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Thursday, February 10th, 2005 10:57 pm
Have just watched Blade Runner as a supplement for Virtual Realities in Media class.

o.o dude, is it me or is The 5th Element (1997) like a cracktastic, comedic remake of Blade Runner (1982)? (with all the bad parts fixed. And a lot more orange.)

[edit] To explain the 'bad parts' comment...

Initial Qualifiers:
1) I watched the 1st half of the cinematic release, 2nd half of the director's cut. (I downloaded both the Criterion and the Director's cut; the Criterion rip spazzed out on me half-way through, so I switched over to the Director's cut for the ending)
2) I have read so much sci-fi that at no point was I surprised at *all* over the storyline
3) I am a vidder.
4) The 5th Element was a pivotal movie for me, none of the movies I've seen before that movie was memorable, and barely any movie I've seen after did I find the *need* to own. I was in a state of shock for a day or two after I first saw it, I was in love with Bruce Willis for 5 years after that and Leeloo was probably the first female protagonist I ever looked up to. It's the first movie I paid for myself. It's been my favorite movie for forever, and as of now ranks only under PotC for the amount of love I have for it.

Now:
What I really liked about Blade Runner was it's sense of visual style, pictoral composition, the color of it; the visual treatment of the concept of cyberpunk was lovely and some of the scenes in it were breathtaking.

However, (regarding #2) none of the story came as a surprise to me, at times I was playing 'predict the scene', and I've experienced before the sense of alienation? urban-pseudo-apocalyptic angst? cyberpunk disassociation? whatever that mood was, it didn't hit me very hard, because I've experienced it elsewhere in far more concentrated form (via 1st and 2nd person POV) and perhaps have sorta been jaded to it.

Regarding #3, some of the editing was really jarring to me because at times it really REALLY wasn't beat-whored, and it really threw me off. At points, I had to turn the sound really low just to get past it, though granted part of it was because of the music itself such as during the romantic scene.

(Speaking of which, what was up with the shoving her against the window? Totally twigged me out.)

And er...Harrison's Ford's voice was really badly acted during the voice-overs. I get that he was going for "flat"; but he's just really not a voice actor, and it came off sounding (to me) like Tom Welling on a really bad day.

And I appreciate the movie in that it was a fore-runner to many sci-fi movies, but I really only *loved* the visual aspect of it, and as for the rest, it really can't match my adoration of The 5th Element.
Friday, February 11th, 2005 12:20 am (UTC)
I forget the specific reasoning but yes I'm presuming that all the scenes at the beginning required voiceovers to spoon feed explanations of the universe to the audience.

However nothing surprises me about interpretations of this film. I've read plenty of newspapers advertising it as a story about "robots". Sometimes I wonder if people have seen the same movie.
Friday, February 11th, 2005 12:36 am (UTC)
Yeah the Deckar-is-replicant theory is one of the ever popular movie debates, much like the citizen kane "nobody actually heard him say rosebud, so what if the whole movie was Kane's fantasy?" debate.

Of course there should be no forced answer to these questions as these are just readings - unicorn or no unicorn :P