Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

If you’re going to wait 35 years to do a sequel, you want to make sure you get it right.  It’s often difficult to get a story that flows naturally from the first.  In some cases, like the Terminator movies, it works.  The first two movies of that franchise were originally envisioned as one script.  Back to the Future was supposed to be a standalone movie.  Its success spawned two sequels that happened to work.  Then, you have cases where the sequels are little more than a basic rewrite of the first.  (Yes, Home Alone 2.  I’m looking at you.)

Bladrunner 2049 is sort of an odd sequel.  It doesn’t exactly continue the story of the first movie.  Instead, it draws from it.  It’s a new story that might have run parallel except that it takes place three decades after the first movie.  A title card tells us that Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt and eventually acquired by a new company.  For those that don’t recall, Tyrell made the  Replicant bad guys in the original movie.  The new company has made better Replicants.  They don’t start uprisings.

KD9-3.7 is just such a Replicant.  In fact, he’s a blade runner, exactly like Deckard was.  After retiring (killing) a Replicant, he discovers a box.  Inside the box could upend everything about Replicants.  K is given the task of burying everything about the box and its contents, lest stars implode and civilizations collapse.

Like many futuristic dystopian movies, it’s never that simple.  It all comes back to Rick Deckard and the aftermath of the original movie.  You may recall that Deckard ran off with Rachael, who he had discovered was artificial.  Much of Bladerunner 2049 is original.  You get a cameo from Edward James Olmos and even Sean Young.  However, Ryan Gosling is carrying most of of the movie.  Harrison Ford doesn’t even show up until pretty late in the movie.

This isn’t to say I was disappointed with the movie.  There were some throwbacks, like the music.  (This is a world where Atari is still a major player, apparently.)  The movie doesn’t go overboard with this.  The appearance of Gaff and Rachael make sense in the context of the movie.  Wouldn’t you want to talk to someone who knew Deckard?

The movie is still about what it means to be free and what it means to be real, although the narrative is a little different.  K has a regular job with the police, but he still has to go through testing.  (Replicants have much longer life spans; the tradeoff is muted emotions.)  Things go off the rails for him when he fails a test.  His lieutenant is sympathetic, but there’s only so much she can do.

Then, there’s K’s ‘girlfriend’, who just happens to be a hologram.  If K is more (or less) human than human, what does that make Joi?  Is she any less programmed than him?  (Do holograms dream of Replicant sheep?)  It gets a little complicated, to say the least.  He’s able to buy her freedom via a portable emitter, but at what cost?  She can be a liability just as much as he can.

The movie is somewhat long at 2:44.  I had caught it back on a flight back to the United States from Shanghai.  A long running time was a virtue here.  It might not be so for everyone, though.  Make sure you have a solid chunk of time to watch it.

The movie was about as dark as the original.  If you’ve seen Bladerunner there shouldn’t be any surprises in terms of the movie’s tone.  It’s still dark.  It’s just violent and sexual enough that parents should probably use some discretion.  It’s not going to be for everyone, but I’d say that your enjoyment of the first movie is probably going to be a good indicator of whether or not you’ll like this one.

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Blade Runner (1982)

The first time I saw Blade Runner was many years ago and it had narration.  The narration was from the theatrical cut and has been removed from all subsequent cuts.  I remember liking the narration and that others didn’t.  Not liking the narration seems to have the overwhelming majority when it comes to opinion, which is what makes the theatrical version somewhat difficult to come by.

Either way, the basic story is the same.  Rick Deckard is brought out of retirement to hunt down four individuals.  Why are any the four individuals so important?  They’re replicants, or artificial people made for off-world labor.  They’re not allowed back on Earth.  Deckard is what’s called a blade runner.  He hunts down and ‘retires’ replicants.  The four replicants are the top of the line, so they need the best blade runner out there.

The movie has gained cult status in the years following its release.  It’s known for being very dark and with good reason.  Aside from the violence, which I’ll get to, I don’t think there were many scenes with daylight.  Everything seems to be at night, which makes the illuminated billboards (and product placement) stand out a little more.  As if that weren’t enough, it seems that it’s almost always raining in the Los Angeles of the future.

As for the violence, replicants aren’t very well liked.  They’re given a four-year life span so as not to develop pesky emotions or personalities.  Deckard is allowed to kill with extreme prejudice, which he does in two cases.  A third is killed by Rachael, who is most likely a replicant, herself.

This is where it the lines get blurry.  It seems that normally, replicants are given the skills they need to do their jobs.  With such a short amount of life, one would assume that there’s no time to waste with training.  It’s possible, as with Rachael, to implant a real person’s actual memories.  Does that make Rachael any less of a person than the person she’s based on?

When I first watched Blade Runner, I saw it mostly as an action movie.  You have a police officer hunting down four criminals with the express purpose of killing them.  It wasn’t until I got older that I began to see some of the finer details.  You don’t actually call killing a replicant what it is.  Instead, you say you’re retiring them, as they’re nothing more than a product of the Tyrell Corporation.  Their entire existence is to go into situations too hazardous for humans.  They’re disposable.

If that’s true, what do you call a replicant that thinks she’s a real person?  Is she any less disposable because she seems real?  Is she any more deserving of life because she’s pretty?  Then, there’s Deckard himself.  It’s implied that he may be a replicant, too.

One thing that confused me, though, is that the movie seems to go back and forth between calling them robots and people.  At least one of the makers are referred to as a genetic engineer.  They seem to be made from organically grown parts.  I’m not sure if the brains are organic, though.  It is entirely possible that the brains are mechanical.  It‘s ambiguous, as they’re not really clones and not exactly robots.

The version I got was The Final Cut, which was the last version released.  There is an Ultimate Edition, which contains several version.  I’m not sure how many of the seven different cuts are available, but it seems that if I want the narration, this will have to be the version I have to buy.  I would like to see the theatrical cut to see how well it holds up.  I’m not sure I’d get it any time soon, as it can be a bit tedious for me to watch the same movie twice in such a short time span.  I may wait to see if it becomes available streaming or at the library.

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Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.


I remember seeing this movie around the time that it first came out.  I was still in high school at the time and Jim Carrey was still known primarily for starring in In Living Color.  The movie ended up being perfect for Carrey to star in.

Ace Ventura is, as you might expect, a pet detective.  If a beloved animal companion has gone missing, Ace is the perfect person to call.  The movie opens with him kicking a package down a street accompanied by the sound of glass breaking.  He’s posing as a delivery driver to get into the apartment of a man with a small dog.  (We’re left to assume that the dog doesn’t belong with this man, but we’re not given the details.)  Ace gets the dog, but doesn’t get to his car before the man notices the switch, so Ace has to make a hasty escape.

He makes a living off of that kind of small case, but is still struggling to make ends meet.  That’s when he gets a big case.  Snowflake, a trained dolphin who happens to be the mascot of the Miami Dolphins, goes missing a few days before the Super Bowl.  Ace is called in to help find said dolphin so that there will be a halftime show.

As you might expect with a comedy, there’s one clue that the main character can work with.  In this case, a small gem is found in Snowflake’s tank.  With the help of Melissa Robison, played by Courteney Cox, he learns that it came from a specific Super Bowl ring.  After going through all of that year’s players, he learns that there is one more person:  Ray Finkel.  Ace know that this is their man, but he’s a hard man to find.  Find Ray and he finds Snowflake.

I haven’t really had much of an urge to watch this over the past few years.  If it comes on TV, I’ll watch a few minutes of it, but I haven’t even seen it on TV recently.  The reason is that most of the humor seems geared towards teenagers.  For instance, there’s a sequence where Ace is going around checking the players’ rings.  He provokes one player into flipping him the finger so that he gets a good view of the ring.  He checks out another at a urinal with unintended consequences.  He also manages to get one to punch him in the forehead so that he can look at the impression on his forehead.

I remember liking the movie when it first came out, but I don’t think I’d be able to say the same thing now.  Carrey’s acting in this movie is very similar to the way he acted in In Living Color.  It was a very high-energy performance with him often speaking at higher-than-average volumes and often taking on wacky personas to look around.  It gets old kind of quick.

If you haven’t seen it yet, it may be worth watching depending on your sense of humor, but I’d recommend renting it rather than buying it.  It’s one of those movies that I think has little replay value.  It was interesting seeing Dan Marino and Don Shula appear as themselves.  (Don Shula made a cameo, but Dan Marino had a few lines.)  It’s interesting mostly to see how far Carrey has come when you compare it to some of his current movies, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Number 23.
 

 

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