Blade Runner 2049 bombs at box office

[kidzrevil]

@Bioskop.Inc completely completely agree. American films pale in comparison to foreign films especially in modern times ! From Akira Kurosawa to a couple of other greats American film doesn’t even come close to technique and story telling devices. Thats why when I heard BOAN mentioned here as a pivotal piece in cinematography history it was as laughable as it was disgusting. Im sure that movie isn’t even in the curriculum of a filmmaking class located outside the USA. 

23 minutes ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

Non-American films have had a far greater influence on modern filmmaking than Hollywood can ever have hoped to have had on the rest of the world. Hollywood has plundered & copied other nations filmmaking styles far more than the reverse, which is the real elephant in the room when talking about film history. If you want to look at innovation in filmmaking, Hollywood is the last place to look for or find it.

There are so many great films that aren't American, films that you can learn style & technique from in a way that you simply can't do with the watered down versions that find their way to Hollywood productions. If your top 5 favourite films have more than 2 American films in it then you simply haven't watched enough to appreciate the magnitude of the world of cinema, or should that be world cinema.

Big fact !! Who’s the DP for Blade Runner ? The aesthetic of the shots have a very ultra modern feel to it. The first Blade Runner reminded me of a cyberpunk LA but this is like a Cyberpunk Berlin. How do you feel about the aesthetic of the film ?

[Chrad]

13 hours ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

What's really troubling is the way people seem to think that this film's Pros out weigh it's Cons

 

7 hours ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

As far as BOAN is concerned, no one is saying it should be banned, but just understood within its context of being a racist film. Yes, it uses cinematic techniques that have influenced future Hollywood films, but these techniques helped propagate a racist naarative & that can never be a good thing.

 

7 hours ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

To state that we know it's racist, but that's ok because of what it might have given future filmmakers just simply isn't good enough.

In no way have I said that. It's not in any way 'ok'. Stating that it has had a profound influence on the development of the medium isn't excusing it for its propagation of evil in the world, and I have always qualified these statements by acknowledging that its technical innovation stands alongside its ugliness. This is not a defence, this is not excusing it, this is not saying its ok. Its innovation just is. It really can't be overstated, we can't pretend it doesn't exist because we don't like that it is so. The fact that the movie was so incredible technically yet stood for such horrible ideals and had an awful impact on the world is a lesson that aesthetic beauty doesn't necessarily have anything to do with moral virtue - a point which should be obvious, but a lot of people seem to forget. Leni Riefenstahl's work, as you've brought up, is another great example.

I absolutely agree it should be understood primarily as a racist film, so I have sought to contextualise my posts that assert its position in the history in the media with acknowledgement of its societal harmfulness. 

7 hours ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

Yes, it uses cinematic techniques that have influenced future Hollywood film.
...
 Another point to make, is that whilst it might have influenced future Hollywood films, it certainly didn't influence the rest of the world in quite the same way, if at all. In fact, Non-American films have had a far greater influence on modern filmmaking than Hollywood can ever have hoped to have had on the rest of the world. Hollywood has plundered & copied other nations filmmaking styles far more than the reverse, which is the real elephant in the room when talking about film history. If you want to look at innovation in filmmaking, Hollywood is the last place to look for or find it.

This is just blatantly untrue. The movie was seen the world over. It's considered the first movie to feature complex parallel editing between action, it moved forward the grammar to something approximating what we do today in terms of the movement between wides and close-ups and the way close-ups are used, it was one of the first films to feature night time photography and large scale location photography,  etc. It had a similar place to Citizen Kane in its day in taking all the technical advances that had been made in cinema, and finding effective use of them in one film. In that way it changed the expectation of how cinema would work in its aftermath, for audiences and filmmakers.

It definitely says something about Hollywood that one of its foundational films is Birth of a Nation. Is it any surprise how little minority representation there is today?

6 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

From Akira Kurosawa to a couple of other greats American film doesn’t even come close to technique and story telling devices. Thats why when I heard BOAN mentioned here as a pivotal piece in cinematography history it was as laughable as it was disgusting. Im sure that movie isn’t even in the curriculum of a filmmaking class located outside the USA. 

You'd be wrong on both counts: I heard it referenced in Australia as a hugely important film to the development of film grammar in the silent era, but also hugely racist and with an awful influence on the world. And, it is a pivotal work in the history of cinematography and directing, whether we like that or not. 
As for Kurosawa, he was hugely influenced by Griffith and has acknowledged as such.

[User]

I haven't read through this thread yet but saw the film last night with a friend who got us tickets. In short, she unknowingly got us the '3D' tickets and this was a disaster for me.
The issue, as I've been hearing about it (and experiencing it) over the last few years is around digital cinema projection and trying to save electricity cost by using bulbs that are dimmer. Throw on a pair of fucking 3D glasses that cut the light by 1.5 stops and I was constantly taking them off to actually see what was happening in blurry 3D. Great.
On top of this, I'm sometimes wondering if dops are choosing to stage items in the frame to wow the 3D audiences but serve no real purpose.
Further... going out to the movies has become such a shit show, (as Andrew mentions at the top) with all the stinking badly socialized dweebs kicking the back of chairs and all. Never mind all that horrible intro shit before the film starts. Ugh.

Overall I liked the film but felt it was a little weak in narrative and plot devices... though great to see the old battered Harrison again... love that guy.

 

[Bioskop.Inc]

On 29/10/2017 at 7:48 PM, kidzrevil said:

@Bioskop.Inc completely completely agree. American films pale in comparison to foreign films especially in modern times ! From Akira Kurosawa to a couple of other greats American film doesn’t even come close to technique and story telling devices. Thats why when I heard BOAN mentioned here as a pivotal piece in cinematography history it was as laughable as it was disgusting. Im sure that movie isn’t even in the curriculum of a filmmaking class located outside the USA. 

Big fact !! Who’s the DP for Blade Runner ? The aesthetic of the shots have a very ultra modern feel to it. The first Blade Runner reminded me of a cyberpunk LA but this is like a Cyberpunk Berlin. How do you feel about the aesthetic of the film ?

@Chrad I wasn't talking about or referencing you, please don't feel the need to defend yourself or others - there's a hole & you either fill it in or dig deeper.

If you actually look at a list of BOAN's great revolutionary techniques, you quickly realise that there aren't many that actually relate to modern cinema - the one's that are would have been used at some point anyway in order to serve a different better story & not to help re-enforce racist ideologies.

@kidzrevil Jorden Cronenweth was the DP for the original & an interesting fact is that the outdoor set was a re-dressed LA Film Noir street on a studio lot, so that's why it probably feels kinda cyberpunk - a great mix of old & new.

The new one was DP'd by Roger Deakins & it did have a kind of a detached Observational Doc type feel about it (Deakins started his career in docs) & it really did feel like things washed over you, instead of smashing you about the head (loud volume aside). I would probably say that the City sets looked more Asain in feel - almost anime in style & less cyberpunk than the original. I think it really does deserve to be seen more than once, as there is no way that you're going to be able to absorb every little detail during the 2hr40mins of a first viewing. I think it's a brave film, that propbably asks people to fill in gaps with their own knowledge rather spoon feeding you every second. Thinking about Gosling's performance & I can see a direct influence from Delon's performance in Le Samourai by Melville - stone cold contract killer.

I think BR2049's running time probably put off a lot of people, but we know a film can make money after it leaves the cinema & the first BR bombed much harder than this one. I think this one will have an afterlife just like the first one did & it might be seen to be as much of an oddity as the original.

[kidzrevil]

@Bioskop.Inc Im going to make an honest effort in seeing that today. I was looking at the original the other day on bluray and fell in love with that cyberpunk feel all over again. I would love to have a similar aesthetic but God knows I don’t have the time,patience or financing for that kind of lighting. It had a noir feel but it was dripping with color ! I loved the saturation with the blue colored lighting especially in the opening scene. You are right about 2049 I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but some of the shots from the trailer especially the scene with the hologram does have that anime feel to it. Its like a nice blend between a modern day Singapore. The original blade runner felt gritty but this one is giving me a high end Gucci kind of feel ! 

[Kisaha]

I haven't seen the film yet (work+baby boy=no cinemaNOWAY!) but Villeneuve comes, probably, from the most European area of the Americas, so I won't rank him as a prototypical Hollywood style director (and they are too many for my liking), while I believe he is one of the most interesting directors of his generation, I think he has underachieved in every one of his films (I haven't seen Incendies). 

If you consider the facts that Ridley Scott was both younger, had less feature films than Villanueve, smaller budget and a lot of backstabbing when he did Blade Runner, all these make a point of where cinema and the top directors stand right now.

My thesis in university was "Italian neo realism and the class of the political systems (capitalism - fasism - communism)", a rather big chapter was about propaganda. 

In Italy, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Giuseppe De Santis, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica (as an actor) and Cesare Zavattini (De Sica's scriptwriter later), met - started their careers - evolve during the regime, doing propaganda films, and/or being friends of Mussolini's son Vittorio, who was responsible about cinema (and the image) in Fasist Italy.

Some of the most influential directors of all time Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Pudovkin, Kalatozov (Of the "I am Cuba" fame) and others (all of communist films actually, because you were with the regime, or you weren't at all!) did achieve greatness because a huge part of the Communist machine worked for their propaganda films.

Aforementioned Riefenstahl's movies brought so many technical innovations and blah blah blah.

what I am saying is, we can not exclude propaganda "art" from our lives, or we are being similar to the ones we accuse of, and we limit our world view. On the contrary, it is better to study and follow different theories and world views, so to try to find the connections, and not the things that tear us and our societies apart. A great thing of being human, is how similar, and different we all are the same time. We will never, be all the same, at the same time, but we can all respect and find a way to communicate with each other, or else, chaos, anarchy, disorder, violence, death!

Especially for -most of us- that we study, and practice film making, the influences are everything. There is no naive art, or film making, everything pushes an envelope, you can try to be outside and objective, especially in documentaries, but every time your socio-political stance will influence you acts (and art), even though you are not aware of it (or you do not have any socio-political stance; you do!).

Some of the greatest cinema of all time, is pure propaganda, and lately, the Hollywood propaganda is "be stupid, and consume", I would rather take Soy Cuba, Man with a movie camera or Olympia, any time.

 

 

[Chrad]

7 hours ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

@Chrad I wasn't talking about or referencing you, please don't feel the need to defend yourself or others - there's a hole & you either fill it in or dig deeper.

If you actually look at a list of BOAN's great revolutionary techniques, you quickly realise that there aren't many that actually relate to modern cinema - the one's that are would have been used at some point anyway in order to serve a different better story & not to help re-enforce racist ideologies.

Your posts actually were responding to things I wrote - e.g., I mentioned that Griffith made Intolerance as an apology of sorts partially because he was criticised for furthering Intolerance (in the context of mentioning how this had a flow on to developing the Russian technique - yes, it was worthless as an 'apology') and in your next post you wrote "What's really troubling is the way people seem to think that this film's Pros out weigh it's Cons, when really all it's innovation was done in order to propagate & enhance a narrative that is pure & simply racist to its core. It really is of little consequence whether he then made a film to appologise about what he had done."  Another example, at the beginning of this tangent of the conversation I wrote that it was a hugely influential film, and we all know it's racist. Here one of the posts I quoted wrote "To state that we know it's racist, but that's ok because of what it might have given future filmmakers just simply isn't good enough." 
In both of these cases it definitely does appear you were referencing what I wrote, and I do feel the need to defend myself because both of these things are mischaracterising what I was saying. 
I don't think anyone is saying that or arguing that the racism of the movie is okay because of its technical advances anywhere, really. I don't think anyone on side with or making allowances for its politics really cares too much about cinema history. 

What you're saying about other movies doing what Birth did sooner or later is likely true, but how much later would that have happened and how would the winding path that took us to where we were today look different if so? Griffith was incredibly influential in figuring out how to built a grammar around steady cuts back and forward around close ups and medium/wides to depict conversations, and in intercutting different sequences - these are not so much technological leaps forward as they are leaps of imagination. Yes, cinema was going that way anyway but that doesn't mean you can discount the point that this is where it was really starting to take place when talking about the context of cinema history. 

[kidzrevil]

Got one guy here defending the reviled DW Griffith as an artist and another defending Italian Fascism as an art form. An embarrassing yet amazing turn of events.  Thank God it aint me, I would hate to have those statements read back to me later on in my career. Anyway.

The color and composition of these shots are amazing. Some of the reviewers don’t think it comes close to the original but they all agree this movie looks incredible ?

[Thpriest]

Watched Blade Runner 2049 last night
Not as powerful as the original but that's to be expected
But it follows and develops the story from the original very well. It is very much the same world both visually and conceptually but not as poetic and enigmatic as the original. I liked it

Long though!

[Bioskop.Inc]

14 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

Got one guy here defending the reviled DW Griffith as an artist and another defending Italian Fascism as an art form. An embarrassing yet amazing turn of events.  Thank God it aint me, I would hate to have those statements read back to me later on in my career. Anyway.

The color and composition of these shots are amazing. Some of the reviewers don’t think it comes close to the original but they all agree this movie looks incredible

By defending these sorts of films you are legitimising them & their racisit narratives/ideologies. It's very sad in this day & age - what's worse is that they probably don't consider themselves to be racist, but are quite happy to find excuses to defend racism. If you dig a little deeper into what Griffith said about why he made the film, he stated that he wanted to bring to light the injustices of the Reconstruction Years that followed the Civil War - apparent injustices towards Whites by Blacks. Laughable really when we look at the suffering & degredation that slavery brought down upon a people whose only crime was the colour of their skin. 

I think visually the new film is more stunning than the original, but that might be because it isn't embued with that gloomy darkness of the original. I suppose this difference can be seen as a direct correlation between the themes that lie behind the narratives of the 2 films: the first is a dark & gloomy film (more akin to a film noir type style) that signals the end of an era in replicants; whilst the new one is brighter presenting a more hopeful vision, a new beginning for replicants maybe.

[kidzrevil]

@Bioskop.Incpeople show their true colors all the time. No need to prolong the BOAN argument a couple of our counterparts have already revealed what they think and what they prioritize. As shameful as it is justifying the “art” of a fascist and a racist who thought the Klan were hero's, some have shown that it is something they will tolerate in the name of artistic expression however it’s not something I can tolerate as an empathetic person. 

Anyway there is a clear visual upgrade in BR2049. They’ve broadened the color palette and let the art director run wild ! Visually that is stunning but it loses the cyberpunk noir feeling of the originals low key tone with saturated blue & red colors

[Julien416]

Guys,

-Wagner was anti semitic but his music is pure genius.

-Louis Ferdinand Celine is considered one of the greatest french writer of the 20th century. Problem : he was a wicked anti semitic as well and wrote the infamous "I'd prefer 12 Hitler to one omnipotent Blum" (a leftist - and jewish - french politician. One of the greatest.) 

-Roman Polanski raped a 13 years old girl, yet he is considered one of the great directors of our time.

To sum it up : geniuses can be ass holes. You may not like it, i certainly don't, yet it's the sad truth.

You'd think being smart, rich and talented would avoid bigotry, racism, lust for teenagers and what not. Unfortunately, nope. We are in mid grey areas. Life isn't black or white...  Both your arguments are valid. But admiring Griffith accomplishment doesn't qualify anyone as a racist. Griffith, as racist as he was, almost invented cinema grammar. You'd never speak of Martin Scorsese a racist, right ? Yet he was the one by whom I heard the first time about Griffith. I remember him speaking in great terms about what Griffith had done (in film making...) when I was younger and interested in film history in his "personal journey with martin scorsese through american movies" (a classic by the way...). I even bought "Intolerance" in VHS right after. It was quite a snoozefest but still... Fortunately I didn't buy BOAN... 

What does that tell us ? Nothing much. Life's a bitch maybe and nothing is as clear as pure water... I wish it was.

[fuzzynormal]

I'd politely suggest that some reflection is in order as well as a reconsideration of racist allegations. My thoughts about BOAN have been qualified.  Stating a reality of nascent film making should not lead to being accused of racism.  That's an unfair conflating of two very disparate things.  It's not cool and it's not intellectually honest.

I mean, hate the film as much as you want and refuse to watch it.  Tell others it's your personal belief that it deserves to be ignored.  But also be fair and nice to people trying to have a good-faith conversation.  Being fair and nice to people is a considerate thing to do, and making charges of racism at people without a legit reason ain't exactly nice.

Beyond that, if you're only willing to look at films made by saints then you're going to be waiting awhile.  Ironic case in point, check out the director's back story on "Birth of a Nation" --not the 1913 film, the 2016 film.

[fuzzynormal]

2 hours ago, Julien416 said:

I even bought "Intolerance" in VHS right after. It was quite a snoozefest but still... Fortunately I didn't buy BOAN...

I ended up with BOAN after buying an extensive Criterion Collection 20 years ago.  I didn't even watch it all the way through, but did check out the scenes noted for inventive craft.  I watched it simply for the academic acknowledgment of "oh yeah, I can see where that technique came from." During the viewing, for whatever it's worth, the sentiment of "Jesus, these guys were racist ass holes," was also part of the mix.

[Kisaha]

I never defended fasism in Italy, or anywhere else, and I am very sad if anyone received a few hundred -almost- carefully written words as such.

I wrote some of the most important names in European cinema that, unfortunately, they had to serve Mussolini's, Hitler's, Stalin's propaganda, which I studied extensively for 2 years for my thesis. This is a period in time (communist revolution in Russia, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's regime) that coincides with the evolution of cinema. As simple as that, do not understand where the misunderstanding is (probably people can not read more words than a SMS or a tweet allows).

It is really silly that I have to apologize about decades of human history, because history is written, and it is not subjective. Propaganda is.

 

[kidzrevil]

cool story guys. 

Anyway.

Has their been a shot that has topped this in Blade Runner 2049 ? This shot was iconic to me !

[Bioskop.Inc]

11 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

cool story guys. 

Anyway.

Has their been a shot that has topped this in Blade Runner 2049 ? This shot was iconic to me !

Probably, loads of great images in BR2049, but can't really find the ones i want.

Watched Valerian (Luc Besson) last night & that really does have some truely amazing stuff going on visually. It also bombed at the box office, but is really worth a watch just for the world he created onscreen & the story ain't bad either.

Personally, I was much more a fan of Alien than BR - there was something about that film that struck a hard note in me. The set design was amazing - inside & outside both space ships.

Before you watch the new BR, watch the short prologue films - really helps, especially the anime one.

 

[BXander]

I thought it was a great movie. It is funny that we are discussing it in a thread about it bombing lol

[Andrew Reid]

21 minutes ago, Bioskop.Inc said:

Probably, loads of great images in BR2049, but can't really find the ones i want.

Watched Valerian (Luc Besson) last night & that really does have some truely amazing stuff going on visually. It also bombed at the box office, but is really worth a watch just for the world he created onscreen & the story ain't bad either.

Personally, I was much more a fan of Alien than BR - there was something about that film that struck a hard note in me. The set design was amazing - inside & outside both space ships.

Before you watch the new BR, watch the short prologue films - really helps, especially the anime one.

 

Blade Runner and Alien both had amazing artists behind the set designs... in case of Alien, HG Giger of course... Pure genius.

BR 2049 doesn't have evidence of a singular hand behind the designs, it seems like more of a committee and CGI effort.

[Bioskop.Inc]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

Blade Runner and Alien both had amazing artists behind the set designs... in case of Alien, HG Giger of course... Pure genius.

BR 2049 doesn't have evidence of a singular hand behind the designs, it seems like more of a committee and CGI effort.

Eventhough BR2049 is a CGI lovefest, I do remember the Ballerina Girl dancing in the street being very striking & the car flying past/inbetween the Atari sign was also a nice touch. The best bit of all, for me, was the Sinatra hologram jukebox where he's trapped in a belljar.

It does seem that with the advent of CGI, the art of set design has slightly been lost. If you look at Alien, there's no CGI, it's all really there & being filmed live - the great thing about it, is that it looks as good as anything they do with CGI today.

Interesting fact: the working cut was 4hrs long & they chopped it down to 2hrs40.