The Quarantine ERA and 2049

The Quarantine ERA

I never meant to use my blog as a way to critique others peoples works of art. I know how I feel about people critiquing my work. I hate it. I’m not even talking about my written work. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an honest review. Most of my readers are friends. These types of readers tend to encourage and not critique. They tell me to keep going and keep up the writing. I am talking about my day job. I’m talking about the part of me that lives in the office 8-12 hour a day, 5 - 6 days a week. There I can be very sensitive, probably to sensitive to critique. I get very defensive and put my hackles up.

Perhaps I shouldn’t think of this of critiquing an artist work, but just giving my interpretation of it. For all I know the artist could critique my interpretation of it and therefore perhaps I missed something. Maybe I had to stop and piss during a critical point and pausing the movie killed the importance. Or maybe Kona came over and slapped me on the shoulder to get my attention and I looked away and missed the thread that ties the entire work together. Maybe I just don’t have the confidence to review a movie and give the world my two cents so before I ever do it, I write a whole bunch of reasons why I have no business doing this other than I think it would be fun and it gets me writing again. It might make me feel alive again and that there is life outside of the day job.  And the dream, my dream, is still being dreamt.

Since quarantine started, well maybe a week or two in, I’ve been on a sci-fi movie kick. Well mostly as sci-fi with some fantasy and a cartoon worked in. It really picked up about a week ago. When I started averaging three movies per weekend day, and two on Friday night.

I’d say 90% of the movies I’ve been watching has two common threads: the future and the end of days. Now given the world we live in today one could easily understand why people would drift here. Though for me this is a place my mind often goes too. It is humanity grasping at straws and fighting for survival in a dead or dying world. I loved it in the Dark Tower cycle; I loved it in the Stand, and the Walking Dead. Rebuilding society on the ruins of a world destroyed by humanity. It’s something that has been tickling the back of my mind since I was at 13 and I first picked up The Gunslinger by Stephen King.

When I give you my critique/interpretation whatever you’d call it, I’d give you a choice to scroll down to the bottom and see if I recommend or not because there will be spoilers. There are always spoilers. I will warn you about these in advance. As much as I want to interpret without spoiling I just don’t know how to do that.

Up first “Blade Runner 2049” and as I said SPOILERS AHEAD!


Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas

Currently you can watch it for free on IMDb TV or Amazon Prime with commercials, iti s how I watched it, and it was just fine.

I was born in 1975 and would have been 7years old when the original Blade Runner hit theaters.  There two things I now for use about me in 1982, I loved Harrison Ford and I love what I thought was Sci-fi.  I know now what I called Sci-fi was really just Space Opera, you know a Soap opera in space.  Sort of like how Buffy the Vampire Slayer is really a Soap opera with vampires and other creepy crawlies and the Walking Dead is a Soap opera with zombies.  I can’t even sit here and say what real Sci-fi is.  It is Star Trek, which in my 30’s and 40’s I have become a big fan of.  Perhaps Ender’s Game?  I, Robot?  I digress and like most of the time I find myself on tangent.

The point is I am trying to figure out how with the combination of two things I loved as a child it took me almost 30 years to actually watch Blade Runner.  I am a child of the 70’s and 80’s but so many movies that where in my strike zone at that time I missed:  Goonies, Princess Bride, and Willow.  While Blade Runner is a much different movie than those, or so I assume, still haven’t seen them, I think the point is made.  I feel like I missed out on a lot of these.  Which is strange to me.  My Dad wasn’t pro-movie, but he wasn’t against it either.  Mom was always taking us to movies.  Maybe it was the delicate balance she had to keep between five kids that all have various different tastes.

I watched Blade Runner, the Final Cut on a plane.  There are only two places I really travel in which I could have squeezed in a full movie and that is either Indiana or it was Hawaii, it doesn’t matter where I was going, I know it was at least 25 years after the original release, but probably closer to 30 or 31 years.  I don’t think 2049 had hit theaters yet, because most likely I was finally getting around to watching because I wanted to see 2049 in theaters.

My impression of Blade Runner, the original wasn’t good.  It was grimy and dirty.  It moved slower than I expected.  It wasn’t a bad movie per se, it just was so below my expectations that I am not sure my mind could wrap around what I was watching.  The entire concept that Deckard could be a replicate was wasted on me.  As if it came out of left field.  I couldn’t see Daryl Hannah as anything other than the mermaid from splash.  I think part of me expected this great Star Wars like movie, or at least something closer to the Star Trek movies of the 80’s.  Perhaps this is me missing the entire point, did I? Perhaps.  We are talking about one single viewing of the 2nd or 3rd cut of the film, on an iPad on a plane.  Hardly, great viewing conditions. You also had a viewer who was expecting something akin to Battlestar TV of show of 2000’s.  It isn’t what I saw.  I can’t say I loved it, I can’t say I hated it, I just saw it and that was that.

So, I guess the question is why did I want to see 2049 at all?  I am a sucker for the continuation of a tale.  I was curious to see if Deckard was truly a skin job.  I wish I could say it was because I knew Ana de Armas was so fucking hot, and got pretty much nude in it, but I didn’t know who she was at the time, and I didn’t know she did that, but I am glad to know that now.    I don’t know but when I found it for free on IMDb and when I was sitting at home thinking about how to spend my weekends in Quarantine, it was one of the first things I wanted to watch, right after Nut Job.

2049 in my mind is something truly special.  However, I can completely understand why it failed to live up to box office expectations.  You wait 30 years to bring out a sequel, you don’t have the original director at the helm you are probably going to have a bad time.  You probably aren’t going to be the Avengers and rule the box office with an iron fist or more aptly said a golden glove with shiny stones.

The first strike against 2049 was its length. No one is going to want to go to the box office for a three-hour follow up to what is basically a cult classic. The first blade runner bombed at the theater so if you’d going to try and make a sequel and the goal is box office magic and sales, sales, sales, then Blade Runner was the wrong movie to add onto. People are gonna go in and site three hours for Endgame it’s been an 11 year 20 movie build up that ended in one of the most devastating cliff hangers of all time. Half the super hero’s we’ve lived over the last decade wiped out with a snap of the fingers. I’d go watch a three-hour Star Wars movie because we have movies here recently that continue a story we all relate to and love. Then Lord of the Rings sage might just be box office and movie magic and people will go and sit because it’s the tail we know and love. It’s bringing to life a part of our childhoods. A cult classic like Blade Runner doesn’t do that and if everyone who rushes out to see it doesn’t give it great reviews it’s going to fizzle. The movie was just to long for box office success.

Strike two against the movie was pacing. The movie was to slow for today’s modern audience. They want the payoff and the want it fast. They don’t want an action sci-fi big budget blockbuster to be a slow burn. They want and demand action. Take Endgame Thanos loses his head in like first 15 minutes. That gets the party rocking. Infinity War starts with the Hulk getting a beat down and Loki getting choked to death. The Rise of Skywalker Kylo is kicking ass and taking names and meets the emperor all at the outset. In all three movies we get in the mix right away. We are drawn in. For Endgame it was wait they just killed Thanos, so who the hell is the big bad in this movie. Infinity War it’s like OMG if Thanos is fighting the Hulk for fun we are all fucked bc who can stop this guy. Not to mention Thanos goes on to become one of the more compelling villains of all time. Then in Rise you want to know just WTF is going on. How did the emperor survive? What does this mean?  See the hook has been set, I will sit here for hours to figure out what hat evil bastard is up too. While I’d argue 2049 has a great intro. Anytime I get to see Batista on screen and kick some ass is exciting for me. I don’t know who he is... there is no real hook set. It just seems like the guy is doing his job and yes while there is a skeleton found it was a little hard for me to follow why I should care about.

The third strike has been touched in before. The first movie wasn’t a blockbuster. So again unless people coming out of the first weekend are saying this is the greatest movie of all time and lives up to the cult classic the box office is going to underwhelm.

I give you all this to just say I understand why it didn’t go bananas at the box office. The movie is a long slow paced burn. However, I loved it. I loved the story. It was well done and well documented. I’m the characters were well developed and likable. I didn’t care that it took half the movie to introduce us again to Deckard. The fight scenes when they happened were more of a dance you couldn’t take your eyes away from. Unlike the original movie that wasn’t sure if it was telling the story of a replicate cop or about some cop chasing rebellious replicates, this story knew exactly what it was. This woman was killed in birth, she shouldn’t have been able to have a child she was a skin job, what happened to the child, and is our new hero that child? I sure wanted him to be. I’d call 2049 a classic in its own right. I can’t say I’d watch the original again but I’d watch 2049 again.

There are a few things that I use to judge movies by. 1) Does is keep me entertained start to finish, am I allowed to leave my life as a lonely accountant behind for a few hours. 2) Does it make me think after it’s over? Does it make me expand my mind and see more than I saw before? 3) Do I have to turn to IMDb or Google to find answers about it? The answer better be no or the movie is in bad shape.

If it does 1 then I’d say it was worth the watch. Spider-man Far From Home kept me entertained for the course of the movie. So box one checked. Spidey also checked no to box three so it passed there, but it wasn’t a movie I spent time and contemplation on.

This movie though, well this movie-checked box 1, box 2, and box the NO on box 3. I got it. I got the point and followed it thru the movie. It entertained me. The movie was both gritty and beautiful at the same time. The burnt out ruins of Las Vegas were breath taking to me. The fights sequences were choreographed dance. Joi was simply a joy. Not because she got topless and sweet, sweet Ana is adorable. No because she was an AI that seemed real and alive and I believed she did love K and thought him special. I thought Gosling played K very well and made me believe he was a replicant who thought he was a real boy. The technology was epic and helped tell a fabulous tale.

Rating: Excellent
Assessment: Must see