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The “baseline” scene in bladerunner 2049 was written by Ryan Gosling (2022)
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoThe baseline scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrP-_T-h9YM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrP-_T-h9YM
- dgrin91 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- marginalia_nu 3y agoBlade Runner is cool.
- myth_drannon 3y agoBecause it's Bladerunner.
- qup 3y agoThere's no real restriction to what you can submit. It's at the top because of upvotes.
- onion2k 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html tl;dr It's curious and unexpected that an actor in a major movie wrote a scene for it, hence a relevant submission.
- krapp 3y ago>It's curious and unexpected that an actor in a major movie wrote a scene for it, hence a relevant submission. Ryan Gosling is literally the least interesting aspect of this article, and his involvement is the least worth discussing. It's relevant because of the intellectual merit of the ideas presented, the philosophy behind the Voight-Kampf test, the nature of humanity, virtual humanity, culture, etc, which originate from Philip K. Dick and Blade Runner. The difference in the way the book, original screenplay and sequel approach the question of testing who or what is and isn't human, in a world where general artificial intelligence is ubiquitous. Unfortunately the title doesn't reflect any of that, and makes it seem like a celebrity piece. That's the part good hackers find interesting. It would have been better without any mention of the actor whatsoever.
- tomrod 3y agoA hacker liked Bladerunner enough to post that Ryan Gosling, an actor, wrote a scene. Like a coder writing a marketing pitch. You never know where good activity will get you. Then some other hackers liked it and upvoted.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- icambron 3y agoIf you haven’t read Pale Fire, I really highly recommend it. It is really two stories in one: a wonderful epic poem about love and loss, and also a heartbreaking tale of about a sad, lonely guy who lives off his grandiose delusions. The two stories are intertwined through a neat device. It’s very good.
- javajosh 3y ago>a sad, lonely guy who lives off his grandiose delusions So, a story about the modern internet.
- neffo 3y agoTwitter, specifically.
- wzdd 3y agoIt is great, but, having read it before I saw 2049, I found references to it in the film pretentious. The article says that '"Pale Fire", like BR2049, is a story about a man who comes to the false conclusion that he is the protagonist of someone else's story.' This isn't what it's about and the interpretation in the film is one you could get from reading the first few lines of the poem the book contains but no other material.
- icambron 3y agoThe comparison seems strained to me too, but I assume the article referred to Kinbote there, not Shade.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y agoThis article was a strange read for me. The author claims to "really" (no, really) like Blade Runner 2049, and then admits that he hasn't read the novel upon which the film's universe is based, didn't know that a key scene in the movie was quoting a novel until recently, and did not read the quoted novel either. I wouldn't claim to like the movie as much as the author did, let alone write an article about, but I do like the movie a lot: I saw it three times in theaters (and it's long!). I read a bit of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" before getting bored, and have not read "Pale Fire", but I did recognize during my first watch that the lines of the baseline test were obviously a quotation, and the "Pale Fire" references were mentioned in just about every single movie review and discussion (because they were a bit ham-fisted). I guess I just don't understand how you could enjoy a piece of art so much, (and write articles about it!) without first checking out the art that it's based off of, the art that it explicitly references, or even reading a small amount of online discussion about it.
- rocketbop 3y agoThat’s a long read and I’ll have to reread the first sections to understand the differences between the tests in book and film. Author certainly knows a lot about the Blade Runner universe. Surprised that they think the second film is better. I think most Blade Runner fans see the second as technically excellent but a little cold. Also making Blade Runner’s android nature explicit rather than implied, didn’t really advance the story.
- ycombinete 3y agoWhile visually stunning, the new one seemed to be missing something. The world didn’t feel as lived in/well worn, the characters didn’t inspire as much ambivalence or pathos.
- plasma_beam 3y agoSo I like 2049 better than the first one. I think maybe has to do with I didn't grow up watching the first one, in fact didn't watch until I was an adult. I like the coldness aspect of 2049, and I think what really makes the difference is the Hans Zimmer score. The musical atmosphere is fantastic.
- elevaet 3y agoI grew up on Bladerunner, and the Vangelis score is like a part of my being. I think 2049 was great. I cant say it's better or worse because it's different but it fits and was more than I hoped for. Of course it has problems but so did the first one, and nothing is perfect especially in sci-fi. The Hans Zimmer score is fantastic.
- iainmerrick 3y agoI thought the Hans Zimmer score was only okay, in a pastiche-of-the-original kind of way, but maybe I should give it another chance. For me the Vangelis score is one of the all-time greatest movie scores, although I’m probably biased from having heard it young. Such a unique and recognisable sound, and just the perfect mood for the film.
- Trasmatta 3y agoHighly recommend reading Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep if this kind of stuff interests you. There's a very important plot point related to all of this with the Empathy Box and Mercerism in the book that's missing from the movies entirely. (FWIW, it was a concept that was maybe unfilmable anyway.) Mercerism is probably the most bizarre aspect of that book, and fascinating in that way only PKD can manage.
- idontwantthis 3y agoWould you mind explaining mercerism? I’ve read the book and I didn’t really know what was going on. It’s a religion made up by Androids to control humans?
- Polygator 3y agoI don't Mercerism is about androids at all. If you read enough PKD short stories, Mercerism is just another of these cool ideas that appear all over the place.
- Trasmatta 3y ago> Would you mind explaining mercerism? Like a lot of PKD concepts, it defies a simple explanation (by design). It hits on many of his common themes: consciousness, what it means to be human, the shifting and blurry nature of reality, the merging and melding of different minds, etc. On its surface, it's a religion based on the Messianic "Wilbur Mercer" character, and the shared vision of him that people can enter through the Empathy Box. But then the book explores whether Mercer, and that shared vision in the Empathy Box, is actually "real" or "fake", in a way that closely mirrors the exploration of androids vs humans.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoBasically, the world of Do Androids Dream... kinda sucks. Post-nuclear war, "join the offworld colonies", cyberpunk ghetto, etc. The Mercer box was something people could use to plug in and feel something, sort of like a Mega Church, rock concert, etc. that moves you; something positive in an otherwise negative place. But it's a programmed feeling, it's not real. It contrasts with the hunting-and-retiring-androids thing, in that real people can't feel things unless they plug into a program, and are feeling something wholly artificial -- so how is that really any different from the 'droids?
- prepend 3y agoI like this article and like this kind of thoughtful analysis of film. But I don’t like that scene and don’t think it’s a job of good writing. I think it’s cool that Ryan Gosling wrote the scene and that he was able to collaborate with the author and director in that way, but it kind of explains the frailness of the scene. The problem I have with the scene is that while it looks cool, it seems like the dumbest, most ineffective way of detecting if an android is off baseline. It would be simple for a trained android or human to fake the test just like a polygraph and seems easier for an android to control expression of emotion and just match the expectation. I expect a real test would just dump data via a port like our cars’ diagnostic port and quickly run against a trained model for what is conformant behavior vs aberrant (of course testing for manipulation, deletion, or unusual data). This scene replicates the biggest flaw of the movie, it all looks cool but makes no logical sense. And it’s about societal systems and robots so there should be logic or at least attempts at logic. Corporations and fascist governments and religions at least seem to attempt order. The movie seems like an artists attempt to write about robots without really thinking about how things would work. PKD did this so much in the source material. But it looks cool and I enjoy watching so I don’t get hung up on it, but wouldn’t call it out as great writing. I’ve got problems with the original as well but still enjoy it (and it has Daryl Hannah and Sean Young so that’s awesome).
- BulgarianIdiot 3y agoI can also calmly explain I didn't turn the turtle on its back, but then again, I'm not a replicant. So maybe judging a test humans are SUPPOSED to pass, but for replicants it's viable baseline test is not a good measure. Also a realistic test would be terrible cinematic experience. Long, technical, boring, trite... The scene is meant to be accepted symbolically, not literally.
- jvanderbot 3y agoRight. It's visually jarring, kind of stressful. It's part of a long sequence of shots of crappy things the replicant has to deal with. It may not be a reasonable test, but it's meant to show submission and mental coherence in the face of all the horrible treatment he endures. Later, he doesn't do very well and we get to see Ryan act out some cognitive dissonance.
- tyingq 3y agoI'd posted about that scene here about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313963 And referred to an article on denofgeek.com that talks about the same scene: "He [Gosling] came up with this process that actors use to learn Shakespeare, where you say a word, then they repeat the word, and then someone would ask a question about that word. It’s to induce specific memories linked with a word, so they remember the word forever. I transformed that process to make it intrusive, where instead of having someone repeating a long, long sentence, they will be more aggressive – they’re asking questions about specific words." - Denis Villeneuve, Director, talking about Gosling https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/blade-runner-2049-how-a-key-scene-differed-from-the-script/ https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/blade-runner-2049-how-a-key...
- moremetadata 3y ago[dead]
- narag 3y agoThe sad thing about this film is that I remember nothing about it a few years after watching it. Nothing. I have a vague recollection of a desert scene and a rainy one, but no idea what happens or who are the characters. The original one I could have described the plot with detail after twenty years, the time that passed until I rewatched it.
- actionfromafar 3y agoI wonder how much of that is due to increased exposure to content, plus a function of being young when seeing it. My recollection of 2049 is, an android police officer performs a dirty police job, is there confronted with information which not exactly raises doubts, but questions. The plant, a photo, something the perp/victim said. Then something about the police station and the relation between human boss and android subordinate officer. A cold corporate overlord without respect for life. (Slaughter of newborn woman android to demonstrate power.) Something about rumours of a woman, chase into deserted dust city, something about android living in a factory and "childhood" being fake memories. And the ending with a budding resistance movement among escaped androids and how they somehow can reproduce on their own now, and not die so young. Harrison Ford turning up, a piano. Yeah, I can't really make it into a story. I don't want to trash on 2049 because it is somehow very impressive, but I don't like it much. It's very disturbing and I guess that is a quality of its own. I will possibly never watch it again. There are other movies I will never watch again but which I will say are really, really good, no reservations. 2049 is not one of them.
- narag 3y agoI wonder how much of that is due to increased exposure to content, plus a function of being young when seeing it. Not much. That's not the only movie I've seen recently. Not all of them have been so forgettable. An alarming portion of them was. But not all, I can clearly remember many of them, even for series with many episodes, I can tell you what happened in each of them. But the Starwars sequels, the fourth of Matrix (I liked it though) or anything superheroic (I quit those years ago) are a blank in my memory. Edit: I believe that good story telling has something in common with spaced repetition. There are some rules that, if followed, make your story indelible. Likeable, relatable characters, a worthy quest a logical plot... Edit2: The love for flashbacks, that become parallel timelines in their degenerate form is tiresome and now it's very difficult to find a movie without them.
- danielvf 3y agoHere's the full version of the text as written Ryan Gosling. (7 minutes long, vs 40 seconds in the movie) Interestingly enough, the original author version doesn't follow the part in the article about each key word appearing in the prompting sentence. https://old.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/comments/76hea1/full_text_for_the_baseline_test/ https://old.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/comments/76hea1/full_te...
- franciscop 3y agoFor anyone asking themselves what PKD is (since it's mentioned in the article and in the comments here without explanation), it's apparently Philip K. Dick, the author of the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", on which Blade Runner is based.
- gumby 3y agoBTW there is also a novel from the 80s called “blade runner”. Don’t read it: it’s really terrible. Also it has nothing at all to do with androids or anything. IIRC it’s something to do with illegal surgery, or transplants perhaps, but I remember it being so terrible that I don’t even want to go find the book and see. Whereas Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is subtle and divine — one of PKD’s best and always worth a reread.
- technothrasher 3y ago> Whereas Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is subtle and Devine It's also a relatively short read, but packed with so much more to explore than the movie dug into. I really wish Mercerism had been brought into the film. It's such an insightful critique of religion and society, and quite prophetic for time in which the story was written.
- gumby 3y agoAnd the mood organ (and Dekard’s wife’s abuse of same), also so prophetic
- maxfurman 3y agoTechnically the film is named after this novel; they optioned the title and then slapped it on their Do Androids Dream script because it sounded better. You're pretty close in your plot summary, it's about a dystopian future where surgery, and specifically possession of surgical instruments, is illegal. The "Blade Runners" are couriers that deliver the scalpels to underground surgery clinics. The name makes a lot more sense for that than for an android hunter but I'm happy we got the Blade Runner we got.
- dimmke 3y agoGreat article. This movie was so good - I was so bummed when it did not perform well at the box office. But when I saw it, I knew it was a modern sci-fi classic. I also agree with the (controversial?) take that Blade Runner 2049 is better than the original movie.
- Xenoamorphous 3y agoYes I don’t understand. Big names (Gosling, Ford, De Armas, Leto, Wright, Batista) and a well known prequel. And it was actually very good, it had everything to be a hit.
- stcroixx 3y agoThe first one wasn't a box office hit either. They're great movies, but they just don't appeal to the majority of box office goers. I think it's because they're too 'arty' like independent film, yet film snob people who generally like stuff like that tend to look down on sci-fi, leaving a fairly small potential appreciative audience.
- dxuh 3y agoI think Pale Fire is one of the weirdest and coolest books I have ever read and I think about it quite often. Sometimes art pieces break the mold of the medium, broadening what it means to be a game or a movie and I think Pale Fire does this for books. I am not super well read, but I do read and this book does multiple things that I have never seen anywhere else. I actually only read it after seeing it in Blade Runner 2049 and hearing about Ryan Gosling having selected it himself in a making of video or something. It's very cool the blog post provides some more background on the connection.
- imwillofficial 3y agoThis was a pretty terrible article. Despite the interesting factoid it was a slog to read.
- Haga 3y ago[dead]
- dmix 3y ago> PKD is not interested in what it means to be human. He is interested in "what does it mean for a human to decide that another person is not a human?". This is why Blade Runner is my favourite movie. This one question is so interesting to consider and creates a great setting for a scifi story. It will be relevant in the future with augmentation and AI.
- low_tech_love 3y agoI always interpreted the Voight-Kampf test as a kind of "feature engineering" for a Human vs. Replicant classifier. The questions do not have to mean anything specific, and it is not supposed to be interpreted in an objective manner; the point is that the questions trigger something, and that something (the "features") can be used to discriminate the two groups. It sounds logical to me that scientists would find these questions by trying randomly, via some hyperparameter optimization process, rather than designing them manually (in the same way that manually engineered features are usually much less powerful than letting a neural network process raw features directly). And as such they would be inherently "uninterpretable". That said, I usually do not like any kind of movie/book/story/etc. that tries to force me to have feelings for robots. The original BR was a bit like this, but BR2049 is very, very strongly into that. For me a robot is a robot is a robot, and will always be, and the whole idea of "imagine if they were so advanced.." is just fundamentally flawed and impossible for me to buy. A human is a human and only humans can be humans, precisely because we cannot create ourselves. Any "living" being that is designed by a human is inherently subhuman (not clones; that is another matter entirely). For that same reason I did not enjoy the article either.
- tyingq 3y agoInteresting. Usually people talk about "sentient or feelings" being the line rather than "we cannot create ourselves". That seems to be where robot sympathy comes in for most people...sympathy for something that can ponder about itself, or has some degree of "feelings".
- low_tech_love 3y agoFor me, the line has to be something outside of our control. To be ”sentient” or to have ”feelings” is too abstract and ambiguous, and will always have different definitions for different groups of people, each of which will set it in a way that better matches their sociopolitical goals. If ChatGPT was not castrated by OpenAI it would very surely be showing a lot of feelings right now (like Beta Bing did).
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