Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - WITH Spoilers

[Judderman]

Both films (and a few others) have referenced men falling in love with artificial women and the falseness/reality of this. I wonder if there is a film where a woman falls in love with an artificial man, or is this a particularly male concept?

Gosling's character was the subject of a little seduction attempt from his human boss. She at least had a soft spot for him.

 

[AlexH]

I would say it is quite an old fashioned view of the future. I love the scenes with the big cities and Japanese writing everywhere. But this is Los Angeles. The idea of Japanese products and Tokyo city culture taking over the future is a very 1980s/90s view when modern Japan was at its peak in world status. But this is fair enough I suppose as this is a sequel to a 1980s film, and I do still like that theme. It is nostalgic but not to the extreme of recent Star Wars films.

I liked that it carried it on as an alternative future. It played as if the existing world of the original Blade Runner was happening now - afterall, it's only 2 years away. There was a Pan American advert, and they haven't existed since the 90s. The huge Atari advert too.

 

[Tulius Hostilius]

I saw the movie today. I really enjoyed it. It is good to finally see a movie without the rush that seems dominant in Hollywood today. We must enjoy it and taste it. The plot was not brilliant but does the job well. In ten years I can say if I liked it so much as the first one.

It was very nice to see an intelligent SF movie which was perfectly paced, lovingly crafted and beautifully acted.

Nice short summary.

Gosling's character was the subject of a little seduction attempt from his human boss. She at least had a soft spot for him.

Yes, that was clear when lieutenant Joshi was in K’s apartment.

 

[ctg]

The Art of Blade Runner 2049.

The Art Of Blade Runner 2049

 

[Khuratokh]

The Art of Blade Runner 2049.

The Art Of Blade Runner 2049

Thanks!

 

[Toby Frost]

The critic Abigail Nussbaum had some interesting thoughts about BR2049. I don't always agree with her, but I think her points are valid.

She argues that, in terms of ideas rather than visuals, 2049 doesn't bring much that's new. I think this is a fair point: Blade Runner's "thing" is the replicants, and as she says, once you've accepted the idea that they are people and slavery is wrong, there's not that much of a debate to be had on the issue. Blade Runner's interest in memory is perhaps more open to debate, but that would suit a slower and less exciting film just as well, if not better.

Anyway, I'm not sure I totally agree with Nussbaum's view (her approach to films seems quite different to mine) but it's worth a look.

Asking the Wrong Questions: Recent Movie Roundup 27

 

[Judderman]

I think the idea of someone not even knowing if they are replicant or not is quite interesting.

 

[Lumens]

I think the idea of someone not even knowing if they are replicant or not is quite interesting.

I agree. Although I think it was done more cleverly in the first movie, if you take the unicorn dream into consideration.

Still, it is so hard to live up to the original in my opinion. They did well in any case. It was beautifully made.

 

[Khuratokh]

The critic Abigail Nussbaum had some interesting thoughts about BR2049. I don't always agree with her, but I think her points are valid.

She argues that, in terms of ideas rather than visuals, 2049 doesn't bring much that's new. I think this is a fair point: Blade Runner's "thing" is the replicants, and as she says, once you've accepted the idea that they are people and slavery is wrong, there's not that much of a debate to be had on the issue. Blade Runner's interest in memory is perhaps more open to debate, but that would suit a slower and less exciting film just as well, if not better.

Anyway, I'm not sure I totally agree with Nussbaum's view (her approach to films seems quite different to mine) but it's worth a look.

Asking the Wrong Questions: Recent Movie Roundup 27

Thanks for the link! at a glance this looks like a pretty decent analysis

 

[Brian G Turner]

Meh.

I was with the film for the first hour or so, hoping it would go somewhere. But the story became confused - it never tried to explore any intelligent concepts - and the underlying sexism was difficult to stomach watching with a wife and three daughters.

Here's a rundown of the character profiles:

Male - cold, emotionless, and macho
Male - cold, emotionless, and macho
Male - cold, emotionless

Female - exists only to give pleasure to men
Female - exists only to be brutally murdered
Female - exists only to give pleasure to men
Female - exists only to be brutally murdered
Female - exists only to give pleasure to men, then brutally murdered
Female - exists only to be brutally murdered

The misogyny wasn't even an inherent part of the world - it was just amateur scripting by someone who hated women. The Leto scene at the beginning, where he caresses a naked woman only to kill her for no reason, is the sort of mindless cliche I thought we'd left back in the 20th century.

Some interesting cinematography, but it never tried to do anything other than echo the original. Frankly, it would have been better just to rewatch the original than waste time with this - that's £15 and 163 minutes I won't get back.

Btw, no one's mentioned the awful Rachel CGI? Dear Hollywood - please quit doing this.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

Here's a rundown of the character profiles:

Male - cold, emotionless, and macho
Male - cold, emotionless, and macho
Male - cold, emotionless

Female - exists only to give pleasure to men
Female - exists only to be brutally murdered
Female - exists only to give pleasure to men
Female - exists only to be brutally murdered
Female - exists only to give pleasure to men, then brutally murdered
Female - exists only to be brutally murdered

I find this reading somewhat superficial, and one could just as easily say that the film is misandristic because it presents male characters who are all utter failures - a failed god unable to create life, a failed human who comes to believe he is more than the parts he is made of until his dream is brutally crushed, an absent father who has lost everything, while nearly all positions of power are occupied by strong women standing up for themselves and moving the plot forward: the police commissioner ordering her male lapdog around - and treating him as little more than that - the leader of the resistance who brings the revelations and sets the down on his luck protagonist on the path to victory, the psychotic murderer who forces K into action multiple times - and bests him just as many times - the dream designer who has created her own little world and has great influence over the story world, and even the AI (not really a "female" per se but she does have a female appearance) who has to give or explain the clues to Gosling's detective character when he finds himself stuck - at least twice.

Let's not forget the replicant prostitute whose nature is to "exist only to give pleasure to men" in theory, however we only ever see her standing up for herself, choosing to approach - and rescue - the male protagonist to serve her own cause (and her female boss) and never is she ever used as a tool by a man. She makes her own way through the story and the only time she ever has sex at all is when the "female" AI hires her to do it - and even then she is in control, using this as an opportunity to plant a tracker on Gosling and further the agenda of the resistance.

If I remember correctly 2 females are murdered - brutally indeed - by the two villains, one of them also a woman. I wouldn't call the death of the villainous Luv a murder - Gosling has to go through her to save Harrison Ford, and it's not like she was some innocent victim unable to defend herself. In many ways she is far more brutal than he ever is.

Finally, BR 2049 is a dystopia presenting the worst possible outcome for humanity as far as our relationship with the world and others around us go. Is there misogyny in this world? Yes. Is the film misogynistic? I think nothing could be farther from the truth.

 

[Toby Frost]

I certainly don't think the police chief is anything other than a good character. She is rounded, both sympathetic and antagonistic at times, clearly has a personality and hardly fits the Hollywood definition of eye candy. The fact that she dies is just the result of facing a more dangerous enemy. You could say the same about Vasquez from Aliens. Luv seems to me to be just a cross between Roy Batty and the Terminator: hardly a deep character, but along the lines of the chief henchman in a Bond film. She's a hands-on villain and that's pretty much that.

I think Joi, on the other hand, is a weak character and could be cut without much loss. Her role seems to be to personify innocence and/or K's good side - in other words, she is entirely dependent upon him to function, which is a common feminist argument against a female character (she literally can't exist without him). She is also doesn't make a lot of practical sense to me. So while she is hardly a generic hottie (probably only because K doesn't arrange her settings to be!) she could be put into a Victorian melodrama without much difficulty, which isn't a compliment.

The prostitute is a strange one, perhaps because prostitutes never seem quite convincing in films anyway (it may be to do with getting the balance right between grimness and titillation). The setting would be wrong if you removed all that sort of sleaze, but she could just as well be a truck driver given her secret role. But this leads to the scene with the two women in the flat, which I just found plain odd rather than whatever I was meant to feel. Again I feel that there are a bits of BR2047 that are just not that good: the scene where Jared Leto witters on and kills the new replicant is crude arch-villain stuff and, in a better film, it wouldn't be there. It certainly packs none of the punch of the killing of Rachel 2, which I would certainly keep (with better CGI).

The killing of Rachel 2, to me, sums up the core of the Blade Runner world: here is a person made for you, and if you don't like her, we'll throw her away. I gather that there are similar artificial women in Black Man and The Windup Girl, neither of which I've read, but I'd be interested in any comparison.

With respect, I think this discussion sums up my whole problem with an approach to critiquing things based almost entirely on identity politics: not that it shouldn't be there, but that it encourages a lack of nuance. If I tried, I could make a strong case that Aliens is an appallingly racist film - although it clearly isn't, and you would end up with a review that was all about proving that thesis.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

I think Joi, on the other hand, is a weak character and could be cut without much loss. Her role seems to be to personify innocence and/or K's good side - in other words, she is entirely dependent upon him to function, which is a common feminist argument against a female character (she literally can't exist without him).

I didn't particularly like Joi as a character - in fact I would argue she barely is one - and I find it hard to include her into any meaningful discussion regarding the perceived misogyny of the film because she's not a woman but an AI, she is not a living being. She's Siri with an added holographic form. I'm sure some people in our day and age would argue that somebody screaming their head off at Siri for not finding the closest sushi restaurant is being abusive towards her as a woman, but to me the debate has absolutely nothing to do with her perceived sex. Can a human commit a crime against an AI? Is Joi aware and/or sentient at all or is she just following a program to the letter? If she is not living in any meaningful sense, then there can be no abuse towards her and of course she will always be confined to being a commodity, a thing. I don't think she loves K at all, I think she is just programmed to display all the perceived characteristics of a human companion who loves whoever happened to buy it.

In any case I am not arguing that she is meaningless, but her relevance can only be analysed from the point of view of her owner, because she only effectively exists for his intent and purpose and not hers, since she has none. Siri is no one. My relationship to the Siri that's on my phone is only ever my problem and not "hers", because she perceives no relationship at all in the first place.

I think the point of Joi was to show what a sad world the characters from the film live in, where companionship can only be found in artificiality (a hologram for the emotional side, bioengineered prostitutes for the physical side). Her final "I love you" to K before being destroyed seems just as empty as the holographic shell that gives her form. So while it is untrue to say that Joi is defined by her need of K to exist, because she is no more than an accessory / extension of Gosling's character (she has no "needs"), the opposite however seems true to me: It is actually K who relies on her to pretend he exists as a normal, living being and not just a drone of the powers that be.

But let's not forget that she actively helps K on his investigation when he himself has no idea as to where the clues point, and even saves his life by distracting Luv as she is just about to finish him.

My only regret is that the movie forgot to include commercial ads for the male version of Joi, which I am sure exists in that world, because this would have probably helped people realise that she is not there to tell us what the filmmakers think the ideal woman is, she is just a product tailored to the needs of a sad, dystopian society, an object meant to be owned, used and abused like any other piece of technology, and the fact that she looks like a woman is completely irrelevant to her status of slave.

The killing of Rachel 2, to me, sums up the core of the Blade Runner world: here is a person made for you, and if you don't like her, we'll throw her away.

Exactly. Problems arise when the audience starts thinking that this motto not only applies to the world of the film but also to the people who made it. The issues the filmmakers depict and what they think about it are two different things.

Again, Blade Runner depicts a misogynistic society (also a heavily polluted world of artificiality where life is cheap and violence is rampant) but at no point do the filmmakers seem to suggest that this is a world where anyone should want to live.

There are allusions in the film to real animals being extinct and to how owning a small piece of wood would make someone rich, yet I have yet to hear anyone criticising the filmmakers' regressive views on ecology and animal well-being.

With respect, I think this discussion sums up my whole problem with an approach to critiquing things based almost entirely on identity politics: not that it shouldn't be there, but that it encourages a lack of nuance. If I tried, I could make a strong case that Aliens is an appallingly racist film - although it clearly isn't, and you would end up with a review that was all about proving that thesis.

Absolutely. There is just as much to be read in Jared Leto's impotence (the all-powerful male god who cannot create true life) as there is in Joi's servitude to her owner.

 

[Toby Frost]

I'd have to disagree about Joi: I saw her as a woman, because she occupied the role of K's wife/girlfriend/partner. By the way that the debate is usually worded, she exists only as an extension of K - a fantasy of his made sort-of flesh - and as such I'd say she was both female and very much a supporting character. Gender aside, I'd also call her weak because she really reiterates the main points of the film, like a chorus: everything is fake, everyone is sad and lonely. I'm not sure that it would have been just as powerful to have K wandering miserably around his flat on his own. (I also don't think she makes much logical sense. How can she see? Does everyone's Joi claim to want to be upgraded? Why, except to sell upgrade units?)

I think my ultimate problem with BR2049 is that I don't see the point to it. The end of the first film is like the end of Starship Troopers: it's on a trajectory now and it's not going to change. Introducing a resistance and the world outside the city waters down the sense of being in a stylised film noir, which was one of the great strengths of the first film for me. I think there's a risk that, once the various elements of a setting have been introduced and a story has been told about them, there's not much to do except shuffle the same small pack of cards (steampunk and epic fantasy have this problem, too). The answer is probably to introduce new elements, but of course this moves you away from the core of the setting - what makes it what it is, really.

The question about a male Joi is an interesting one. I've only seen this done half-sensibly in A.I., which wasn't a great film anyhow. It might be that something more subtle would be needed. The flip side of this, I suppose, is the small number of female androids that aren't built as wives/girlfriends. I can only think of the android from Alien Resurrection and perhaps Luv, who is a fighter, not a lover, so to speak.

 

[Jax]

In the dvd extras the drector says JOI has grown to more than just her programming through her love for K. She is very much a female character and more than just an ai.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

I'd have to disagree about Joi: I saw her as a woman, because she occupied the role of K's wife/girlfriend/partner.

Surely that's not the definition of a woman.

That's exactly the problem I have with people who call out the movie's supposed misogyny and cite Joi as an example: It bothers them to see her portrayed as nothing more than a luxury accessory for lonely males, but it doesn't bother them at all to call a "woman" something that merely looks like one, as if all you had to do to fit the bill of a woman was to have the appearance of a woman and be some guy's partner.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

In the dvd extras the drector says JOI has grown to more than just her programming through her love for K. She is very much a female character and more than just an ai.

Well, that's the filmmaker's opinion, nothing in the film tells me that the hundred thousand other Jois who were sold to other customers don't behave in exactly the same way. In fact, the film hints otherwise, when the naked Joi hologram talks to K at the end of the film and calls him a "good Joe" - the same name Joi had given him earlier to make him feel more human. To Joi, everyone's a Joe, there's nothing special about K.

But let's say she did outgrow her initial programming and loves her owner - she's still an AI. In fact that's the modern definition of an AI: a machine that can learn by itself. Learning to truly love does not make her a female, it makes her an AI that knows a bit more than the day before.

 

[Toby Frost]

Surely the feminist argument about Joi isn’t just to do with what her character is but a broader question of what roles are being provided to actresses and the like (at least, I'd have expected so). If every female role in a film was some sort of gyrating sex-robot, the feminist argument that all the female roles were rubbish would be made out, even if there were no actual human women in the story. Anyhow, I don’t see Joi as fundamentally misogynstic or anything like that, although she hardly breaks new ground, just a rather thin character and not worth the extra screen time (and BR2047 really needs to lose some screen time somewhere, if you ask me).

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

Anyhow, I don’t see Joi as fundamentally misogynstic or anything like that, although she hardly breaks new ground, just a rather thin character and not worth the extra screen time (and BR2047 really needs to lose some screen time somewhere, if you ask me).

I wasn't pointing fingers, simply stating that I had problems with the view that BR 2049 is a misogynistic film. I don't think that this is what you meant at all. In fact I feel like I'm still debating Brian G. Turner's post rather than you, since I agree with most of your posts.

I agree with you that Joi is a thin character, but I also think she should be viewed as a fancy appliance rather than a human character, which is predominantly defined by their needs, desires and weaknesses, concepts she can only simulate - and that has nothing to do with the sound of her voice or the fact that she looks like a female. When I see her on screen, I always see her as K's thing, never as K's partner. She's basically as useful to him as his car or his gun. So I'm not sure it's fair to use the way that program is treated in the story world to say that women get the short end of the stick in the BR universe.

Surely the feminist argument about Joi isn’t just to do with what her character is but a broader question of what roles are being provided to actresses and the like (at least, I'd have expected so). If every female role in a film was some sort of gyrating sex-robot, the feminist argument that all the female roles were rubbish would be made out, even if there were no actual human women in the story.

I believe that whether or not BR 2049 is a misogynistic film and whether or not actresses are provided with interesting roles are two different debates.

The American film industry is still a fundamentally male-centric environment today and hopefully this will all have changed sooner rather than later. But that doesn't mean that a specific film should get a pass if it has a misogynistic agenda, nor does it mean that strong female characters were never written in Hollywood. If people wanted to debate BR 2049's place in this male-centric industry and whether or not it is a fair representation of it, I would gladly point out that aside from an artificial companion who is neither technically female nor human and about as hollow as a voice-activated toaster, the film's story and its world are predominantly led and designed by strong-willed female characters (police commissioner, resistance leader, dream designer). The three main male characters however are all failures (an impotent and petty god, a disgraced blade runner on the run, absent father and alcoholic, and a young detective who starts as no more than a loyal dog to the system and relies on a holographic girlfriend to feel alive - and solve the case).

If anything, I find BR 2049 far more progressive than most of the films that come out of Hollywood every year. But one has to be able to distinguish the story world, which can be perceived as misogynistic (it creates genetically engineered prostitutes...) and the filmmaker's feelings towards that story world, which are anything but.

As far as I'm concerned, this film is a lot like Dagobah's cave: Within it, you only find what you brought with you.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The scene that introduces Wallace to us only had to let us know that he had a God-complex, and that he wanted replicants to have babies (bizarrely putting himself out of business, seeing as he's making them).

But the scene was constructed around putting a naked and helpless woman at his feet so he could stab her through her reproductive organs.

It wasn't a settings issue, or a character issue - it was a scripting one. And simply the most blatant example of sexism in a whole string of them.

I get that some people don't see that - casual sexism remains a normal part of our society - and images showing women as objects for pleasure or violence (or both) are routine and widely accepted. But just because someone doesn't see it, doesn't mean it's not there.

Once you do start seeing it, though, it's hard not to unsee. And BR 2049 was full of them, which was seriously disappointing.