6 ms·

I am one of the 11 people on Earth that hates coffee. "Hate" isn't strong enough. Even "despises" I'm not sure goes far enough. It tastes disgusting to me. I ca

by jmyeet 4y ago

I am one of the 11 people on Earth that hates coffee. "Hate" isn't strong enough. Even "despises" I'm not sure goes far enough. It tastes disgusting to me. I can't even stand the smell. This has led me at times to wonder if I'm crazy or if everyone else is. I do notice a ton of people consume a ton of sugar in their coffee so it seems like many don't really like coffee. They like sugar. But I digresss. I have the same "am I crazy?" thoughts with Blade Runner. Unlike coffee it's not bad (subjectively). I just don't get the hype. It's a product of its time too. I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket where the noir surroundings and mega corporations are a product of xenophobia, basically. There were genuine fears the Japanese were "taking over". And Blade Runner reflects this zeitgeist. In Blade Runner it's the Tyrell Corporation. In Aliens it was the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Rutger Hauer did give a good performance and there were some good lines [1] but I'd never put it in my list of top films. Not even my list of top sci-fi films. It is better than Interstellar though, which is trash, so there's that. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRxHYHPzs7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRxHYHPzs7s

aglavine 4y ago
Blade Runner was truly original.And it was truly copied all over the place.
HorizonXP 4y ago
I have to ask then, what films do you like better than Interstellar?
- fb03 4y ago
  I was also baffled by the "interstellar is trash" line. Maybe I watched it wrong.
  - AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
    I didn't love Interstellar the first time I saw it. When I watched Inception for the first time I walked out of the theatre in love with that movie (and I still am), but, leaving Interstellar I felt confused and underwhelmed. Perversely I think I was actually very overwhelmed by Interstellar because after seeing it many times in the almost a decade since it came out (oh my god how has it been 10 years) it's become one of my favorite films, but, there is just so much going on that it was difficult to connect with it on the first viewing.
    - Joeri 4y ago
      I had a similar experience. It is one of my favorite scifi movies, and it gets better with every viewing. I think it also resonates especially because I have a young daughter myself. The soundtrack though, that clicked right away. I never get tired of that soundtrack. In fact, I would say it is my favorite soundtrack of any movie ever made.
  - turdit 4y ago
- ghaff 4y ago
  Countless SF films. I found Interstellar very middle-drawer. I didn't hate it but certainly wasn't wowed by it.
  - corrral 4y ago
    It was a fine excuse to have a few big-budget sci-fi themed FX spectacles. Could have stood to be a full hour shorter, though.
- jmyeet 4y ago
  My view is a little more negative because of all the hype it gets but only a little. It's just a bad movie. SPOILER WARNING To understand the plot structure (such that it is) in Interstellar, you have to start with the writer's desire for the emotional ending of the main character with his daughter, who is now old. Everything that happens in the movie is a really forced way to reach that outcome. The whole watch time-travel thing was more of that illogical nonsense in service of that conclusion. The time dilation to make all this happens just doesn't work that way. You have to get to a significant percentage of c before time dilation becomes really noticeable. For example, at 0.9c you're still only at ~2x time dilation [1]. The gravity effects of the black hole don't make sense either. The "science" of Interstellar is no more realistic than Star Trek or Starship Troopers. [1]: https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    I mean I agree, on the other hand if it's no more realistic perhaps this means that the fiction part of science fiction actually takes precedence despite coming second and thus is actually not any sort of evidence of its being a bad movie.
  - mercutio2 4y ago
    Odd. I didn’t like interstellar either, but time dilation in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole is way, way less controversial than being able to build a wormhole large enough for a ship to get through. Possibly you’re confusing stellar mass black holes and super massive black holes? Time dilation doesn’t only occur at high velocities, so your link focusing entirely on velocity is accurate, but I think not really relevant. The physics was pretty reasonable for the time dilation. Possibly off by an order of magnitude or so, but not ridiculous on its face. Except for the wormhole.
- airstrike 4y ago
  Risky Business
- gravelc 4y ago
  Arrival, BR2042, Dune Pt 1. I’m beginning to see a pattern here.
  - elevaet 4y ago
    I'm with you. Arrival is an absolute classic. BR2042 needed some suspension of disbelief IMHO, but it was as good as you could hope for in a BR sequel. Dune pt. 1 ... it's one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made.
ur-whale 4y ago
> I just don't get the hype. IMO, much depends on when you were born. When it came out, Blade Runner was truly something else and rode in on multiple deep cultural vibes of that era (e.g. Japan, Vangelis's synth music, etc...). Second, the book it was based on (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_...) was also quite unique in the SF genre of that era, as was the author (Phil K Dick). The thing is : on top of that, amazingly enough, the visuals / art direction has aged rather well, going from what was a futuristic vibe at the time to something that now looks steampunk-ish. I must confess to being boringly average when it comes the Blade Runner: I do love the movie, and it is certainly in my top ten sci-fi movies list.
mrandish 4y ago
I first saw BR in a theater the month it originally came out. It's hard to appreciate from today's perspective just how revolutionary it was. The film itself, especially the original cut, is flawed due to the studio making last minute edits which the director, cast and writers were against. Yet, it is still the one science fiction film that has been more visually influential than any other. It changed everything that came after it. > I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket BR largely created that bucket.
- juliangamble 4y ago
  > BR largely created that bucket. Combined with William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It was a combined effort.
- samstave 4y ago
  And Neuromancer! although the movie is 1982 and the book is 1984 - I put these two together as the founding fathers of cyberpunk entertainment, albeit the FATHER of Cyberpunk is PK Dick... BR created the visual dystopian cyberpunk world of the future without focusing on internet/online things... Neuromancer changed and set the tone for the internet to come. The thing is, that at 47, MANY MANY MANY of my contemporaries and peer grew up in the 80s with these concepts for which they said "wouldn't it be cool if...." <--- and then we went about building all this shit. Its the nerds of the 80s that have all worked to make the cyberpunk-esque current systems we have, and the evil corps as described in both have come to pass.
  - _carbyau_ 4y ago
    It is a curious thing that science fiction and science-that-comes-to-pass influence each other. This is why I like the idea of solarpunk. And yet, cyberpunk brings conflict/struggle which makes it interesting. Solarpunk so far seems like a boring utopian dream. While I'd rather that in my future, it won't sell or interest people.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
ajmurmann 4y ago
The xenophobia angle is really interesting to me. Despite being born after the movies release I always loved it. But I am also a huge japanophile and am unusual in the regard that I badly want cities as they are in Blade Runner and other Cyberpunk fantasies and was thus blind to the xenophobia, since I see the intended negative as desirable.
- june11 4y ago
  I also echo this pov, it never had occurred to me about the xenophobia angle
- henriquecm8 4y ago
  I agree, maybe some author had this xenophobic side, but not all of them, and Gibson, which is made, arguably, the first Cyberpunk book, introduced the "japanese" tropes, and he did out of admiration.
ardit33 4y ago
you sound like those type of guys that try to be 'cool' by disliking what other people like. Blade Runner is a great movie for its time and it has inspired a lot of artists. It is a Noir (Sci-fi), and the type of movie that only adults would appreciate, due to its storyline. If you are under 25, probably it is not a good movie for you. Same with 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came much earlier. any other movies of the time. Also Interstellar is very unique in one major aspect: They had to model true science (and maybe made a discovery) when they modeled the look of light around the super massive Black Hole. 5 years later, the real black hole halo pictures came out, and the movie got it spot on. You might not like the story, but good movies like that try to predict the future. They often miss, but sometimes get it right. Blade Runner deals with AI, Androids, and the question of 'What is human'. We might face this issue if General AI becomes a thing 50 years down the road.
- baal80spam 4y ago
  I can only recommend "The science of Interstellar" book as a great companion to the movie, explaining the physics side of it. As for Interstellar itself, I watched it the year it came out and I thought it was a pretty cool science-fiction movie. I rewatched it last year sometime after my father died of covid and I appreciated it from a whole different angle. Suffice to say, I don't remember the last time I cried watching a movie.
kennywinker 4y ago
> It's a product of its time too. I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket where the noir surroundings and mega corporations are a product of xenophobia, basically. This is a super interesting critique of basically everything cyberpunk, that I've only recently come across. I still don't totally buy the xenophobia angle, because to me it just came across as a projection of hyper-corporate/capitalist. Like it's an extrapolation out from where we were, but the problem isn't that it's foreigners, it's that it's hyper-capitalist. In blade runner the world has been globalized to the point where we don't recognize downtown LA, but that's not actually what's wrong with the world - big faceless corporations and environmental destruction are what's wrong with the world. While the environment itself is heavily influenced by asian imagery, Tyrell and Weyland-Yutani aren't very strongly coded asian. i.e. Tyrell is run by an Elon Musk type engineer-ceo, and Weyland is a decidedly white name to go along with the Yutani part. I'm still digesting this idea tho, I definitely need to re-watch with this in mind. There is definitely some playing with xenophobia there, just... how much? and is it re-enforcing it, or is it challenging it?
- jmyeet 4y ago
  To be clear, you shouldn't discount the movie because it's intertwined anti-Japense sentiment of the time. It's simply more context. You cannot separate art from the time when it was created. It's why you see a lot of countercultural themes in 1960s movies, for example.
  - kennywinker 4y ago
    Listen, if I've managed to get this far without discounting the movie despite the blatant and jarring non-consensual sex scene presented as a love scene, I'm not about to let some mild xenophobia stop me. Some of my favorite pieces of art are deeply flawed. What's important is understanding what ideas they contain, so you don't just uncritically and subconsciously believe those ideas. The xenophobia in cyberpunk idea is jarring to me because I wasn't really aware of it, and if it is there, it means I have some unexamined biases that hid it from me.
    - 4y ago
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
Tyrell is of Scandinavian origin, Eldon Tyrell was played by Joe Turkel, the name in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep was the Rosen corporation. I figure it was more fear of Germanic people than Japanese.
- jmyeet 4y ago
  The Philip K. Dick book dates from the 60s so it doesn't really fit into the 80s Japanese xenophobia zeitgeist.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    yes, nor does the movie. Eldon Tyrell is not Japanese, Tyrell is not a Japanese or even an Asiatic sounding name, Rachel is not Japanese. Yutani is a Japanese name, Weyland-Yutani sounds like the merger of an Occidental and Oriental firm. I was not supporting the Japanese xenophobia zeitgeist idea vis-a-vis the names, I was indicating that the name itself (in Blade Runner) did not support it and indicating that from the source material of the book it was not supported.
- freeflight 4y ago
  > I figure it was more fear of Germanic people than Japanese. Probably a combination of both to represent the Axis, in the book even the Soviets are also still around and the Cold War actually went hot, which is what lead to thermonuclear WWIII that left Earth increasingly inhabitable.
ghaff 4y ago
FWIW, Blade Runner (like some other films e.g. Apocalypse Now) weren't considered as anything special at the time but were more appreciated as the years went on with or without director's cuts. That said, I really liked both at the time.
- sorokod 4y ago
  I watched apocalypse now soon after it's release and was completely blown away by it. There is a soundtrack album to which I listen occasionally.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    There were definitely other Vietnam War and related films like Platoon and Coming Home which were probably more highly regarded at the time but haven't had the staying power of Apocalypse Now.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      I recall apocalypse now being extremely popular at the time of its release. Maybe that was just my social circle?
      - ghaff 4y ago
        It was moderately successful at the box office ($100m worldwide) after a very troubled production but it only won sound and cinematography Oscars. Whereas Platoon for example won Picture, Director, Editing, and Sound. Coming Home won Best Actor and Actress. Apocalypse Now wasn't a flop and had a reasonably good critical reception at the time (although Brando's performance was criticized) but overall it was seen as pretty middle of the road among Vietnam War and Vietnam War-adjacent (e.g. Born on the Fourth of July) films. Being seen as a great film by many mostly came after its initial release.
ffhhj 4y ago
I love Blade Runner, but I find the detective to be a useless entity, like an ant walking in a deeper world that makes him meaningless. And the idea of them not being able to discover which are the cyborgs makes no sense.
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  Aren't we all meaningless ants?
  - ffhhj 4y ago
    I mean we could replace Deckard with a pizza delivery guy, or even a camera drone, and the story won't change a lot. Try changing Neo in Matrix, Dave on Space Odyssey. And there's nothing wrong, the main character is the spectator, which makes it a more deeply philosophical movie, the replicant captcha is performed on the viewer. "What's meaningful" the movie asks.
    - the_gipsy 4y ago
      You are right, and that's what's so brilliant about it. Deckard barely shows emotions nor connections to the world. At times it feels like his detective persona is just an act, just like his humanity could just be an act - no matter whether he is human or a knowing or not-knowing replicant.
    - the_gipsy 4y ago
      Stalker gave me that exact same feeling of, as spectator, being tricked into being the protagonist.
- corrral 4y ago
  A fairly ineffective detective protagonist teasing at the edges of something much bigger, and mostly getting steamrolled by it, is a common noir thing. Not universal, but a frequently-used trope.
cowmix 4y ago
The only reason I give people like you a pass on hating on Blade Runner is I, personally, can't stand The Matrix -- which has made me a pariah with my peer group for over 20 years now.
- exodust 4y ago
  I liked Blade Runner, but one thing that bothered me was the lack of flat screen technology. All the screens are CRT, even the ones in the vehicles. You'd think the artists in the 80's would have easily imagined flat screens would exist in the near future. Chroma keying a flat square should have been a trivial effect.
  - xsmasher 4y ago
    Chroma keying was nontrivial at the time. Once you are processing the shot it is now an "effects shot" and you've got a budget to stick to. Interestingly enough, the screens in the film 2001 were all flat - because they were rear projection screens, with film or slides projected onto them.
    - exodust 4y ago
      Okay, but I recall Superman used much harder blue-screen trickery, and was earlier than Blade Runner. They had to key out a man with flapping cape and wind in hair. Even if not keyed, the rear projection would have worked too. Doesn't matter I guess. I didn't realise 2001 had flat screens! Good pickup.
divs1210 4y ago
I disagree. Blade Runner seems to age like wine, and becomes more poignant with each re-watch. It has a good pace, amazing visuals, asks tough questions, has some really good action sequences, etc. Of course, everyone is looking for different things in movies and the experience is highly subjective. Blade Runner will always be one of my favorites - right there with Contact, They Live, Jurassic Park, and other top-notch SciFi films.
- kennywinker 4y ago
  Starship Troopers, don't forget Starship Troopers.
  - deltaonefour 4y ago
    Starship troopers was a masterpiece. Don't mock it.
    - __d 4y ago
      It mocks itself more than enough. It needs no help from me.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        Mocking itself was its whole point.
        d0mine 4y ago
        It _appears_ to mock itself, so it wouldn't be blamed for fascist's propaganda while being essentially a recrutement tool for US military.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        Maybe you don't know very much about Paul Verhoeven.
jaqalopes 4y ago
So relieved I'm not alone in this. BR was top of my to-watch list after years of recommendations from friends, family, and the culture at large. And I finally sat down to watch it and it was downright bizarre. I read the book it's based on a few months prior and maybe that skewed my expectations. It was nothing at all like Dick's original story. The stakes were never explained and the visual language was incredibly gaudy and overemphasized. Then again, I do think this is a case of the "if you'd only seen it at the time!" I saw 2001 A Space Odyssey recently for the first time, and while I really appreciated the practical effects, compared to fast paced, exciting movies made in the past 20-30 years it was boring and utterly baffling. Time passes, things change, the fact is not everything is for everyone, and assertions of "Thing X is the greatest of all time" are and always will be nonsense.
- gs17 4y ago
  > Then again, I do think this is a case of the "if you'd only seen it at the time!" I'm not sure about that. It definitely would have been more interesting if I saw it when it was novel, but the biggest fans of it always say I'll love it if I just watch cuts that came out a lot later.
stavros 4y ago
I will join you in your coffee hate. Can't even stand it in pastries.

by jmyeet 4y ago

aglavine 4y ago

Blade Runner was truly original.And it was truly copied all over the place.

HorizonXP 4y ago

I have to ask then, what films do you like better than Interstellar?

fb03 4y ago
I was also baffled by the "interstellar is trash" line. Maybe I watched it wrong.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
  I didn't love Interstellar the first time I saw it. When I watched Inception for the first time I walked out of the theatre in love with that movie (and I still am), but, leaving Interstellar I felt confused and underwhelmed. Perversely I think I was actually very overwhelmed by Interstellar because after seeing it many times in the almost a decade since it came out (oh my god how has it been 10 years) it's become one of my favorite films, but, there is just so much going on that it was difficult to connect with it on the first viewing.
  - Joeri 4y ago
    I had a similar experience. It is one of my favorite scifi movies, and it gets better with every viewing. I think it also resonates especially because I have a young daughter myself. The soundtrack though, that clicked right away. I never get tired of that soundtrack. In fact, I would say it is my favorite soundtrack of any movie ever made.
- turdit 4y ago
ghaff 4y ago
Countless SF films. I found Interstellar very middle-drawer. I didn't hate it but certainly wasn't wowed by it.
- corrral 4y ago
  It was a fine excuse to have a few big-budget sci-fi themed FX spectacles. Could have stood to be a full hour shorter, though.
jmyeet 4y ago
My view is a little more negative because of all the hype it gets but only a little. It's just a bad movie. SPOILER WARNING To understand the plot structure (such that it is) in Interstellar, you have to start with the writer's desire for the emotional ending of the main character with his daughter, who is now old. Everything that happens in the movie is a really forced way to reach that outcome. The whole watch time-travel thing was more of that illogical nonsense in service of that conclusion. The time dilation to make all this happens just doesn't work that way. You have to get to a significant percentage of c before time dilation becomes really noticeable. For example, at 0.9c you're still only at ~2x time dilation [1]. The gravity effects of the black hole don't make sense either. The "science" of Interstellar is no more realistic than Star Trek or Starship Troopers. [1]: https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  I mean I agree, on the other hand if it's no more realistic perhaps this means that the fiction part of science fiction actually takes precedence despite coming second and thus is actually not any sort of evidence of its being a bad movie.
- mercutio2 4y ago
  Odd. I didn’t like interstellar either, but time dilation in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole is way, way less controversial than being able to build a wormhole large enough for a ship to get through. Possibly you’re confusing stellar mass black holes and super massive black holes? Time dilation doesn’t only occur at high velocities, so your link focusing entirely on velocity is accurate, but I think not really relevant. The physics was pretty reasonable for the time dilation. Possibly off by an order of magnitude or so, but not ridiculous on its face. Except for the wormhole.
airstrike 4y ago
Risky Business
gravelc 4y ago
Arrival, BR2042, Dune Pt 1. I’m beginning to see a pattern here.
- elevaet 4y ago
  I'm with you. Arrival is an absolute classic. BR2042 needed some suspension of disbelief IMHO, but it was as good as you could hope for in a BR sequel. Dune pt. 1 ... it's one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made.

ur-whale 4y ago

> I just don't get the hype. IMO, much depends on when you were born. When it came out, Blade Runner was truly something else and rode in on multiple deep cultural vibes of that era (e.g. Japan, Vangelis's synth music, etc...). Second, the book it was based on (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_...) was also quite unique in the SF genre of that era, as was the author (Phil K Dick). The thing is : on top of that, amazingly enough, the visuals / art direction has aged rather well, going from what was a futuristic vibe at the time to something that now looks steampunk-ish. I must confess to being boringly average when it comes the Blade Runner: I do love the movie, and it is certainly in my top ten sci-fi movies list.

mrandish 4y ago

I first saw BR in a theater the month it originally came out. It's hard to appreciate from today's perspective just how revolutionary it was. The film itself, especially the original cut, is flawed due to the studio making last minute edits which the director, cast and writers were against. Yet, it is still the one science fiction film that has been more visually influential than any other. It changed everything that came after it. > I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket BR largely created that bucket.

juliangamble 4y ago
> BR largely created that bucket. Combined with William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It was a combined effort.
samstave 4y ago
And Neuromancer! although the movie is 1982 and the book is 1984 - I put these two together as the founding fathers of cyberpunk entertainment, albeit the FATHER of Cyberpunk is PK Dick... BR created the visual dystopian cyberpunk world of the future without focusing on internet/online things... Neuromancer changed and set the tone for the internet to come. The thing is, that at 47, MANY MANY MANY of my contemporaries and peer grew up in the 80s with these concepts for which they said "wouldn't it be cool if...." <--- and then we went about building all this shit. Its the nerds of the 80s that have all worked to make the cyberpunk-esque current systems we have, and the evil corps as described in both have come to pass.
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  It is a curious thing that science fiction and science-that-comes-to-pass influence each other. This is why I like the idea of solarpunk. And yet, cyberpunk brings conflict/struggle which makes it interesting. Solarpunk so far seems like a boring utopian dream. While I'd rather that in my future, it won't sell or interest people.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

ajmurmann 4y ago

The xenophobia angle is really interesting to me. Despite being born after the movies release I always loved it. But I am also a huge japanophile and am unusual in the regard that I badly want cities as they are in Blade Runner and other Cyberpunk fantasies and was thus blind to the xenophobia, since I see the intended negative as desirable.

june11 4y ago
I also echo this pov, it never had occurred to me about the xenophobia angle
henriquecm8 4y ago
I agree, maybe some author had this xenophobic side, but not all of them, and Gibson, which is made, arguably, the first Cyberpunk book, introduced the "japanese" tropes, and he did out of admiration.

ardit33 4y ago

you sound like those type of guys that try to be 'cool' by disliking what other people like. Blade Runner is a great movie for its time and it has inspired a lot of artists. It is a Noir (Sci-fi), and the type of movie that only adults would appreciate, due to its storyline. If you are under 25, probably it is not a good movie for you. Same with 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came much earlier. any other movies of the time. Also Interstellar is very unique in one major aspect: They had to model true science (and maybe made a discovery) when they modeled the look of light around the super massive Black Hole. 5 years later, the real black hole halo pictures came out, and the movie got it spot on. You might not like the story, but good movies like that try to predict the future. They often miss, but sometimes get it right. Blade Runner deals with AI, Androids, and the question of 'What is human'. We might face this issue if General AI becomes a thing 50 years down the road.

baal80spam 4y ago
I can only recommend "The science of Interstellar" book as a great companion to the movie, explaining the physics side of it. As for Interstellar itself, I watched it the year it came out and I thought it was a pretty cool science-fiction movie. I rewatched it last year sometime after my father died of covid and I appreciated it from a whole different angle. Suffice to say, I don't remember the last time I cried watching a movie.

kennywinker 4y ago

> It's a product of its time too. I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket where the noir surroundings and mega corporations are a product of xenophobia, basically. This is a super interesting critique of basically everything cyberpunk, that I've only recently come across. I still don't totally buy the xenophobia angle, because to me it just came across as a projection of hyper-corporate/capitalist. Like it's an extrapolation out from where we were, but the problem isn't that it's foreigners, it's that it's hyper-capitalist. In blade runner the world has been globalized to the point where we don't recognize downtown LA, but that's not actually what's wrong with the world - big faceless corporations and environmental destruction are what's wrong with the world. While the environment itself is heavily influenced by asian imagery, Tyrell and Weyland-Yutani aren't very strongly coded asian. i.e. Tyrell is run by an Elon Musk type engineer-ceo, and Weyland is a decidedly white name to go along with the Yutani part. I'm still digesting this idea tho, I definitely need to re-watch with this in mind. There is definitely some playing with xenophobia there, just... how much? and is it re-enforcing it, or is it challenging it?

jmyeet 4y ago
To be clear, you shouldn't discount the movie because it's intertwined anti-Japense sentiment of the time. It's simply more context. You cannot separate art from the time when it was created. It's why you see a lot of countercultural themes in 1960s movies, for example.
- kennywinker 4y ago
  Listen, if I've managed to get this far without discounting the movie despite the blatant and jarring non-consensual sex scene presented as a love scene, I'm not about to let some mild xenophobia stop me. Some of my favorite pieces of art are deeply flawed. What's important is understanding what ideas they contain, so you don't just uncritically and subconsciously believe those ideas. The xenophobia in cyberpunk idea is jarring to me because I wasn't really aware of it, and if it is there, it means I have some unexamined biases that hid it from me.
  - 4y ago

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

Tyrell is of Scandinavian origin, Eldon Tyrell was played by Joe Turkel, the name in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep was the Rosen corporation. I figure it was more fear of Germanic people than Japanese.

jmyeet 4y ago
The Philip K. Dick book dates from the 60s so it doesn't really fit into the 80s Japanese xenophobia zeitgeist.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  yes, nor does the movie. Eldon Tyrell is not Japanese, Tyrell is not a Japanese or even an Asiatic sounding name, Rachel is not Japanese. Yutani is a Japanese name, Weyland-Yutani sounds like the merger of an Occidental and Oriental firm. I was not supporting the Japanese xenophobia zeitgeist idea vis-a-vis the names, I was indicating that the name itself (in Blade Runner) did not support it and indicating that from the source material of the book it was not supported.
freeflight 4y ago
> I figure it was more fear of Germanic people than Japanese. Probably a combination of both to represent the Axis, in the book even the Soviets are also still around and the Cold War actually went hot, which is what lead to thermonuclear WWIII that left Earth increasingly inhabitable.

ghaff 4y ago

FWIW, Blade Runner (like some other films e.g. Apocalypse Now) weren't considered as anything special at the time but were more appreciated as the years went on with or without director's cuts. That said, I really liked both at the time.

sorokod 4y ago
I watched apocalypse now soon after it's release and was completely blown away by it. There is a soundtrack album to which I listen occasionally.
- ghaff 4y ago
  There were definitely other Vietnam War and related films like Platoon and Coming Home which were probably more highly regarded at the time but haven't had the staying power of Apocalypse Now.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    I recall apocalypse now being extremely popular at the time of its release. Maybe that was just my social circle?
    - ghaff 4y ago
      It was moderately successful at the box office ($100m worldwide) after a very troubled production but it only won sound and cinematography Oscars. Whereas Platoon for example won Picture, Director, Editing, and Sound. Coming Home won Best Actor and Actress. Apocalypse Now wasn't a flop and had a reasonably good critical reception at the time (although Brando's performance was criticized) but overall it was seen as pretty middle of the road among Vietnam War and Vietnam War-adjacent (e.g. Born on the Fourth of July) films. Being seen as a great film by many mostly came after its initial release.

ffhhj 4y ago

I love Blade Runner, but I find the detective to be a useless entity, like an ant walking in a deeper world that makes him meaningless. And the idea of them not being able to discover which are the cyborgs makes no sense.

the_gipsy 4y ago
Aren't we all meaningless ants?
- ffhhj 4y ago
  I mean we could replace Deckard with a pizza delivery guy, or even a camera drone, and the story won't change a lot. Try changing Neo in Matrix, Dave on Space Odyssey. And there's nothing wrong, the main character is the spectator, which makes it a more deeply philosophical movie, the replicant captcha is performed on the viewer. "What's meaningful" the movie asks.
  - the_gipsy 4y ago
    You are right, and that's what's so brilliant about it. Deckard barely shows emotions nor connections to the world. At times it feels like his detective persona is just an act, just like his humanity could just be an act - no matter whether he is human or a knowing or not-knowing replicant.
  - the_gipsy 4y ago
    Stalker gave me that exact same feeling of, as spectator, being tricked into being the protagonist.
corrral 4y ago
A fairly ineffective detective protagonist teasing at the edges of something much bigger, and mostly getting steamrolled by it, is a common noir thing. Not universal, but a frequently-used trope.

cowmix 4y ago

The only reason I give people like you a pass on hating on Blade Runner is I, personally, can't stand The Matrix -- which has made me a pariah with my peer group for over 20 years now.

exodust 4y ago
I liked Blade Runner, but one thing that bothered me was the lack of flat screen technology. All the screens are CRT, even the ones in the vehicles. You'd think the artists in the 80's would have easily imagined flat screens would exist in the near future. Chroma keying a flat square should have been a trivial effect.
- xsmasher 4y ago
  Chroma keying was nontrivial at the time. Once you are processing the shot it is now an "effects shot" and you've got a budget to stick to. Interestingly enough, the screens in the film 2001 were all flat - because they were rear projection screens, with film or slides projected onto them.
  - exodust 4y ago
    Okay, but I recall Superman used much harder blue-screen trickery, and was earlier than Blade Runner. They had to key out a man with flapping cape and wind in hair. Even if not keyed, the rear projection would have worked too. Doesn't matter I guess. I didn't realise 2001 had flat screens! Good pickup.

divs1210 4y ago

I disagree. Blade Runner seems to age like wine, and becomes more poignant with each re-watch. It has a good pace, amazing visuals, asks tough questions, has some really good action sequences, etc. Of course, everyone is looking for different things in movies and the experience is highly subjective. Blade Runner will always be one of my favorites - right there with Contact, They Live, Jurassic Park, and other top-notch SciFi films.

kennywinker 4y ago
Starship Troopers, don't forget Starship Troopers.
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  Starship troopers was a masterpiece. Don't mock it.
  - __d 4y ago
    It mocks itself more than enough. It needs no help from me.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Mocking itself was its whole point.
      - d0mine 4y ago
        It _appears_ to mock itself, so it wouldn't be blamed for fascist's propaganda while being essentially a recrutement tool for US military.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        Maybe you don't know very much about Paul Verhoeven.

jaqalopes 4y ago

So relieved I'm not alone in this. BR was top of my to-watch list after years of recommendations from friends, family, and the culture at large. And I finally sat down to watch it and it was downright bizarre. I read the book it's based on a few months prior and maybe that skewed my expectations. It was nothing at all like Dick's original story. The stakes were never explained and the visual language was incredibly gaudy and overemphasized. Then again, I do think this is a case of the "if you'd only seen it at the time!" I saw 2001 A Space Odyssey recently for the first time, and while I really appreciated the practical effects, compared to fast paced, exciting movies made in the past 20-30 years it was boring and utterly baffling. Time passes, things change, the fact is not everything is for everyone, and assertions of "Thing X is the greatest of all time" are and always will be nonsense.

gs17 4y ago
> Then again, I do think this is a case of the "if you'd only seen it at the time!" I'm not sure about that. It definitely would have been more interesting if I saw it when it was novel, but the biggest fans of it always say I'll love it if I just watch cuts that came out a lot later.

stavros 4y ago

I will join you in your coffee hate. Can't even stand it in pastries.