Blade Runner 2049

I really enjoyed it, but I have to say, I'm disappointed though not surprised it's performing poorly at the box office. It's a big, complicated, hard SF, cyberpunk noir that moves at its own pace and makes the audience do a bit of work. It was never going to be a mainstream hit.

Shoeless said:

I really enjoyed it, but I have to say, I'm disappointed though not surprised it's performing poorly at the box office. It's a big, complicated, hard SF, cyberpunk noir that moves at its own pace and makes the audience do a bit of work.

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Not enough explosions and blood?

caw

Probably something like that. I would't say the movie is glacially paced, but at over two and a half hours, it can get languid. And while there are explosions and some blood shed in it, it's definitely not every few minutes. On the whole though, they rarely make SF movies like this anymore, so even if it completely tanks, I'm glad it got made. I'll add it my collection along with other notables like Brazil and the original Blade Runner.

Shoeless said:

I really enjoyed it, but I have to say, I'm disappointed though not surprised it's performing poorly at the box office. It's a big, complicated, hard SF, cyberpunk noir that moves at its own pace and makes the audience do a bit of work. It was never going to be a mainstream hit.

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The first Blade Runner wasn't that popular with US audiences initially, was it? It got a better reception overseas, and became a cult hit, if I remember correctly. I didn't quite get it when I saw it the first time. It was after all the hype about the Star Wars movies, and it had Harrison Ford in it, but it was a very different kind of SF film. It's become one of my all-time favorites, however.

Hopefully, we can go see it next weekend. I was apprehensive about their making a sequel, because this so often means that one's memories (or take on) the first movie will become tarnished. Sort of like what they did when they kept making Alien movies after the first two. In my mind, all the later Alien movies don't exist, and the story ended with #2. Except once seen, they can't be completely unseen.

I don't know how the lukewarm opening will impact the decision to make more movies like this in the future. Nowadays, it seems like everything with a higher budget needs to make all the money back in the first week or it's deemed a failure. Making a movie that has a more sustained career as a cult classic doesn't seem to be on studios' radar anymore.

I don't know what's shifted in the world that's made it so everything is about short-term profits nowadays, but this isn't just confined to movies.

Roxxsmom said:

The first Blade Runner wasn't that popular with US audiences initially, was it? It got a better reception overseas, and became a cult hit, if I remember correctly. I didn't quite get it when I saw it the first time. It was after all the hype about the Star Wars movies, and it had Harrison Ford in it, but it was a very different kind of SF film. It's become one of my all-time favorites, however.

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You're absolutely correct, the original Blade Runner also did incredibly poorly at the American box office, so over 30 years later, that audience sentiment hasn't changed. It took many years for it to become a critical hit and a lauded piece of SF film history, and it was really the advent of home video that cemented the movie's place, especially when it became one of the first laser disc releases to really take advantage of that format's ability to put out much higher quality images than VHS, and to pioneer the concept of extra, supplemental material about making of the film.

I guess the big difference this time is that now the film studios, knowing that the original is now considered a classic, hoped that this would translate to a sequel, so they put $160 million into the budget for this film. I don't know if the total global box office will be enough for Warner and Sony to make their money back on this film, but I expect what will probably end up "saving" it will be the home video market again. I certainly have every intention of buying this in Blu Ray format when it comes out. I'm willing to bet that for both Sony and Warner, they're willing to take the hit to the profits for this film in exchange for having another SF classic feather-in-the-cap. Sometimes prestige and critical acclaim can be just as important currency as actual profit, and this time around, Blade Runner certainly is getting much more positive critical reception than the original did. So even if the audiences don't like it, the critics this time are much more receptive.

The critics love it, so there's an excellent chance you'll see Oscar nominations for director and cinematography come January. I'll bet money right now that it wins the sound categories. It's undeniably gorgeous but the sound is on another level.

I'm going Friday for my B-day. Can't wait.

I liked it. Gorgeous sound, cinematography, performances, and character development. At times it was needlessly slow though. The movie could've easily shaved 15-20 minutes off its duration without skipping a beat, IMO, but I'm not complaining. Not a movie for the impatient. It's meant to be savoured. Not about the destination, but about the experience getting there.

Shoeless said:

I guess the big difference this time is that now the film studios, knowing that the original is now considered a classic, hoped that this would translate to a sequel, so they put $160 million into the budget for this film. I don't know if the total global box office will be enough for Warner and Sony to make their money back on this film, but I expect what will probably end up "saving" it will be the home video market again. I certainly have every intention of buying this in Blu Ray format when it comes out.

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Between home video, streaming rights and television rights (the latter of which is a highly underrated and potentially "evergreen" source of income) it has a good chance of turning a long term profit. Still, the studios can't be happy that the film fell so far below even its lowest estimated box office expectations. Have to be hoping it will have great legs and a strong overseas showing.

Jcomp said:

Have to be hoping it will have great legs and a strong overseas showing.

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I would assume that'll be the case. This movie is very artsy, subtle, and full of subtext. At least here in Europe people should love it. America is suffering from fast-paced blockbuster fever right now, IMO, but they'll come around... A good movie is a good movie anywhere in the world.

Rob,

Thank you! That is what I have always said the unicorn means, not that stupid dream!

Ihe R.G. said:

I would assume that'll be the case. This movie is very artsy, subtle, and full of subtext. At least here in Europe people should love it. America is suffering from fast-paced blockbuster fever right now, IMO, but they'll come around... A good movie is a good movie anywhere in the world.

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Eh. Most of the "fast paced blockbusters" do just as well abroad (if not better) as they do at home. Some more recent efforts, such as the latest Transformers, Pirates and Fast & Furious installments, had flat out disappointing U.S. box office results, but have pulled in significant money in other markets. It's not as if Meanwhile, 3 of the most profitable (ROI wise) movies of the year in the states are relatively low-budget horror flicks (It, Get Out and Split).

Can we do spoilers in this thread now? I have an important question.

I just got back from seeing it, and I thought it was really good. A worthy sequel that kept me thinking and going, "Ohhh," for the whole movie. I was anxious when I heard a sequel was coming out, because the original was one of my favorite movies, and so often sequels screw things up or introduce a new premise that is incompatible with one's interpretation of events. That wasn't the case here, so yay.

The only complaint I had is that the theater I saw it in played parts of the musical score (during those moody, tense scenes where the camera was panning around) much too loudly, and it hurt my ears.

Celia Cyanide said:

Can we do spoilers in this thread now? I have an important question.

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I do too, but I'm going to google it first. Maybe write the question in a color that is hard to read?

Note, this is definitely a movie I will rewatch, because even with paying close attention, there were little things I missed.

I seem to be a rare voice of dissent. I liked it, didn't love it.

There's lots to like - it is visually stunning, and Ryan Gosling is excellent. Ana de Armas' is also very good and her character is a very clever addition to the film. But I found it dragged - slow-paced for the sake of it at times, rather than because it had something to say - and the ending was a big letdown.

SPOILERS
After hours of build up, all we get is a knock-down drag out fight? And with a henchman at that, not even the "real" enemy. Although Jared Leto might as well not have been in it, since his character got such little screen time and appeared to be really quite incidental to the plot.

I also couldn't suspend disbelief in this sequence. In the first film, the replicants are much more like androids - fittingly - and display superhuman resistance to pain and injury. Yet apparently here they can be simply choked and drowned like a normal human? They're supposed to work on offworld colonies with imperfect atmospheres, and we're shown that they can run through walls like paper. It jars that they are only fragile when the plot demands it.

Having taken what felt like three hours to get there, it all felt rather too abrupt an ending to be satisfying. It's a long film, and yet it felt like there's at least another half hour after the fight in the water that was left on the cutting room floor. Maybe they're setting it up for a sequel. If so, it sucks that they compromised this film to make it work. Better things to cut would have been all the superfluous side characters - did we really need the whole resistance angle that pops up for five minutes to give K an excuse to go back into battle? They didn't actually do anything with most of the characters and concepts they introduced. It just feels wasteful.

Roxxsmom said:

The only complaint I had is that the theater I saw it in played parts of the musical score (during those moody, tense scenes where the camera was panning around) much too loudly, and it hurt my ears.

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I also thought that the sound mixing was among the worst I've heard recently. Clearly they were going for a stylistic approach, with periods of cacophony followed by near silence, but it just didn't work. It didn't help that Zimmer's score is far too heavy-handed, and I say that as a fan of his and generally a fan of bombast. But it was just way too much for the film.

Roxxsmom said:

The only complaint I had is that the theater I saw it in played parts of the musical score (during those moody, tense scenes where the camera was panning around) much too loudly, and it hurt my ears.

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Same here. It was way too loud during "silent moments" of tension or panoramic views (maybe that's some artistic device in itself?). I suspect that might be the movie, not the cinema(?).

I enjoyed it very much, but I agree the pacing could be tightened up - there's a bit of self-indulgence in the way some shots are held as if waiting to be tapped for the One Perfect Shot website.

Another flaw is Jared Leto's character, who is a caricature of a villain, not a real person. But fortunately he's not in the movie much. Gosling and Ford are incandescent, though. They make everything real.

I’ll add another dissenting voice.

I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t really like it either and I did love the original. Too slow. Whereas I felt the original had a story to tell, and sprinkled glorious visuals along the thread of that story-telling, this film felt like someone had a bag of glorious visuals to show, and cobbled together something resembling plot around them.

Ryan Gosling’s performance was, for me, the best part of this film. Harrison Ford and others also turned in good performances. It just didn’t work for me, alas.

onesecondglance said:

SPOILERS
After hours of build up, all we get is a knock-down drag out fight? And with a henchman at that, not even the "real" enemy. Although Jared Leto might as well not have been in it, since his character got such little screen time and appeared to be really quite incidental to the plot.

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Yeah, it was actually The Kid on the way home who said "They could have cut him out entirely." It would have worked just as well with a faceless Board of Directors (or some other conceit).

And also? The lighting in the scene with Deckard and Wallace, where their faces kept going from light to shadow - pretentious and irritating.

(Spoilers over.)

One other thing that struck me. In the first film, violence was used sparingly and to deliberately shocking effect - killing Zora, in particular, was brutal and awful, and you could feel her anger and her terror, and Deckard's own disgust. It was a strong statement about how much dehumanizing was behind Deckard's job. I still flinch when I watch it.

The violence in this movie was your standard "we can do these cool shoot-em-up effects now for cheap, so we'll blow some heads off and won't that be fun?" Hollywood BS. It added nothing to the story and said nothing about the story.

Count me among the disappointed. Gosling was amazing, the other performances were perfectly fine, and there were moments of loveliness. But I want to see the 90 minute Not-Director's Cut.

I dug the music. I did find at times though it almost practically drowned out the dialogue. I don't know if that was a specific problem with the channel mixing in the theatre I was in. I'll probably buy the soundtrack. I rarely buy soundtracks. It's great driving to work music.