I saw a media screening of Blade Runner 2049 on Monday night. Just so you know, it’s a very good addition to the Blade Runner universe that connects to the first film as well as one might ever expect. It differs from the Ridley Scott film in that it’s less of a pulp noir (especially compared to the theatrically-released version of the original), and it’s more self aware of its own philosophical reflections — but not in a manner that gets in the way of characters or stories or the insanely realized moods of this outrageously cinematic, future-fiction opera. Even thirty years after the events in the original Blade Runner, this new film is still as much about a place drenched in shadows as it is about humans and replicants, and the line that separates the two.

I’m not going to write a regular review for this exceptional movie. After the screening, Denis Villeneuve and Warner Brothers sent us off with a lengthy list of things they didn’t want us to write about even though the film’s review embargo had been lifted. With that in mind, I’m going to blast away free form at different aspects of the film as they come to mind.

Old is New Again

The moods and atmosphere of the original film are on full display here, but this is an updated version of a new new Los Angeles. Between the first movie and this film an EMP attack knocks out the power grid and erases all data, and the environmental collapse that resulted in all of the extinct animals in Blade Runner becomes a crushing famine. A new breed of reliable replicant slaves and genetically modified crops save humanity from extinction. The setting of the new film looks different to account for the changes that have occurred since the last movie, but it also looks different because of all of the advances in digital effects since Ridley Scott’s first film. Even though this new movie is a slicker product in that regard, it still maintains the gritty sense of place that the first movie captured so well, and 2049‘s viewers will feel right at home in this new film.

The characters and the acting in this new Blade Runner are consistently strong and even Gosling’s limited range is used to maximum effect here. A lot of the restrictions the filmmakers asked for limit how much I’m willing to say about the players on this new stage, but all the performances are mostly pitch perfect. Even though I thought Jared Leto’s villain was under-utilized, the new characters are great additions to the Blade Runner universe, and they’re all realized with consistently inspired performances by this contemporary cast. Again, I won’t say too much, but the returns from the original cast are very good here as well.

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival was a very strong, but overrated alien visitation flick — it showcased the director’s visual style, but the story and some of the effects were ultimately too ham-fisted for the serious meditation on intergalactic communication that the film’s most ardent fans would have you believe it to be. Arrival is a good movie. It’s not a great film. Blade Runner 2049 is a great film, and it’s a great sequel. It’s so good that I’m afraid we’ll get another Blade Runner sequel. That film will be a disaster.

That said, if you’re planning to see Blade Runner 2049, I recommend re-watching the original. I also recommend watching these three prequel shorts to get properly oriented for this next long, strange trip…

Blade Runner 2049-”2020: Blackout”

Blade Runner 2049-”2036: Nexus Dawn”

Blade Runner 2049-”2048: Nowhere to Run”

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So the very first reviews about Bladerunner 2049 have already started leaking. People are already talking “masterpiece” and “Oscar worthy.” As I mentioned in a recent post, I’m super stoked for this movie and I really do hope it’s a masterpiece. While the raving leaks have me mostly just anxious about the film, this new prequel anime by Shinichirō Watanabe is making me a believer. This is the third and final prequel short that will be released before the film hits theaters next week on October 6. Here’s the word from io9…

Shinichirō Watanabe is one of the most iconic anime directors in the business, thanks to his work on the beloved Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop. But his latest work is an intriguing sidestep: a 15-minute short film set in the world of Blade Runner.

The third and final prequel movie set between the events of Blade Runner and the upcoming sequel, 2049, Watanabe’s Blade Runner Black Out 2022 covers a period hinted at in the previous two shorts. It’s the year when a gigantic EMP blast knocks out power to the cities across the world, leading to a rise in anti-Replicant sentiment and eventually a complete prohibition of Replicant creation—one lifted in the years before Blade Runner 2049 through the actions of the movie’s new villain, Niander Wallace (Jared Leto).

On Monday evening the movie could be found exclusively on the Crunchyroll site with no embed link, but I was able to find it on YouTube and add the playlist to my channel there. Hopefully that video will stay up for at least a few days. Here’s Blade Runner Black Out 2022…

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65 years ago, in 1952, Philip K. Dick published his very first short story, “Roog,” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In the year 2017 we’re only a few weeks from the premiere of the Blade Runner sequel, and our actual world seems more and more Phildickian every single day.

Read more about “Roog” here, and dive deep down a rabbit hole in this video that spotlights Phil’s psychic abilities and his theories about our simulated universe…

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If you’re looking forward to seeing Blade Runner 2049 as much as I am you’re going to want to see this new featurette about the film. It features comments from the filmmakers about the movie along with new footage that’s mildly NSFW. Also, in case you’re just catching up, here’s the basic gist of this sequel…

Officer K (Ryan Gosling), a new blade runner for the Los Angeles Police Department, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. His discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former blade runner who’s been missing for 30 years.

OK. Check out the featurette…

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Today I came across an RT article where Slovenian philospher Slavov Zizek outlines his conviction that as humans and machines merge, people will lose their individual freedom. Here are some words…

“The fact that is what possible to break into, to hack a computer through a DNA, means that our identity, determined by DNA is nothing more than just another computer formula,” Zizek said.

“Our life, human life, our identity is reduced to a series of formulas. So we are effectively entering some kind of post human universe where everything, our inner most identity can be reduced to a formula.”

“I would not be afraid of this [particular experiment], that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Zizek said, emphasizing that there are a lot of much more disturbing scientific achievements

“What I’m afraid of is a possibility of a direct contact-link between our brain, what we are thinking, and a computer network, because there we lose our autonomy.”

He warned that soon computers will be able to control the human mind, misleading the individual to believe they are still in control of their thoughts and reality. Under this arrangement, Zizek argues, humans will lose their autonomy and will become indistinguishable from the machines.

“What is much more dangerous is… if our brains will be directly linked to computers so we will lose our inner freedom. Even in the worst of Nazism… those in power could not control what you are thinking. You can have your inner thoughts… Now with a direct link between our brain and the digital network, we lose our inner freedom,” the philosopher said.

It’s hard to think about the blending of humans and machines without thinking that we’ll have to wait until October to watch Blade Runner 2049. In anticipation of the new film let’s have another look back at the classic: here’s nearly an hour’s worth of outtakes from the original film which is celebrating its 35th anniversary in 2017…

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1982 was an amazing year for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror films: E.T., Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Creepshow, The Thing, Poltergeist, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Tron, and The Dark Crystal all debuted that year. Another 1982 movie that was full of fantastic elements as well as fantastic music was Pink Floyd — The Wall. One of the greatest rock films of all time, The Wall tells the story of a young boy who grows up in post-war Britain and becomes a famous rock star. Eventually lost love sends him on a downward spiral of self-loathing that conversely sees him rise to the position of a fascist demigod. It’s all one big sprawling metaphor for the interpersonal traumas that find us detaching from friends and family until we’re each living behind these walls of our own making in the prisons we’ve created for ourselves.

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of this landmark film, here’s Pink Floyd — The Wall…

Stay Awake!

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A few weeks ago I shared an old Insomnia post to my social media networks for From the Archives Friday — it was a notice celebrating the birthday/inception date of Roy Batty, the leader of the renegade replicants in the original Blade Runner film. Batty’s inception date on January 8, 2016 takes on special importance this year as Blade Runner is celebrating its 35th anniversary, and the film’s long-awaited sequel, Blade Runner 2049, will be released this fall. And hey, being one-year-old is a pretty big deal even for an artificial humanoid.

Celebrating Batty and the Blade Runner universe, I’m planning lots of posts leading up to the release of the sequel this year. Let’s get started with this exhaustive making-of documentary of the original Blade Runner film. Here’s Dangerous Days – On The Edge of Blade Runner…

Stay Awake!

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On Friday we observed the birthday of Roy Batty. What I’m trying to say is that we observed the “inception date” of Roy Batty — the poet laureate of the replicants in the film, Blade Runner. The Guardian has the word…

8 January 2016 marks the inception date of Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the leader of a gang of renegade replicants on the run from Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) in Ridley Scott’s iconic 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner.

A product of the Tyrell Corporation, Batty was part of the Nexus-6 line of genetically engineered replicants. Described as “more human than human”, the creations look indistinguishable from humans; but possess superior strength, agility, tolerance to extreme temperatures, and intelligence.

But, boy, was the internet pleased to celebrate his birthday.

The events contained within Blade Runner occur in November 2019, in a technologically advanced Los Angeles which sees Spinners flying above the streets littered with ads promoting tourism in “off-world” colonies throughout the galaxy. By this time, replicants have long existed, though now illegal on Planet Earth after they proved dangerous to humans.

Endgadget added…

…it seems as if we’re edging closer and closer to Blade Runner’s world. The very fact that AI, flying cars, robots and private space travel are hot topics at all is a big deal. Who’d have thought in 1982 that real tech giants would share something in common with Tyrell Corporation? Truly intelligent machines and off-world colonies may still be decades away, but they’re at least on the horizon. Building-scale giant displays have been around for a while, too, and the seemingly physics-defying image enhancer isn’t that far-fetched given the existence of gigapixel cameras. And like it or not, we’re starting to see cities suffocated by pollution. Will we get much closer to Roy Batty’s world by the time he’s supposed to shut off in 2019? Probably (and to some extent, hopefully) not, but it’s fascinating that there are any similarities at all.

Here’s the reason Rutger Hauer became an actor…

Stay Awake!

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This week, I’m remembering Philip K. Dick who died after a series of strokes on March 2, 1982. I first read A Scanner Darkly in the early 1990′s. The book was written in 1977, but it takes place in the early 1990′s and I was dumbfounded at how Dick had predicted slacker culture nearly two decades out.

Dick was a prolific author, but he struggled through most of his career until film adaptations of his work brought him mainstream attention. The Wiki has a brief breakdown:

In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, eleven popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, The Adjustment Bureau and Impostor. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

After his death, Dick was treated to a bizarre tribute when some obsessive fans created his likeness in the form of a remote controlled android. The android was included on a discussion panel in a San Diego Comic Con presentation about the film adaptation of the novel, A Scanner Darkly. In February 2006, an America West Airlines employee misplaced the android’s head. It was never found. In January 2011, Hanson Robotics announced that it had built a replacement.

Here, that android jerks and blinks his way right to the bottom of the uncanny valley…

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It’s difficult to over-estimate the impact that Run Run Shaw and his invention of the kung-fu film genre have had on action films specifically and on world cinema in general. I heard on the radio this morning that Mr. Shaw has left the Earth for that big movie palace in the sky. Here’s The New York Times:

Run Run Shaw, the colorful Hong Kong media mogul whose name was synonymous with low-budget Chinese action and horror films — and especially with the wildly successful kung fu genre, which he is largely credited with inventing — died on Tuesday at his home in Hong Kong. He was 106.

Asked what his favorite films were, Mr. Shaw, a billionaire, once replied, “I particularly like movies that make money.”

Shaw’s first big film was 1972′s the One-Armed Swordsman and by the time the kung-fu genre began to tire, Shaw was savvy enough to become an investor in a little sci-fi cop film called Blade Runner. In between, he made some of the most important action films of all time. To celebrate the man and his life, here’s one of my favorites: The Five Deadly Venoms

Stay Awake

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