17: Blade Runner 2049

Tola and Tim discuss (yet another Denis Villeneuve film) Blade Runner 2049. Tim struggles to make connections from Tola’s list of actors to Blade Runner and 2001. The guys discuss sequels, opening text, Vangelis, Ryan Gosling’s eyes, Dave Bautista’s tiny glasses, Princess Buttercup, Nabokov (thanks to Priscilla Page’s excellent essay for this connection The Poetry of Blade Runner 2049), miming vs feeling humanity, AI girlfriends, the Joi of Ana de Armas, Jared Leto’s Elon Musk-ian scene-chewing and monologues on slavery, the joy of an Edward James Olmos cameo, the complicated ickiness of consent in Blade Runner (thanks to El Zee’s essay The Impossibility of Consent), questions about production lines for replicants, why we choose to watch movies that recapitulate terribleness, Sorry to Bother You, Manic Pixie Dream Sexbots, Take Your AI Girlfriend To Work Day, junkyard kite harpoons, failure modes of hovercars, implanted memories, extra creepy holographic sexbots, Chekhov’s hard drive, Minneapolis’s Somali theater contingent, the emotions of a murderbot, radioactive Las Vegas and its giant statues of sex workers, Roger Deakins’ amazing cinematography, more objectification and commoditization of women, Deckard’s bees, feeding whiskey to a dog, drinks over fistfights, changes in how we interpret films over time, fighting in the sea while a car slowly goes underwater, and tears in snow.
Final score: science 65%, fiction 73%, film 91%.
Next up: Project Hail Mary (more Gosling!)