Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

[Big Ben]

Yes it is. "Josef K" was the designation Kafka gave the protagonist of The Trial and The Dream. K was the protagonist of The Castle. "K" could really be anyone in this instance which I felt led into the plot point of

Spoiler

"You are not really all that special."

[flyonthewall2983]

I read someone saying that a friend of theirs called this movie sexist. They didn't articulate as to why, probably just ignorant to the possibility that the dystopian future as depicted in it could be partially because of the way women are depicted, that true equality in that world is even more of a myth than it is here.

[dda1996a]

But K. and Kafka's character are caught in never ending absurd encounters, which I could only fit into his search for the missing child, less that it could be anyone (unless you specifically consider Kafka's protagonists to be a stand in for anyone, which in case I get what you are saying).
Also this film is far from sexist. Just because it has white males at its center doesn't mean women are shown as weak and useless. Joi, Luv, Robin Wright and Mariette are all credible female characters. Are we going to accuse every film centered around a white male of being racist/sexist/ignorant of minorities?
If you really wish you could focus on how this future makes Joi, a female a commodity. But we have here a female killer robot, a lieutenant, and the leader of the revolution all being females.

[Mr Sausage]

I read someone saying that a friend of theirs called this movie sexist. They didn't articulate as to why, probably just ignorant to the possibility that the dystopian future as depicted in it could be partially because of the way women are depicted, that true equality in that world is even more of a myth than it is here.

The future didn't seem especially sexist. See Robin Wright's character, for instance, who doesn't seem to conform to any sexist stereotypes.

I'm guessing they mean the Ana de Armas character?

[RIP Film]

I think people were referring to an overall misogynist tone rather than sexism. Like that part with the replicant woman

Spoiler

who drops out of the bag and is promptly stabbed

. Or Joi running around half-naked, or that one character being a hooker in order to spy on K. I don't know, to me it seems like a pretty crappy future and thus misogyny would be the norm, but they could have spread it around a bit more and made both sexes seem as disposable.

[DarkImbecile]

I don't know, to me it seems like a pretty crappy future and thus misogyny would be the norm, but they could have spread it around a bit more and made both sexes seem as disposable.

Robin Wright at one point basically holds her ability to force K to have sex with her over his head, just another underlining of the recurring theme of some people/replicants/AIs only having value to those in a position of power over them to the extent that they provide what the powerful want from them (the children stripping scrap metals being another example).

[flyonthewall2983]

That moment is pretty vital towards knowing the kind of hierarchy humans have over Replicants. What's so off-putting about it is that Joshi is abusing her authority in a way we hear about men doing it, and K puts up little resistance only because he's programmed that way. Wright wasn't given a lot to do with that character but she absolutely makes the most of it, that scene specifically.

[Mr Sausage]

Precisely. This isn't a sex or gender issue. It's a class issue.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'll even go as far to say that she does it because she may have acted like that because she was programmed that way herself, that the LAPD is entirely made up of Replicants who, as part of their job, have to remind one another of their station in life if anyone takes their eye off the ball.

[Mr Sausage]

I'll even go as far to say that she does it because she may have acted like that because she was programmed that way herself, that the LAPD is entirely made up of Replicants who, as part of their job, have to remind one another of their station in life if anyone takes their eye off the ball.

If she were a replicant, I'd doubt she'd have been overpowered so easily by that one replicant, nor referred to so contemptuously as "little thing" during that scene.

[plasticinespeculator]

I read someone saying that a friend of theirs called this movie sexist. They didn't articulate as to why, probably just ignorant to the possibility that the dystopian future as depicted in it could be partially because of the way women are depicted, that true equality in that world is even more of a myth than it is here.

There are two main lines of attack, first is that the female characters lack the psychological complexity of Officer K and the second is how women are sexualized and it's old-fashioned sexual politics, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it misogynist.

[RIP Film]

I feel like my problem with Villeneuve is that he seems fairly hands off with the scripts. I looked at his writing credits on IMDB and they are pretty brief. Most of my issues with his films come down to the writing, for instance Sicario kind of failed to make Emily Blunt an effective counter-point to Del Toro's character, Arrival feels like a short story extended into a feature-length film (which it was), and 2049 has some action film clichés that seem out of place for his career. He's good everywhere else, I just wish there was more confident oversight behind the writing.

[zedz]

I read someone saying that a friend of theirs called this movie sexist. They didn't articulate as to why, probably just ignorant to the possibility that the dystopian future as depicted in it could be partially because of the way women are depicted, that true equality in that world is even more of a myth than it is here.

There are two main lines of attack, first is that the female characters lack the psychological complexity of Officer K and the second is how women are sexualized and it's old-fashioned sexual politics, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it misogynist.

Spoiler

One of the female characters is only an app, but still undergoes almost the same character arc as the protagonist, it's just that it's conveyed rather subtly. There's also more complexity to the evil hench-replicant than appears on the surface of the script. She's one of the few characters (all replicants, as I recall) that cries during the course of the film. And all of the female replicants / apps are engineered to service men's needs. It's the nature of the film's shitty world.

[dda1996a]

I feel like my problem with Villeneuve is that he seems fairly hands off with the scripts. I looked at his writing credits on IMDB and they are pretty brief. Most of my issues with his films come down to the writing, for instance Sicario kind of failed to make Emily Blunt an effective counter-point to Del Toro's character, Arrival feels like a short story extended into a feature-length film (which it was), and 2049 has some action film clichés that seem out of place for his career. He's good everywhere else, I just wish there was more confident oversight behind the writing.

I'm afraid you really didn't get the point of Sicario then, and Arrival never felt overlong or lacking.

[tenia]

Arrival has tons of issues but yeah, overlong isnt one of them (surprisingly).

[dda1996a]

Sure it does but it was still one of last year's best films. It's far from perfect but I think that's Villeneuve's skill that he manages to create a lot more out of his screenplays (even though I liked Arrival's screenplay). Sica Rio is his masterpiece but even something like Prisoners that has been done before manages to transcend its genre and plot points to create riveting cinema.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm all in for the hyperbole this is getting, but to be honest the one thing I felt lacking once I listened to it apart from the movie, is the soundtrack. Zimmer did some interesting things sonically to match what is on the screen, but unlike almost everything else he does it's something that is best left there. Him and Benjamin Wallfisch were thrown in at the 11th hour too, so it's not like a lot of his other work, especially with Christopher Nolan, where he's in on the ground floor in the pre-production phase.

[beamish13]

I've never been particularly impressed with Zimmer's work. His scores for Nolan's Batman films lack the personality and memorability of what Danny Elfman did on Tim Burton's films.

I took a class on film composition at UCLA with composer Paul Chihara, who's probably most well-known for frequently collaborating with Sidney Lumet. Chihara called Zimmer the "musical antichrist" who has no orchestral ideas whatsoever

[flyonthewall2983]

I was on a film score board for a little while and that seemed to be the opinion of his work by a few of it's more outspoken members. It's loathsome to them that he's made himself kind of a cottage industry, with several composers who worked for him who have aped his style endlessly. And to some degree that's totally fair, but I'd never say that at the expense of his really good work like on The Thin Red Line or Interstellar.

[John Cope]

Still hope (and expect) for the Jóhannsson score to leak at some point.

[plasticinespeculator]

I read someone saying that a friend of theirs called this movie sexist. They didn't articulate as to why, probably just ignorant to the possibility that the dystopian future as depicted in it could be partially because of the way women are depicted, that true equality in that world is even more of a myth than it is here.

There are two main lines of attack, first is that the female characters lack the psychological complexity of Officer K and the second is how women are sexualized and it's old-fashioned sexual politics, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it misogynist.

Spoiler

One of the female characters is only an app, but still undergoes almost the same character arc as the protagonist, it's just that it's conveyed rather subtly. There's also more complexity to the evil hench-replicant than appears on the surface of the script. She's one of the few characters (all replicants, as I recall) that cries during the course of the film. And all of the female replicants / apps are engineered to service men's needs. It's the nature of the film's shitty world.

What arc does Joi go through?

[RIP Film]

I'm afraid you really didn't get the point of Sicario then, and Arrival never felt overlong or lacking.

I get it, the film does a loyalty shift 2/3 of the way through, and it's effective at that. But I found it heavy handed how it treated Blunt. Her character may have been a fly in the ointment, but the moral conflict is all but abandoned in favor of taking sides with Del Toro, who by the end is practically treated like Liam Neeson in one of his revenge flicks. Having said that, it's still a good film and probably his best.

As for Arrival, I found the drama of it wafer thin. It gets into the linguistic theories a bit but sort of glides on them, the audience is expected to accept it on an appeal to authority: they're the top academics in their field, but I never felt like I was solving the mystery with them. The script leap frogs from one discovery to the next. It doesn't help that there isn't much dimension to the characters to begin with. The ending and underexposed cinematography was pretty interesting, but overall I found it spotty. Anyway back to Blade Runner...

[zedz]

What arc does Joi go through?

Spoiler

She becomes "a real girl", just as K believed he has (and ultimately does) become "a real boy". In the meantime, she also, like K, defies her programming in order to help somebody else.

[dda1996a]

I'm afraid you really didn't get the point of Sicario then, and Arrival never felt overlong or lacking.

I get it, the film does a loyalty shift 2/3 of the way through, and it's effective at that. But I found it heavy handed how it treated Blunt. Her character may have been a fly in the ointment, but the moral conflict is all but abandoned in favor of taking sides with Del Toro, who by the end is practically treated like Liam Neeson in one of his revenge flicks. Having said that, it's still a good film and probably his best.

As for Arrival, I found the drama of it wafer thin. It gets into the linguistic theories a bit but sort of glides on them, the audience is expected to accept it on an appeal to authority: they're the top academics in their field, but I never felt like I was solving the mystery with them. The script leap frogs from one discovery to the next. It doesn't help that there isn't much dimension to the characters to begin with. The ending and underexposed cinematography was pretty interesting, but overall I found it spotty. Anyway back to Blade Runner...

Blunt's character never once had any say in the film. She is continually pushed aside and neglected. But that's the film's point. I don't think the film shifts loyalty.

[plasticinespeculator]

What arc does Joi go through?

Spoiler

She becomes "a real girl", just as K believed he has (and ultimately does) become "a real boy". In the meantime, she also, like K, defies her programming in order to help somebody else.

Didn't the movie undercut that when K encounters the giant advertisement Joi and he realizes she was just acting like she was programmed? Subsequently, he spent about ten minutes of screentime moping because the encounter disrupted his view of their relationship. Also, how did her actions show she has an arc? Given her programming, one could easily claim she was doing exactly what she was designed to do.