Blade Runner 2049 (3D / second-pass / SPOILERS)
Cert: 15 / 163 mins / Dir. Denis Villeneuve / Trailer
It's funny how these things clump together, but this was my second second-pass of a second-installment this week. Pretty sure if I managed to do that again after the weekend I'd get some sort of badge or certificate. I digress.
Having left this Obviously Not Long Enough, I decided Blade Runner 2049 really needed another going over. A work best experienced on a massive screen, the ideal place for this is the cinema of course. And whereas home-based deconstruction can take place whenever you've got a couple of free hours, cinema scheduling means that you've really got to decide within 3-4 weeks if you can get more out of a movie. I'm sure I'll be watching this for years anyway, but I really want to get the most out of it now.
Before I get stuck in, I should say how much I liked the flickering, juddery, interlaced studio idents at the start. Nothing which follows uses this faux-interference aesthetic until the closing credits, and I can only imagine they've been put there to piss off the people who download the film illegally and have that deflating feeling of wasted bandwidth upon pressing Play. Top work!
So. Magnificent though Blade Runner 2049 is, as I suspected rewatching the movie brought no great revelations. Whether Denis Villeneuve's sequel needs more time to bed in culturally and generate more general discussion, or whether the story just has less to say (or more specifically, ask) than its progenitor remains to be seen. With the best will in the world, I suspect it's the latter. This is a fine looking presentation in 3D, even if Roger Deakins says otherwise, although like all post-production conversions, it never feels intrinsically necessary.
Ana de Armas is great as Joi, and Carla Juri also shines as Ana (somewhat confusingly). But this film belongs firmly to Sylvia Hoeks' Luv, the replicant quality administrator and assassin*1. Hoeks owns every single scene she's in here, showing both the aspirational pinnacle and ultimate downfall of perfected human simulation with furious bursts of anger, jealousy and childish petulance. More human than human, indeed.
If you take nothing else away from Blade Runner 2049, Joi seems easily available in a consumer society, but Luv is more intense and will end up killing you…
As a story about manufactured evolution, it's both prescient and timeless. The intricacies of the central plot are much clearer the second time around, even if this robs the film of its smaller and larger conundrums whilst watching. Whereas Blade Runner famously asked more questions than it answered, the more philosophical aspects of BR2049 seem largely wrapped up within its not-inconsiderable run-time.
The discussion throughout the first movie of course was 'can a bioengineered replicant with an organic AI brain be treated as human once it becomes self-aware?. Irrespective of the 'other' as-yet-unanswered question, the answer to this is yes. The creation may not be biologically human, but it's emotionally human. So when BR2049 asks 'yes, but can a holographic simulation with an AI brain be treated as human once it becomes self-aware?, the answer is also clearly yes. Humans are just machines made of meat rather than electronics, and the existence of a metaphysical soul can be neither proved nor disproved using both examples. Discuss.
There's also a brief (and less-explored) pondering over 'if you're implanted with someone else's memories, how can you tell which ones are yours?. But Agent K's belief in his past experiences affects his judgement and actions in the present. Those burned-in reactions and instincts become part of his mind's operating-system, so yes, they're his memories as much as his interpretation of events which occurred the day before. He might not have been there when key childhood events took place, but he remembers them so they're his memories in a very real sense. He didn't 'make' them, but you (probably) didn't make the clothes you're wearing - they're still yours. Discuss.
Additionally, in terms of who is and isn't a replicant and how that affects their outlook and prospects, Villeneuve (or more properly, screenwriter Hampton Fancher) is far more transparent this time around, so the only real lingering discussions are based on the ongoing one from the first Blade Runner anyway*2. All I had after that were plot-based niggles:
• Does the 'natural lifespan' of the new replicants include the time normally allowed for humans to pass through childhood and adolescence, or is it adulthood-onwards? We see them 'born' in their adult bodies, and Sapper certainly appears to have aged - if only because you wouldn't make a replicant which looked like that grizzled 'out of the box', now would you?*3
• How come Sapper wears glasses? Is it because a) He’s trying to disguise himself and/or blend in with the humans to avoid detection? (in-universe explanation), b) As part of his natural lifespan, his eyes are starting to wear out and he can’t get them replaced or repaired without drawing attention to himself? (in-universe explanation), c) The glasses Sapper wears are like those tiny wire-framed ones you typically see in movies with Second World War Jewish refugees wearing them, largely due to their lack of materials/resources at the time, and the film is drawing a visual parallel between the persecution of the Jews and the authorities in Blade Runner hunting down the last of the Nexus 8s, not least to allow for control-freak Niander Wallace’s ‘superior’ models? (out-of-universe explanation), or d) All of the above. Discuss.
• Speaking of superior, how come Agent K just manages to drown Luv so (relatively) quickly? I know these are bio-engineered creations as opposed to wires and pulleys, but you’d think Wallace would have adapted them to either draw the required oxygen from water if they become submerged, or at least be able to hold their breath longer. Wasn’t the original point of the replicants to perform work which was too hazardous for humans, like maintaining the off-world colonies and ships (ie working in freezing and low-oxygen environments)? And now it turns out that if one of them falls asleep in the bath, that’s Game Over? Ridiculous.
• Most importantly: wait, who's looking after Deckard's dog?
*1 A job title I'm currently pushing for myself, but my employer won't have it. [ BACK ]
*2 There's no way of dressing this one up, that CGI Rachael is passable until she begins speaking on-camera, then it's absolutely atrocious. One of the few genuine weak-points of the entire film Too much movement in all the wrong parts of the face. It felt less weird when the holographic girlfriend simulation was syncing with an android hooker. Seriously, Rachael and Rogue One Leia need to get in the sea.
I like that Deckard points out to Wallace "Her eyes were green...", because if that's the only thing he can see wrong with this picture then his own clearly aren't working properly, either. From a story perspective, surely Deckard is more likely to have been persuaded to help Wallace if he'd made a 'projected current age' replicant, implying that the pair could somehow go on to make up for lost time, rather than unequally resetting the relationship with an age-gap. This would also have entailed getting the actual human Sean Young back in the studio, and I wouldn't be typing all of this in the first place.
The irony hasn't escaped me, of course, that all of the other replicants in the film are flawless facsimiles of humans since they're played by humans, whereas the Rachael-bot is a literal replicant, and who is so far down The Uncanny Valley that the Los Angeles Pot-holing Society have been called out to rescue her... [ BACK ]
*3 Imagine the day the Ryan Gosling replicant was created, though. The boss comes in and is like "I know you've made this one stab-impervious Terry, but why are the eyes so close together? You do know we have to sell these, right? Would you buy this? ...well I suppose the LAPD might take him, but they're going to pull our trousers down over a discount..."[ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Blade Runner 2049 (first-pass / SPOILER-FREE)
Cert: 15 / 163 mins / Dir. Denis Villeneuve / Trailer
You've come here for a review of Blade Runner 2049, and in much the same way as Kingsman, you've arrived with two questions. Again, the answer to the first is "yes, very much so" and to the second, "no, but how could it be?". Because you're an impatient soul, I've put my lengthier-than-usual pre-amble in the first footnote. You're welcome. Discussion of the film begins after the next paragraph.
First things first: before going to see Blade Runner 2049, I'd advise you to watch the three prequel/lead-in shorts, Black Out 2022, 2036: Nexus Dawn and 2048: Nowhere To Run. Along with the timeline over at Collider, they cover key events which occurred between the first Blade Runner set in 2019 and the new movie. This isn't essential homework, but any background exposition in BR2049 is fleeting and largely conversational, so it's handy to have this grounding beforehand.
The story follows Los Angeles detective and Blade Runner, Agent K (Ryan Gosling) as a routine retirement job opens a potentially huge can of worms. K's boss Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright), anxious to avoid the ire of her superiors and attention of the powerful replicant-manufacturing corporations, orders her young charge to tie the case up as efficiently as possible (ie not sparing the gunfire). But K's inquisitive nature leads him along a trail to former assassin Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), in a place where the ghosts of the past are buried almost as well as the conspiracies of the present…
So the first thing which strikes the viewer about Villeneuve's sequel is how light it can be in L.A. Whereas Ridley Scott's telling took place almost exclusively at night, the tale's pickup point features scenes at various times and varied run-down environments. It's never sunny of course, with only the dregs of humanity left behind on a near-ruined planet, whatever passes for natural daylight only serves to illuminate the brittle shell of a world even more harshly. Although undoubtedly existing in the same timeline, this only really looks like the same Blade Runner on the occasions we see the city's filthy skeleton lit only by neon and gunfire. But if the visual theme in 1982 was of darkness and rain, 2017's is more desperation and rust.
And this difference is the key to the film's greatest strength: BR2049 never feels like the retread that would have been the path of least resistance so far as writing is concerned. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher returns, in the company of Michael Green, and together they've created a continuation of the story, rarely slowing to nod at the audience with knowing familiarity*4. Of course, the pressure is on Villeneuve to deliver a work as profound as its forebear, but going in with that expectation is likely to lead to over-symbolising what is essentially a beautifully shot detective movie. Villeneuve doesn't explore the same avenues as Scott did, or leave the viewer with the same (or even as many) questions. That's not to say there isn't plenty to think about afterwards of course, but there's no book to cross-reference it all against, this time.
At a run-time which won't give you much change out of three hours, the pace is languorous to the point of self-indulgent, but Roger Deakins' cinematography earns that effortlessly (although Sony's shameless product placement is at an all-time high). And for a production with such a wide-ranging cast-list, the lion's share of our time is spent with Gosling, Ford and Sylvia Hoeks' antagonist Luv (who deftly steals every single one of her scenes). Gosling seems almost perfectly cast in his role as our guide through the shattered landscape, and Ford brings more of latter-day Solo than latter-day Jones to his reprisal (thankfully*5).
To say any more would probably be to delve into what makes this so enjoyable, and begin to spoil it in the process. Other than a grounding in Blade Runner and the shorts linked above, try to see this 'clean'. But do try to see it.
Was I blown away by Blade Runner 2049? No.
Do I think the film will have a cultural longevity which will become more intriguing as each year passes? No.
But did I think exactly the same when I first saw its predecessor? Yeah.
What do I know?
Well, Blade Runner.
To the point where it's fairly essential that you've at least seen the first one.
The cinema is the natural home of this outstanding-looking piece of work, yes.
I think it just about does.
But I also think the film could have set out to achieve more.
For the most part no, although there could be a couple of exceptions in there.
I shouldn't imagine so.
There isn't. For shame.
Couple of perfect moments for one, too.
*1 This is the pre-amble which was too long to feasibly put as part of the main review. It was written before watching Blade Runner 2049. And as flowery and self-important as this seems (okay, is), it felt worse to give the introduction its own separate blog post, somehow. That's the kind of treatment usually reserved for Star Wars, after all.
So. Where to begin? Although as a youngster I'd read the comic adaptation which filled out the page-count in Marvel UK's Return of the Jedi Weekly, I first came to the actual film of Blade Runner in the mid 90s. And I first began to fully appreciate it about five years later (and even that's been a constantly increasing curve rather than an off/on switch). Ridley Scott's 1982 neo-noir masterpiece is the gift which keeps on giving; still finding new audiences, still beguiling old ones, still being discussed and dissected after thirty five years. And comparing the movie with Philip K Dick's source-novel only raises more questions as that's a thematic whirlpool of its own, yet the works seem to feed off each other with each re-visit. I don't think I'll ever be done with either.
So it may seem unduly harsh to say this, but Blade Runner is a film which categorically does not need a sequel. The loose ends of Rick, Rachel and replicant-retirement don't need tying up. Indeed the movie's ambiguity is what makes it so satisfying, its point-blank refusal to put a bow on the story, despite a superficially happy ending. So in helming the follow-up, director Denis Villeneuve has his work cut out, even with (or perhaps more accurately because of*2) Ridley Scott's return in an exec-producer role.
And yet, am I happy a sequel exists? Hell yeah. But if Blade Runner 2049 is to be a worthy follow-up, there's no way I can begin unpacking it after a first viewing*3. If I leave the cinema understanding everything I've seen then the film has failed on some level. I expect to be talking about BR2049 for a long time to come. So y'know, no pressure Denis.
With all this in mind, what follows above is a first-reaction. More of a 'should I see it?' than 'why should I see it?'. You already know if this flick is going to be for you, and for obvious reasons you can take your own baggage and tailor your own expectations accordingly. But tonight we're gonna party like it's 2049. [ BACK ]
*2 My own concerns with Mr. Scott have been written about elsewhere, but it's hardly controversial to say that his return to the Alien franchise has had a mixed reception. And yes, footnotes within footnotes. It's very much that kind of film [ BACK ]
*3 I haven't even got round to going back to Villeneuve's Arrival yet, even though I know it fully deserves the time. But it's his work on that movie in particular which tells me he's the right choice for Blade Runner 2049. [ BACK ]
*4 Although the writers do place one rather ungainly elephant in the room by means of unnecessary callback, but I'll leave that until my next review. [ BACK ]
*5 And I say this as one of the twelve people in the world who actually like Crystal Skull, but Harrison Ford's dramatic range isn't particularly wide. He's only great at being varying shades of Harrison Ford™, and thankfully the one we get here is Weary Ford rather than Curmudgeonly Ford. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The A-word.
It's the bane of cinephiles, everywhere.
That book you love; the comic you remember; the show you used to watch; the game you lost an entire summer playing? Oh, someone's adapted it and it's getting made into a movie! Whether a cause for pre-emptive celebration or foreboding caution, it leads to only one thing: expectation. And expectation is the death of the 'clean' movie-viewing experience; no matter how closely the film sticks to its source material, or how much it tries to distance itself, it will be faced with the hurdle of comparison.
And while the movie industry loves the pre-built marketing buzz of 'now a major motion picture!', they loathe the comparative references which will be made from the first review onwards. Because many punters will expect to get exactly the same reaction from a completely different medium, to a story they already know. And therein lies the problem.
In this monthly series, we'll look back at some of the most respected and best-loved properties which have made the perilous journey to the big screen; often with some controversy, and almost always with far too much hype. This isn't so much a review of the films themselves, more an appraisal of their suitability as an adaptation.
I was lucky in that I'd (inadvertently) picked an edition of Androids featuring an introduction by Paul McAuley. Printed in 2011, the three-page opener tells the reader eloquently, yet bluntly, to un-remember the film which will no doubt be first and foremost in their mind. It should be obvious that the 1968 book isn't a novelisation of the 1982 movie, but it's a point which bears stating at the outset.
In Dick's Los Angeles of 1992, a radioactive dust hangs in the air and killed most of Earth's wildlife in the early days of 'World War Terminus'. Any remaining animals are extremely rare, and owning/caring for one has become both a social and moral duty, as well as a status-symbol. For those who cannot afford a real animal, electronic replicants are available. But the planet is essentially dying, with most of the surviving inhabitants having moved out to colonies on Mars and beyond. The remaining humans on Earth huddle under the spiritual umbrella of a secular-religion Mercerism, based around shared empathy, and use a domestic appliance known as a Mood Organ to generate emotion on demand, counteracting (or even causing) whatever anxieties are on their minds. Aspiration, reassurance, faith and narcotics; times may change, but human behaviour does not.
As an inducement to relocate, the authorities offer migrants their own personal android-assistant, off-world. Manufactured by The Rosen Association, these ever-improving machines grow more interwoven in their extra-planetary societies, but are still viewed as equipment, despite having intelligence and self-awareness. What they lack is spontaneous empathy, a trait which their manufacturers have been unable to simulate via programming. Any androids who manage to escape their servitude usually make their way to Earth, where they realise a less-dense population offers more places to hide.
Taking place over roughly 24 hours, the story follows state-licensed bounty hunter Rick Deckard, in the middle of squabbling with his wife as he's called in by the LAPD to retire six escaped Nexus 6-model androids after they hospitalise his colleague, Dave Holden. Among them is the group's leader Roy Baty, his android wife, Irmgard, and Pris, who hole up in the ramshackle apartment of simple-minded delivery driver, J.R. Isidore (the character who becomes J.F. Sebastian for the film). But what the machines apparently lack in emotional judgement and experience, they more than make up for in raw strength and intelligence. In order to complete his assignment, Deckard travels to The Rosen Association headquarters in Seattle, where the enigmatic Rachael is tasked to assist him, being a legalised Nexus-6 herself.
+ + + + +
Far more introspective than its cinematic offspring, this is a book about empathy, identity and consciousness. Those themes exist in the adaptation as well, of course, but here they make up most of the inner dialogue. And while Rick is still handed the assignment in much the same circumstances, the interaction with his quarry is more in-depth than just point/shoot*1. It's this engagement which leads to the mercenary questioning his own empathy, and frequently. The notorious question of 'is Deckard a replicant?' is dealt with directly here, and by Deckard himself (although I won't tell you which way that turns out).
A fairly slim volume at 193pages (my edition, at least), Philip K. Dick doesn't waste too much time describing the scenery, keeping the story moving forward with each compact chapter. The spectre of implanted-memories raises its head again, arguably with better impact than in his story which was about implanted memories. Dick also focuses far more on the above-mentioned conversations between Deckard and the rogue-androids, than when the hired killer finally despatches them. The retirements are treated as punctuation at the end of a life-sentence, rather than a reflective denouement. Not to get too spoiler-ific, but you remember in Blade Runner when the final showdown with Roy progresses from a tense lengthy shootout to a rooftop chase, then rain-soaked iconic soliloquy? Here's how it plays out on paper...
"I'm sorry, Mrs Baty," Rick said, and shot her. Roy Baty, in the other room, let out a cry of anguish.
"Okay, you loved her," Rick said, "And I loved Rachael. And the special loved the other Rachael." He shot Roy Baty; the big man's corpse lashed about, toppled like an over-stacked collection of separate, brittle entities; it smashed into the kitchen table and carried dishes and flatware down with it. Reflex circuits in the corpse made it twitch and flutter, but it had died.
Rick ignored it, not seeing it and not seeing that of Irmgard Baty by the front door. I got the last one, Rick realised. Six today; almost a record. And now it's over and I can go home.
No Tears In Rain, here. But the book isn't Roy's story, it's Rick's. That's not to say the artificial lifeforms don't each become characters in themselves, but we see everything that happens through the eyes of Deckard, or of Isidore, the radiation-addled loner who's high on empathy but low on social-skills. The humanity the androids develop (for better or worse) isn't explored too deeply, as it's laid out plainly that these beings aren't physically human. We can't understand what it's like to actually be them any more than we could put ourselves in the mind of a dolphin, or more accurately an alien. Humanity is specific, empathy is universal.
+ + + + +
As well as the upfront issues of self-awareness, there's also an intricate subtext of guilt being played out in the pages. The humans don't trust the independent thought of their android servants as they perceive them as lacking in empathy. But this flaw is a by-product of the humans' manufacturing process; it can't be programmed in, so can only develop with time and interaction, the way it does in other animals. The problem is that androids only live for around four years (explained in the book as being that their cell-generation can't match the demands put upon it by the machine itself), so at best they're only going to attain the emotional understanding of a toddler. Couple that with being treated as hardware and it's no surprise that the androids start wanting a better life for themselves, a recurring theme in science fiction.
So the Rosen Association has progressively created a life-like machine, driven by market demand. The public treats the machine as a disposable object, the disposable object objects. The authorities decide that the machines can't be allowed to exist under their own auspices, ostensibly because their lack of pathos could cause them to kill a human when confronted in a deadly situation. In reality, their judicial reaction of sentencing runaway androids to 'retirement' is born of fear and guilt. The collective society in the story, already in a state of contrition after a devastating war, cannot see that it is responsible for its perceived nemesis at every single turn, not least because the androids have been literally modelled in their image. A generation which prides itself on empathy has such a narrow definition of the word that it can't see the threat it's created, or the irony of restricting the emotion to beings it can control.
Make no mistake, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a story about a bounty hunter going out to kill six escaped slaves because society deems them to be less than human. It is a tale for past, future and indeed present times.
Blade Runner (U.S. Theatrical Cut)
Ridley Scott (1982)
And so, in the hands of screenwriters David Peoples and Hampton Fancher, 1992 becomes 2019 with Los Angeles in a near-permanent state of filth and rain-soaked darkness. Gone is the domesticated discontent of the novel, as Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard lives divorced and alone in a morose ponderousness of bourbon, takeaway noodles and melancholic piano-playing. The protagonist's narration*2 pulls the telling into full film noir and centres it solely around him. He's certainly more of an actual detective this time around. Deckard feels a little older than before, and the story sees him being pulled (with no shortage of intentional irony I'm sure) out of retirement to conduct his mission, although the six escaped replicants of Blade Runner have already killed twenty-three humans on their way to Earth, making Deckard's lethal mandate more narratively justifiable.
The androids are referred to exclusively as replicants now, and script references to genetic engineers indicate that there is indeed little or nothing electronic/mechanical about them, where this was more vague in the book. There are still artificial creatures in the story and the Voigt-Kampff test still centres around hypothetical situations involving cruelty to animals, although there's nothing in the film to indicate how/why biological ones are so hard to come by. World War Terminus doesn't get so much as a sniff.
As Deckard's role remains central, the development of J.R. Isidore / J.R. Sebastian is transferred onto the replicants, which given the film's finale is entirely fitting. In this version, it's Sebastian who becomes more the sketched-in archetype, with his backstory retooled to be more useful to the tweaked plot structure. Along with replicants Pris and Roy being given more of the limelight, it's also notable that the informant Rachael is a far more sympathetic character than her written counterpart. In Dick's novel, Rachael and Pris look identical, being the same model android. And although Sean Young and Daryl Hannah are fantastic here, I'd be intrigued to see the film where either actress plays both roles.
The screenplay runs on a parallel track to the novel, with new characters and situations, but always heading in the same direction and for the same reasons. As with earlier entries in this series, the film expands, reinterprets and amplifies the cinematic aspects of its source material. Ridley Scott does an admirable job of carrying over the psychological and moral themes of the story, but with cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, brings a visual poetry to the cityscape that even Philip K. Dick hadn't envisioned.
Ridley Scott's taken something that was very good and made it very great. That's a rare ability, and one that even he hasn't mastered using consistently.
*1 On this subject, the Voigt-Kampff personality-test is very much a part of the novel as it is the film, and with similar mechanics it's not explained why androids can best be discovered via this laborious process, as opposed to heat-readings, EMP-scans, x-ray etc. There's the implication that they're constructed with mostly organic (and nano-electronic) components, but there'd still be some massive physical internal differences, surely? But look at me, wanting everything explained…[ BACK ]
*2 I'd forgotten quite how laconic Ford's voiceover is. At one point it reminded me of My Name Is Earl. "Yup, that brought me to #22 on my list: Shot an android stripper in the back…"[ BACK ]
*3 Anyway, 2019's not far off. Where's my voice-activated Polaroid-printing machine? Actually I joke about it, but it's only really like someone smashed Siri and Instagram together. Which is more 21st Century that I'd like to think about, frankly… [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well, when you're in the capital anyway, and it turns out that your new favourite cinema is showing one of the greatest films ever made, why wouldn't you?
And so, a glorious Saturday evening in June was dedicated to the dark, the dirt and the relentless rainfall of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Sure, it's a little grainy in some shots, and it's a little framey in some of its slo-mo, but the film still looks utterly gorgeous 33 years from its incep-date. Whether the Final Cut is the definitive edition of the movie is still up for debate, of course, but since the core of the story holds in all seven versions, I'd happily watch any of them on a massive screen with thundering sound. The only real problem I had was removing myself from the familiarity of the film and trying to watch it afresh to maximise its cinematic impact (I've never seen Blade Runner at the cinema before, film fans, only at home).
It occurred to me that November 2019 looks to be a largely horrendous time to be alive, and I'm quite miffed that we'll all have gone back to using 10" CRT monitors by then. Although on the plus side, any voice-operation glitches have been ironed out and booze seems easy to come by at any hour of the day or night, so I'm sure I'll manage.
Watching Blade Runner has renewed my worries about the sequel, not least because Ridley Scott now has a track-record of derailing continuity he didn't bloody well write in the first place. It's one thing to complain about George Lucas' revisionism, but at least he doesn't go changing Steven Spielberg's stories. None of this can spoil what the original Blade Runner (in its many variations) means to so many, of course, but I know plenty of folks who can't watch Raiders Of The Lost Ark without re-tasting Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. I'm not one of them, by the way. I'm one of the twelve people in the world who enjoyed KotCS, but I'm sure you get my drift.
Anyway, yes of course he's a replicant...
If you can, do.
Well, you should own it already, so…
In Ford's case, that title would belong to Doctor Jones.
It does.
I will.
I'm fairly certain I can hear the front-end of one, but the internet doesn't seem to corroborate this, so I'll side with no.
What, apart from starring everyone's favourite Corellian smuggler, you mean? Honestly…
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
