Spoilers Blade Runner 2049 - Grading and Discussion

Who says?

 

It’s implied. They weren’t supposed to develop emotions, then they did after about four years (hence the lifespan, stops them going nuts) so they gave them memories as primary socialisation to stop them going nuts, but it’s a recurring theme that from the human perspective they aren’t as developed (I’m not saying the literally don’t, just from the perspective of the human developers of Joi. That’s the impression I get.) and are basically on the emotional range of a child, even with memories. K is pretty much impassive unless interacting with Joi or eventually getting real pissed off.
How many replicants buy Joi do you reckon?

 

That's Nexus 6. The later models are different.

Wouldn't that make them more emotional, not less?

No clue.

So K is impassive except when he's not?

 

Lol.
Yes. Like I said (probably not very clearly)
Nexus 6 ‘develop their own emotional response’
Nexus 7 (memory implants and no lifespan safeguard, only one known example, Rachael)
Nexus 8 (Sapper, Freysa, the replicants in the anime...eye serial numbers, no life span, free will, banned from earth but soldiers etc in colonies. slave race and led to the uprising and prohibition)
Nexus 9 (The Wallace replicants, inbuilt ‘obey’ mechanism, prohibition lifted and allowed on earth, as they obey their ‘owner’)

Leon, Roy etc are all shown as having very limited emotional range or more accurately control on the surface at least. Nexus 9 have that built in subservience, and seems to cause them to have problems with stronger emotions breaking through particularly. K is borderline Spock.
I don’t think they have no emotions, I think they are, by the time of Rachael particularly, fully developed in that regard, even Roys lot are emotionally developed, just totally unable to control their response to that (hence the VK test being shakey...they are not emotionless as their predecessors are implied to be, but their emotions don’t work in the same way.) what I am saying is that, as part of the dehumanisation, the humans regard them as having a lower emotional range (and therefore needs) and treat them as such. We see Sapper and K dealing with that assumption (keep your head down, avoid trouble, because of their place in society they sort of repress themselves. Sapper and K both seem naturally pretty peaceful guys anyway.) because they have been dehumanised. Traditionally replicants are supposed to largely be lacking in Empathy (goes back to the book) and we see them struggle with that...some form bonds, but you have people like Freysa or Priss who basically fake it to get a desired response (Priss with Sebastian, Freysa with K) and May even be programmed that way.
K has a Long run of emotionless poker face, his first big response is when he finds out the memory is real. Most of the rest of the time, he’s pretty impassive. Now, whether that’s the way the replicants end up because of their status, or are made that way...especially as part of the obedience structuring...is a question that works differently for the illegal 8s and for the legal 9’s. It’s part of what the baseline test is about. 3 generations on, and it’s still about having the right emotional response and the expected level of empathy, just the rules have flipped slightly. Be a bad dog, and you’re taken out back.

 

Which of course does not preclude them from having emotions of their own.

Supposedly. We know that they aren't quite as obedient as they are made out to be. K lies through omission right to the face of his superior, and Luv says that she'll just lie about what happened with Joshi when she next speaks to Wallace.

Which is good, IMO. Replicants that are completely under control is not good for drama.

 

Most of the time, K presents a pretty impassive face, because he keeps having his place in this society made very clear to him, and that society doesn't want him to feel much of anything. If he deviates from baseline, he's toast, and baseline is unemotional.

As for how many replicants are Joi customers, my first thought was, maybe K has to be a Joi customer because no other replicant wants anything to do with a blade runner, and humans certainly wouldn't. But we have no real idea whether what normal life for a non-blade runner replicant is like. Slaves don't get to have happy, normal relationships. Maybe replicants don't, either.

 

Yup. There’s always that distance between the dialogue exposition, and what we see is the actual case in the films.

 

The closest we get to seeing it is Sapper, but he’s an illegal Nexus 8, so not exactly a good baseline. The biggest question with him is why does he essentially guard the bones.

 

The other doxies certainly act like he's worth avoiding when they realize who he is. Mariette not so much.

 

She either liked the look of him, or was really, really, committed to the cause I guess. The real girls comments suggests even more stratification, with Jois even lower down the chain than pleasure models. But that depends on if Jois are just gonna be the next replicant...AIs that grow up to be sentient.

 

That's one thing I like about BR2049: there's so much happening around the core storyline that could become the focus of another story. K's story is over, but we've still got the replicant rebel group, Deckard and his daughter, Wallace, and maybe more Jois taking steps toward self-awareness and autonomy.

 

Aside from the obvious ‘religion of the slaves’ thing going on with the rebel group, I actually didn’t find them that interesting. It’s not something for Blade Runner in some respects. That’s a big story, big action film, and Blade Runner’s both are more about little stories with the big stuff being implied. (We don’t see the shoulder of Orion etc, even calantha and the blackout are in a short film.) I don’t want to see The Matrix Redone, or Star Wars in BR. I don’t even want to see Spartacus With Replicants. I like the tight focus of the two films, I like that they are usually Noir Romance in a Dystopia.

 

Which is why it's a shame the movie bombed as hard as it did. Even though I had a few issues with the movie, there's a lot of stuff in it I would have loved to have seen followed up on in future movies. Maybe we could get a TV show or some comics or something.

 

I couldn’t do a comic...it always feels like a hollow version. I tried various continuations, and they always, always jump the shark. TV....maybe. They won’t get Ford, even for a cameo, but depends who does it. He did one episode of Young Indiana Jones a long time ago.
Ironically, they would have a shot at getting Rae, but that would be a story hoop to jump through.

 

Rae?

 

Common short form of Rachael. Sean Young. She did renegades, and came back for 2049 despite the bad blood...I can see her doing a cameo if they went the TV route.

 

Apropos of nothing, an idle thought this morning made me realize there's another nice little reference between 2019 and 2049. Deckard quotes Treasure Island when he meets K, which is the same book Holden is reading in the deleted hospital scene from the first movie.

 

This movie won 2 Academy Awards! Best Effects and Best Cinematography. Awesome recognition on the cinematography front!

 

I'm thrilled Roger Deakins finally got his Oscar! Long overdue!

 

It definitely deserves them, they were both amazing.