Bladerunner 2 (Spoilers!)

stoofa said:
OK then! I've not posted back into this thread yet, I've wanted to take the opportunity to see the film twice before doing so. Can we now, at last, put to bed the notion that Deckard is not a replicant. We know about replicants without an expiry date from the film - although I'm still inclined to believe Rachel was still going to expire anyway, Gaff's "shame she'll die anyway" line from the original.
I know, I know - I'm still going to get opposition this this. The original, Director's Cut highly indicated he was a replicant, 2049 has, as far as I'm concerned, confirmed this.
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How so? There's nothing I saw in 2049 that confirms this. There is one line where Wallace says something along the lines of "as if you were summoned to fall in love with her", but he could still be human and she's an experimental replicant. Dekard doesn't have any strength, healing or short life.

As far as I'm concerned, Dekard is human, or else it invalidates his feelings, and so invalidates his love for Rachel and thus her humanity. If Dekard is a replicant, then his love for Rachel is just fake programming, and she's nothing more than a construct too. If Dekard is a human, and he falls in love with a replicant, then she's as real as any woman, and her own emotions are validated by Dekard as being as real as anyone's. She a real woman, even if she's been manufactured.

The relationship between K and Joi is a mirror of this, a thought experiment of what love and humanity is, and how if you feel it (even if you've been programmed that way), does it make it real regardless of how it came to be? It's a particular theme that PKDick returns to again and again in his work.
 
Ridley Scott is adament that Deckard is a Replicant, and says the 1982 film doesn't make sense if that isn't the case. However, I don't think Denis Villeneuve agrees as they had discussion/argument about it on stage when Mark Kermode was moderating a showing of the original Blade Runner with them both on stage.

Basically the sequel works either way. For what it's worth I think he's human now
 
VincentHanna said:
Ridley Scott is adament that Deckard is a Replicant, and says the 1982 film doesn't make sense if that isn't the case. However, I don't think Denis Villeneuve agrees as they had discussion/argument about it on stage when Mark Kermode was moderating a showing of the original Blade Runner with them both on stage.

Basically the sequel works either way. For what it's worth I think he's human now
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Harrison Ford is adamant that Dekard is human, and that the first film it doesn't make sense otherwise. That's how he performed it.
 
It kinda works both ways in the original.

No Spoilers required since this discusses the original movie:

If you ignore the changes that Ridley Scott made in later editions (Unicorn dream) then it still leaves the issue that Deckard seems to have super strength, pulling himself up on the roof with two broken fingers - Though we do often see characters in movies doing unrealistic things like this.

Also both their eyes have a orange glow in the scene in Deckards apartment. Harrison Ford claims he accidentally moved in to the special lighting used to light her eyes.

But it begs the question - Why bother using another Replicant like Rachel? Why jump through all the hoops of putting him in the police department. Especially if Replicants were illegal on Earth.
 
The unicorn dream makes no sense in the original cut of the film and if Deckard is definitely not a replicant, then it should have been removed, as it serves absolutely no purpose.
Once the dream is in the film along with the paper unicorn, then we know that Deckard's dreams are known, in the same way that Deckard is aware of Rachel's.

The reason Deckard doesn't expire is nicely explained at the beginning of 2049
Nexus 8's without an expiry date

We know that Deckard's eyes glow, we know that he does show increased strength and resilience - we can also assume that as a replicant who believes he is human, he doesn't use his "extra strength" because he simply doesn't know he has it!

2049 doesn't contradict the idea from the original that Deckard is a replicant
If 2049 had actually shown him as human, then we could go back and ignore all of those things from the original - it doesn't
 
2049 also doesn't specifically state either way.

I also believe that Deckard isn't a Replicant, regardless of what Scott believes/deliberately edited in later on to make it appear that he might be. For me, it robs the movie of one of it's most important themes.

There's not necessarily a right or wrong answer, proven by the fact this debate has raged for years. But to suggest that 2049 picks a side just isn't true. The scene between Deckard and Wallace totally revels in the ambiguity of this idea.
 
DrToffnar said:
There's not necessarily a right or wrong answer, proven by the fact this debate has raged for years. But to suggest that 2049 picks a side just isn't true. The scene between Deckard and Wallace totally revels in the ambiguity of this idea.
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Indeed. Deckard should be considered both and neither. It's the whole point of the story.
 
i think the key point about that scene is that Deckard neither defends himself against the insinuation that he is a replicant and is aggrieved by the insinuation that his love for Rachel wasn't real.
 
Jokester said:
i think the key point about that scene is that Deckard neither defends himself against the insinuation that he is a replicant and is aggrieved by the insinuation that his love for Rachel wasn't real.
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Totally agree. There's a reason he's totally silent whilst Wallace is monologueing and his first words during that scene are "I know what's real...". His delivery is perfect. His words are certain but his body language and his eyes pertain to the idea that this is ALL he's been thinking about for 30 years.
 
As an aside, I said to my friend before we went in that i hoped Jared Leto's performance wasn't going to be too OTT.

In actual fact, having had time to disgest the film I loved his very considered delivery of his lines.
 
VincentHanna said:
As an aside, I said to my friend before we went in that i hoped Jared Leto's performance wasn't going to be too OTT.

In actual fact, having had time to disgest the film I loved his very considered delivery of his lines.
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Indeed. He reminded me a little of G-Man from the Half Life series actually. It all comes out in the right order, but it sounds slightly uncanny valley and is largely unsettling as a result.
 
Jokester said:
Ah ha, I've been racking my brains on trying to figure out what that was!

I think if he had more screen time it would have probablyhave become a negative though.
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'Was there enough Wallace' is actually one thing I haven't quite settled down on yet.

On the one hand, it leaves quite large sections of his character arc totally ambiguous which is quite cool and allows us to fill it in. But on the other, there's not quite enough detail to point to anything at all. Even if you include the stuff from his short, all we really know is that he's just a big bad business man with some kind of weirdly paradoxical Pinocchio complex.

In some respects (and perhaps there's some hugely divine irony here), David from the Alien Prequels has more depth then Wallace does, purely because he HAS an arc (though I may be bias because I really like that character.
 
Jokester said:
Ah ha, I've been racking my brains on trying to figure out what that was!

I think if he had more screen time it would have probablyhave become a negative though.
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But can someone explain to me what the scene is about where Wallace kills the newly born Joi replicant in front of Luv while tears stream down her face? Was it to show Luv how worthless to him a replicant that can't have children is (and thus can't help him realise his dreams of dominating and propelling mankind to new heights via the efforts of replicant slavery), and so how worthless (and disposable) Luv would be if she failed? This is also shown how Wallace orders Luv to execute the Rachel-copy the moment Dekard rejects the bribe.

As Luv is compelled to obey Wallace it seems unnecessary, but the tears and her subsequent actions imply she's somewhat unhinged. Maybe she's a Nexus 8 kept around for such unsavoury jobs? At the fight at the end when she thinks she's killed K, she says "Now I'm the last one".
 
Steampunk said:
But can someone explain to me what the scene is about where Wallace kills the newly born Joi replicant in front of Luv while tears stream down her face? Was it to show Luv how worthless to him a replicant that can't have children is (and thus can't help him realise his dreams of dominating and propelling mankind to new heights via the efforts of replicant slavery), and so how worthless (and disposable) Luv would be if she failed? This is also shown how Wallace orders Luv to execute the Rachel-copy the moment Dekard rejects the bribe.

As Luv is compelled to obey Wallace it seems unnecessary, but the tears and her subsequent actions imply she's somewhat unhinged. Maybe she's a Nexus 8 kept around for such unsavoury jobs? At the fight at the end when she thinks she's killed K, she says "Now I'm the last one".
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Might be a bit out there, but it's one theory I have.

I think Wallace DELIBERATLY messed with her emotional chemistry in such a way as to abolish empathy, love, kindness etc from her 'programming', for lack of a better word. In doing this, he could ensure that she was truly his. As demonstrated by nearly every replicant we've ever seen, that lust for any kind of positive sensation or longing for the more human emotions has them betray there creators EVERY time.

I think she feels this conflict within her and struggles with it most during the scenes you mentioned, hence the crying, but can do literally nothing to prevent what she's seeing or doing.

Thinking about it, maybe Wallace saw some horrendously cruel irony in naming her 'Luv'.
 
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Guys, your arguments on what Deckard is or isn't in the original Blade Runner have no standing because with this sequel we threw away a lot of original Blade Runner mythos
again - for starters in original BR Replicants were robots or androids - synthetics with paraphysical capabilities using biologically grown elements such us skin or eyes - that's why they called them Skin Jobs - that description is actually in opening text of 1982 Blade Runner - at least the cinematic version - so in those terms if you start shaking this tree then majority of the plot of 2049 would be void. In original BR Deckard, if you believe him to be Replicant, he would have to be Nexus 6 because Rachel was specifically the first test model of her kind.

So stop it, don't spoil it for yourself, don't search for the answers from original BR, the script was clearly not a BR and was re-written to be - just watch it as a blade-runner-like movie, or treat it as alternative timeline - one where it doesn't matter if Deckard was Replicant 35 years prior, one where Rachel's eyes were green...
 
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I think you guys trying to nail down if Deks is a rep or not are kind of missing the point of the new film - what difference does it make of your origins if you live / feel / think like a human even if you are a rep / human or hologram? its the essence of a turing test - if your actions are indistinguishable from a human then who can say that you arent one? the good thing about 2049 is the story works if Deks is human or replicant, the more interesting question is does it matter anymore?

^^ V0n, I always thought from the original film its clear that they are organic? Chew is growing eyes and Tyrell talks of cells and viruses (obviously the PKD book talks of androids)
 
No spoilers because it's part of original BR:

gettothechopper said:
^^ V0n, I always thought from the original film its clear that they are organic? Chew is growing eyes and Tyrell talks of cells and viruses (obviously the PKD book talks of androids)
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In that case what kind of organic entities were toys like Bear from J.F. Sebastian's apartment? J.F. Sebastian was DNA component designer adding bio to the tech. Sometimes relatively crude tech (Priss doing breakdance imitation of poorly tuned mechanical dancers in storage). Thanks to the synthetic element soldier Roy was given wall ripping, one hand lifting super human Terminator like strength, nuclear rod fodder Leon was given skin pain threshold set so high "he would be dead before he felt anything" etc.
bladerunnerbear.jpg


Also, this is original intro text from cinema version:
bladerunnerskinjob.jpg


DrToffnar said:
Don't agree there vOn. The discussion IS the point. Is it one of the main themes? Does it matter if it is? In essence, that's for each fan to decide
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I was ripping my heart out for 10 or so pages in this thread stressing out how the trailers don't look like noir world of BR and how seeing old Ford breaks the entire point of final cut and "is he-isn't he" mystery. In the end we have to accept that they went there. It's done.
We know that the whole "maybe he was the first model that aged with unlimited life span" extension to the mystery doesn't make sense in light of original BR because it was stressed again and again that Rachel was uber special and one off and "who knows, maybe she will live". But then again a lot of things don't make sense in BR2049 that way - regardless of canonisation and their syntheticness - replicants producing sperm to inseminate other replicants have far reaching consequences for humans they interact with and serve to (also as sex slaves). Then you have to take the whole bizarre pre-destination of events into account - Deckard, the first replicant to age and inseminate ends up with the first replicant capable of giving birth, though they met on the back of random event (Nexus 6 uprising) that was so unpredictable than it costed lives of all the main puppeteers (all the main android designers of Tyrell corporation). Deckards den is located at the first landing site in the first dirty bombed city K visits. Deckards daughter is the first memory maker K visits. And so on, so forth. We can completely break this movie in seconds if you start looking at all the things and actions in BR2049. To me it's quite clear it was never meant to be part of Blade Runner universe and was crammed in there by force breaking things. I elect to watch BR2049 as if it were stand alone movie based on similar premise to BR.
And the movie is very good sci fi flick to watch that way.
 
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