Blade Runner 2049 (SPOILERS)

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I think you can hide them like this but there’s not a way to spoiler them:

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Cheers man, I’ll remember that for next time. Odd though cos it blurred it on the preview, honest!

Blame Sean!

#SEANNNNNNNNNNN!

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Yeah, that’s what I mean: it’s taken from The Shining so it has zero in common with the rest of the film. Crazy.

wait what is this all about, i’ve obviously not seen this version but it sounds baffling

i guess this is probably on the wiki page?

Here you go:

FWIW I would say the original cut is highly ambiguous about him being a replicant. I know people who claimed he was prior to the 1992 release but I don’t think it was obvious at all?

what! genuinely never heard of that. that is mental.

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Probably an age thing? It was always fairly ‘cult’ prior to the 1992 Director’s Cut and after that appeared the 1982 version was pretty much deleted. So if you’re not old enough to have been able to catch the film in some form in those 10 years you’d pretty much not know much about how different it was.

I think I’ve only seen the voiceover version. It was fine, enjoyed the film on the whole. Maybe I’ll try and watch a more recent one over Christmas.

I saw the film when it came out and have not properly re-watched it since.

At the time there was no real suggestion that Deckard was a Replicant. That was a later reading that came from fans who looked into the production history of the film and noticed that it was a different beast to the theatrical release.

When the film was first released, the main subject of discussion was not the voiceover, but the ending, which seemed to have no relation to the rest of the film and felt shoehorned in.

More like Bum Runner! Am I right?!

My ears are burning.

mentioned blade runner 2049 to a guy in work
he asked if that was when Oscar pistorious comes out of prison

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I’m thinking of the International theatrical release (1982), most likely. More or less the same film by the sounds of it.

But, yes, a big part of why I prefer it is because that, having watched and loved the film in the 80s, that version was Bladerunner, and the Director’s Cut was just some tedious attempt to artify a perfectly good (nay, exceptionally good) film. (Those fucking dream-like dove sequences make me angry just thinking about them.)

Also, yes, the voiceover is integral to the noir aesthetic. I had no idea that the last aerial shots were outtakes from The Shining, but that doesn’t really affect my evaluation of the film. They’re just visual metonyms for a future already plotted by the earlier scenes, and the fact that the shots weren’t actually taken for the film doesn’t bother me: I don’t have much time for “integrity”.

Not sure how they’re s’posed to contradict the rest of the film, though. Anyone care to elaborate on that point?

I’m also not fussed that the “Deckard may be a replicant” aspect isn’t a feature of the original version. It’s central to the book it’s based on, sure, and I get a lot of pleasure from that aspect in the book. But I am quite happy for / prefer film adaptations to be interpretations of the course rather than faithful reproductions.

The film version (versions? I can’t remember what bits were chopped and changed in the Director’s Cut) added another dimension to the “text” of Androids, by depicting the replicants as on a quest to meet their maker. Reading that narrative arc in concert with the characterisation of Decker and Gaff in the novel (ambiguity of Decker’s status as human; Gaff’s cold-stone-killer approach to retiring replicants) makes for a far more interesting meditation on the idea(s) of humanity.

Yes, you meant that version. Not sure how there were so many versions even in 1982 that we need more than one term. Nuts.

I assumed @kiyonemakibi was referring to the ending scenes with the car being in bright sun, in a world that shows no signs of suffering from huge amounts of smog etc, and the car being decades old (for 2019) but very new looking.

I will say that I never noticed the disconnect until it was pointed out to me, but unlike you I didn’t really think much of the film when I first saw it. The Director’s Cut was far more involving for me and I took an interest in it.

It’s only in recent years as I’ve watched again that I’ve become severely irritated by it’s art-over-plot aesthetic. Deckard is really BAD at doing his job. That wouldn’t be a problem except that we open by making this point he’s somehow ‘the best’. [spoiler]He does the gumshoe bit fine and corners the snake woman Nexus but completely underestimates her and her accomplices. Then later he goes to get the final two is completely outclassed. He does very little at all to actually resolve the plot.

There’s a secondary point really which is that: if he’s a replicant, how come it’s possible to break his hand and overpower him? What is the point of this programming? It’s like all theory without practice or something. Like the whole thing is to make a weird reveal at the end that “oh look, he’s a replicant” but actually this sort of ‘wow’ can only happen by forcing your plot to say something else to the audience.[/spoiler]

If Deckard is a replicant though, what if that’s the same for all Blade Runner’s and they’re slightly cheap and crap robots that are sent out as expendable options instead of human police officers.

I’m probably talking shit with my above point, but I really love how the film creates so much discussion around it. Even if 2049 is a fantastic film in it’s own right, by the virtue of not having this really bizarre release of different cuts and stuff, it’s probably not going to create this kind of fevered talk around it.

very little talk about Vangelis and the part his score plays in the orginal film in this thread. I think it wouldn’t be the same film without it. Very interested to hear the new score, the snippet in the trailer seems to give a nod towards Vangelis at least…

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The person doing the new score, Johann Johannsson (Jóhann Jóhannsson - Escape - YouTube) is pretty great. I think it’s going to be impossible to satisfy everyone who is a fan of the old score, but I think this is going to be a really good stab at it.

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