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alias_sqbrI wrote an off the cuff review on twitter. But overall: I liked the central arc, about a bladerunner who knows he's a replicant, and is numbed to the emptiness of his life, getting dragged into the mess caused by the events of the previous Bladerunner movie. Ryan Gosling does a good job of looking beaten up and sad, and the visuals were pretty effective in a bleak cyberpunk dystopia kind of way. But for a story about the question of who counts as a real person it sure could have done with 1000% less objectification of women and exotification of POC.
Also there were a lot of random loud Inception-esque BLAAAAARP noises, at least in the Titan-whatever cinema we were in. They undercut the emotion of various scenes and also would probably be unpleasant for people with some hearing issues.
Anyway, sound balance aside I've been pondering how the basic plot could have been made into a more enjoyable movie. I'm having trouble sleeping, I think in part because all those objectified boobs did bad things to my brain, so here's some rambling thoughts.
Spoilers like WHOA, and it won't make much sense if you haven't seen the film.
*****Spoilers*******
I liked the overall What Is A Person arc, and the protagonist kind of needs to be a white 30 something dude for the plot to work, so Ryan Gosling can stay.
I actually also didn't mind the AI girlfriend Joi being so shallow, since that felt like a deliberately disquieting commentary on Joe thinking he wasn't a real person. But literally ever other female character needed to be written better to create a contrast. And there should have been some explicit uncanny valley limits to Joi's sentience, or it being made clear that there aren't. I felt like her being a Wallace product was a Checkov's gun of competing loyalties that never got fired. And how much more disquieting would it have been if we'd met another version of her BEFORE she died? One focussed on an owner who wasn't Joe. I kind of feel like she had to die or at least leave Joe, since he had to be alone by the end. But something more strange and computery, like being reset so Luv could access the data files, would have been more interesting.
The female characters and villains generally needed to feel more like they had a consistent inner life. The regular humans needed to feel notably more "normal" to make Joe's quiet strangeness more obvious, and up the "I am not a normal person" angst.
To this end, Wallace should have been just a regular business man. No weird eyes, that was just unnecessary and kinda silly looking "disability as inhuman-ness". The same basic "make replicants fertile so I can breed more of them" motivation (I mean I think that whole plot is a bit gross, but you'd have to do extensive replotting to change it), but like a CEO discussing upping production at factories. Treating the replicants like cows at an auction, checking their teeth etc not being weirdly sexual. Also a less terrible actor haha.
Luv isn't all that important to the story except as a simple antagonist, but a little more fleshing out would have been nice, to compare her motivations to the other replicants.
No random self defeating behaviour from villains to suit the plot. Why did Luv kill Joi and leave Joe alive?? It would have made so much more sense to kill him and take the drive to search for extra data. And it wouldn't have been hard to set up the plot so the same outcome happened but Luv's behaviour wasn't nonsensical. Why did Wallace petulantly stab the replicant girl after he'd JUST SAID they were resource intensive to make? Why not have him notice an unexpected flaw and THEN kill her?
Way less random naked women. A little more sexualisation of men. I liked the random dead looking male replicants in cases but why were there no male sex workers or ad characters or giant naked statues? Why did Luv's dying face have to be pretty and blank like a model bluh. Why did the camera take every oppurtunity to stare at boobs nnnnngggg.
The sex worker Mariette was way too much of a hooker with a heart of gold whose every action was all about Joe. I guess the whole thing with being a sex worker who acts as a body for Joi had some purpose to the plot beyond a weird sex scene, but if it was going to happen the contrast between her and Joi should have been way clearer: a scene showing her dealing with her life outside Joe, maybe. Not writing her as into Joe for no reason, why on earth was she so touchy at the end? Like, a little "sorry you had such a bad time" comfort makes sense, but if she'd been no nonsense freedom fighter it would have been a nice emphasis that unlike Joi she is a full person with her own life who isn't 100% focussed on Joe when she isn't being paid to be.
I'm glad the leader of the replicant resistance was a visibly disabled woman who didn't die, but she would have been good as a POC too. (The movie needed more POC in general, but most characters were villains, needed to be white for the plot to work, or died horribly, which makes it a little tricky)
I am not sure how the plot could work without Rachel being dead but I still really didn't like how very Fridged Mother/Wife she was.
I thought the daughter was mostly ok, she at least felt like a person and wasn't sexualised, but she was a bit Sad Disabled Girl. I'm a bit confused about her backstory: did she get adopted by someone rich then get sick? When she talked about her parents did she mean her adopted parents?
I LOVED the "am I real boy" followed by the reveal that Joe really is just Some Replicant after all. That made all the manpain worth it and is why I am fine with him being a white dude, since he needs to look like he could be Harrison Ford and Sean Young's kid. The spoiler I got walking into the cinema, by the way, was "were we supposed to think he died on the steps?". I forgot about it for most of the movie then when I saw the steps went ohhhh. Luckily it mostly just added to the sense of bittersweet inevitability.
Less "POC and other cultures/languages are alienating and weird for our poor manpainy white protag", please. There are ways to write a dark story about white protag in a multicultural city that don't hit those buttons.
Probably other things but that's all that comes to mind for now.
And while this specific story did kind of work best being about a dude, I wish there were more stories like this with reversed gender dynamics. I love me a good "created intelligence ponders their existence" story but wish they didn't so often have the subtext "do women even HAVE sentience?"
Also there were a lot of random loud Inception-esque BLAAAAARP noises, at least in the Titan-whatever cinema we were in. They undercut the emotion of various scenes and also would probably be unpleasant for people with some hearing issues.
Anyway, sound balance aside I've been pondering how the basic plot could have been made into a more enjoyable movie. I'm having trouble sleeping, I think in part because all those objectified boobs did bad things to my brain, so here's some rambling thoughts.
Spoilers like WHOA, and it won't make much sense if you haven't seen the film.
*****Spoilers*******
I liked the overall What Is A Person arc, and the protagonist kind of needs to be a white 30 something dude for the plot to work, so Ryan Gosling can stay.
I actually also didn't mind the AI girlfriend Joi being so shallow, since that felt like a deliberately disquieting commentary on Joe thinking he wasn't a real person. But literally ever other female character needed to be written better to create a contrast. And there should have been some explicit uncanny valley limits to Joi's sentience, or it being made clear that there aren't. I felt like her being a Wallace product was a Checkov's gun of competing loyalties that never got fired. And how much more disquieting would it have been if we'd met another version of her BEFORE she died? One focussed on an owner who wasn't Joe. I kind of feel like she had to die or at least leave Joe, since he had to be alone by the end. But something more strange and computery, like being reset so Luv could access the data files, would have been more interesting.
The female characters and villains generally needed to feel more like they had a consistent inner life. The regular humans needed to feel notably more "normal" to make Joe's quiet strangeness more obvious, and up the "I am not a normal person" angst.
To this end, Wallace should have been just a regular business man. No weird eyes, that was just unnecessary and kinda silly looking "disability as inhuman-ness". The same basic "make replicants fertile so I can breed more of them" motivation (I mean I think that whole plot is a bit gross, but you'd have to do extensive replotting to change it), but like a CEO discussing upping production at factories. Treating the replicants like cows at an auction, checking their teeth etc not being weirdly sexual. Also a less terrible actor haha.
Luv isn't all that important to the story except as a simple antagonist, but a little more fleshing out would have been nice, to compare her motivations to the other replicants.
No random self defeating behaviour from villains to suit the plot. Why did Luv kill Joi and leave Joe alive?? It would have made so much more sense to kill him and take the drive to search for extra data. And it wouldn't have been hard to set up the plot so the same outcome happened but Luv's behaviour wasn't nonsensical. Why did Wallace petulantly stab the replicant girl after he'd JUST SAID they were resource intensive to make? Why not have him notice an unexpected flaw and THEN kill her?
Way less random naked women. A little more sexualisation of men. I liked the random dead looking male replicants in cases but why were there no male sex workers or ad characters or giant naked statues? Why did Luv's dying face have to be pretty and blank like a model bluh. Why did the camera take every oppurtunity to stare at boobs nnnnngggg.
The sex worker Mariette was way too much of a hooker with a heart of gold whose every action was all about Joe. I guess the whole thing with being a sex worker who acts as a body for Joi had some purpose to the plot beyond a weird sex scene, but if it was going to happen the contrast between her and Joi should have been way clearer: a scene showing her dealing with her life outside Joe, maybe. Not writing her as into Joe for no reason, why on earth was she so touchy at the end? Like, a little "sorry you had such a bad time" comfort makes sense, but if she'd been no nonsense freedom fighter it would have been a nice emphasis that unlike Joi she is a full person with her own life who isn't 100% focussed on Joe when she isn't being paid to be.
I'm glad the leader of the replicant resistance was a visibly disabled woman who didn't die, but she would have been good as a POC too. (The movie needed more POC in general, but most characters were villains, needed to be white for the plot to work, or died horribly, which makes it a little tricky)
I am not sure how the plot could work without Rachel being dead but I still really didn't like how very Fridged Mother/Wife she was.
I thought the daughter was mostly ok, she at least felt like a person and wasn't sexualised, but she was a bit Sad Disabled Girl. I'm a bit confused about her backstory: did she get adopted by someone rich then get sick? When she talked about her parents did she mean her adopted parents?
I LOVED the "am I real boy" followed by the reveal that Joe really is just Some Replicant after all. That made all the manpain worth it and is why I am fine with him being a white dude, since he needs to look like he could be Harrison Ford and Sean Young's kid. The spoiler I got walking into the cinema, by the way, was "were we supposed to think he died on the steps?". I forgot about it for most of the movie then when I saw the steps went ohhhh. Luckily it mostly just added to the sense of bittersweet inevitability.
Less "POC and other cultures/languages are alienating and weird for our poor manpainy white protag", please. There are ways to write a dark story about white protag in a multicultural city that don't hit those buttons.
Probably other things but that's all that comes to mind for now.
And while this specific story did kind of work best being about a dude, I wish there were more stories like this with reversed gender dynamics. I love me a good "created intelligence ponders their existence" story but wish they didn't so often have the subtext "do women even HAVE sentience?"
no subject
Date: 2017-10-09 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-12 04:36 pm (UTC)But that had boobs in it and did really well! (Not so much, no)