I don't know if everyone will be like Pigo, thinking about some inexplicable questions in some inexplicable moments,
Like what:
What is the definition of man? Is it a complex creature with feelings, or a single individual who makes up society?
As a human being, is it important to carry the memories of the past, or to choose the power of the future?
If a purely artificial life form has the ability to love people, how should it be viewed?
Deep philosophical speculation aside, these interesting questions are actually the rich mine of countless science fiction creative ideas.
As early as 1982, the famous science fiction film director Ridley Scott made the famous film history of "Blade Runner", trying to use the love and hatred of replicants to interpret "the ability to love and be loved, which is the basis of human origin, but also the meaning of our existence.".
This sci-fi film full of psychedelic, dark and damp atmosphere, slow pace, inner conflict greater than dramatic tension, seemed particularly out of place in Hollywood at the time, but it influenced countless latecomers, including "The Matrix" and "Ghost in the Shell", and opened up a new path of cyberpunk aesthetics.
"I have seen unthinkable beauty, I have seen space battleships burning beside the constellation Orion, watching C-rays shine in the darkness of the Gates of Heaven, and all the past will disappear into time, like tears disappearing into the rain."
The replicant villain Roy's "monologue in the rain" before his death has become a classic passage in popular culture in later generations.
After 35 years, Canadian director Villeneuve finally filmed blade runner sequel Blade Runner 2049, which tells a tragic story that takes place thirty years after the previous work. With a high degree of completion and faithful to the style of the previous work, it is regarded as a god work in North America, where is god?
The answer is simple, blade runner 2049 looks like this:
There are such things:
And here's it:
Pigo has to say that this is what science fiction films really should look like, and the more than two hours of watching the movie is not boring, but every moment is making you marvel, immersed in the romantic illusions made by high technology and imagination.
But it is a pity that when the film was released in China, it was not satisfied, and finally the box office failed miserably, and the mainland box office was less than 100 million, which was called a blood loss.
The reasons behind this are actually very complicated, combined with the film itself, we will take a good look at it today.
First, about human nature
1982's Blade Runner threw out three elements of being human:
The ability to have real memories, compassion and self-doubt.
Countless replicants are implanted with memories, thinking that they have their own lives, but in fact, those are all false, and they are memory fragments created by the manufacturer in order to better control them.
Blade Runner 2049 builds on this and asks, "If memories don't belong to me, don't I really exist?" ”
The protagonist K has always presented himself as a soulless replicant, numb killing, working, and virtual girlfriend staying in his own small home, expressionless life.
But once by chance, he accidentally learned that he might be a naturally born child, combined with his own memory, after many investigations, he was more convinced of this, and began to behave like ordinary human beings, crying and screaming, falling in love with others and being loved.
The virtual girlfriend who was previously untouchable is also constantly giving K confidence as a human being.
Obviously, there is no physiological change, but K has failed the simple replicant emotion test, and the test results are far from the baseline.
This well-trained professional killer is not willing to fight back in the face of his hostile father Deca, but only wants to sit down with his father for a drink, talk about his mother he has never met, and enjoy such a warm moment for a while.
But fate finally made a big joke with him, he was not the naturally born chosen son, those childhood memories and the Trojan horses with numbers written on them were all things that belonged to others, and from beginning to end, he was just a nobody.
But so what? His soul and personality have awakened, and after a fierce inner struggle, he chooses to go against his original intention of production, risks his life to save Deca, takes him to his real child, and the badly injured K himself slowly falls on the steps outside, completing his human sublimation in the snow.
Gosling's performance gives K the soul of the character, the previously dim eyes gradually brighten as the light of life dissipates, and the complex emotions are dismantled into a simple sigh and float in the air.
Compared with the exciting and magnificent ending of the previous work, the ending of this film, which is filled with light loneliness and sadness, actually hits the audience's heart more directly.
Second, the unique style of visual aesthetics
Villeneuve is a very personal emerging director, and his works often have a calm and restrained literary and artistic temperament.
In Blade Runner 2049, he teamed up with ace photographer Roger Dickins to use a large number of slow motion and blank shots to express this sense of alienation between people in the "futuristic world".
Under the continuous rain, a large number of fluorescent substances and neon lights and dirty and cluttered streets combine to present a false artificial texture.
Unlike the traditional science fiction film habit of designing the story background in Western industrial cities, the cities in Blade Runner 2049 are obviously more oriental.
A large number of Asians, Kanji, Japanese women on billboards, and Japanese noodle restaurants on the street are fused together by Villeneuve.
Many of the scenes in the film are designed with geometric and spatial aesthetics, which are particularly simple and elegant, and when Lave leads K through a long corridor lined with replicant models on both sides, through the door opening behind the two people, you can see the staircase extending outward, and the solidified replicant body stands aside, as if symbolizing time.
In the passage where K goes to Las Vegas to find his father, Villeneuve inherits Scott's preference for Beijing's impression, so that the whole picture is shrouded in sand and dust, and the huge building looms in the background, and the human sculptures that K passes through form an alienated "artificial landscape", which perfectly fits K's confused mood at the moment.
Roger Dickins' excellent photographic composition gives the film a breathtaking visual impact.
After all, "a random screenshot can be used as a desktop", which is not a joke.
Three. Are the main reasons for the box office failures that our aesthetics cannot keep up with the pace of the United States?
Combing through, a question arises, since the quality of "Blade Runner 2049" is so strong, why is it so ugly at the mainland box office?
On the one hand, it is the problem of its own positioning, although this film is a hollywood production with a cost of 100 million US dollars, but in the final analysis, it is still a literary and artistic film with greater self-expression than commercial genres.
"Blade Runner 2049" has a very commercial story line, but in the way it is presented, it is an anti-genre expression, the action scenes are so few scenes, and it is short and pitiful; the protagonist who thinks he is the savior finally finds himself just a nameless person, giving the audience only a sad touch rather than a reunion touch; nearly three hours long, with a non-complicated story, a large number of environmental shots as fillers to slow down the pace of the film to a certain extent.
Most importantly, the protagonist K is an expressionless replicant, and all the character transformations, contradictions and dramatic tensions are completely internalized in K's inner struggle, requiring the audience to pay close attention to the subtle expression changes on each character's face and the atmosphere creation of the scene, and patiently bring in the character empathy.
On the other hand, before the "Wandering Earth" came out, science fiction had always been a niche genre in China, not to mention that this kind of hard science fiction overhead movie with complicated world view settings and logic set a big threshold for the audience.
And these points are not friendly to the average audience who wants to see another "Matrix", and it is normal to be lower than the psychological expectations.
In addition to the anti-genre and sci-fi markets, Pigo personally felt that a major reason for the box office failure of Blade Runner 2049 was that the distribution team overestimated the fan base of the Blade Runner series, making it difficult for ordinary audiences to choose a "know nothing" movie.
The selling points and key plots of the film are not peddled to the audience in advance, as other blockbusters do, making it difficult to attract fans who are unfamiliar with the first film into the cinema.
Of course, this is inseparable from director Villeneuve's zero tolerance for "spoilers", Vellennewie always believes that audiences can only get the best viewing experience if there are zero spoilers, and he personally wrote to reporters, imploring them not to spoil the key information in the pre-screening review.
Unfortunately, the audience is diverse, and for business operations, such an approach is a double-edged sword.
For such a good science fiction movie, the history of famous film may be the highest praise, but in all fairness, it should have achieved better results.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Etofenaster
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