Alien: Covenant (second-pass / SPOILERS! Also, LANGUAGE!)
Cert: 15 / 122 mins / Dir. Ridley Scott / Trailer
You see, I did enjoy Alien: Covenant the second time around (first and spoiler-free, here), it's just that…
• The two producers credited on-screen at the same time are David Giler and Walter Hill. Am I alone in wondering if this is related to the two synthetic characters in the film being called David and Walter? Like they got to name characters as part of a Kickstarter-perk, or somesuch?
• Jed Kurzel did the score for Covenant, and while I've no strong feelings on it either way, it seems a bit odd that in the opening scene, he's credited as David begins playing Wagner's Das Rheingold on the piano. That's quite a slap in the face from editor Pietro Scalia there, to be credited for the film's music the moment someone else's work is playing. Unless those are Kurzel's hands of course, because the framing of that sequence certainly suggests that Fassbender can't play the piano.
• Now I know everyone else is asleep, but why does the ship's computer, MU/TH/ER, bark on at Walter to deploy the recharge-sails? All he does is presses a button, which then begins an electronic sequence of automatically deploying the recharge-sails. Fairly certain the computer could have done that by itself?
• And while I'm on, why does the same computer harp on at Walter about retracting the sails because there's an incoming neutrino-burst instead of, oh I don't know, not wasting those precious seconds waiting for another button to be pressed and just retracting the sails?
• So, if the neutrino-bursts are pretty much unpredictable and unavoidable, and if one of those will damage the deployed hardware, then this weakness has been deliberately built into the ship, yes? Knowing it could happen and knowing the effects of it happening, Weyland/Yutani seem to have done nothing to build in dampers or surge-protectors. Well done, guys.
• Acting-captain Oram has a pop at Walter about the unpredictable nature of these natural phenomena damaging the ship, yet six minutes later he's sitting in a landing craft (which is essentially a big box of computers and sensitive electronic equipment, with seats and an engine) and telling the pilot to drive right through a fucking electrical storm, just because he's nosey.
• Even if the crew of the lander didn't clock the massive ship parked on a mountain which is sending out the beacon-signal on their way down, they land 8km away from it then decide to walk, over forests and mountain-sides. Why not get back in the lander and cruise over to the signal? That's what the craft was actually designed for. Transportation.
• And after David pops out of the night and is like "follow me!", they walk to the desolate city he's made home. This crew have landed on a planet - from space, up above - literally within walking distance of a city and not noticed it.
• When the two synthetics are discussing programming upgrades, I like that Walter's observation is that David's model was thought to be "too human". Given that the latter bore a deep-seated grudge against a parent, went mad after isolation on a long-haul flight, killed the entire crew through idle curiosity, committed planetary genocide, developed biological weapons then betrayed and killed the only person who still liked him, I'd say David was very human, yes. And indeed too much, so. To the point where you really can't blame his artificial side at all, to be fair.
• So watching Daniels and Walter scrapping, there's the moment where she drives that nail under his chin. Ah! I thought, I hadn't noticed the significance of that first time round. As well as the scripted giveaway later in the cryo-tube scene, she'll be looking up at the synth she thought was Walter, see the scar and realise it's actually David! So, I kept my eye open for that when the film's denouement arrived, and… no. Not there, mate. In the film's final moments there are at least two clear shots of the underside of David's chin, and there's not a scratch to be seen, despite the wound having been sustained at the same time as the ones on his face, which are still patched/healing. So either that android's got super-fucking-healing around his lower jaw only, or David transferred his consciousness into Walter's already-handless body (why bother, when they look alike and he's got to lose the arm anyway?), or it really is Walter after all and he's just turned into a massive space-bastard.
Who sets up a huge callback then forgets all about it? Answers on a postcard, please…
But that's not what's really got under my skin. No, for that I'll need to skip the bullet-points…
…why is this film so determined to reboot the history it has no real right interfering with? All credit (and deservedly so) to Ridley Scott for directing one of the finest genre-redefining movies of the 1970s, if not all time. But for the pedestal he's put upon, you'd be forgiven for thinking he wrote the story/script (Dan O'Bannon & Ron Shuster) and designed the creatures (HR Giger, as we all know). Now obviously as director he's still at the sharp edge of the creative team, but that's what it was, a team effort.
And while the 1979 original laid the groundwork for everything to come, the universe didn't really expand until seven years later with Aliens, where we learned of the creatures queen/hive system. The species further adaptability was explored in Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection, and notably in around twenty years' worth of novels, comics and video games. The life-cycle of queen/egg/facehugger/chestburster/drone has been given biological resonance by comparing the species to bees or ants, not to create any sympathy for the xenomorphs, but to add a layer of practical believability (and, therefore, danger). And the many, many authors and artists involved in this narrative evolution all used O'Bannon's story as a seed, but they added to the story, they didn't re-write it.
So then Prometheus comes along and goes, 'actually they're a bio-weapon, mate'. Which is a little disconcerting, but basically fine. ThenCovenant comes along and goes 'no really mate, the aliens you know won't even be invented until 2104 by a crazy synthetic living in a cave. All the proper 'Aliens' films take place after that anyway, but all those 'Predator' tie-ins? They can go fuck themselves into a cocked hat. Xenomorphs start now, with David. Alright?'
And it seems a bit… well, disrespectful, frankly. As if Scott and the Covenant writing-team of Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan and Dante Harper had invented the sandpit, rather than just being invited to play in it. And that's where the sentiment creeps in of 'oh, but it's Ridley Scott, it's all his'. Not really, see above. He helped, fair play. It's bad enough that the highly-anticipated (and now apparently aborted) Alien 5 movie from Neil Blomkamp was going to re-route the series own timeline*1, without this one sticking two fingers up at everyone who's coloured within the lines for so long. I just get the impression nobody at 20th Century Fox really has any direction for this series and they're hoping it'll freewheel into something cohesive.
None of this would even matter if Scott's grand vision for a clean-slate universe wasn't so smugly oblique. First there were going to be three films in this pre-Alien cycle, now it's looking like four. Although Scott's mentioned six, and said the next movie 'might' be set before Covenant*2, even though the audience now knows what happened to a) Elizabeth Shaw, b) David the synthetic, and c) The Engineers. And there's still no sign of LV-246, despite both prequels so far deliberately framing shots to match the curved ship from Alien. It genuinely wouldn't surprise me if the final prequel answers precisely no questions on the run-up to the Nostromo's fateful encounter. All I want is a cinematic universe where there's the possibility of the Yautja walking around the corner at any moment. Fat chance.
Level 2: This film stars that Demián Bichir, and he was in that Hateful Eight along with Sam 'Windu' Jackson.
*1 Okay, Resurrection's not great by any stretch of the imagination, but you stick by your past endeavours, Fox. Think of the problematic areas as potential ret-cons, not narrative black sheep to be airbrushed out of the family photos. If the film was good enough to release and promote in 1997, at least have the courage of your convictions when it comes to retrospective appreciation. If I as a Star Wars fan can stomach the Holiday Special, I'm fairly certain Alien 4 should be workable. And I'm not even going to apologise for David Fincher's Alien³, it's a good movie. [ BACK ]
*2 Although Scott also went on record as saying there'd be no Xenomorphs in his Prometheus sequel and that it was going to be called Paradise Lost. In terms of sticking to his word, it's not dissimilar to David standing next to four facehugger-eggs and saying "Yep, totally safe mate. Come on, have a gander. No, seriously!"[ 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.
Alien: Covenant (first-pass / spoilers in the footnotes)
Cert: 15 / 122 mins / Dir. Ridley Scott / Trailer
Taking place around ten years after the events of Prometheus*1, the crew of the Weyland Corporation vessel Covenant are transporting two thousand colonists across deep space to their new home, when they're brought out of cryo-sleep by a power surge which damages the ship. During the repair cycle, the onboard comms system intercepts a transmission coming from an unknown planet. Naturally, they go to investigate; naturally, I don't have to tell you what's coming next...
So Covenant is far more a sequel to Prometheus than a lead-in to Alien (which is fine), and it's interesting to see which of the 2011 threads Ridley Scott has picked back up to weave further, and which he's happy to basically abandon. The film also tackles its predecessor's somewhat cavalier approach to biological continuity more directly, still not answering all of its questions, but at least asking far fewer, this time*2.
Second best line in the film:
"There's so much here that doesn't make sense..." ~ Katherine Waterston's Daniels, around 45 minutes after everyone woke up and things started making little or no sense.*3 On a performance level, the Covenant cast mostly deliver pretty much what's needed and what's expected. Katherine Waterston does well though, bringing enough of herself to a role which could easily have been Cardboard Cutout Heroine. But the talking point of the film will be Michael Fassbender, of course. With his performance here ranging from theatrical to pantomime, this really is his spin on 'Legend'*4. And as a result, Covenant is every bit as bold, complex and problematic as that implies.
The film works better as an action/survival-horror flick, rather than a morality-thriller*5. That's not to say a film can't be both, just that this can't balance the two evenly. Although I didn't find this entry as instantly satisfying as Prometheus, it's an intriguing film and takes the overall story forward every bit as gleefully. It just also feels deliberately obscure and logic-defying*6, at times. There's definitely the feeling that Scott's enjoying leaving the big questions unanswered.
"Watch me, I'll do the fingering..." ~ Michael Fassbender's android character, playing with himself.
Prometheus, really.
It's certainly more Prometheus than Alien.
Which is as it should be.
Yes, it looks gorgeous.
Although again, try comparing the birthing-scenes in this movie to the 1979 Alien and you'll realise why you won't be watching these movies in narrative-order.
Too early to tell at a first-pass…
Probably not, but there's no shame in that.
No, but I'll want to talk about it at great length either way.
There isn't.
Level 2: Both Danny McBride and James Franco starred in 2011's 'Your Highness' alongside Natalie 'Padmé' Portman, Kiran 'Teedo' Shah and Simon 'Blue Five' Farnaby.
*1 Footnotes contain spoilers: Highlight-to-read…
It's nice to see that USB plugs have evolved by the year 2104, but Jack Daniels bottles are the exact same ones we have now. Presumably they couldn't face the moaning about changing the design again. And I'm not imagining a writers-link between that bottle appearing on-screen, and characters with the names Daniels and Tennessee, am I?[ BACK ]
*2 Of course, if the face-huggers we know and love are the specific result of David's own genetic experimentation between 2093 and 2104, that would rudely de-canonise their usage in the present-day-set Aliens vs Predator movie. I worry about these things. Come on, I can't be the only one who loves the first AVP.[ BACK ]
*3 The Covenant crew have tracked a surprise signal to a previously undiscovered planet, to the point where they land about 8km away, then make the rest of the journey on-foot. Y'know, rather than actually landing where the signal is. Which, incidentally, is a city that their scanning equipment doesn't seem to have picked up. Although at the same time, this is once again a team of apparently professional space-explorers who land and step out of the ship after undertaking the absolute bare minimum of research, then proceed to smoke, spit and piss into an alien eco-system whilst prodding anything which looks unusual. You'd be forgiven for thinking they deserve the misfortune that comes of it all.[ BACK ]
*4 To be honest I rarely see eye-to-eye with Ridley Scott, but he's a director who can control not one, but two of Michael Fassbender's non-native accents. For that, he has my undying respect. I also liked that when David has long hair, he looks a bit like Iggy Pop, but when he's half-way through cutting it, he looks like Joe Elliott. Part of me hopes that's intentional, but god knows what it means if it is.[ BACK ]
*5 What's also interesting that the ersatz captain of the ship raises the matter that his faith is frowned upon by the Weyland Corp, especially odd since they had no problem with bringing Elizabeth Shaw along on the Prometheus mission with a similar philosophy and in such a critical role (even if she wasn't technically crew). Although fair play to the film for showing that poor decisions aren't down to the difference between faith and reason, but just because humans are naive, irrational and stupid.[ BACK ]
*6 So if David drops a hold-full of Alien-sauce capsule bombs (and remember the carnage which can be caused by a couple of drops in vodka and some black goo in a puddle) on a city-full of people, how come the place isn't still crawling with Xenos a decade later? They can't all have been killed in that initial blast, surely? Besides, even David describes it as a biological weapon rather than an explosive one. To be fair, this is why I need to see the film again.[ BACK ]
*7 Thanks for reading all these, though. I appreciate it.[ 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.
Alien Cert: 15 / 111 mins / Dir. Ridley Scott / Trailer
And following a brief break after Prometheus, the second-part of the 426 extravaganza was 1979’s original Alien movie*1.
The problem with running this double-bill in chronological story order, of course, is that the original film really isn’t ageing well, visually. There, I said it. The film stock is furry, even for a remastered director's cut. Miniatures look like miniatures, the fully-grown Xeno looks like a guy in a suit, and the escape of the iconic chestburster is nothing short of comical*2. And that's all fine until you run it back to back with a flick made in the digital age.
But, when it comes down to the mechanics of the Mansion Murderer In Space, Scott’s film is masterfully tense and hasn't been topped since (although many are still trying). This was the first time I’d seen the original Alien at the cinema. Hopefully it won’t be the last...
As the Nostromo is hauling an ore-refinery for mining operations, that effectively makes the seven crew members and the Seven Dwarfs.
Which would make the Xenomorph Snow White.
If you can bear the analogue-feel on a digital-screen, yes.
It does.
Probably not, but only because of their impressive other work.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 2: Sigourney Weaver's in this of course, and she starred in A Monster Calls along with the voice of Liam 'Qui-Gon' Neeson.
Yeah, I've marked it up. Despite looking worse in the cinema, the film's better in the cinema. Me mordere...
*1 There were 13 people in the auditorium for the screening Prometheus which is embarrassing enough. But two of those left in the interval, and one walked out about ten minutes into Alien. Who does that? I could understand if they'd been showing the films the other way around. Alien is generally accepted as the better of the two, right? Some weird reverse film-snobbery going on.
[ BACK ]
*2 Not the screaming and the writhing; that bit where it looks around then goes skittering off across the floor. Tonight's audience had already watched a far more visceral version of the birthing process in Prometheus of course, but then this film was followed by a couple of sequences from Covenant, one of which shows a similar event. So seeing modern-interpretations both before and after John Hurt’s most famous scene doesn’t really do the film any favours I’m afraid. [ 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.
Prometheus (2D / fourth-pass)
Cert: 15 / 121 mins / Dir. Ridley Scott / Trailer
And so, Alien Day saw a special screening of Ridley Scott’s two franchise-entries, in advance of his latest, Covenant. First up on the playlist was Prometheus*1, a film I haven’t watched since it ended its cinematic run in 2012. No agenda behind that, I’ve just been waiting for the director’s cut which hasn’t yet materialised (and probably won’t).
So while I remembered how much I enjoyed Prometheus, I’d forgotten what an amazing cast of character actors it boasts outside of the headliners*2. And sure, many of them are only there to do Stupid Horror Movie Things™ before buying the farm, but it makes for a great watch all the same.
The film's still got issues, of course, and the intervening years have not been kind to the exposition-heavy script and total lapses of screenplay-logic. But it’s not often I can go back to a movie I’ve left fallow for five years and enjoy it every bit as much.
Also, I like that the Engineers control their starships using six boiled eggs and a flute. That's the future, right there.
Probably nowhere near as well as intended, but yes.
Nah.
No, I've been disagreeing with people about this film for five years now.
Not that I heard.
Level 2: Rafe Spall's in this, and he starred in that I Give It A Year with Rose 'Dormé' Byrne.
Although in related news, the crew of the Prometheus contains Aldrich Killian from Iron Man 3, Heimdall from Thor, Wong from Doctor Strange and of course Magneto. You'd expect a team with those members to fare a little better, frankly...
*1 Given that Prometheus is a prequel, it makes absolute sense to show it first in a double-bill of course. However, as the “new” content of the Alien Superticket deal takes place between the two existing movies (and is being saved 'til last for screening in May), it would make more sense to show the films in their release order, surely? It’s not like Alien follows on immediately from Prometheus, in the same way that you wouldn’t go from The Phantom Menace to A New Hope (especially if you were awaiting the release of Attack of the Clones). More on this in my accompanying Alien review. [ BACK ]
*2 Although while I hadn’t forgotten that Prometheus is one of the few occasions where Michael Fassbender’s accent is actually under control, it had slipped my mind that the Fauxmerican drawl of Idris Elba is absolutely atrocious. I guess Ridley can’t be expected to steer two ships at once, right? [ 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.
