Fly-by Movie Thoughts

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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.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Ah. Well. I never saw Fifth Element - the trailer put me off precisely because I thought "cheap Blade Runner rip-off, huh?". Also because I'm so-so about Luc Besson as a director. Whereas I saw Blade Runner for the first time eons ago, as a kid, when it was originally released, and then again and again, especially once the director's cut (which famously removed Ford's voice-over and the false ending, both studio additions) made the big screen.

Other directly BR-influenced films: most recently, Minority Report and, for the Coruscant scenes, Attack of the Clones come to mind, but these are more homages. (As with Chiana in Farscape who had her look obviously modelled on Pris in Blade Runner, and the Cylons in the new version of Battlestar Galactica who are much like the BR replicants.)

The love scene: Ridley Scott famously commented that it turned out to be a hate scene, because Harrison Ford just couldn't stand Sean Young (and vice versa), and that showed. In any case, as one of the points makes that the most intent feelings are shown by the artificial beings, and between them (Roy and Pris come to mind), it works.

[permetaform]

Whereas I saw Blade Runner for the first time eons ago, as a kid, when it was originally released, and then again and again, especially once the director's cut (which famously removed Ford's voice-over and the false ending, both studio additions) made the big screen.

ahhhh.

also, tell about the false ending! others have mentioned it...the end in the version I have is the closing of the elevator door.

Minority Report

Wasn't that more P.Dick influenced than anything else? ;D

(As with Chiana in Farscape who had her look obviously modelled on Pris in Blade Runner,

ahhhhhh

The love scene: Ridley Scott famously commented that it turned out to be a hate scene, because Harrison Ford just couldn't stand Sean Young (and vice versa), and that showed. In any case, as one of the points makes that the most intent feelings are shown by the artificial beings, and between them (Roy and Pris come to mind), it works.

Watched the entire sequence with the sound totally off (instead of low) and keeping in mind the dialogue, and I think I can see what you mean...however the background music just totally threw me off the first time I saw it, I just ended up laughing and groaning through most of that sequence. (it was produced a year before I was born, so that probably has something to do with it ::wry grin::)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

You're a young 'un! *feels old*

So, the ending: well, Scott's ending always was the one you saw. However, the previews resulted in the studio concluding that people a) didn't identify with Deckard enough (well, duh!) and b) wanted a happy ending, because he was Harrison Ford, newly beloved hero of action films (this was just when Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies had made him a superstar). So they took the film, called Ford back, added the voiceover, took some outtakes from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (also a contemporary) showing a snowy sunny landscape, and added a voiceover for these in which Deckard tells us that in fact, Tyrell told him Rachel was the only android not to have a four years limit, and thus he and she will live in bliss.

(20 years later, on the DVD audio commentary for Thelma and Louise, Ridley Scott is still ranting about it. Can't say I blame him.)

Minority Report: It's not just the Philipp K. Dick connection, it's also the look of the film.

Oh, and as Melymbrosia said, wrong order - BR invented cyberpunk.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

[boring pedant]

BR took cyberpunk public. It had been around for a while in books, including the book that BR was based on, which was published in 1968. Then the cyberpunk writers of the 80s took the look of BR and ran with it.

[/boring pedant]

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::snogs you::

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

But Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? isn't cyberpunk. It doesn't have the focus on computers and although it's concerned with anomie and the influence of multinational corporations, it doesn't have the same take on these things that cyberpunk does, and has more of a philosophical and religious concern with the nature of reality besides. The look of BR is much grungier and also much edgier than anything in Dick's work, which tends to the battered and rundown.

Cyberpunk was deeply influenced by many earlier sf writers, including Dick and Samuel R. Delany, but being an influence on a genre doesn't mean you belong to it. Cyberpunk itself is a movement of the late eighties and early nineties, and by the early nineties people were already calling books "post-cyberpunk" and the second generation of cyberpunk.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

BR didn't create it, though. I was reading computer-based fiction by Vinge and Rucker and other books with these themes before BR came out - hell, "Johnny Mnemonic" was published in 1981, the year before BR came out. I'm not arguing that BR isn't a watershed, because the generation of writers that was experimenting with the dystopian-near-future computer-ruled theme saw it and thought "Yes! This is exactly it! This is waht I've been doing" and ran from there, but I won't point to BR as the moment that cyberpunk was born, just the moment that it was popularized.

WHY AM I WANKING ON ABOUT THINGS ONLINE WHEN I SHOULD BE WORKING ONT MY MANGA? AAARG!

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Work on your manga.

I will spot you "True Names," but I don't think Rucker's early work is cyberpunk--it seems much more straightforwardly influenced by Dick and surrealism and of course mathematics. Even Vinge didn't combine the interest with technology with cyberpunk's political preoccupations. And the stylistic innovations borrowed back into SF from BR don't show up in Vinge at all.