Ryujin
Legend
Saw it at the weekend and thought it was a grand spectacle that was very in keeping with the earlier film. Denis Villeneuve deserves a lot of praise
That said, I always felt that the first film tread a very fine line between replicants being humans (manufactured slaves) and "not quite" humans (i.e. in the book they are missing empathy). In the new film replicants are clearly a slave underclass that will rise up to defeat their oppressors (presumably in the next film if one happens).
Mind you I've always been firmly in the camp that Deckard is human and not a replicant - if he is a replicant his personal growth in the original film is undercut - and so I'm perhaps not Ridley's target audience given his feelings on the subject!
In the new film, Deckard is a little ineffectual but it is a continuation of his story rather than K's. Although K does have his own arc in the film.
I liked the ending but it could easily be "the end" or "the beginning" of a third film.
As an aside, I was very worried at one point that Deckard had been brought back just to die a la Han Solo . . .
Apparently in some cuts of the original pretty much all question that Deckard is a Replicant is removed; ie. he is one. I would tend to agree that this movie is largely about Deckard's story, from K's point of view. There's also a lot of resonance between the stories of the two characters.
I had to digest my impressions of this movie for 24 hours. At first I thought that I hated the soundtrack. I later realized that it was just that booming, distorted stuff whenever a car flew out of the city limits that I actually hated. The rest was fine. It's just that stood out so much it was the nail that gets hammered down. Leto's performance was his usual bizarre crap. In this case it just served to highlight how stellar was the performance by everyone else. Even Dave Bautista managed what I would call a deeply emotional performance.
The effects, with the exception of the previously stated car leaving the city limits, were insanely good. Those car scenes looked, to me, like a cardboard cutout on green screen by comparison to the other effects. When Rachael came on screen I was wondering how they found an actress who looked so much like a young Sean Young. At least until I saw the credits. Seems it was a computer generated character mapped onto a flesh and blood actress, without the usual "uncanny valley" elements. Just beautifully done.
The movie isn't perfect, but it's damned good.
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