MORE BLADE RUNNER SPOILERS
THE KILL wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:49 amRoss, your argument rests a little too much on brushing off that artifical memory thing. It's easy to just empathize with a character in a film because we see everything from his perspective and assign him a right to live; films form this empathic relationship between the viewers and its characters, but there's a history to replicants/ artifical humans and just like the apes in Planet we (humans) would very likely just kill them as we please. So what if they've learned another trick, like language etc.? They're just animals, they have no human rights. Even if you were convinced that a chatbot was a real human - after finding out about that it is indeed a chatbot, you wouldn't hesitate deleting its program if it gave you any trouble. In that way, Blade Runner was great, it showed us K's miserable life and how shitty everyone is to him.
I don't know - I'm not swayed. we have massive empathy for/with pets, and they're clearly not human. replicants would easily surpass fido/mittens. the movie
failed to establish an existential distinction between humans and replicants, which would be fine
if the plot didn't hinge on such a distinction.
I've come around a bit about the things this movie does right. here's a recycled thing I wrote elsewhere:
To me, the human condition is characterized by things like (1) the struggle between what feels good and what is right/just, (2) finding meaning and purpose in life even with the certainty of death and the uncertainty of what lies beyond, (3) establishing identity in a largely chaotic world. Humans get to be agnostic about (3), ignoring the problem if they choose to; replicants don't have that luxury - their identity was decided by someone else, and it's nothing to feel good about. For (2), replicants face an uphill battle relative to humans, since they're handicapped by lifetimes that are routinely cut short, and they lack the ability to reproduce (an existential balm for impending death). Maybe it's on me for not working through these themes during/after the movie, but I still don't think it put any of these front & center. That might've ruined the tone, I admit. Anyway, with all this in mind, "more human than human" could mean overcoming those existential challenges even with the handicaps of being a replicant. By the end, we clearly see K doing (1): what is right, instead of what simply feels good.
so yeah, maybe I can watch the movie again with the above in mind, without succumbing to the idiotic distractions of the "replicating replicants" thing that is shoved in our faces a thousand times ... apparently just to distract me or to give dummies a transparent plot to latch onto. I'm still very frustrated with all that shit - the Niander monologues were so cringey and nonsensical...
but yeah, the "secret" plot of 2049 was masterfully done... Ghost in the Shell tried to make that sort of thing its main plot and it just fell on its face. and the "city/setting as its own character" thing worked way better in 2049, too. GitS was like - OK, you see an environment and think it's cool for a second. but 2049 makes you want to soak up each setting.
spacehamster wrote:K's "relationship" with the Joi app is the best idea in the whole movie for me. His pathetic obsession with this thing reminded me a lot of the way book Deckard takes his animal price guide everywhere, so I took that as another little nod to the source material. And the soul-crushing moment towards the end when he sees the holographic ad for it and realizes that the "relationship" he thought he'd built with the AI based on their shared memories was all bullshit was basically my favorite moment in the movie because it plays on the core theme of what identity is without explaining itself for a second. Really smart stuff.
I think there's a well-founded read on this subplot that's totally opposed to yours. if we can empathize with our "fake" protagonist, why not extend that to another layer of artifice? if the proof of the pudding is truly in the tasting (as I've argued in support of our empathy for replicant characters), then K's relationship with Joi is absolutely legitimate. how can an artificial person - a product - have snooty hipster opinions about the authenticity of the girlfriend he bought? I'd be much more open to this read if Joi had been anything other than an infinitely/stereotypically hot wish-fulfillment vessel, even though I realize the paradox of expecting depth, flaws, and nuance in a emotional fleshlight...