlled by implanted memories and without artificial lifespan restrictions. Outside of not-reproducing there's pretty much no reason a Replicant isn't human at this point. This is SO COOL! This is what I came to the theater for! They have the AI in his apartment, who they don't really develop as a completely other than human love interest, and I wanted way more of exploring her and how she works. Is she really in love with him if she's practically identical to half the billboards in the city, and just happens to be the AI he owns? Isn't it sort of morally squirmy to have someone whose life is defined by the immorality of being made and owned, cheerfully unquestioning the love and feelings of the person *he* owns? He's fuckin' Thomas Jefferson with a faux-fur-lined-jacket here. Naw, the film-makers aren't interested in that.
Much more minor quibbles;
3) ethnic stuff made me squirm about the original movie, which features Caucasians intimidating and murdering a first generation Chinese immigrant, Asians and one Latino as characters you see who are easily glossed over, and no Black people at all. And seriously nearly everyone in this movie is white. There are like two Black people in the entire movie, and one's a really loathsome minor character, and the other's a fairly neutral minor character, and *that's it*.
4) which dovetails into setting. In the 1980s the idea that the future would be a really East Asian place was exotic to a lot of Americans ... and yet worked great with 30s/40s detective stories in which people were constantly going in and out of Chinatowns. This fits great with how Bladerunner has that contrast that grabs you immediately, "film noir... in the *future*," but also into the plotline about the Replicants, since what *created* those East Asian enclaves of the 30s and 40s was systematically dehumanizing very human people for the sake of dirt-cheap labor. But 2049's future isn't very Asian at all. Nor is it a Brazilian future, an Indian future, there's maybe vague hints of it sort of being a Russian future. It's sort of genero-cyberpunk-future, it's every Shadowrun game you've ever been in.
5) one of the minor things about Bladerunner was the presence of the nonhuman. Bladerunner's filled with snakes, birds, fish, everything's available in a carefully produced Replicant version. That's a setting detail that doesn't come through here, even though Doctor Badger says he can get a "real" goat or horse and there's Deckard's standard issue Postapocalypse Dog.
6) Another setting detail; deserted, post-nuke Las Vegas looks awesome. It's absolutely stunning, which is why it pains me to say *it makes no sense*. This is a setting with giant corporations and remarkably little regard for life, where San Diego has squatters straight out of a Mad Max Movie, and it's full of Shit Someone Considers Valuable Enough to Gank. Why is it this beautiful Pripyat-looking ghost town rather than full of shantitowns, junk, tenement housing, and other Bladerunnery detritus.
7) this gets more major but I seriously couldn't get into the villains at all. The big villains of Bladerunner are what, the police chief, Tyrell, Deckard himself. Tyrell is creepy not because he's intentionally fucking creepy, but because to him, these amazing creatures he's brought into existence aren't humans but things he's detached and intellectually curious about. And while his dialogue and surroundings are kinda creepy, they aren't too ridiculous. He's a film noir industrialist, so he's not an obvious supervillain but you're never in doubt this is a shitty person. Wallace though? He's written to hit you with VILLAIN!!!!1! in red boldfaced font two points larger than the rest of the text. He says random things to be creepy as fuck while drifting through preserved cadaver corridors to different creepy empty rooms. His second in command, Love, is basically all way Roy was a creepy villain... without any of the warmth and community that made Roy at all likable.
The movie has a batch of really interesting plots they could explore, and they kinda poke at them... and then they're on to the next point, which is more about their main plotline of Replicants being able to reproduce, and what that means to the Tyrell Corporation's replacement and to the burgeoning Replicant Uprising.
1) there's the "Blackout" mentioned in the movie. What does it mean to be human or Replicant when memories, one of the biggest things that differentiate the two, are gone for *everyone*? Later there's the discussion about real memories being about feelings more than detail - this is awesome stuff! I wanted more of it!
2) there's the question of who's actually human, which is really genre, and even more pertinent with the latest generations of Replicants controlled by implanted memories and without artificial lifespan restrictions. Outside of not-reproducing there's pretty much no reason a Replicant isn't human at this point. This is SO COOL! This is what I came to the theater for! They have the AI in his apartment, who they don't really develop as a completely other than human love interest, and I wanted way more of exploring her and how she works. Is she really in love with him if she's practically identical to half the billboards in the city, and just happens to be the AI he owns? Isn't it sort of morally squirmy to have someone whose life is defined by the immorality of being made and owned, cheerfully unquestioning the love and feelings of the person *he* owns? He's fuckin' Thomas Jefferson with a faux-fur-lined-jacket here. Naw, the film-makers aren't interested in that.
Much more minor quibbles;
3) ethnic stuff made me squirm about the original movie, which features Caucasians intimidating and murdering a first generation Chinese immigrant, Asians and one Latino as characters you see who are easily glossed over, and no Black people at all. And seriously nearly everyone in this movie is white. There are like two Black people in the entire movie, and one's a really loathsome minor character, and the other's a fairly neutral minor character, and *that's it*.
4) which dovetails into setting. In the 1980s the idea that the future would be a really East Asian place was exotic to a lot of Americans ... and yet worked great with 30s/40s detective stories in which people were constantly going in and out of Chinatowns. This fits great with how Bladerunner has that contrast that grabs you immediately, "film noir... in the *future*," but also into the plotline about the Replicants, since what *created* those East Asian enclaves of the 30s and 40s was systematically dehumanizing very human people for the sake of dirt-cheap labor. But 2049's future isn't very Asian at all. Nor is it a Brazilian future, an Indian future, there's maybe vague hints of it sort of being a Russian future. It's sort of genero-cyberpunk-future, it's every Shadowrun game you've ever been in.
5) one of the minor things about Bladerunner was the presence of the nonhuman. Bladerunner's filled with snakes, birds, fish, everything's available in a carefully produced Replicant version. That's a setting detail that doesn't come through here, even though Doctor Badger says he can get a "real" goat or horse and there's Deckard's standard issue Postapocalypse Dog.
6) Another setting detail; deserted, post-nuke Las Vegas looks awesome. It's absolutely stunning, which is why it pains me to say *it makes no sense*. This is a setting with giant corporations and remarkably little regard for life, where San Diego has squatters straight out of a Mad Max Movie, and it's full of Shit Someone Considers Valuable Enough to Gank. Why is it this beautiful Pripyat-looking ghost town rather than full of shantitowns, junk, tenement housing, and other Bladerunnery detritus.
7) this gets more major but I seriously couldn't get into the villains at all. The big villains of Bladerunner are what, the police chief, Tyrell, Deckard himself. Tyrell is creepy not because he's intentionally fucking creepy, but because to him, these amazing creatures he's brought into existence aren't humans but things he's detached and intellectually curious about. And while his dialogue and surroundings are kinda creepy, they aren't too ridiculous. He's a film noir industrialist, so he's not an obvious supervillain but you're never in doubt this is a shitty person. Wallace though? He's written to hit you with VILLAIN!!!!1! in red boldfaced font two points larger than the rest of the text. He says random things to be creepy as fuck while drifting through preserved cadaver corridors to different creepy empty rooms. His second in command, Love, is basically all way Roy was a creepy villain... without any of the warmth and community that made Roy at all likable.