Deckard is an asshole

I cannot entertain the idea that this film doesn't suck all the stinkiest dicks yet. It has everything against it, everything.

BR is one of the best movies ever but it took them literal decades to nail a literal final cut. Why even try to follow that. I mean, beyond theoretical payday.

Brooks wrote:

BR is one of the best movies ever but it took them literal decades to nail a literal final cut. Why even try to follow that. I mean, beyond theoretical payday.

The funny thing is. I don't see this making a lot of money. I can see word of mouth by the mainstream cinemagoer killing this dead in the water.

Where's my Funko Pop.

Yeah, really don't read my review if you haven't seen it, because it spoils everything.

I'm disappointed he doesn't explain/remember the details of Villeneuve's argument.

Furthermore, apparently:

hope those who have watched this spotted
Saw it last night and was glad I'd watched the original again the night before. I can't remember the last time I had seen it all the way through (probably in the 90s). Having it fresh in my mind certainly helped get some of the references and understand some of what was going on. If the aim of Villeneuve was to leave as many uncertainties as Scott did then he has succeeded.

Vela wrote:

I'm going to disagree with G's assessment/criticism of the central conceit of this film. Don't read the following til after you have seen it.

Spoiler:

The premise that Deckard/Rachael had a child is supported by a couple of other points. First, Tyrell was well aware of limited lifespans in the N6 model (ref: his discussion with Batty). Second, Rachael was clearly a special project and this was inferred entirely in the original introduction of her.  My second criticism of G's argument is that they aren't robots. They are synthetic, but still chemical (organic), not mechanical. Reference again, Batty's discussion with Tyrell. Those chemicals they are discussing in Roy's pleas for a longer life are cell replication pathways. If the cell replication process is already occuring inside an individual (for purpose of cellular repair), it's not entirely unreasonable for Tyrell to have attempted a crack at artificial meiosis.   

That's a fair enough argument, and I don't doubt it's the one posited by the filmmakers when they started making the sequel and were hashing out their plot, but it just doesn't really wash with me.
It smacks of someone desperately trying to retrofit the plot of BladeRunner to justify a sequel then just papering over the obvious cracks with ambiguity.

Let's suppose it's true. If Deckard is a replicant (and Scott has flat out confirmed this on multiple occasions) then it seems unbelievable that Tyrell engineered a scenario where Deckard was actually "special" and had the ability to reproduce, meaning that years before BladeRunner happens, Tyrell sent him off into the wild to be a BladeRunner knowing that sometime in the future he would come and visit him, giving him the opportunity to meet and fall in love with Rachael, his other special project, and they would then go on to have a child.
That's simply preposterous. If Tyrell had created replicants that could reproduce, then he'd be testing that in a lab somewhere under controlled conditions.
Alternatively, Villeneuve likes to be ambiguous about Deckard, and I think this is purely to serve his hokey plot, but even if you take it that Deckard was human, then the above still applies and you have the ludicrous scenario where a human has sex with a replicant and the replicant gets pregnant and produces some sort of hybrid of the species. That's an even bigger stretch to suspend disbelief over.

I think the nature of the replicant is also kept ambiguous to paper over cracks. We're never really told what they are or how they're made (my calling them robots was facetious). They're super strong to the point that they can run through walls. K can glue his skin back together, but Rachael seems to have a skeleton that's so human that it requires microscopic analysis to confirm that it actually belonged to replicant. So what the hell are the replicants really? Again, it's ambiguity for the sake of furthering a tenuous plot.

There's much I liked about the film though. As with the first, it's at it's best with the scenes about the nature of the self and memories and feelings. I particularly liked the whole Joi scenario/relationship, which was very well handled, but did that really add anything that the first film hadn't already said? Probably not.

The only big let down for me is the plot, everything else was suitably intriguing and well done.
Late in the film Deckard tells K that there was this amazing complicated plan where everyone played a part in hiding the replicant child once it was born.
Now that's logical, but doesn't actually wash either.
Why is Bautista living beside her grave, putting flowers on it, and hiding clues to her existence in his house...right beside her grave. If you were trying to hide the existence of someone, then that's the last thing you'd do. He's simply there, doing that, because if he isn't then you have no plot. It's lazy writing.

The child is then taken to that place in San Diego where all the children are working (are they replicants too? Who knows. I like to think not) and disappears. Who took the child from there? How did she come to be living in the city in that isolation bubble designing memories for replicants? Again, ambiguity for the sake of a plot twist.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It was a decent stab at making a thoughtful sequel to a film that doesn't need one, and I'm just glad that it wasn't the omnishambles it could have been. I dare say it'll probably grow on me with further viewing, but I just felt they went in the wrong direction with the story, and that the whole scenario stinks of franchise building and future sequels that nobody wants.
I just don't care about a replicant rebellion and a potential war against humankind. That's not interesting. That's not what BladeRunner is about. BladeRunner is about the nature of the self.

Who knows. Again ambiguity to cover plot daftness. I think it was stated that Bautista was a medic in the military (though he's a bit big for that really, and what would a replicant medic be medic-ing? Glue dispenser?) and that he performed the c-section on Rachael and delivered the baby.
He's just there, doing that now, because the plot requires it.

Also you are bang on about what the story is about: the self. Any future films would be far more interesting if they involved quandaries about AI and replicants as sentient beings and how humans react. 

It's a different take on the themes to how it is handled in the matrix films, foundation and robot novels, 2001, etc. I was convinced Joi was sentient until the adJoi called him Joe as well.

Interesting piece from of all places, Digital Spy, talking about the iffy depiction of women and womankind in BR2049, and the missed opportunities arising from that.