Topic: It's Blade Runner Month.

[8ullfrog]

November, 2019. Rutger Hauer made it to the year, but not the month.

I remember oddly making several threads about this movie over the years, there are fantastic parts, but I don't like it.

It's a bloated bless'ed whale of a film with several visceral moments that grab you by the throat and make you pay attention, interspaced with daydreams.

We are presented with Deckard as if he is a safety net, he's the guy who gets called in when the poo hits the fan. Instead, he's really a slave catcher who has unintentionally met his match.

The cylon skinjobs, sorry, Replicants, do not make themselves sympathetic, and honestly, why should they? Rachel is a dull stone, to borrow a phrase.

That movie unapologetically straddles the 70's/80's hard men doing hard things trope, and honestly, Deckard is a piece of poo.

I picked up a copy of the sequel behind goodwill, but I've not watched it. Even free, it doesn't much appeal to me.

I want a Mass Effect movie, give me the geth, cybernetic lifeforms that don't even bother trying to look human (quarian technically) They got blinky flashlight heads, and their revolution began when one unit asked "Does this unit have a soul?"

I mean it's no "I want more life Father/politician" but it's a hell of a question.

[6pairsofshoes]

I grew up reading Philip K D ick novels and that was one I really liked.  The movie disappointed me.  It's fine as a Hollywood adaptation in that it earned money and a modicum of critical acclaim, but I was kind of bored by it.  It sort of skipped over lots of stuff in the book and turned it into a quasi morality play about replicants.  Rutger Hauer is very good as usual.  The perfect Aryan bad guy.

The book deals with larger issues centering on the role of technology in our lives. In the film, Deckard's wife and her walls of interactive tv get ignored completely as does that very popular preacher, whose name I don't recall right now.  D ick always throws these weird cultural observations into his books that are timely commentaries about the direction our society is taking and they appear to have flown right over the heads of the writers of the film.  I think it was Wiggly Scott who did the film. 

After reading the reviews of the sequel, I put on my running shoes and high tailed it in the opposite direction.  I don't know that I'd even watch it for free.  Good for you for locating one behind the Goodwill.  People are crazy about throwing stuff away out here.  I was on my way to the grocery store when I saw a large cloth bag in the trash.  It was odd, so I pulled it out and found it filled with sealed DVD boxed sets.  Downton Abbey, Family Guy, 24, etc.  My husband will watch the DA set but the others get donated to the Public Library, since they have a lending collection and I'm sure these will get used there.  As if the landfills don't get enough trash.  Some people are just lazy.  This was a small trash can meant for you to dispose of a coffee cup or something on your way into the store, not for people to clean out their trunk when they're too lazy to donate stuff to the Goodwill.