Blade Runner 2049 - Dystopias R Us, Qualudes (and spoilers) included
Blade Runner 2049 is a waste of your time and money. Don't bother with it. It loots the original movie to obtain the worldview behind this movie's "plot". It adds nothing of value to the original, well-done dystopia, unless you count total boredom as a new theme. (Spoiler alert.) I walked out of the theater when, after waiting for him for almost 90 minutes, the first thing Harrison Ford does on screen is try to kill the protagonist in a cartoonish five minute fight scene set in an antique, broken disco in an antique, broken Las Vegas. Writers, here's a clue: I don't care about the dystopian sets and in-the-know cultural references if the plot is garbage.
The movie is full of "brooding" silences and sweeping computer-generated panoramas of post-industrial wastelands and megaslums. Dialogue is minimal, at least as far as I watched. The pacing is so slow that you feel like you are on qualudes. You keep reaching for the fast forward switch. The writers(sic) try to keep you awake by inserting violent murders and fights. They want these bits of sadism to stun the audience, like the Roman Polanski knife scene in Chinatown; but they telegraph the violence and thereby blow the intended surprise.
Meanwhile, the minimalist plot is full of holes, and the character development is less than one-dimensional. I didn't care one whit about any of the cardboard characters. I guess you are supposed to entertain yourself for two hours and 45 minutes by watching the CGI footage and having your eardrums blown out by the artillery barrage that pretends to be a music score.
OTOH, if you want lots of dehumanizing, sadistic violence and women treated as objects, this is your movie. Sometimes its a two-fer, as when the psycho ruler of the world knifes the naked android he has just had awoken. Pointless sadism and sick voyeurism in one scene.
As for women, the female characters are an irrelevant-to-the-plot electronic companion who is programmed to adore her android owner; a sadistic android flunky of the lunatic world leader; a liquor-swilling tough cop; and a collection of hookers. This is the kind of women's liberation that gave us beer-swilling female football fans.
How is this hideous society held together? The Supreme Leader is a nutjob. There is no government visible, except for the LAPD. We do not see anything resembling a family, anything resembling a community. It is all one vast human antheap supposedly kept in line by the brutal, hightech LAPD. But Dr. Evil's henchwoman can murder a cop in police HQ (what, no surveillance cameras?) and there is no rallying round the thin blue line? We have total police surveillance, but the high-rise buildings are jungles? Even a cop has graffiti on his door and has to walk through a hallway full of threatening characters? What's the point of the police then? One of many minor plot fails: the crowds in the stairway vanish when the bad girl shows up to investigate? Continuity? A conversation with Donald Trump has more continuity. The audience is supposed to either fill in or forget the string of holes in the plotline.
This movie is a bad mashup of the disgrace-to-the-novel Dune movie and the pathetic second Matrix movie. It makes the execrable Jupiter Rising look good - at least Eddy Redmayne did an entertaining job of carpet-chewing. Let's count the tropes: Plucky African entrepreneur in his slum-chic shop - check. Android hookers plying their trade in costumes that would have fit in the 1960s - check. Flyovers of vast post-industrial landscapes, complete with mountains of garbage - check. Giant, filthy "workshop" full of bedraggled orphans doing nonsensical "work" under threat of punishment - check. Evil villain gibbering in his palatial home - check.
The whole movie is just a series of boring set-pieces, sometimes with ponderous exposition layered in, sometimes with self-contradictory attempts at evoking the world. Antique wood is a luxury good, but there is synthetic farming? What? No one thinks to grow a tree for profit anywhere in the vast desertscape? There was this loss-of-all-computer-data event and ten day blackout (alluded to, but not explained); but it somehow only caused a few personal records to get lost. It magically did not result in the complete crash of civilization or the outbreak of nuclear war? Puh-leeze.
If I hadn't googled that the screenwriter for this did the original Blade Runner movie, I would have thought it was written by a bunch of twenty-something, Eastern Block cokeheads putting their subconscious disgust at crumbling Communist dictatorship on screen. Maybe that explains the unremarked inclusion of Russian banners, in addition to the original Chinese/Japanese cultural elements.
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I have to admit that I was suckered into seeing this movie by its 8.5 rating on IMDB. (Many dissenting reviewers suggest that the rating has been rigged.)
WTF are people (not) thinking? Is the populace so marinated in ultra-violence and titillating sex/sadism that this is considered a "normal", mainstream movie? This is what people want their teenagers to be watching?
Rather, I think, this is what TPTB want the slaves to watch so that they will accept their subservience - gee, we don't have it as bad as the folks in this movie. Maybe, soon, I can rent an android hooker and torture her.
It will be a long time before I pay to watch another "blockbuster" Hollywood movie.
Comments
Here's a review that generalizes the violence problem.
Zombies and Replicants, The Choreography of Human Dignity: Hollywood’s “Blade Runner 2049” and “World War Z”
When I hear concern about gun violence from "the left"
This is generally the path my mind goes down. And the problem is much, MUCH more pervasive than simply Hollywood media. We have a sick and violent culture. That is exemplified by our state of continuous war. It is exmplified by our automatic approval of us bombing someone somewhere. It is exemplified in our culture (your point here). And it is most clearly exemplified when you read a "liberal" blog and about Weinstein and you see people proposing horrific tortures as appropriate remedies to the problem. And speaking of torture, let's discuss black sites and Guantanamo.
We don't have a problem with "gun violence" in our culture. We have a problem with violence in general.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I used to be a 2nd amendment repeal fanatic.
And I still don't like guns.
My stance has mellowed, but only because I know that the terrible capacity to maim and kill should not be reserved for a select group who get to decided who lives and who dies.
All violence is evil. Sometimes we do violence to prevent a greater evil. The problem is when we do violence to achieve a lesser evil.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I became pro-gun, anti-certification/tracking
When someone convinced me with one simple argument that it was not ridiculous to suggest that an armed populace would serve as a check on government power. Up till that point I had mocked that suggestion. We all know the argument. The government has tanks and whatnot. What is even a few semi-automatics going to do in the face of that.
The person I was speaking to rebutted that line of thinking utterly by asking me one simple question:
If you were an evil dictator trying to put down a populist uprising, would you prefer that the populace was armed or unarmed?
LOL, it didn't take much thinking to realize that tanks only carry you so far. Then he went further and pointed out that in the United States we had a cadre of people specifically trained to establish insurgencies and these same people tended to take their oath to uphold the constitution pretty seriously. Those who are trained to do such things would MUCH prefer to start with an armed citizenry although that's not mandatory.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
@SnappleBC
I wouldn't care. I would simply threatend to nerve gas or nuke any locality that didn't submit completely. The idea that a really evil dictator would hesitate to use WMDs to make an example is part of the pro-gun fairy tale.
Here's a data point on that. Do you know that civilians in Saddam Hussein's (you know, the guy who really did gas his own people - and the US sold him the gas) Iraq, circa 1990, were armed to the teeth, with AK-47s and such. Why? Because Saddam's police did't do law and order; they only did secret police/political enforcement. They let the civilians defend their own neighborhoods and streets - vigilanteism.
Clearly, Hussein didn't give a shit about civilians having semi-auto weapons.
I don't buy the pro-gun argument at all. These days, TPTB just monitor the behavior of citizens, and make sure that the ones trying to organize anything get pre-crimed. That leaves a disorganized bunch of individuals who can be further picked off with surveillance/police state tactics. If a leftwing group tried the equivalent of the Oregon wilderness standoff, they would all be shot down like dogs.
Sure, I get that
What's the point in being an evil dictator if you won't turn weaposn of war on your own populace?
But what happens next as the civilian death toll spirals upwards? How much of the military will remain on board as the wool gets pulled completely away from their eyes? I don't think that's a winning long-term strategy to suppress a population... at least not a well-armed and bloody-minded one.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I actually do believe you're both right.
The PTB have a desire to see things stay exactly as they are with regards to weaponry.
They want Leftists afraid to arm themselves because of overwhelming force, which is then used as evidence by the Right wing to convince themeselves of the need to arm themselves for when the government comes around to them eventually.
I abhor violence and the need to arm oneself, but I fully understand the impulse. The question is when do we see the signs of the times as needing a violent response. There are a lot of folks with guns who think that time is now, and are just waiting for a opportunity.
As I said, I used to be a fanatical anti-gun crusader, because I know what violent ends they can be put to, and how hideous the effects can be. However, I also see my fellow citizens sleeping on the street because the rich strongly benefit from arming and loosing a predatory police force on the population, armed with guns.
I guess it just got to the point for me where I don't trust arms dealers OR the government to stop doing business with them.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
There's a "and here a miracle occurs" color to your narrative
How does this "insurrection" become bloody-minded? If Evil Dictator (ED) is smart, he does what I suggested. He decapitates the proto-leadership, leaving a bunch of disgruntled guys who can easily be duped into attacking other disgruntled guys of a different race/religion/ethnicity. The police and military feel they are taking out individual bad guys/ring leaders/terrorists/whatever - its the cop mentality. They feel they are stopping fights between ethnic groups.
If ED is smart, the spiraling death toll you are talking about never gets started. If ED is smart, Google/Facebook/NSA simply monitors the communications and arrests anyone who shows initiative.
Just give me some level of detail to the scenario. Is it some guys like the Bundy family and their militia taking over someplace and calling for other armed-and-dangerous, Soveriegn Citizen nutbags to join them? The current government is well aware of clowns like the crooked-ass Bundy family; they could squelch them in a minute, but they choose not to. What TPTB did to the DAPL protestors shows the level of force they are capable of. And nobody among the military or cops is crying any tears over legitimate, peaceful DAPL protestors.
Cops are very much pro-gun control, because they don't like being shot at with semi-automatic weapons. Again, in what scenario does putting down a bunch of heavily armed vigilantes/militias make the cops/military have second thoughts? The more violent opposition the military encounters, the stronger their unit cohesion becomes. The less empathy they have for the militias. Meanwhile, the police have been militarized. They view themseles as an occupying army, complete with all the toys they had in Iraq, and view the civilians as potential bad guys who need to be shown who's boss.
The military is a separate culture. They are no longer representative of America. While they may recruit in various places in America, the Imperial Army doesn't live in the community anymore. You want the Army to shoot up Massachusetts, get troops from the South. You want to shoot up the South, get troops from the Northern ghettos. No qualms there. The Chinese put down the Tienamin Sqare demonstrations with troops from the far west countryside. Empires understand how to put down rebellions.
The situation you're asking about is chaotic
So predicting when it will materialize and around whom is impossible. Honestly, it's a situation I hope doesn't happen but given the trajectory of the US it seems virtually certain. You can rule out the morons like Bundy. Consider this possiblity. There's a food riot somewhere. The government clamps down and there are causalities. For whatever reason, this moment was the moment when other people said "enough" so more people showed up and additional riots spawned in other areas. So the government clamps down further and now we are under martial law.
It's at that point that the people I'm thinking about are going to start discussing whether it's "go time". As I noted, these are not morons like the Bundy clan. These are trained professionals who know how to create and feed an insurgency. Of course what happens at that point is things get bloodier.
Who wins in that whole mess is mostly a function of how determined the populace is. In the end, TPTB cannot win by nuking the country they want to own. Nor is it very clear that the military will roll on domestic civilian populations (I have asked a few military people about that). There's no magic. There's just the spontaneous uprising which either gets snuffed out or grows. It's a LOT harder to snuff it out when it's well armed and reasonably well planned.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
If it were being planned you wouldn't read about it online.
You also wouldn't hear a peep out of the MSM until it happened.
The people are not as stupid as the PTB think. Wat Tyler's Rebellion comes to mind. A huge revolution organized by common folk, without a whisper of it reaching the ears of the nobles.
While Occupy was fueled by the internet, you must also remember that the PTB didn't really care that much about the internet then. They do now, and are trying to destroy it. Any Tactician worth his salt has already expected the response and has been thinking about ways to counter their counter rather than do the same thing.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I just can't make all your hypotheticals fit together.
You are proposing a chaotic situation; but I think you have to give a credible example of how such chaos was created.
A food riot with casualties? Nothing of the sort has ever happened inside the US in modern times. Food distribution barely breaks down in a hurricane situation. OTOH, the ghettos are a permanent healthy food desert; but unless martial law is declared, no one is interfering with the delivery of junk food and booze to the ghetto.
The most likely place for chaos is in the ghetto, which is already heavily patrolled and dominated by law enforcment. Its sort of hard for me to understand chaos breaking out in Appalachia. They try (although recently fail) to be self-sufficient in food and housing.
So, I just don't see where this chaos is supposed to take place in a manner that flumoxes TPTB.
This is another hypothetical that I find hard to swallow. Who are these "professionals who know how to create and feed an insurgency"? The only people with those capabilities work for the Deep State and they are not my friends.
You are positing an organized, professional group that plans without being discovered by the most extensive surveillance and espionage dragnet to operate in peacetime. Orders of magnitude more capable than the Stasi. But there are these professionals? I have never seen the slightest hint of such an organization inside the US. Only well-known rightwing nutjobs like the Sovereign Citizens gangsters and the Christian Identity movement.
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You are welcome to whatever scenarios you want to create. I think I am welcome to my opinion that they are unrealistic in the current circumstances. Of course, after the next market crash, these concepts would be much more likely - except for organized professionals, who would light up surveillance in all circumstances.
At this point, I bow out
I'm unwilling to discuss details on this further over the open internet.
Let's suffice it to say that "organized" is probably an overstatement. Maybe "semi-organized" right now. In terms of trained professionals... yeah, you've heard of them.
If you don't think food riots are possible in the US then I don't know what to say. Where do you think the neoliberal train stops? Is there some point at which you think the Plutocrats are going to say, "Yeah, that's enough greed. We're done now."
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Ok. Interesting. I don't want to play there.
Thanks for the hints. Not a scenario I'm interested in. I've seen the movie a hundred times. Yeats said it:
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I said food riots would be much more likely after 2008 round two - the coming mega financial crash with no financial airbags left to cushion the fall, plus a completely corporatist government to ignore the citizens plight. Yeah, looted savings, canceled social security, food shortages, power outages, failed water and sewer systems, broken down roads. All almost predicatable with the neoliberal/neocon gangster elite.
OTOH, in such a situation, we are much more likely to start wars to grab resources (useless, climate destroying oil) or to keep populist revolutions from succeeding. If a real war starts, food riots won't even move the needle. It will be martial law.
Well, in truth
What I'm speculating about here is the end-game for neoliberalism and it's not going to be pretty. How, exactly, that horror will unfold is anyone's guess. I just know that the current trends cannot continue and eventually there will be an armed uprising... globally not nationally... if no other relief is found.
That thinking is predicated on the premise that without some substantial changes, the rich will continue to get richer while the poor get poorer. At some point down that poverty curve, food riots along with a ton of other civil unrest become nearly mandatory.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
On that time scale, I'm in complete agreement with you. n/t
Yes, violence and coercion is the first response to everything.
Talking, negotiating, compromising - those are limp-wristed liberal solutions.
I've been staying away from action scifi flicks for years, because they had devolved into cartoon-plotted CGI-fests.
I went to this one based on the "brand name" and got hit in the face with what Anthony Burgess called "the old ultra-violence". That this garbage is popular tells us what a sick society we are. And I don't have to be a religious fundamentalist to say so.
state of constant war
Not "exemplified"; caused. "Exemplified" implies that the feature is an effect. In the case of our continuous wars, it's the root cause. Continuous wars mean that we have a never-ending influx of ex-warfighters, a significant proportion of whom feel that the death and violence they witnessed "over there" is also an acceptable solution to certain situations "here at home". For this reason among myriad others, Sun Tzu stated: "No nation has ever benefited from prolonged war."
The desire for violent retribution for certain wrongs is part and parcel of the human condition. This is shown by not just history itself, but by many literatures far older than the USA. But national cultures which default to a peacetime footing (unlike ours) know that violent retribution is the last and most desperate resort, not the first and default one!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
That's sort of a chicken & egg thing
I'd need a sociologist and a historian to untangle that. Certainly domestic violence and foreign violence feed each other. Many things in our corrupt nation are like that. Things like inequality, lawlessness, and government lies also feed into a general culture of lawlessness which, of course, drives violence. But I think it's also telling that we have always romanticized lawlessness -- even under better times.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Both you and thanatokephaloides make good points
In your favor, H. Rap Brown said it fifty years ago: "Violence is as American as cherry pie." While we weren't armed to the teeth in the first half of the twentieth century, like we are today, there were lynchings and violent assaults on union members.
In thanatokephaloides favor, the constant warfare and the constant flow of PTSD'd veterans, coupled with the increasingly violent media, has shifted the assumption of "polite" discourse and when to resort to violence. The tilt of law enforcement towards the rich has also eroded the willingness of citizens to trust the legal system, i.e., to turn to violence.
My position is that, while the tendency to violence has been strong, society used to contain it to only what was acceptable to TPTB. After 40 years of neoliberal/neocon gangsterism, there is very little left of society, so violence is increasing.
So, I agree with both of you.
I actually had a discussion about dystopias...
And their popularity. Here's my theory:
In a world where everything is ABSOLUTELY awful, and there is no hope whatsoever, even the most minor acts are easy to claim as heroism. In essence it allows characters to seem heroic for just... showing up. Much like the Harry Potter series, (Which in my opinion is a magical dystopia, complete with secret police) the main character doesn't have to be particularly clever, or heroic in order to be the hero. He just has to be average. A little better sometimes, but usually just average is lightyears above the hideous caricatures around them.
Hence why I don't want to write a dystopia next month.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Interesting take on what it means to be a hero
Huh? To me, HP is a superior magician; and magicians are already superior to muggles. Nothing average about him at all.
Could you please explain how HP is "just a little better than average"? Ditto for Hermione.
Much of what happens to Harry
Is other people's work and actions, but he is given credit for being the hero.
Hermione should by all rights be the main character, but because everything revolves around Harry, the author represents his actions as acceptable. Despite constantly breaking rules, authority sides with him rather than admit it was their incompetence which led to the disasters in the first place.
Harry to me is a very hard character to like, because he feels like a Royal. It's a very British way of thinking to have a person be admired by all the people simply for being who he is.
And I honestly couldn't get past through the 4th book or film. It felt like a magical dystopia, with secret police, evil powerful societies, all out to kill him, and just surviving seems to be an achievement and heroic. Just my opinion of course.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Very interesting take, indeed
I never really thought about how the magic-enabled are some natural-born, superior aristocracy. But, once I do, the whole series loses its "magic".
I don't know how this series became so popular, but it sure was a welfare program for every British actor alive today. JKR got billioniare-rich; and TPTB have no problems with the series. Meanwhile, the fundamentalist nutbags yammer on about witchcraft and bury your sociological point completely.
Urk. Time for a complete rethink. Thanks.
What really did it for me was the 2nd book.
When the Weasley's are under investigation for consorting with the commons. (yes, I know they call them muggles...)
The Weasley's are a perfect example of the lower gentry in a highly class-stratified society. Looked down on by their superiors, and often accused of being common. If anything they're the most competent people in the aristocratic world, by looking at what the peasants are doing and trying to understand it. Instead, the full force of the hammer of oppression comes down on them, and the family is to be known and valued solely known for what they achieve within the court society.
Almost Louis 16th, in as far as the isolation of the two worlds and the total failure and hostility to understanding anything about those beneath them. Instead, Purges are suggested by the most powerful, who want to hang onto that power, and it's somehow heroic to just say "No, massacring peasants is bad."
Yes, I have a lot of theories about that, even down to the arbitrary divisions within a single school that ensures that everybody is too busy fighting with each other to ever consider how rotten the whole systems is.
But perhaps that's just my cynical nature ruining a story told from a child's point of view by ascribing sinister motives to those in charge... except Rowling did it already.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I always ignored the Beezlys. They were the least compelling...
part of the series. Ron was like McCauley Culkin, an odd-looking, but vaguely cuddly child who grew into a gangly, unhandsome adolescent. I always found him to be superfluous to the plot, just a dogsbody when the plot needed more hands than Harry and Hermione had.
Now that you mention that episode, I recall being terminally bored with it. But, from your POV, it is an absolutely obvious piece of evidence for a class hierarchy.
Geez, first Santa Claus, now Harry Potter. The world is not what I thought.
This is what I thought of the first movie
I tried watching it twice and I had no idea what the plot was about and why so many people raved about.
Thanks for the review. Now I won't waste time watching it.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Doggonit ...
I don't have time to read Americans entertaining themselves with non-stop ritualized violence. There's a football game on !
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
A review from The Guardian that agrees w my take
“Blade Runner 2049” is a flawed replicant
Late stage cinema
My opinion is that the "movie", a big-budget 90-120 minute 2D production with high-priced stars that shows in theaters before being released in other formats, is dying. They push the sex as far as they can without getting an X-rating (only because it limits distribution options), there don't seem to be any violence limits, and half the pixels on the screen are CG. They keep pushing the limits of shock in order to get anyone to show up to watch it. They remake old films, reboot old series, because they have run out of stories to tell in that medium.
Plenty of room for porn, because it's cheap, and internet distribution is cheap as well.
Something like Game of Thrones is more like a series of films than what we used to think of as a TV show. There is a limited market for that, since it just costs too much to produce.
I think games are the future. I've been talking about movie/game convergence for 20 years. 3D and VR, arbitrarily long story lines, multi-player, anything from near-realistic to utter fantasy, any desired level of sex or violence, interactivity. Production cost is less than for a film, and the best selling games gross as much as the best grossing movies.
Turn on, plug in, drop out.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
The three legs of Japan-China-Korea’s “visual culture” tripod
are comics (manga, graphic novels), animated cartoon series, and computer games.
Full-length movies have become a mere franchise-milking promotion device for the triad.
The traditional Hollywood model, on the other hand, had blockbuster movies as the main thing with everything else being a spin-off.