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Blade Runner 2049 - 10.6.17 (1 Viewer)

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Just a couple quick questions about BLADE RUNNER 2049.
1) There's a big PAN AM sign. Is this a nod to 2001, a slightly alternative universe, or something else?
2) Is there a reason the that Ring Tone on one character's cell phone is the beginning of PETER
AND THE WOLF?
3) Am I the only one who think the film would have been greatly improved if about 45 minutes had
been cut?
 

Tino

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Just a couple quick questions about BLADE RUNNER 2049.
1) There's a big PAN AM sign. Is this a nod to 2001, a slightly alternative universe, or something else?
2) Is there a reason the that Ring Tone on one character's cell phone is the beginning of PETER
AND THE WOLF?
3) Am I the only one who think the film would have been greatly improved if about 45 minutes had
been cut?
1. It’s a nod to the first film
2. Didn’t notice
3. Yes
:D
 

TJPC

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You are by no means the only one who would like the movie cut. I find just about every scene would benefit from a trim. Too much lingering close ups etc. where nothing is really happening.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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Another great thing about this film is it is also a filmmaker's film. I believe filmmakers will glowingly discuss this film for years as happened with the original...of course with Deakins involved this began as a film that would stand out in many ways but I think Villenueve also brought a lot to the project.
 

Sam Favate

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^ Yes, despite box office receipts or reviews, this will be remembered as a beautiful film. Hopefully it will be re-discovered as the first one was, and be influential in its own right.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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^ Yes, despite box office receipts or reviews, this will be remembered as a beautiful film. Hopefully it will be re-discovered as the first one was, and be influential in its own right.

Well, at the moment we live in a time where bad super hero films are worshiped so we have to come out of that and maybe at that point this film will influence a new generation of filmmakers interested in making good films.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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Ended up seeing this tonight. I am NOT a fan of the original film. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever made it the whole way through from beginning to end. I just find it very ponderous. My experience with the movie is largely pieced together from different chunks I've seen at times on cable before I got bored and changed the channel. This sustained my attention for the entire running time, so by that measure it's a definite improvement.

My biggest complaint was the overabundance of expository dialog. The movie has a very simple, concrete story and the world building fills in a lot of the gaps for the audience. Having characters explaining what the visuals are already making clear just seemed to lack trust in the audience's intelligence.

I love great music and unfortunately the music is also uninspiring and forgettable which is a huge part of this story. If they couldn't get Vangelis, they should have gone with Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross.
This definitely felt like a step down to me. The music was a major part of the appeal for the first movie, even if I had issues with how it was integrated. This just felt like more Hans Zimmer noise to me. But then, I can count on one hand the number of his scores that I actually enjoy.

Really liked it. It's a story that builds on and continues the world and themes of the original. LOVED the cinematography and production design.
Like the first film, it succeeds best as a stylistic exercise. Wonderful production design and some truly iconic cinematography in the mix. I don't know that it quite compares to the first movie, though, because it's less novel now and it's much easier to do than it was back then. This movie is full of amazing things. But the movies are full of amazing things all of the time now.

After thinking about this film some more I do have the following reservation of it.

The coincidence of K, Dr. Stelline and Deckard coming together.
I'll join the chorus saying it's not a coincidence at all:
There's a reason Dr. Stelline is the best at doctoring memories for replicants: She is the only replicant who has lived a complete life from birth. She is the only replicant with a real childhood.

I believe there are certain memories that she gives all replicants, perhaps because those memories of hers get the job done but more likely because those memories are priming the current generation of replicants for the revolution to come. Hiding the whittled horse from the other kids is one such memory. The movie tips its hat as to whether K/Joe is Deckard's son when the prostitute replicant sees the whittled horse on the table and clearly remembers hiding it.

K/Joe remembers Dr. Stelline's emotional reaction when he shared the memory, and knows based on it that it was her memory. Since Deckard whittled the horse, 1+1=2

The first scene with Dr. Stelline felt very organic to the story being told, so it didn't feel to me like the movie was cheating by planting that information early on.

I was also very pleasantly surprised at how good Dave Bautista was in his role (particularly in the connecting short preview movie). I have liked his previous roles limited as they have been (mostly) - the level of sensitivity he was able to bring was an unexpected but very welcome.
I agree. Until I saw his name in the credits, I didn't make the connection at all that that was him.

I think the WWE is underestimated as a training ground for actors. It's basically a soap opera for boys -- lots of scenes to memorize, and a very a grueling pace.

That is something used only in this sequel. The original film didn't have them looking for a serial number. They used a series of seemingly random questions to test if their memories were authentic or implanted.

In the original film, the retinal scan looked as if it was being used to detect microreactions to the questioning, not numbers.
Yes, the baseline test back at the police station with the lines from Nabokov's "Pale Fire" was much closer to the Voight-Kampff test from the first movie. Presumably they tattoo the serial numbers into the eyes during production now for easier identification. Wallace's product over all seems a lot more streamlined that Tyrell's originals.

1) There's a big PAN AM sign. Is this a nod to 2001, a slightly alternative universe, or something else?
This is one of my favorite things about the movie. The original movie took place in 2019, which is only two years from now. Clearly we're not going to get from here to there in that short of an amount of times. And as a predictor of trends four decades into the future, the original movie was way off the mark -- to the point where it's actually considered something of a curse to the featured brands.

So what this movie did, smartly, was tell an alternative future history. It's pretty safe to say that the history of the Blade Runner universe and the real world are aligned until circa 1982. But from there, the two diverged markedly:
  • Retrofitting and repairing continued to predominate, and the real world trend toward a globalized marketplace of cheap disposable goods designed with planned obsolescence in mind never took off. Things aren't as small or as sleek as they are in the real world, but they are functional and probably more durable.
  • A number of brands that went kaput or faded into shadows of their former glory are still major players in the Blade Runner universe. Conversely, some brands that are major players in the real world either never existed in the Blade Runner universe or never achieved the same level of success.
  • While there is some form of wifi and internet connectivity, the world wide web as we know it doesn't seem to exist. Voice communication still predominates, and conversations that would happen by email or texting still happen face to face in this world.
  • The Soviet Union never fell, and products are branded as being made in the CCCP.
  • Space exploration never petered off like it did in the real world. The continued existence of the Soviet Union as a formidable rival for the United States likely meant that NASA was much better funded, and colonization of space was much more aggressive.
The little glimpses of how this world diverged from the real world were among my favorite parts. Taking the future envisioned by the first film and then extrapolating out another thirty years was absolutely the right call, in my opinion.
 

Brian L

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This movie finally pushed me over. Today I bought my first ear plugs. I'm going to use them the next time I need them in a theater. It would probably be a Nolan film or the new Dune!

I am a guy that likes loud, and I thought 2049 was stupidly loud. In fact, it was probably the loudest film I have ever seen. And then, some of the dialogue was whispered and difficult to understand.
 

Todd H

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Till she talks. It's amazing that how wonderful they look but as soon as they talk everything breaks down.

Yep. The uncanny valley rears its ugly head as soon as one of these recreations attempts to speak.
 

SamT

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I thought she looked better than Tarkin and Leia in Rogue One. For a moment I thought maybe it's an old footage. Of course all this before she speaks.
 

Brian L

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Until I saw the video posted earlier in the thread, I was certain it was old footage. The work they did here was lightyears better than what they did with Leia and Tarkin.
 

skylark68

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I really enjoyed the film. The world was effectively built and I extremely liked Wallace's compound. It reminded me so much of an Egyptian or Babylonian building. Especially with the lit water effects on the walls and ceilings. That ambiance was beautiful. I thought it was great having the "failed" brands of this alternative world being so prevalent. The Pan Am as well as the huge Atari logo were a great touch. I also thought it was fun that the car that K drove (flew) was a Peugeot. I realize it's still a huge brand in Europe but it left the US market decades ago.

This film and Dunkirk have restored my faith in modern film to be quite honest. All is not lost.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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It's a fictional universe...not meant to be real...so why would it matter what brands they use? I believe they used brands that were a callback to the original film to keep the universe consistent...which makes sense.
 

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