Movies & TV

It's so good, that it actually makes Blade Runner retroactively better.

I love both blade runner movies, but I agree 2049 is better. The story is just so good

Jared Leto apparently LARPed as being blind for this movie

I always liked how, despite Deckard being a major part of 2049, whether or not he's a replicant (which I don't believe) doesn't matter at all.

Easily my favorite movie. The pacing is wonderful for my particular brain, and there are so many layers to it, with fantastic cinematography.

Something I think was clever was the addition of Joi, and her role in the story. By the time this movie came out, the original Blade Runner had kind of percolated through society. Replicants being human isn’t really a mindblowing or challenging premise imo.

So to get a similar feeling and though exploration going, a new level of “fake” life needs to be introduced, one that the audience might not immediately accept. You can see that reflected in the movie where a replicant treats Joi like shit for being “artificial”, reproducing the oppression of replicants, despite the history and material context of the abuser. Seeing the movie explore Joi and her potential development and emergent autonomy was super cool. She was definitely my favorite part of the movie.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I saw it in theaters and was totally blown away. I guess it's a bit of a polarizing movie because one of the workers at the theater came up to me after the credits and asked me if I liked the film. I told him it was fantastic and then he told me they had a bunch of people walk out of it. Maybe people were expecting something that wasn't such a slow burn. But it was pretty much a lot of what I wanted in a movie. Great sets that feel futuristic, but super lived-in. Also, a surprising amount of practical effects too. The LA fly through scene in the rain was actually a scale model which is always neat to see these days. Great soundtrack. Great performances. Pure cinema.

I saw this movie shortly before I left home. It was the first movie I’d seen in theaters by myself (at fucking 25 lol), and I went and saw it twice. I loved it.

I’ll never forget David Bautista’s performance. And the baseline test scene was fucking cool.

I also recently saw it for the first time. It's solid, loved how oppressive the atmosphere felt and how the audio took over the entire experience when K was driving around. It felt so immersive, like we really were just seeing one small thread in this horrible reality full of other tragic stories. I guess that's just successful worldbuilding. I didn't love some of the Joss Whedon tier quips (especially in the Las Vegas part, shounen level fan service ) but otherwise, everything from the dialogue to the set design and VFX was top notch.

Decided to rewatch it because of this post... definitely don't regret it.

The AI Girlfriend thing has gained a whole new meaning since ChatGPT dropped

Yeah Blade Runner had the audience asking if Deckard was a replicant or not. Now we're left wondering if Joi is just a large language model or not.

Also nuking Las Vegas was a good bit

this is one of my favorite action movies of all time. I was lucky enough in 2017 to catch it in the theaters and i couldn't stop thinking about it for like 2 years. However, it's very easy to see why fascists incels like to use K's face as their profile pictures.

K is a handsome, quiet, intelligent physically fit, capable loser who everyone hates on because they're secretly jealous. This is exactly how fascists see themselves and how they see their own persecution complex. He goes home to his AI girlfriend because this is the only option he has. The world around him is in an advanced state of decay (which fascists routinely blame on the 'fall of western civilization' and not capitalism) but he holds onto the hope that he can become a hero through violence (mass shooting).

Anyways i dont want to shit on this movie too much. Obviously I enjoy it for the correct reasons

I think this is actually the last movie I saw in theaters that truly emotionally affected me on a spiritual level. I think there's something about the ambiguity of how real the replicants are in both movies that is used for great emotional effect, but the way K ultimately rejected the reality that was handed to him and sacrificed himself in pursuit of a deeper humanity within himself is something that just fuckin' resonates with me man. I still tear up thinking about it.

Was an odd experience seeing that the movie was actually quite polarizing. I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about people's criticisms, and while I understand their reasoning, I ultimately don't think there's a single thing this film could have done differently that would have made its emotional impact any stronger. The biggest criticism seems to be the slow pacing, which I understand, but it irks me the most. The pacing is a staple of thoughtful science fiction, (think the original Blade Runner, 2001, Ghost in the Shell) and absolutely serves the purpose of letting the themes, setting, and underlying philosophical questions posed by the movie to stew in the mind and sink in. In that regard, the pacing in this movie is about fucking perfect. The opening scene establishes everything you need to know about the plot with zero filler. In fact, the only times the movie seems to slow down is when K is going through a psychological transformation of some sort. Trying to understand his perspective, why he changes, why meaning emerges out of the events of the movie, is the meat and bones of the whole experience. If you can't get on board though, yeah, I can imagine it being a bit of a slog.

Other criticisms like Leto's performance or the lack of fleshing out Freysa or the resistance also seem kinda silly. They each have like 5 minutes of screen time and ultimately serve their purpose in the story just fine. You don't really need to know much about them other than their motivations and their importance to the story, which I think they both do just fine. This movie is just simply not about them, and really only serve to remind the viewer that there's bigger forces at work all vying to control things in their own way.

Another criticism that caught me off guard is the accusations of misogyny in the film. The movie certainly has a lot to say about the commodification of sexuality, which is another strong point of the film imo. There's quite a lot I can say about how the movie thinks about gender identity and sexuality, and how it either contributes or detracts from our inner humanity, but there's an excellent youtube video on that topic so I'll just link that here: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6GsXBh5PGZU

But... yeah, anyway, good film. 10/10. It's kinda strange because while I like Denis Villeneuve, I feel like a lot of his movies don't really hit the mark that well. Honestly found Dune kinda boring. Would recommend Arrival and Enemy though, those are solid. But 2049, another level man, another level.

Villanueve is so good

Im gonna watch Incendies now

I honestly thought it was long and boring lol sorry (and I also love long boring movies but not this one)

Seeing people heap praise on Blade Runner 2049 is the most "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills" I've ever felt. I genuinely thought it was one of the worst movies I've ever watched and it's only redeeming feature was that it was occasionally pretty to look at.

I liked Blade Runner 2049. That's the type of experience I expected for Dune. But instead Dune ended up being offensively dull and void.

I saw it three times in the cinema. At one time in my live I saw a movie two times at the cinema. Every other time i only saw a movie once. Bladerunner 2049 is so good. For about 4 years before it came out i was really angry that Hollywood would commit this sacrilege and make a sequel - why?! - they would definitely fuck it up! But then when it came out i was surprised that some people actually said that it was good.

it blew me away. For now about 6 and a half years that picture of K walking into that orange void has been my desktop background.