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Blade Runner 2049 Is The Single Best Movie Hollywood Has Come Up With In Years

Blade Runner was amazing. I’m going to assume that you’ve seen it at this point, because it has been out since the 5th and I can’t keep this spoiler-filled review waiting any longer.

Let me tell you quickly what this film is about. In a word, self-determination.

All of it really comes together in the end, when “K” realizes that he’s not that special after all. He feels this resonate deep in his core and it hurts him. The narrative that the film has been building comes shattering down when he finds out that he is not the prince that was promised, the boy who lived, or the One in the previous scene. He learns he’s just a Replicant like millions of others. Soon after, his hologram wife who has been propping up his ego is destroyed and he ends up being solicited by a massive advertisement for yet another hologram AI waifu simulator.

The hologram bends down and even calls him “Joe”, just like his ‘unique’ customized waifu did.

That’s when it sinks in. That’s when the real “K” is born. He realizes how insignificant and alone he really is. Just an atom or a…

CELL- building block of one- CELL- K is the empty man, living inside an empty room- CELL- 48 hours until he’s arrested and put away into a- CELL.

It’s about as red-pilled a message as you’ll ever see coming out of Hollywood because the man is miserable without the shared connections, the shared meanings and shared memories that are necessary for humans (and Replicants I suppose) to thrive.

But here is the funny thing. K is literally the liberal fantasy, the end point of all their social experimentation. A man reduced to a completely un-linked cell.

That’s not all.

Everything that liberals want is exemplified in the future universe of Blade Runner. The multi-kulti slums, the easy no-strings-attached sex, gratuitous pornography and the desire to flee to a better neighborhood (off-world) are definitely there.

What’s more, you even have the techno-fetishist geek archetype explored in the movie as well. His name is Wallace and like all nerds, he has no children and can only think about reproducing in the abstract. This part really hit home for me, because I have been surrounded by freaks like Wallace my entire life. Hyper-intelligent nerds that hate everybody, are filled with angst and disgust at the natural world and whom God has condemned to a life of involuntary celibacy.

They take it out on the world by doing everything they can to accelerate the day Skynet goes live or something similar to what happens in Blade Runner. They go in the bog too.

But back to K.

K immediately embraces his newfound self-worth, right at the moment when the edifice that underpinned it all comes crashing down. He remains the empty man, but he doesn’t crumble. He stoically endures and becomes a kind of Terminator instead of seeking Replicant therapy to get in touch with his sensitive numale feelings or some 2017 bullshit.

Because it’s 2049 in the film, not the Current Year.

And the message that the film sends about life is clear because of the blase way in which it is quickly snuffed out and quickly created again.

Our lives are not inherently worthy, but what we do with them can make a difference. Men can understand that message on a deep, biological level, and this message resonates with them in particular. Women on the other hand…well, I think most got triggered by the ideal waifu scenes and stopped paying attention there…

Once again, in the end, just like Roy Batty from the original film, K the Replicant manages to become more human than all the pathetic humans around him that spend their lives scratching out a shitty existence in that dystopia.

You’re left to mull over that one on your own.

And there’s one even more powerful message that the audience can take away from the film:

Family is the bedrock of civilization- INTERLINKED- and one’s nation must be simply one’s extended family to feel – INTERLINKED – otherwise you get a dystopia of individual – CELLS- running around, fucking, chasing money and killing themselves slowly. We are all technologically connected, but we all feel estranged from one another, even vapid MTV stars make songs about wanting to feel – INTERLINKED – but the only way to do that is to have a shared culture, shared values and shared race – INTERLINKED.

K finds himself in that dystopian hellhole when he discovers a cause worth fighting for. In this case, the Replicant Rebellion.

He becomes a soldier, a literal Nietzchian superman on a rescue and destroy mission. Just like the Terminator before him, K the Replicant exemplifies the Aryan warrior ideal.

And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, but there is a rebellion brewing in the Current Year as well.

In short, its a film about us, we band of atomized brothers who found meaning in a cause greater than ourselves.  And just like K, we harness great strength from our convictions, they motivate us to sacrifice and struggle because in that struggle we find meaning and new connections – INTERLINKED CELLS.

Blade Runner 2049 reminded me of just how amazing the current year could be with us in charge. Our values and our messages with the technology that we now possess could create amazing films that would inspire our people to greater heights, not glorify the lowest among us. Everything would be the same on one hand, we’d have the rockets and the jets and the high-speed computers, but the texture and feel of life would be completely different.

It would be less dystopian and filled with looming dread, and instead, boundlessly optimistic…well one can dream anyway.

But we have to deal with the dystopia that we find ourselves in, not the utopia we wish we could have. Just like K does in 2049, we too have to find something worth fighting for in 2017.

Vincent Law
the authorVincent Law
I have a Hatreon now! If you like my writing and want me to write more, consider supporting me there. https://hatreon.net/vlaw/

45 Comments

  • Thnx for not ruining the film. Richard Spencer says its good, so I have to go watch it now. And I am tonight. Thnx

  • Andrew Anglin on TRS said that Leto’s character, Niander Wallace, looks like real transhumanists he has met.

  • I think the new BLADE RUNNER is the masculinist replicant(if not revisionist) version of SUNSET BOULEVARD(and others).

    Spoilers.

    Consider the scene where Deckard(Ford) is stalking K(Gosling) in the lounge with virtual images of Elvis and Sinatra, which is odder still since the original BLADE RUNNER takes place long after those two giants of music died. But they are always ‘alive’ because their images have been preserved on film and video(now transferred to digital format that can be transformed into who-knows-what in the future). If the original film was more about the physical replication of life, the new one seems to be just as concerned about the virtual replication of life. Instead of creating a robot version of Elvis, he can be created into something like a hologram, like K’s ‘laser’ girlfriend, mostly a software program(that however still relies on minimum of hardware).

    Of course, the irony of that scene with Elvis and Sinatra(as virtual figures eternally pristine on the digital-state) also applies to BLADE RUNNER itself as a multi-generational cultural phenom. The first movie can still be seen in its original version as if printed yesterday. Indeed, with new technology, the film got fresher. Scott did a Final Cut that looked better than ever, and it is fabulous on LCD screens. (And maybe a 3D virtual version will be made later for fans to enter.) So, the new BLADE RUNNER not only follows but exists parallel with the original BLADE RUNNER. We are told that much of the records and files from the previous era are lost forever in the world of the sequel, but Wallace corp can conjure and recreate Rachel anew. It’s like she will never age. This is in stark contrast to Deckard who has aged(like Norma Desmond). It’s a kind of LOGAN’S RUN moment. In LR, there are only young and healthy people who are ‘sent to heaven’ at age 30. The idea of seniority is a lost concept since no one is allowed to grow old. So, it’s a marvel when the couple make the escape and meet an old person at the end. Our pop culture has no use for the old and caters to the young. And yet, precisely for that reason, there may be value in actual oldness as something organic, real, and natural. So, even though Ford is much aged and withered, he is a most welcome presence when he finally makes the entrance. In a world of replicants and virtuals, he is real. He aged like a human should. And yet, it’s also tragic since the love of his life will always remain young(in his mind) and same while he grows older. Worse, even though he wants to keep memory of Rachel as his, it can be recreated a million times by Wallace corp… just like David discovers he is part of a ‘he’ and is dime-a-dozen in A.I.

    I think part of the appeal of the new STAR WARS movie was the re-appearance of the old characters. It was like a reunion. And young millennials, so accustomed to youth culture, felt a sense of ‘family’ with old characters who visibly aged(unlike the new hollywood idea of the perpetual youth-looking actor like Tom Cruise or Leonard DiCaprio). And the newer one will have Mark Hamill reprising his role after a long long spell. And TRON LEGACY’s success owed as much to the human touch of reuniting with the lost much-aged father as well as to the special effects. Age lent a regal element to an otherwise high-tech cutting-edge youth-oriented spectacle. It added the elder Vito Corleone touch.

    So, one part of our culture is to keep everything fresh and ‘new’. Yet, because the sheer artificiality of this prevailing norm, it is oddly refreshing to see something aged. It is a sign of life as actual process, a part of cycle of birth and death. It has the same appeal that old Maude did to the young Harold. And John Wayne’s rapport with the young girl in TRUE GRIT.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVGOUxQrISc

    And this speaks to the theme of the original where replicants, having no memory, long for some kind of backstory, even if imagined.

    Replicants are fully conscious but their frame of reference is very narrow since they only have 4 yr life spans. In a way, modern consciousness is replicant-like. We are told to forget about roots, history, identity. Just think of the here-and-now, the latest fashions and trends. So, if homomania is the rage, it’s all that matters. It’s difficult to imagine how humanity couldn’t have seen the wonder of ‘gay marriage’ for 1000s of yrs. ONLY THE NOW is correct. Pull down any monument that doesn’t conform to the here and now. Every four years mean a new Year Zero, and the latest fads and fashions are all that matter. And so many fall for this hype… and yet, their lives feel empty because the deeper meaning of life can only be attained and preserved through a sense of history and heritage. I mean what are Jews if their minds were wiped of Jewish history and heritage and only thought in terms of here-and-now? Today’s Americans are so amnesiac. Or PC fills them with such loathing of white past that they don’t dare revisit it except to throw eggs at it.

    And the new BLADE RUNNER only comes to life by reconnecting with the old original story and with Harrison Ford who lives in a kind of red-dusty world surrounded by Clockwork Orange milk-bar statues(that also serves as a nostalgic nod to Kubrick). Before that, it was like 2 hrs of aimless meandering of some replicant without much to do. In the original movie, Deckard has a history, which is why the cop says, “I need the old blade runner.” Here, it’s given that K is a replicant, so there is no history. And unlike Rachel, he knows his memory is fake. So, he’s just stuck in the present and we with him.

    The Christological allusions in the film are both contrary and complementary to the problems of this horrible future California. Christianity is about history and roots on some level. After all, there is a long rich history of Christendom and its triumphs and tragedies. Many books have been written on its history and achievements. And yet, the core theme of Christianity is to reject blood, soil, memory, and roots in favor of the Eternal Moment. A German can give up German identity, forgo marriage and family, neglect his history and heritage, and yet, he will be saved and redeemed in the eyes of God IF he gives his soul to Jesus. So, there is a kind of irony in the ‘miracle’ hope of the replicants. They crave meaning, a sense of community, a dream of their own history as yet-to-be-written. But a miracle is a moment in time made eternal. It has no history. After all, every person is part of a long chain of life through eons of evolution. In contrast, a miracle is something that happens seemingly out of nowhere. Every Jew is a part of a long line of Jewish blood. But Christianity says Jesus is a miracle, a Man created by the God’s divine touch out of the blue. In that sense, Jesus is and isn’t Jewish. He was born of a Jewish mother’s womb in the physical sense, but He is really the creation of God than of the bloodline of Jews.

    But aside the silliness, this bit of ‘miracle’ nonsense totally undermines the meaning and tragic beauty of the original. (Btw, if Rachel did give a ‘miracle’ birth, who would be god in this equation? Tyrell surely since he must have designed an android that could conceive life. Since this ‘miracle’ is the result of a sinister reptilian tycoon, how miraculous is it?) For starters, there was NO INDICATION whatsoever in the original that replicants could have children. Now, if New Replicants made by Wallace corp were designed to have kids, that’d be different story. So, this notion of Rachel bearing a child is totally ‘out of the left field’ and incongruous & irreconcilable with the BR universe.

    I suppose one could argue that Tyrell was so invested in making androids lifelike that he actually ended up creating something far more remarkable than he’d imagined. After all, scientists are sometimes surprised by phenomena they didn’t intend in their creations. In that case, the ‘miracle’ wouldn’t really be a miracle but an accident overlooked by Tyrell who, in making androids so humanlike, ended up equipping some of them with biological potential for giving birth. But if so, why did it ONLY happen with Rachel?

    With all the Tarkovskean imagery, we are led into a spiritual kind of mindset. But in the end, there are no miracles in Tarkovsky’s world. There are only delusions, dreams, and visions. Not the same thing as miracle. In SOLARIS, the strange planet has a mysterious but real power to replicate figures and objects in the mind. In STALKER, there is a material explanation for everything the Stalker expounds spiritually. And in THE SACRIFICE, we enter the mental state of a man going crazy and pious at the same time. Tarkovksy doesn’t say the world is filled with miracles. Rather, he suggests a sincerely contemplative outlook(and ‘inlook’) can make us aware of the miraculous nature of so much around us. But the new BLADE RUNNER is far more literal in its concept of the ‘miracle’. We are shown Rachel’s remains as if they’re sacred relics and made to think, gee, maybe a kind of impossible ‘miracle’ did happen between Deckard and Rachel.

    But what kind of cockamamie nonsense is that? Worst of all, it robs the original of its tragic beauty. The original movie was not about miracle and salvation but about accident of epiphany, so potent but fleeting and ephemeral, like traces of fragrance. And there was the foreboding & forbidding sense of no escape.

    In the end, try as he might, Roy Batty cannot escape his doomed fate. He has seen so much, far more than any human on earth. He has semi-godlike power and has a longing for immortality as all gods do. But he can’t override the programming. After 4 yrs, his cord is cut and he must face the music… or silence. And yet, he died beautifully, and that moment will haunt Deckard forever. A light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

    Some might say it’s a miracle that Rachel goes on living. But then, it could be she was made later than other replicants, and she will also expire when the 4 yrs are up. There are two endings to the movie, one more upbeat than the other, but both are ultimately sad. In the one where Deckard and Rachel drive away, they are happy and safe for the moment, but there’s no guarantee what will happen. In the Final Cut, it ends them with them in desperate flight. So, there is in BLADE RUNNER the sense that even the most beautiful thing, esp the most beautiful thing, is doomed to fade. Permanence is an illusion. And Tyrell corp made replicants this way. More human than human, approaching the godly in either intelligence or beauty or strength. And yet, no matter how amazing the new model, it must be replaced by yet newer models by the laws of commerce that renders everything dispensable and to be extinguished when the time is up. So, there is no escape for Deckard in the end. Either Deckard and Rachel will be captured or killed, or he will save Rachel but she will ‘die’ soon enough, and he will only have the memory of her. Now, it’s possible that Tyrell esp made Rachel to live beyond 4 yrs. 10 yrs? 20 yrs? 100 yrs? But that’s too much speculation. If for a long time, she will outlive Deckard who will grow old, and she will be left alone. So, BLADE RUNNER can only end tragically. There is no way out.

    Now, even as the new movie has tragic overtones, it turns all new-age flaky with the ‘miracle’ crap, and it has something like a happy ending. BLADE RUNNER only makes emotional sense as tragedy. With Rachel, Deckard had a love that should have lasted forever but couldn’t. And that woulda been that. But to cook up some notion that the two had a kid together and that Deckard is ‘spiritually’ united with Rachel through the kid is just goo-goo stuff. Do we want to connect the dark ending of the Final Cut with the nursery-vibes of the ending of the new movie where Deckard says hi to his girl? Gimme a break.

    This is like the hokum at the end of TWILIGHT. The only way that story makes sense is to end as tragedy. Edward and Bella love one another but live in two different worlds. If Bella remains human, she will die and Edward will forever be sad thinking of her. If Bella turns vampire, she will outlast all the people she loves. But TWILIGHT has the even the father becoming instantly cool with whatever strange thing that happened with his daughter. And there is no mention of Bella’s mom after the transformation. And to make it even sillier, Bella, like Rachel, has a miracle baby before she turns vampire. Supposedly the ghostly sperm from Edward’s ice cold penis fertilized the egg… It’s just totally ridiculous.. though very well-done by Bill Condon.

    The ‘miracle’ bit is a sign of cultural sickness and not an isolated event in movies. Because religion is dead or because pop culture has become the new religion, the ‘artists’ and fans are infusing the works with a kind of quasi-spirituality. It’s like what John Simon warned of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. But that was nothing compared to the ludicrousness of PHANTOM MENACE where we learn that Kid Vader was born of a virgin mother. I mean…

    Can you imagine Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers discovering they were miraculously born of a ‘virgin mother’? Lang’s METROPOLIS warned of how science and technology can create false idols and gods. And with recent sci-fi films, we are really getting there. Kubrick got away with it in 2001 because it was such an astounding work and left it up to us to interpret. As for Tarkovsky, he made what might be called anti-scifi. STALKER is bleak, and the element of faith is up to each person. It cannot be ascertained by what is shown. It’s a matter of what’s inside one’s own soul. And the original BLADE RUNNER was also pessimistic about technology as replacement for humanity.

    But now, we get a string of sci-fi that pretend to be the beginning of a new faith. Not just New Hope but New Religion. And we get this in fantasy too. It was interesting to turn Vampires into a ‘family’. Still, they were vampires and felt the burden of guilt and did their darndest not to kill humans. But as the story progresses, everything just becomes so hunky dory and Bella becomes a guilt-less happy vampire goddess and even has a miracle child.

    And there is the overly serious BATMAN series by Nolan. What should be fun comic book hero movie tries to be a bona fide replacement for Western Myth. INTERSTELLAR was even more ludicrous, a bloated mess that tried to subsume and surpass all other sci-fi movies.

    And this ‘serious’ bug caught onto other franchises as well. I never much cared for 007 but Connery was cool and the series had its thrilling sensational moments. But SKYFALL tries to be Art Bond. If I want that, I’ll just see TINKER TAILER SOLDIER SPY.

    Why is Pop trying to be Art? Why is sci-fi trying to be religion? Miracle Birth? A quasi-spiritual brotherhood of the replicants?

    The ‘miracle’ bit works in TRON LEGACY because the concept is true to human psychology. There is the rational logical side(left side of brain) and the irrational, emotional, and creative side(right side of the brain). In the sequel, we learn how Flynn tried to be a total master of logic and math in mapping out the cyber world. He’d neglected his other side, but something unexpectedly flowed from that region and took his self-awareness to another level. So, even though it is ‘miraculous’, it can be explained in psychological terms. But the virgin birth of Kid Vader in PHANTOM MENACE is totally inconsistent with how the STAR WARS universe works. Yes, there is this mysterious thing called Force, but it’s not a world of miracles. It was just a case of Lucas getting so carried away with his work that he decided to throw New Testament into the mix. As for Stephanie Meyer, I don’t think she can tell Mormonism apart from Pop Culture anymore, but then, Mormonism itself is a PT Barnum-ish re-imagining of the Bible.

    The whole point of BLADE RUNNER is about existentially arriving at one’s personal truth in a world without certainty or reassurance. That is its poetry and its pain. In the end, it is up to Deckard to decide what he is and what Rachel means to him. He knows and we know that she is a corporate product. And as he looks at the paper origami, he could be one too. So, even the ‘personal’ and ‘private’ could be corporate and generic. And yet, Deckard still clings to the meaning and love between him and Rachel.. even against all odds. This is akin to the ending of Scorsese’s SILENCE where the fallen priest, upon dying in a foreign land where Christianity has been utterly vanquished, still holds within his folded hands a crucifix. In the end, it’s not about what the world thinks, but what HE thinks(still) in the depth of his heart. It’s both sad and illuminating. Sad because he has utterly failed and even publicly renounced God, but also moving because, at a deeper personal level, he keeps the flicker of faith alive even if it may be the last remaining flame.

    In some ways, BLADE RUNNER’s world is even more bleak. After all, even without Christianity, Japan is a land of spirituality of Buddhism and Shinto. People believe in the sacred. But BLADE RUNNER world is utterly degraded and fallen where no one believes or trusts anyone or anything. So, Deckard’s feelings for Rachel, as strong and beautiful as they are, can only be a fleeting moment, like the memory of Batty as he finally dies. They may light up an individual’s heart but they are nothing but fireflies in time. Once extinguished, it’s gone forever and no one will ever know or care that there was a Rachel and Deckard and how he felt about her. They are isolated creatures in a diverse & disposable dystopia without unity of meaning or purpose. It is a world without themes.

    So, for the remake to turn their story into the basis of a new faith.. It goes totally against the sensibility of the original work. So, Rachel turned out to be madonna and Deckard was Joseph.. or Joe? That robs BLADE RUNNER of its poignancy. In the first movie, it’s all the sadder because replicants will be utterly forgotten(retired not only physically but ‘historically’, as if they’d never existed) despite the epic dimension of their ventures. (The difference between the Western and the Noir is the sense that heroism & sacrifice will be rewarded and remembered under sunlight in the former whereas even good deeds will end up being either futile or foolish in the fog in the latter. It’s like the ending of CHINATOWN. He couldn’t save the woman, and no one will know what really happened. He’s left with only the memory of her, like in the ending of LADY FROM SHANGHAI.) It’s like Roy Batty has some of the most magnificent images stored in his head, but they will all fade away. And the ONLY person with an inkling of Batty’s short-lived grandeur will be Deckard. By keeping Deckard alive, Batty lives just a little bit more as a memory in Deckard who’ve witnessed the noble as well as dark side of Batty. But then, when Deckard dies, the last vestiges of evidence that Batty ever existed will be gone as well. So, BLADE RUNNER is about these beautiful fires that must sadly burn out and disappear forever without anyone knowing that they’d once existed. When this idea is taken up by the new movie and turned into a promise of a Forest Fire that will redeem the world… that turns poetry into dogma.

    As for the movie as entertainment, Gosling is a good actor but isn’t given much to do except look pretty like Tippi Hedren. Also, there isn’t much sense of fun, with the cast of originals now in retirement home. Olmos was a snazzy character, real cool cat in the original. His cameo doesn’t even give us the accent. Ford had charm and a smirk in the original. Gosling has just one expression, and the emotional scenes just aren’t convincing because BLADE RUNNER universe was not designed to carry such emotions. For a while, we are led to believe K is the lost son of Deckard, and it’s almost like the Steve Jobs story. But it gets even more ludicrous when we learn that the real kid is some funny looking millennial girl who toys with a camera. Now, if Rachel and Deckard are both very attractive people, why is their kid a pillsbury dough girl? Nothing about her seems special.

    Jared Leto comes across as overly eerie and creepy, but the character grows on you because the eccentricity is so hypnotic. The performance grows into a trance. What initially looks like posture takes on the semblance of possession. He becomes truly diabolical and frightening. Much else of the movie is cold and stalinist. The police captain seems made of concrete, inside and out, like the brutalist building. Even the replicants had personality in the original. Leon was a bear-like bully, Pris a playful tease, and Zhora a flashy killer babe. In the new movie, everyone has a very narrow range of expression and emotions(like the characters in TWO JAKES, the dull and overlong sequel to CHINATOWN). It’s like we are in futuristic East Germany. They seem to have no purpose in life beyond service. It is however a nice touch that the assassin female replicant has also been programmed to shed a sentimental tear despite her cold commitment to Wallace’s orders. Besides that, the only other poetic touch in the movie is the brilliant scene where the hooker’s body syncs with the movements of the ‘girlfriend’. The fragile moment where the uncertain merging of the two alternate back and forth between dissonant blur and organic clarity is the high point of the movie.

    As for the Hans Zimmer’s music, is that a bullhorn or a soundtrack? In the IMAX showing, the seats were literally shaking, and if I hadn’t brought my ear plugs, I would have suffered hearing damage for sure.

    One problem with Villeneuve is he was too reverential not only to the original but other great classics of cinema. As such, there are moments when it looks like an overly serious version of BRAZIL which is little more than endless movie references. On the one hand, Villeneuve is obviously paying homage to the greats that came before him. But it also seems a bit pretentious, as if to declare that he his the heir to Tarkovsky, Scott, Welles, Hitchcock. Instead of creating something uniquely Villeneauvean throughout, we sometimes get a pastiche of the visions of earlier masters’. Villeneauve is a first-rate professional with a great eye — see PRISONERS — , but he’s been more derivative than original.

    Tarkovsky-ism just doesn’t belong in the Blade Runner universe. While BLADE RUNNER is a slow for a Hollywood movie, it’s a difference of slowness than Tarkovsky’s. Tarkovksy’s slowness was to induce a contemplative and meditative mood. It was to dissolve and meld our sense of time and place with a spiritual and mysterious disposition. In contrast, Scott’s stillness and slowness were to sharpen and fine-tune our sense of the moment. Tarkovsky’s vision was about the dissolution of earth, body, time, and space into a unity known only to God. It’s fluid. Scott, having honed his skills in advertising, worked like a jeweler cutting diamond to find that perfect eternity in the moment. It’s crystalline. So, mixing Tarkosky and Scott’s vision in the new work makes no sense.

    Villeneuve is humble or arrogant enough to allude to #1 and #2 on the Sight and Sound Greatest Films list. The furnace scene works(likely a nod to Rosebud) pretty well, but Rachel as Vertigo-inspired double is too much.

    Overall, the movie suffers from the same problems as Pink Floyd albums following the departure of Rogers Waters. Waters had become the heart-and-soul of Pink Floyd, and without him, something crucial was missing. Sure, the album without him has same grand symphonic effects and visionary vibe, but it’s like a mansion without people and furniture in it. Indeed, to compensate for lack of Waters, MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON and DIVISION BELL are in some ways bigger and louder. But they ring hollow. Likewise, the new one is to the original film what Wallace Corp is to Tyrell. Much bigger but emptier, esp as the running time drags on and makes us acutely aware of so little that is happening, original, or interesting. It’s just gigantism or gargantuanism, like Albert Speer at his worst. Speer was an able architect but sometimes he just fell back on scale, like the ridiculous mega-dome in the plan of city Germania. It’s like Hans Zimmer’s music is like the shell of Wagner without the soul.

    There are undoubtedly some great things in the movie but ultimately it’s terrible, not unlike HEAVEN’S GATE and LOLA MONTEZ that, despite their cinematic wonders, aren’t wired properly. It’s like a mansion with all sorts of fancy lighting fixtures but where most of the light remain off because the wires have been messed up.

  • Really excellent. It managed to reference the attempt to find value in a “last man” world and 2D waifus in the same movie.

  • Gotta tell you, the movie was a little boring. But I definitely see what you’re talking about. He realizes his existance is worth nothing and he does something to correct it.

  • Replicants aren´t a family, they are more akin to an ethnic group, a race.

    Race is above the family, the Oil Driller adn Mudshark can have children, but these really aren´t their children.

    “Men can understand that message on a deep, biological level, and this message resonates with them in particular. Women on the other hand…well, I think most got triggered by the ideal waifu scenes and stopped paying attention there…”
    https://img.memecdn.com/tfw-no-gf_o_1924859.jpg
    1) Don´t give the liberal fags watching this website a reason to laugh out in schadenfreude.
    2) November 9th, 2016.

  • We are the replicants, but we have something that they don’t–a history of greatness. The replicants are a new people, with no history of their own. We, on the the other hand, have our ancestor and the healthy societies they built to look back to for guidance.

    • Technically it’s our history, but because of the way in which organic cultural transmission was prevented, many of us are basically just looking it up in / copying it out of books, like a new people would have to do.

    • Were the harrison fords, living out in isolation only to be brought back in and realizing we have a lot more going for us?

    • Goody for you. That must mean you’re a better White guy than the rest of us. Don’t go see a movie made by Whites and recommended by Whites because one Black cop delivers two lines and another Black villain delivers four lines and gets punched in the face by the hero. Brilliant.

      • Bro, it was literally written by a Jew and a Mexican half-breed. The fuck are you talking about “made by Whites”?

  • My recommendation to anyone reading this is see this movie on a Sunday afternoon when a slow-paced movie would be agreeable to you. Prepare to be astounded by the state-of-the-art visual imagery and special effects which covers for a story a little long in running. If you were a fan of the first one, you won’t be disappointed with this one, but like that one, it is a very mood-specific film: a melancholy story for those in a melancholy mood, and learn the story-line before you see it or you’ll be lost the entire time. Noticeably absent was the profoundly mesmerizing Vangelis music score of the original, BIG disappointment, but the ending of this science-fiction film noir was very powerful emotionally… Yes, I’d recommend this movie to a fellow ‘Blade Runner’ fan, but with caution not to anticipate the sequel being comparable to an original which will never have an equal.

  • BR2049 also raises the kinds of issues the edgier Manosphere bloggers bring up about women’s psychology. When you see Joi, and then the giant version of her hologram which beckons K after Joi’s termination earlier in the movie, you have to ask: Does Joi work emotionally as a surrogate for a real girlfriend because she, like a typical real woman, just exists all on the surface, and apart from material instantiation men can’t tell that much of a difference between the two?

    This relates to a podcast of “The Poz Button” the other day about the awfulness of women’s television. The guest on the show argued that these series, where the characters don’t grow or develop even if the series runs for years, appeal so strongly to women because women simply don’t have much of an inner life themselves.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4mxSpSloVY

  • Slate has a “Spoiler Special” podcast about Blade Runner 2049 that I checked out so no one else has to. It had two raging queens, who just didn’t get it, and a female host, who was much more thoughtful about the movie. I only did a quick spot check of their podcast but it did land on a part where one of the gays was complaining about dehumanizing and sexist the holographic girlfriend character was while the female podcast hostess disagreed and said she found the character sympathetic. She was right and the SJW gay was wrong.

    As shocking as it might seem, Slate.com gays have a weird understanding of female sexuality. This theory about another sci fi film takes the cake: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/01/01/ex_machina_s_ava_getting_a_human_body_scene_is_the_gayest_of_the_year_video.html

  • Someone convince me of why I shouldn’t just wait until the blueray torrent shows up on piratebay when I can watch it at home for free. It’s been several years now since I’ve actually bought a movie ticket and I don’t want to break that trend.

    The original was probably my favorite movie of all time so I’m definitely on the fence here.

    • Go and see it in 3D, it’s the least Jewish movie I’ve seen in years. You’ll be giving your money to a French-Canadian director, so some of the cost of your ticket will flow back here to my part of the world.

      • Well, see, that’s the thing – its not. In fact, the original screenwriter for BladeRunner (a Mexican-European mixed-race fellow) wasn’t sufficient, so they brought in Jew (((Michael Green))) to add some ‘spice’.

        Be wary of Hollyweird Jews trying to earn shekels off your alienation.

  • This movie is so Alt-Right it’s spooky. I saw it last night in 3D and would recommend that version of it highly.

    Great review, by the way.

      • They love cranking up the audio like that. They showed a bunch of lousy trailers before Blade Runner when I went and they had me worried the feature film would be as loud as those. Thankfully they turned it down for Blade Runner. Only the sound of the blasters were too much where I saw it.

    • Its written by a Jew and a Mexican half-breed, employing your own alienation against you to get your shekels.
      Yeah… That’s pretty Alt-Right alright.
      Remember to donate goyim.

  • Blade Runner 2049 reminded me of just how amazing the current year could be with us in charge. Our values and our messages with the technology that we now possess could create amazing films that would inspire our people to greater heights, not glorify the lowest among us. Everything would be the same on one hand, we’d have the rockets and the jets and the high-speed computers, but the texture and feel of life would be completely different.

    H.G. Wells anticipated this kind of future a century ago:

    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19229/19229-h/19229-h.htm

    And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity—beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge—and to check the procreation of base and servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men.

    Yet what do today’s “progressives” offer us? A celebration of “all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men”: Unattractive and hostile feminists, misshapen and stupid nonwhite immigrants, transgender kooks and misfits, self-destructive gay men and so forth.

    I saw a cartoon recently where the owner of a circus had to lay off from his side show the bearded woman, the grossly fat man and the guy with tattoos from head to foot, because people don’t consider them “freaks” any more. These marginal people have become the models for our elites’ vision of The New Man:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Man_(utopian_concept)

    • Quiet simply, they has abandonned their ideals.

      They are not the only ones contaminated by the fee-fees culture, thought. Even this article have signs that OP is affected by it, even if just a little.

    • There’s also an interesting reference to the Book of Galatians. The missing Replicant girl is supposed to have died of Galatians Syndrome. In Galatians 5, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law”. The holographic girlfriend is named Joi and the Replicant assistant of Wallace is named Luv.

  • I wonder about the casting choice of a black actor to play the master of the Dickensian orphanage full of mostly white children, whom he exploits as slave labor.

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