Holy shit this movie is pure art. The visuals and aesthetic are spot on for Cyberpunk and the sound direction is so good. Literally every set had me engaged because how good they looked. The scene with K just going around the city with these big ass logo's of dead and alive companies was so good. Visually, this movie is a masterpiece.

The whole plot of K finding a purpose and then losing it to then making up one himself is great. Pretty similar to Detroit become human. The plot kept me hooked throughout. The whole section in the ruins of Las Vegas was peak. The pacing was also so much better than the first movie.

And then there is the Ryan Gosling is literally me propaganda which I fully subscribe to. K feels very similar as to his lack of purpose and being stuck in a society that fucking sucks. The AI Girlfriend thing has gained a whole new meaning since ChatGPT dropped. God I love this k-pain scene.

The ending was great. K did the most human thing possible after breaking his shackles even when he was not HIM hence proving that every single replicant is a living being but lack purpose and memories which shape their personalities.

And Jared Leto somehow gave his best performance in this movie. This is his peak after Paul Allen.

  • somename [she/her]14•1 month ago

    Something I think was clever was the addition of Joi, and her role in the story. By the time this movie came out, the original Blade Runner had kind of percolated through society. Replicants being human isn’t really a mindblowing or challenging premise imo.

    So to get a similar feeling and though exploration going, a new level of “fake” life needs to be introduced, one that the audience might not immediately accept. You can see that reflected in the movie where a replicant treats Joi like shit for being “artificial”, reproducing the oppression of replicants, despite the history and material context of the abuser. Seeing the movie explore Joi and her potential development and emergent autonomy was super cool. She was definitely my favorite part of the movie.

    • jackmarxist [any]3•29 days ago

      Best part about her imo was K finding out that everything she said was pre-programmed. She was always designed to speak what K wanted to listen and the k-pain scene is about that. Him realizing his love didn't mean much but he can save a real relationship by saving Deckard and uniting him with his daughter was so well done.

      • somename [she/her]3•29 days ago

        Well, certain linguistics quirks and tendencies were pre-programmed, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's all she was

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]4•29 days ago

          That's what i love about it. Is she a machine reading a script? Is she a person who has only existed for a few months or a few years trying her best with the extremely limited fake memories and information and vocabulary she was imprinted with?

          A big thing with Roy and company is they were, emotionally, toddlers. They'd only had a couple of years to work out emotions and feelings, figure out their identity, make some kind of sense out of who they were. You can kind of see that as they wrestle with strong emotions in the movie, with Roy's reflections on his life as he plays with Deckard.

          And then Joi creates this similar ambiguity. She's even less "real" than the Replicants, having no body beyond a computer on the wall and a portable hologram emitter. Is she "real"? The society is perfectly capable of building artificial humans that are fully sentient, can they build a digital one? They've got no qualms about slavery. And there's the two opposed characters - Love, who isn't loved but is unambiguously human, and Joy, who is loved but whose humanity is in question.

          The Replicant company "solved" the problem of replicant instability by giving them fake memories to give them emotional grounding and context. K isn't a thirty year old man, he's only existed a few years at most, waking up with a full set of memories. Is joi the same kind of being, waking up with a set of memories, a personality and goals fine-tuned for a particular role, and then left to run? Who can say!

          Also, the ai/expert system holographically overlaying herself on the "real" replicant prostitute has layers of things to say about the commodification of sexuality like wooooooah.

        • jackmarxist [any]2•29 days ago

          They don't really answer the question so it's upto the viewer about how to perceive it. I personally believe that she's ChatGPT on the inside. Then again, it's entirely possible that she became fully sentient and all their relationship actually became real.