Recall that while the original is an amazing movie and a scifi classic, it wasn’t actually a popular or successful movie at the time.
WHAAAAT? Dude, I think you can be thrown off the boards for that.
I watched the original again last weekend, and it’s definitely a movie I appreciate but don’t love. It feels a little dated, and not just in the expected ways that some of the special effects have aged. It’s all just a little bit goofier around the edges than I remembered. Gaff’s just a weirdo. Roy’s got some powerful dialog, but then he also just howls as he runs around chasing Deckard. It’s an odd film.
I’m not reading reviews, but I’m seeing snippets of glowing praise for the new film, people throwing around things like “sci-fi masterpiece”. So, yay, but also, I’m curious if it’s going to be true to the original and also be a noir masterpiece. Maybe that just hasn’t come up in the impressions I’ve seen, but it’s easy to imagine that aspect of the original being marginalized and still seeing the film lauded as a success. I’m very curious if that’s intact.
Fun Fact:
Roy’s soliloquy at the end of the movie is just something that Rutger Hauer ad-libbed at the time.
That … really strains my credulity. If for no other reason than it doesn’t seem like Ridley Scott’s way to just turn a camera on an actor and say “Hey, whatever you want to do, it’s all good.”
In the documentary Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner, Hauer, director Ridley Scott, and screenwriter David Peoples asserted that Hauer wrote the “Tears in Rain” speech. There were earlier versions of the speech in Peoples’s draft screenplays; one included the sentence “I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tannhäuser Gate”[6] In his autobiography, Hauer said he merely cut the original scripted speech by several lines, adding only “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain”[7] although the original script, displayed during the documentary, before Hauer’s rewrite, does not mention “Tannhäuser Gate”:
“I have known adventures, seen places you people will never see, I’ve been Offworld and back…frontiers! I’ve stood on the back deck of a blinker bound for the Plutition Camps with sweat in my eyes watching the stars fight on the shoulder of Orion. I’ve felt wind in my hair, riding test boats off the black galaxies and seen an attack fleet burn like a match and disappear. I’ve seen it…felt it!”
Hauer described this as “opera talk” and “hi-tech speech” with no bearing on the rest of the film, so he “put a knife in it” the night before filming, without Scott’s knowledge.[8] In an interview with Dan Jolin, Hauer said that these final lines showed that Batty wanted to “make his mark on existence … the replicant in the final scene, by dying, shows Deckard what a real man is made of.”[9]
OK, so there was improvisation involved, but Rutger Hauer didn’t just make the whole damn soliloquy up. Granted, that may have been me inferring something that Timex didn’t intend.
Ya, you’re right that Scott wouldn’t let an actor just make shit up, but Hauer did in fact rewrite that whole thing himself, improving it significantly.
He kind of plays it down, saying he just shortened it, but really, when you read the script, and then what he did with it, he made it into a totally amazing scene. It’s one of my favorite scenes in all of science fiction.
Yeah, I’ve watched it numerous times over the years and the issues that have endured for me are the more goofy ones; Harrison’s daft reporter facade when he’s talking to Khora, his over the top faces and movements when he’s getting thrown around by Leon, the photo scanning sequence, Batty’s odd howling, Deckard’s uncomfortable move on Rachael. The pace has never been a problem to me because every lingering moment I drink up. It’s such a beautiful picture with Vangelis’ score.
I’d vowed not to go to the cinema again after my last experience but… a sequel by Denis Villeneuve to one of my favourite sci-fi movies of all time? That’s hard to resist. I’ve got my Breath of the Wild tempered hype armour on now but I’m excited for next week when we’re hoping to go during the day on a weekday to avoid the crowds.
Perhaps this was mentioned upthread but you all should read the Philip K. Dick short story the first film is based on if you haven’t.
I just came back from a late screening. Overall, despite a few nitpicks, I really enjoyed the film, but it’s not going to have the same impact of the original fiim. I don’t think the cinematography is on par with Cronenweth’s work, and the score, aside from the brief reprises from the original, is a completely forgettable follow-up to Vangelis’ legendary soundtrack, but the tone and pace of 2049 are unlike any other sci-fi film I’ve seen theatrically. The effects are inspired, and it’s packed with fantastic set pieces, which the clever story supports well. Low-key and serious in the best possible way.
While it’s a strong sequel, this is a Villeneuve work through and through, so I would keep that in mind. I’ll definitely watch it again.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was a full novel, not a short story.
The first film had such awesome shots of architecture that I chose it when I was writing about architecture in film for a paper in college.
And the photo investigation session? Iconic. It forever convinced audiences that advanced technology could upres images from low res. Its been used in soooooooo many cop shows its a cliche now.
Funny little nerd story. I was walking around SIGGRAPH this year (its a convention for CGI nerds) and a couple people told me NVIDIA was using deep learning to upres images.
Now I’m right in the middle of designing a neural net right now and so am somewhat familiar with the tech, but by no means an expert. So my initial reaction was “no they aren’t, you must have misunderstood”. But of course I’m highly intrigued. What? Is this possible? Are they using some insane data set to extrapolate objects, lighting, background, etc.?
So so practically run over to their booth and find the display with a nice technical Indian data science spoke woman manning it. I ask her all amused but braced for some stunning thing, as the display behind her WAS upresing a scene.
First thing out of her mouth was “That’s impossible.” I’m like “Ok, whew!”. Turns out they were improving render speeds in the view port dramatically so a 3-D artist could work in render mode more easily. A cool thing, but no Blade Runner.
Maybe next year!
Just came back from it. It was impressive. Just pure atmosphere through and through, much like the original, although this one felt more sprawling and less muted. Not often that I see a movie this atmospheric in a cinema. Also it feels like a second film in a trilogy? I wouldn’t say no to a third one if they kept the quality.
I just want Cyberpunk 2077 to come out already though…
They are not upressing images in the original (well, not only and that’s not what the scene is about), they are navigating a photo in 3D to see new angles!!!
You can see it at about 0:48 here
Didn’t he start with a printed photograph? I think he’s doing both things.
It’s awesome that the end result is printing it onto a polaroid.
I think its not just a printed photograph but a print that includes 3D info, but that I’m mostly making up/inferring.