The 2048th sequel to Blade Runner

[charliepanayi]

Out next week, rave reviews (which I have to admit, I was not expecting) - who is planning to see it?

[Soupspoon]

Planning to, but a bit of a backlog of late-summer releases still. Coincidentally, I found my copy of the game, the other day. Haven't tried to get it working on a modern computer, yet. Should at least work on an XP box.

[commodorejohn]

Surprisingly, I think I'm actually going to see this. I've been extremely skeptical about it for a few reasons, not least that the modern movie industry mostly just doesn't do any of the things that made the original so great these days (I mean, try to imagine modern Hollywood turning out anything so dreamily-paced without two dozen coke-addled executives complaining about how it's too slow! and oh, could it also maybe feature shakycam and speed-ramping?) but a combination of signs that the filmmakers have their hearts in the right place and some of the early raves have me convinced to at least give it a shot. If nothing else, the prospect of seeing the re-energized Harrison Ford who showed up in JJ-Wars in a movie that doesn't completely waste his best performance in twenty years is worth a gamble.

No Vangelis is total bullshit, though.

[Liri]

No Vangelis?


I'm still pumped.

[commodorejohn]

He's not even dead, fer cryin' out loud!

[Soupspoon]

Well, surprised that I'm the first here to see this, apparently, given I have now seen this. (Had another film in my pending list as today's plan-to-watch, but the timings encouraged me to switch priorities.)

Visually, they've kept (and expanded upon) much of the much-loved original style. I believe it's the same world (and yet that it's not all just zee-rusted Coruscant/Trantor/Megacity One) with the same tech and society and the like (only moved on, and with hints of 'history').

The soundtrack works (except for some over-volume in one bit in particular, but that's a minor niggle given contemporary styles of movie making) and the rumbling chords and tuned percussion do their jobs.

The plot... I can't won't go into the specifics, yet, but I was worried I was being unintentionally telegraphed some details. I wasn't. I liked what they did. I did think they'd be inverting a very key part of original* canon, cleverly, but they actually... Yeah, not going there. There's still some departures. One of the bits is in the textual preamble explaining the film setting which, given the homage given in the very last scene, is notable. But I'll happily skip over that.

(* - Depending on which Cut you accept, of the original production. There are at least three, with different fan-interperetations/official conclusions to each.)

It feels a bit gratuitous, in places, pandering to both modern audiences (nudity, violence, explosions) and nostalgic ones (presenting scenes echoing ones from the original, not to mention in-universe replays), but that's what we've probably all come for.

I can't predict your collective reactions, but I thought it worked well. I may even see it again, if I can clear the rest of my backlog of films-to-see, just to catch more of the references - or perhaps try the 3d version (though I really don't like encouraging the practice of making those, on the whole). YMMV, but it's a solid production, IMO. I await your disagreements and refutations, of course.

[Liri]

I enjoyed it immensely. Even the volume. The color palette was very nice. It was long! But that's okay; I like long movies.

I peed right before it started but I still had to Go by a third of the way in (I held it). Might see it again just to watch with a relaxed bladder that's not running away with discomfort.

[Grop]

I really liked it. It looked great, made a very good use of its soundtrack, had nice designs and SF ideas, and surprised me several times. I expected many cliché things to happen, and quite often they came and were very different from my expectations. The nostalgic moments are done right: they are either subtle or at least quite different from standards.

(On the other hand a few cliché things that I didn't expect did happen, and a few things feel like fridge logic to me).

Also I didn't think the nudity was gratuitous. I remember like two scenes, and I think both served a purpose.

Weird product placement: K's car is a Peugeot. But then Lieutenant Columbo drove a Peugeot as well, so maybe all the cool cops do that in California.

[Soupspoon]

Days after, the full nudities I still remember were the 'birth' scene (putting that in terms that are particularly obscure and misleading to those who haven't seen it yet), which relied on bodily obscuration of an obvious nude to keep it from being full-frontal, and the Joi 'advertisement' which had helluva lot of gratuitous nipple on show (and indicates a very relaxed regulation of the industry¹). The 'threesome' was much tamer and cut away but seemed to go further than "it's possible, and probably this isn't the first time it has been done".

But gratuitous isn't continual. The violence was extreme in some circumstances (the impersonal fate of non-green-eyes, for example) but not every moment. The explosions (prior to "do your job", then again prior to the snatch team) seemed like a slightly unnecessary use of pyrotechnics when the plot could have progressed in other ways. I just saw each of those as made more like modern movies trend towards and not quite like the original flavouring (except maybe the violence, Zhora's glass-smashing and spasming upon 'retirement' in particular).


I was worried that my appreciation of the film would outpace that of everyone else, and it's nice to see that others do find it good. That leaves my small ifs and buts as looking far more significant than I intend. Don't take these as negatives, merely small scratches (perceived!) on an otherwise quite polished product.


¹ Or the advanced AI clearly working in the drones and homes is trusted to self-censor based on the audience. Not that there are many city-kids running round that area at that time of night. Society is probably not that different to ours, just more pressure towards the middle and the edges.

[Liri]

One of the reasons it works so well is that it really is a sequel. Not like the current rash of Alien flicks. I also didn't realize it was the same director as Arrival and was comparing the throbbing synths of the two in my head.

Edit:

Spoiler:

using Las Vegas added some additional unintended anguish

Not that audiences knew it'd be set there, in part, but I wonder how much turnout was depressed by the massacre.

[Chen]

Visually the movie was excellent. The feel of the setting and everything was spot on. Acting was also quite good. There were a some plot problems though. They really are fridge logic on this one since they don't really seem to get caught immediately when watching just because there's so much going on visually, or audibly in the scenes. It was also a tad long, which I imagine is not helping its mediocre box office numbers. The theatre I went to only had an ~8 pm show not the usual ~7 and ~9 shows.

Plot stuff and some other comments (with spoilers, clearly)

Spoiler:

- Unless I missed it, it was just plain coincidence that K went to see the memory woman who happened to be Deckard's daughter. Nothing seemed to lead him particularly to her, he just needed someone who was a memory specialist. And perhaps the most ridiculous technology in the whole movie was that device that let her see his memories without even touching him. That means they have full on mind reading in this time!
- Why did Wallace want to let replicants reproduce? He mentions not being able to make them fast enough, but birthing people and raising children has to be WAY longer than creating replicants. The replicants at least come out as adults.
- How the hell did K manage to take out the three flying cars that Deckard was being carried away in at the end? If it was so easy, why didn't the damn prostitute army thing do it themselves? Why did they need K at all in fact?

[Soupspoon]

Plot stuff and some other comments (with spoilers, clearly)

Spoiler:

- Unless I missed it, it was just plain coincidence that K went to see the memory woman who happened to be Deckard's daughter. Nothing seemed to lead him particularly to her, he just needed someone who was a memory specialist. And perhaps the most ridiculous technology in the whole movie was that device that let her see his memories without even touching him. That means they have full on mind reading in this time!
- Why did Wallace want to let replicants reproduce? He mentions not being able to make them fast enough, but birthing people and raising children has to be WAY longer than creating replicants. The replicants at least come out as adults.
- How the hell did K manage to take out the three flying cars that Deckard was being carried away in at the end? If it was so easy, why didn't the damn prostitute army thing do it themselves? Why did they need K at all in fact?

My takes on those:

Spoiler:

- Being the Chekhov's gunchild aside, her tech seems derived from whatever tech gave (original) Rachael her memories. It's something already extant in canon, perhaps now (decades later) made 'remote'. It seemed reliant upon something on the wall behind the examinee (sort of like an advanced MRI scanner component, maybe). I have more problem with the free-space holographic technology. Daughter's holoroom has big arc-like grooves in the floor and domed ceiling that are obviously intended to be emitter arrays, but projection doesn't really work that way (needs a Pepper's Ghost element, at least). But SciFi, so...

- I think he was doing an Elon Musk. Manufacturing adults one by one (or several by several, even) takes a huge manufacturing process to 'birth' them, which is probably inefficient and difficult to spread out onto colony planets where populations are needed. I think he's going for this approach to reduce the overheads and increase the expansion.
(He seems not to share the "replicants should not usurp natural humans" attitude of society, or at least the lawmakers, but then he bought up and reinvigorated the old company, so obviously he's not that bothered about that issue.)

- K has police training and (despite handing gun in, with his badge, though obviously as an officer he'd know how to get a gun again) a police-adapted vehicle that probably comes equipped with(/with the ability to install) heavy anti-vehicle weaponry, at least an analogue to how neo-Rachael/Luv had remote weaponry available for her own corporate purposes.

(The related big plot hole I saw was that the Vegas snatch-squad left K/Joe alive but free. They should have either taken him with Deckard (two vehicles, perhaps, for a galant Hero's Escape from his) or put him down like they were happy enough to do with Copy-Rachael when it was obvious she was useless.)

Just seen my first actual critic's review of the film, as well. A film critic, by profession, that is, not someone criticising. Because he wasn't. He raved about it. And this from a guy I often find likes things far less than I do, and rarely shows so much enthusiasm. Bodes well for my own appreciation.

[CorruptUser]

Saw it. Liked it. Some things made me think.

Nitpick

Spoiler:

Why was there several beehives in an area with no flowers? How did the hives survive?

Liked

Spoiler:

So there are two major factions running around with no conclusion to their plotlines. The Railroad and The Institue The skinjob rebellion and the skinjob manufacturers. Why aren't they dealt with? Well, no matter what, Joe was going to die. But to die for a worthy cause was what made him human. So he decided to die for Deckard.

I found it almost strange how well they managed to dehumanize sex. You have naked skinjob birth in front of Wallace and it's completely unsexy, you have a brothel and hookers and none of it is sexy, you have the Las Vegas rusted out statues of woman in orgasm, even the late movie image of naked billboard Joi sensually moving around and yet it's so impersonal it's unsexy. The only time a sex scene is enticing is the robo-threesome, and in that you don't even see a nipple.

[Liri]

Saw it. Liked it. Some things made me think.

Nitpick

Spoiler:

Why was there several beehives in an area with no flowers? How did the hives survive?

Spoiler:

How do you know they were real bees?

[Grop]

Nitpick

Spoiler:

Why was there several beehives in an area with no flowers? How did the hives survive?

Spoiler:

How do you know they were real bees?

Spoiler:

How are they supposed to survive in that super radioactive place? How are Harrison Ford and his dog doing that as well? Are replicants and their dogs supposed to resist radioactivity? Or is radioactivity a lie? I was quite confused by that part.

[Soupspoon]

I was going to say "the heat signature", but then temporarily forgot ordinary thermodynamics.

Spoiler:

From the event that specifically created the Vegas dustbowl, one can assume that the suppression of humans (by regulation/psychology) is greater than the suppression of wildlife. That it hasn't become Pripyat-green must be put down to the extreme modernist concreting and steel-enclosure of the landscape (not even a weed?) and the dust storms making even freeform Atomic Gardening just too unestablishable (in an area where Deckard does not exactly fear to live, and presumably practice apiculture, whether or not he consumes the honey).

But, being in the geographic centre of the biologically sparse zone, perhaps it is yet a handy base of operations as bees travel in all directions to the fringes where there are flowering plants (desert-hardened, eeking out dust-moderated sunlight and gaining their water from the mountain springs that always traditiinally watered The Meadows of Vegas, prior to its need to sustain a city-state sized population of wastrel humans upon a bedrock of near-continuous concrete), beyond the boundary distance we saw Joe first testing the (metaphorical) waters of the area. That and any discreet (and discrete!) flowerboxes that Deckard may be maintaining, during his copious free time betwixt drinking and... playing the piano?

But I still need to watch again, really. And Pripyatisation may have been harder if further ecological damage occured from beyond this ground-zeroish locale (seemingly a unique target, as far a radiological targetting is concerned) to have scoured nature, such as the Joshua Trees and flowering cactii of the Mojave basin. (There also seemed very little plantlife on the waste-heaps are around the orphanage, indicating either something extremely herbicidal in the environment, even for a waste tip, or else only that the scrap is so continuously disturbed and over-laid that nothing (save maybe that gathered by the scavengers for food) ever gets a foothold.

Though the Blade Runner world seems particularly short on all non-human life, barring highly-engineered entomocultural output foodstuffs (holding them back from the Soylent Green?). The mysterious (pre-original) cataclysm that left us with a human-heavy world and not also stablised a far lower population probably needs more explanation. (Off-world farming and resupply probably explains some of it, also why metal scrap can be so copious, without rapidly re-entering the metals industry through recycling. New stuff (including non-metal polymers and silicate materials) gets imported and the scavenging of the disposed waste becomes a cottage induustry for the dregs, after the most obvious wealth-producing shavings are already claimed during the original removal.)

[Grop]

I suppose the animated short movies might explain some of the history. The 2022 one for instance seems to be about the blackout.

Soylent Green related nitpick:

Spoiler:

The world seems to be quite poor. And in the very beginning, we see a super cop go to a well functionning farm and kill the one farmer because of replicant, even though he is threatening no one. There is no indication that someone might continue that business, which should logically be wasted (or that police is concerned by that at all).

And since we are all mentionning the fridge logic and weird stuff:

Spoiler:

Superior cop's behavior is very weird. She wants the child to have never existed and to be suppressed, just because or her ideology; however she isn't a politician and doesn't expect to gain anything from that. When K claims he has taken care of that business, she unquestionably believes him (even though he has acted quite suspicious), and shows no curiosity at all. This is even lampshaded when Wallace's goon questions her gullibility.

Also I agree with Chen about coincidences; and there is more to say about the ending:

Spoiler:

K seems to have met the child out of pure luck. That could be explained by her backstory (not being able to travel) as it is suggested that most wealthy people have left earth: she might be the most famous memory crafter on earth. Now, considering she is the child. Is her health problem a lie, or is it true? Is it pure luck that she has such a serious health problem and became a genius artist? Did the adult replicants in charge of her make up that health problem and put her in a bubble? Then what would have happened if she was not a genius artist, could they predict that? (She did say that isolation made her develop great imagination; but if isolation automatically made children great artists, well should I really end that sentence?). There is some irony in her working for Wallace and him probably knowing her by name, while searching for her; but her being a famous genius artist doesn't seem to make any sense.

[CorruptUser]

Spoiler:

Considering that her parents are super intelligent replicants, given that they sort of function as adults in spite of being a couple of years old, it stands to reason that a 30 year old replicant would be even more intelligent. Or talented or wise or whatever.

As for the immune disease, two main possibilities.
1) Reproduced replicants have a lot of bugs to work out, what with Tyrell dying before he could perfect it. Thus Rachel dying in childbirth in spite of being a super human.
2) Lie to protect her. No one is going to get a sample from her to see her barcodes... if the reproduced ones still have those codes.

[Soupspoon]

It is still an open question about Deckard, before you go to far into making that particular assumption.

[Grop]

Spoiler:

Considering that her parents are super intelligent replicants, given that they sort of function as adults in spite of being a couple of years old, it stands to reason that a 30 year old replicant would be even more intelligent. Or talented or wise or whatever.

I don't think it follows at all, even though it worked in Dragon Ball Z. Also intelligence and artistic competence are two different things.

When two intelligent people marry and have kids, their kids aren't automatically genius artists.

[CorruptUser]

Spoiler:

I still go by the Deckard is a skinjob theory.

As for the daughter, well, they are replicants not humans so birthing them may result in super skinjobs. Or more likely, a horrible monstrosity because the kinks weren't worked out. But whatever.

[Grop]

Spoiler:

Even if we assumed there was such a rule: if pokemon A and B breed, their child C will be a genius memory crafter.

This is something the show has never told us.

And there would be no way for replicants to predict that. Since no replicant has ever been born before that one.

[Zohar]

I saw it last night. It was gorgeous, sound design and soundtrack was generally excellent, and it was perhaps the most misogynistic and violent towards women film I've seen in a long time. I was shocked at how terrible and flat its portrayal of women was.

[charliepanayi]

I didn't see an issue with the female characters myself (and I certainly don't think the film is misogynistic), but the nudey statues and billboard were pretty dumb.

[Zohar]

Spoiler:

It had endless and gratuitous nudity by women for no reason. Almost every single woman in enthralled by the lead character. Practically none have any depth or redeeming qualities. Definitely more (prominent) women characters were killed in the movie than (prominent) men. Male characters who commit violence against women are the never punished or criticized in the film, and yet the most antagonistic, almost sadistic, woman suffers a horrifying violent death on screen while her male boss keeps his air of sophistication and supposed depth (while continuing to promote the random murder of women).

I could go in, but I'm sure others have covered it better than I did.

[CorruptUser]

I think part of the point was that it dehumanized the sex to the point where it was no longer sexy. There's nudity everywhere, including the "look on my o-face ye mighty and despair" statues out in Las Vegas, but the only sexy scene in the entire movie is that robo-threesome where you don't see any nudity.

Question, does it pass the Bechdal Test? There's a scene where Killbot 9000 meets with the police chief, and while I think they were talking about Mr McGuffin I don't think they were talking about the relationship, so I think it passes.

[Zohar]

Sure, make nudity unsexy, no problem. But other than those few shots we get at the corporate place, they are all nude shots of female bodies only. How surprising!

The most illogical part of the movie though is

Spoiler:

That GiantCorp doesn't have all data of what's happening with the virtual wives they provide available to them. Of course they would,
it's ridiculous to imply otherwise.

[CorruptUser]

The original movie had Deckard practically rape Rachael, or at best take advantage of a woman in an emotionally unstable state of mind, whereas Roy Batty was rather tender with Tris. Violence against women was prominent from the start.

Of course, I go by the theory that Roy was the hero of the first movie and Deckard was a murderer.

[Soupspoon]

Hmmm, what those points make me think of is a (only partially-supported) side-theory on the trans-apocalyptic world of Blade Runner, both movies, that there's a sort of Children Of Men scenario where women are artificially depleted. Perhaps prioritised for off-worlding, perhaps susceptible to some Colony Collapse Disorder influence where wives and mothers are overwhelmingly kept in filtered family homes, leaving just 'working girls' (unconcerned/actively against fertility) and professionals such as Madam Cop (career over biology) out there. The latter being out of the dating equation, the former filling part of the void with VR-tech covering most of the rest.

You just never see the kind of woman you should care about (they're off-Earth or 'happily' stay at home). And maybe that's also a further partial reason for Mad CEO to be seeking a particularly viable version of his product.

(Doesn't explain the extreme population densities (nor the quite obvious non-Children Of Men existence of neo:Dickensian orphanages that aren't groaning under the weight of continual rich patronage), unless it's only high-density in the likes of Megacity One, and surprisingly peopled even in the scrapyards, because most of the planet is unlivable except for (male) bug-farmers who tend their 'livestock' in a practically monastic lifestyle. - Though there's another reason why he wouldn't have a wife, of course.)


Yeah, multiple problems with that being passably usable as canon. Probably blame Central Casting for being man-heavy, then and now. (Or the Casting Couch being heavy upon women, as we're increasingly finding out...) But it does paint our dystopia with further shades that are similarly short on pink-and-rose hues.

[Magnanimous]

It was... alright. Some parts were really good, but this movie felt really bloated and could easily have been a half-hour shorter. It seemed like every single scene had dramatic pauses for effect, with emotional music in the background and characters staring at each other. Which is fine if you do it once or twice in a movie, but by the second half I kept thinking "get on with it!"

Also the treatment of women was definitely a bit skeevy. The character of Joi really didn't have much impact on the plot, and she had basically zero agency. I guess she was meant to be a foil to the female replicants, to make them seem more human?

Nitpick:

Spoiler:

Does the LAPD office not have security cameras? Or security guards? Wallace's assassin lady seemed to just walk in and kill someone (twice!) with no consequences.

[Chen]

Spoiler:

It had endless and gratuitous nudity by women for no reason. Almost every single woman in enthralled by the lead character. Practically none have any depth or redeeming qualities. Definitely more (prominent) women characters were killed in the movie than (prominent) men. Male characters who commit violence against women are the never punished or criticized in the film, and yet the most antagonistic, almost sadistic, woman suffers a horrifying violent death on screen while her male boss keeps his air of sophistication and supposed depth (while continuing to promote the random murder of women).

I could go in, but I'm sure others have covered it better than I did.

Some comments

Spoiler:

- Gratuitous nudity on advertising I'll grant you there were only women. Not much different than current real world advertising, but still.
- Enthralled by the main character seems like a stretch. JOI certainly though that was the whole point of her. The police boss had that one scene in the apartment while drinking that at a vibe of it, but I'm not sure I'd say enthralled. The implication seemed more like an reversal of the whole boss sexually harassing employee thing, especially with the implication that K couldn't actually say no. I wouldn't say Luv was enthralled either.
- In terms of depth I can get that, but in reality does anyone besides K have any depth in this movie? Harrison Ford was there to seem gruff and angry and that's about it. Jared Leto TRIED to have some depth but really it didn't really work well.
- Prominent women being killed over men is an interesting one. They could have killed Deckard I suppose to even it out. But even then we have what Luv, police captain and K himself dying as the only "prominent" characters? I mean the only other two would be Deckard and Jared Leto's character. I suppose JOI too, though it's questionable how much "killing" that is. I find it hard to reconcile this one since as women become more prominent characters, clearly the number of prominent women getting killed is going to go up too.
- It's only Jared Leto's character who committed violence against a woman in a non-fighting situation (twice) and who would have been there to criticize or punish him? Both were done in the middle of his pyramid lair. I mean they had video of Luv murdering that lab tech and she didn't get punished either.

[Grop]

The most illogical part of the movie though is

Spoiler:

That GiantCorp doesn't have all data of what's happening with the virtual wives they provide available to them. Of course they would,
it's ridiculous to imply otherwise.

Did the movie really make that suggestion? I don't remember when.

Regarding K's instance of Joi being useless. That is made explicit during that gratuitous nudity scene (or was that fan disservice ?):

Spoiler:

Joi tells you what you want to hear.

Actually most things in this movie are quite useless, plotwise. If you consider what has been accomplished between the beginning and the end of the movie ~ nothing much really. So everything is only there to tell messages and have symbolic or mood value. Such would be the case of every scene Wallace appears in, for instance.

[Zohar]

Some comments

Spoiler:

- Gratuitous nudity on advertising I'll grant you there were only women. Not much different than current real world advertising, but still.
- Enthralled by the main character seems like a stretch. JOI certainly though that was the whole point of her. The police boss had that one scene in the apartment while drinking that at a vibe of it, but I'm not sure I'd say enthralled. The implication seemed more like an reversal of the whole boss sexually harassing employee thing, especially with the implication that K couldn't actually say no. I wouldn't say Luv was enthralled either.
- In terms of depth I can get that, but in reality does anyone besides K have any depth in this movie? Harrison Ford was there to seem gruff and angry and that's about it. Jared Leto TRIED to have some depth but really it didn't really work well.
- Prominent women being killed over men is an interesting one. They could have killed Deckard I suppose to even it out. But even then we have what Luv, police captain and K himself dying as the only "prominent" characters? I mean the only other two would be Deckard and Jared Leto's character. I suppose JOI too, though it's questionable how much "killing" that is. I find it hard to reconcile this one since as women become more prominent characters, clearly the number of prominent women getting killed is going to go up too.
- It's only Jared Leto's character who committed violence against a woman in a non-fighting situation (twice) and who would have been there to criticize or punish him? Both were done in the middle of his pyramid lair. I mean they had video of Luv murdering that lab tech and she didn't get punished either.

Spoiler:

- The resistance was super into K for some unclear reason, too. But as you said Cop was as well, and Luv (/Love?) certainly had her interest in him. True both the corporation and the resistance had reasons to be into him, because he was hopefully leading them to the girl, but the creators of the movie chose to show that interest primarily through women chasing after this man.
- I think the movie tries to give background and motivation to Deckard, K, Leto, even the first replicant killed. Edward J Olmos's character I felt also had depth, but then again I love that actor so maybe that's my bias. On the other hand, there really isn't much explanation on why the other women do what they do - Joi and Luv are built to do certain things (as is K, but he manages to escape that fate), cop woman has no background, resistance woman and girl possibly have a bit more details, I'll grant you that, but I feel they're a lot more minor to the movie.
- So at first I said "Named" women but then I remembered the replicant Leto murders and wanted to include her while keeping out the faceless hordes Luv kills with her drones. I think there's a substantial difference in the type of deaths they suffer. You could even stretch it to say that Rachel essentially died in this movie (she certainly wasn't dead before this one). And Joi is 100% an on-screen death, and is treated as one. There's also "New" Rachel's death. If there's more women characters then yeah, the number of dead women would go up as well, that's understandable. But in this case they outnumber the men by a lot (again, if we're not counting faceless killings, which might include women as well). And not only that, the murders are brutal and violent. Sliced open, stabbed, strangled to death - these are all more cruel than the way the few men die.
- You're right, Jared Leto's character is evil and cruel, and yet suffers no consequences for it. Luv was certainly punished! Not by the law, but by the narrative - she gets strangled and drowned and is seen to suffer.

The original movie had Deckard practically rape Rachael, or at best take advantage of a woman in an emotionally unstable state of mind, whereas Roy Batty was rather tender with Tris. Violence against women was prominent from the start.

Just because the original movie was violent towards women is not a reason to expect the second movie to follow suit.

[CorruptUser]

Joi was in the movie to make you question whether a computer program could be alive, in the same way people question if skinjobs are people.

[Soupspoon]

And ad-Joi was implicitly rejected as a replacement, just like re-Rachael explicitly was. I don't think it's entirely clear that the memory of either 'original' was downgraded from 'real' (nor that the memory of both were not) by the relative experiences. Though any attachment was non-transferable, either from true grief or from a determination not to fall for the 'trap' being set by the various levels of the corporation(s) concerned.

[Chen]

They left the ad-JOI at the end ambiguous particularly to bring up this kind of questions. The realization when she calls him Joe is there and clearly made the character also question whether or not the other JOI was really "alive" or just something telling him what he wanted and programmed to do so. Like much of the film's philosophy (like the first film) they leave it open ended without a firm conclusion on it.

[pogrmman]

I REALLY wanted to see this in theaters — especially after my whole family gave it good reviews. They’re all big fans of the original.

Unfortunately, they pulled this from the theater in town before I could see it (the disadvantages of going to school in a small town!) and I don’t think it’ll still be in theaters when I make it back home (which’ll be for thanksgiving).
:/

(I mean, I doubt my quizbowl team will want to waste time and get back super late next weekend,and I don’t drive, so I’m probably not going to be able to make it into the city)

[OP Tipping]

Good movie, good reviews ... I wonder why it underperformed at the box office.

There have been a few movies like that lately. Alien Covenant, War for the Planet of the Apes. It must be maddening for the companies: we know it is a good movie, you know it is a good movie, why aren't many people going to see it?

[Liri]

Alien Covenant wasn't that great. Visually it was lovely though.

And I didn't see the new PotA because I haven't seen the previous ones in this trio(?) even though I'd heard good things. And I didn't see the earlier ones because I haven't finished the originals. It's missed opportunities all the way down.

[Zohar]

The new Planet of the Apes just looked like more of the previous movie, so it didn't really interest me very much...