Spoilers Blade Runner 2049 - Grading and Discussion

And it'd have to be someone very high up with extremely restricted access, as based on her reaction to the news, if Joshi had ever gotten wind of it she'd have put a bullet through his head then and there.

 

He does other other memories of a childhood, all replicants post Nexus 7 do. You just need to insert one more memory, that of being a replicant and knowing all those other memories are false. That’s it. Job done. Deliver your ‘new’ replicant to its new ‘owner’. It thinks it’s a replicant, so it is...only Nexus eights are shown with the eye ID, everything else is biologically indistinguishable from humans.
We do know Deckard had help from within the LAPD when he vanished (the spinner, Gaff’s, in the hotel.) and my wife suggests some of Madams dialogue suggests she knows what’s going on (which makes of much of her behaviour, including her response to him saying the son has been dealt with, and not a question, and why she’s observing him when he goes to Vegas. She could be responding to his report as understanding he now knows what he is, and has sided with her. He gives her no proof, no scanned body parts etc, just his word. He already knows he can lie...she’s asked him to keep secrets, a useless order if he can’t lie. Etc)
There’s no leaps that have to be made, they need us to believe he is the son for the story to work anyway...it’s the way none of that is actually contradicted after the reveal of the daughters existence, and the way it subtly keeps reinforcing that, even after his scene with the resistance.
If he, in the story, can believe he is the son...why is there any doubt it is possible? Joi also believes it, more than he does at points. So..when does it stop being true, and why?

 

It would be Joshi herself. She’s the one he ‘obeys’.
Sometimes she forgets

 

Oh, and don’t forget, Stelline herself has fake memories she relates...parents etc. (Hidden twin a la Star Wars.)

 

It doesn't stop being true because it was never true. K was grasping for purpose and meaning to his life. That is why all of his energy outside work went to Joi, who could never truly offer it. He finally found it in one implanted memory and the right circumstances to make him consider for even a moment he might be more than the soulless automaton he assumed himself to be, that he had been programmed to accept as his default state. Those moments or hours or days of hope and possibility allowed him the "soul" he had assumed was impossible for him to possess.

Have you never thought for one moment that maybe you could reach out to the remote control and bring it to your hand? That one day a letter might come to you and reveal your secret lineage? Your acceptance to Hogwarts or the secret last will from a grandparent who kept their true nature secret? That you would awake one morning to find out you have a destiny and a purpose beyond the everyday doldrums of mere existence?

K's belief that he could be that child was nothing more than that. He ignored the inconvenient truths momentarily to allow for that quantum of possibility. Of hope. It was implanted in his mind, as real as any other memory, so one can presume it wasn't that hard.

 

It was true in the story, until the reveal (and as I am arguing, in one evidence based interpretation, is still true after) because that’s how it works. Once K no longer thinks he is just a replicant, nor do we, the audience. A replicants childhood etc memories are a constructed narrative (like Rachael’s, which were borrowed of course, as they didn’t use the memory making tech we see here, and copying memory wasn’t illegal.) as otherwise they wouldn’t work. Yes they know they are false, but as it’s part of their system, they still make sense. That orphanage memory is revealed to be true, meaning anything else he remembers directly related to it is also revealed to him as true. He can doubt some of it...after all, we know memory implants are not just made for replicants, Stelline is a freelancer, Wallace is one of her contracts, but only Wallace makes replicants. Who are the other memories for?
You can’t, as she says, just bung a bunch of unrelated stuff in there.
Every Replicant, therefore, has a memory of a life, they just know it’s not real because they are replicants and are programmed to obey. This is explicit. It’s one of the ideas the film explores...replicants at this point are replicants because they believe they are, because they are told they are. ‘How can it not know what it is?’ Well...now they do, that way they don’t go nuts and kill people, they know their place. (Soulless..ties into the race arguments too, historically part of dehumanising groups involved regarding them as being born without souls.) It’s a disturbing idea (one used before in wider BladeRunner media) but basically it’s very easy to make a human believe it’s a replicant (Wallace tries sewing that idea into Deckard in this film, because of the existing conflicts in the first film...and the deleted ‘made for each other’ ending.) you just bung a memory in there, of learning everything prior to say last year is false, tell them they are a replicant and off they go. If this wasn’t possible (because of super strength etc....) you wouldn’t need VK tests or eyeball serial codes (again, easily faked, Chew makes eyes in his shop...they aren’t all for replicants, he wouldn’t need a shop, and wouldn’t advertise...replicants are illegal on earth.) you could just arm wrestle or ask someone to open a really impossible jar of pickles to discover them.

So, it has to be believable, or there’s no surprise in Freysa’s ‘revelation’. Except, after this, they continue making sure that each time it is discussed, it is done so in a way that still gives it possibility. The other possibility it opens is the ‘twins’ likelihood, which explains and is supported by stuff appearing throughout, and particularly the ending scenes. Everything that supports Stelline being the child, has to support K being the child also, but...it carries on doing that even after he ‘knows’ he isn’t the child.
That’s how you do things writing a detective story anyway (k is a detective, he follows the evidence, and visibly does NOT want to believe he is the child, until it’s inescapable. There’s the horse in his pocket, found because of a memory we know ‘someone lived it’ and there’s Freysas word on the other...except, all the other evidence says there were two children, and Freysa never ever says that other evidence is wrong. Stelline never says the memory is implanted, never says it’s her memory. All we know for sure is, it happened.) you make sure your evidence supports as many possibilities as possible, until the detective figures it out and finds the evidence that narrows it to one....K actually never receives that evidence, it just narrows the ‘suspects’ to two...him and Stelline, because Freysa clearly knows Stelline is the child she dressed in blue.
Now..ignoring the hole in ‘how do you prove this kids mother was a replicant?’ and assuming you can somehow do this, a female is far more useful to prove the miracle of conception...here is a replicant (since Stelline must somehow show as one for Freysas plan to even work.) and she is pregnant (look at her bump! Bet it’s a boy, it hangs low, let’s all start knitting....) is a visible miracle. Here is a replicant and a pregnant woman he got pregnant! Is just too easy to doubt, unless you are distributing porn of the conception.
The child or children are actually essentially useless to Freysa anyway...having one pregnant replicant doesn’t mean they are all suddenly gonna be able to have kids and define themselves fully as a race, it’s literally just the symbol she’s after. And she had that, but she died. Wallace is the only one who can glean anything, who can make them able to reproduce, but he’s an asshole. It’s about control with both of them. (If you like you can call it the means of production.)
If hiding K in the LAPD makes no sense, then nor does having Stelline work as a contractor for Wallace. This actually makes Mariette into the only other likely candidate for being the child...she’s off radar, describes herself as a real girl in a roundabout way, is mostly under the protection of Freysa, and is the only other person who pays attention to the horse. But...it’s from the tree.

Literally the only contradiction is the ‘long hair = girls, shaved head =boys’ in the memory, but I am not sure that holds when we see the orphanage, and no-one remembering that memory is gonna know what the back of their own head looks like anyway. We watch the memory.)

Finally, Deckard can’t help falling in love with K...the song is playing XD
All the best memories are hers....(he hates his memories of being a Blade Runner, or losing Joi etc...he already had to suicide set up shot under the Joi hologram, K wants death at that point, so sadly, but wants it to mean something. This is true for either reading...he believes Stelline deserves happiness, and Deckard too, they are both Blade Runners Who rebelled and lost their wife. Widowers.)

 

Welp, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.

 

Lol.
Like I said, it’s one interpretation, and they seem intend for more than one. I’ve still seen nothing to disprove it after a couple of viewings, and this discussion. I am not approaching it from a ‘grr, this is the answer’ perspective.
One scene that is interesting is when K first arrives at the orphanage. The Jesus visual with the kids. I wonder what’s behind that.
I also like to assume he shot the fagin type character as part of his cover up, and the kids are under the care of someone better. But those aren’t theories.

Madams behaviour towards K is interesting too. She regards him as a person.

 

Sounded like she said "From a dream." She could have said "tree", but from a story telling perspective, what significance would that have? Dialogue has meaning and moves the story along. Mariette being amazed at wood is meaningless. Her being amazed at seeing a wooden horse she has dreamt about has meaning, because the horse has meaning.

 

It references back to her conversation with K about the dead tree in the photo.

Wood is very rare and valuable.

I agree, it would have had meaning if she had dreamed about it or said it.

Sounded like, maybe. But she didn't.

 

Which means what?

 

Tree. Because she saw Ks photo of the tree, and seeing real wood is probably amazing. As a resistance member, she might well know about Rachael’s grave, and this is the sort of thing she’s there looking for. I watched it twice the other day with seriously awesome headphones. And the memory implant isn’t a dream, it’s a memory, it’s an important distinction. We havzero evidence for anyone other than K having that memory.

 

It's because of the line "We all wish it was us." People have interpreted that as "We all thought it was us."

 

Yeah. That’s what I mean about hanging onto what’s actually said or not said. There’s enough in the fil after all xD. Luv and her ‘I’m the best one’ is a bit odd too. I only really caught how complex she really is on a second viewing, and still can’t really puzzle that out.

 

If there's a room for a debate in BR2049 based on incomplete information, I'd go for the question of whether K's Joi had any more real awareness or personality than the giant Joi advertisement. Does the scene with the advertisement mean that his Joi was no more real than that? Or is it a reminder that what she had become was lost?

 

I think it’s the second, based on the info there is...she acts independently of K and makes decisions. She also keeps secrets. (An AI assistant who understands privacy!!) she was aware K was/might be the child before losing her connection to Wallace Corp, and made the decision to do so, so that decision was made entirely by herself.
She’s all part of the Pinocchio theme as well though...she is jiminy cricket and the holo version is the blue fairy. Deckard is Gepetto.

 

I haven't watched the movie since it came out in theaters, but I don't remember there being any question in my mind at the time that K was not Deckard and Rachel's child, and that Ana was the only child.
As for the bit about Freysa saying Rachel had a girl, and not not saying she had a boy, I thought it was pretty clear that she was saying she only had a girl.
Who is Madam? I don't remember there being a character named Madam in the movie, and there is no Madam in the cast list on Wikipedia.

 

She never states the number of children, never says ‘there was only a girl’ or anything like it. It’s inferred ‘she had a boy’ ‘she had a girl’ not ‘she had a boy’ ‘no, she had a girl’. The story has already brought up twins with the DNA record (k states it’s impossible for fraternal twins to have such identical DNA...but it’s also impossible for replicants to give birth) so it tells two stories with one chain of events, especially when you look at other stuff (the birthday makes the kid a Gemini I think, K and Stelline share a birthday party when they first meet -it’s possible and likely she knows who he is - and the ending where we see her experiencing snow at the same time as K. Of course in the surface story, that’s a real girl experiencing artificial snow while an unreal boy experiences real snow...) that goes on, and the way that at no point is it explicitly stated he is not the child, even though there’s means motive and opputunity to do so. (Which means it’s a deliberate choice of the makers)

Madam is what all the police call Joshi, and it sticks in my head more because she’s called it more often. Of course it sets her next to Freysa, who is literally a Madam.

 

Or there is the flip side, which is that Joi is exactly the companion that K wants/needs. Which means the product does what it says on the tin.

Maybe she's not important for what she was, but for what she was to him.
Just like maybe K wasn't important because of who he was, but because of his actions.

I'm not saying Joi wasn't more than a very good program designed to give each user the kind of partner they crave, but she also wasn't not that.

 

Or to stretch it, maybe they never expected to sell a program that predicts your every want, to a replicant (born of replicant or not xD) that wanted/needed that program to be self aware. Like the moriarty glitch in TNG basically. Replicants aren’t really supposed to have emotional needs, let alone those needs requiring Joi to step by step become sentient.
Of course he treats Joi as real, so she becomes real...once he is treated as real, he becomes real...and once he is treated as unreal, he becomes unreal again. Until he has that moment of self realisation. Once he asks. In essence, he realises the statement about the miracle, and the statement about dying for a cause are both in part wrong...is Rachael giving birth the miracle? Or is it the unreal boy becoming real? (Or girl...in Rachael’s case.) and is it dying for the right reason that makes you Human? Or is it living for it, even if it means you might die? That’s what the rebels got wrong, and Roy Batty got right. It’s what Wallace gets wrong, what a lot of characters got wrong...where you come from, how you are born, these things are not important, it’s about how you live. Replicants are already Human, they just aren’t treated that way, and giving birth ain’t gonna change that. Even Deckard is living like a slave, by Roy’s words. K frees himself, then he frees Deckard, who will free Stelline, and fuck Wallace and fuck Freysa. It’s a nice synthesis of the two films basically. Madam/Joshi is the only one who almost gets that right, because she knows it’s gonna be ‘Human Supremacy’ and the Nexus 8 riots all over again, and she treats K pretty much like a person. But she’s afraid of upsetting the status quo even if she knows it’s wrong. Know your place, know theirs, and maybe try to make it slightly less shitty.
She knows she’s a slave too, and when she starts standing up to that power...it gets her killed. But it bought K 48 hours, even if he didn’t spend it the way she thought he would. It is basically her rebellion that dominoes into the eventually end.