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| nice shooting, but completely inappropriate rain gear, love |
The news leaked out this weekend that the Blade Runner sequel is definitely on. While I'm slightly encouraged that Ridley Scott is hiring Hampton Fancher to write an original script I still think this project isn't a very good idea. Here are the reasons I gave back in March when this was just a horrible rumour:
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1) Most sequels are horrible. Even the good ones like The Godfather Part 2 aren’t really a patch on the original. This rules applies even more so in science fiction with the curious exception of The Empire Strikes Back. The Matrix sequels were so completely awful that they managed to ruin the mythology and all the good will of the original.
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1) Most sequels are horrible. Even the good ones like The Godfather Part 2 aren’t really a patch on the original. This rules applies even more so in science fiction with the curious exception of The Empire Strikes Back. The Matrix sequels were so completely awful that they managed to ruin the mythology and all the good will of the original.
2) We’ve been down this road before and it wasn’t good. Harrison Ford’s reboot of the Indiana Jones franchise: Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the worst film of his career. It was also the worst film of Steven Spielberg’s career. And Ray Winstone’s. And John Hurt’s. etc.
3) Ridley Scott doesn’t understand his own movie. Scott has repeatedly said that Harrison Ford’s character Deckard is a replicant when this makes no sense at all in the context of the story. Both screenwriters agree that this doesn’t work as a plot device and it makes even less sense when you’ve read Philip K Dick’s original novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This doesn’t bode well for a Ridley Scott retread of this material.
4) CGI will make everything worse. Blade Runner was shot on the old Maltese Falcon set on the Warner Brothers back lot. The set looked so bad that Scott only shot at night with lots of fake rain and smoke. Constant rain and night shoots made everyone on edge and it shows in the film which has a genuine misanthropic, dystopian feel. A sanitised, blue screen Blade Runner would likely be as uninspired and lifeless as the Star Wars prequels.
5) The end of the story is already flawless. Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut ends with the great emotional high of Roy’s speech on the roof of the Bradbury Building followed by Deckard and Rachael fleeing for their lives from his apartment. The last shot in the film is the elevator doors closing on Harrison Ford and Sean Young as they run towards an uncertain future. To me this is as self contained, ambiguous and brilliant as the ending of The Graduate and any additional information would only spoil this pitch perfect note. Occasionally Hollywood should ignore the accountants and let art win a round or two in the eternal fight between art and commerce.
54 comments:
I am, however, looking forward to Ridley Scott's The Man in the High Castle:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/07/ridley-scott-sci-fi-philip-k-dick-bbc-drama
I know you appreciate debate and dissenting opinions so let me say this. I'm inclined to agree that all this Bladerunner sequel stuff is a bad idea but I've said all along that I would support a sequel that was a filming of KW Jeter's novel sequels. I like Jeter as a writer and some of his books are very good. The Bladerunner novel sequels are flawed (in some cases very much so) but they are interesting.
Brian
How about a film of Jeter's Infernal Devices or Noir?
I finished Falling Glass yesterday sitting in my empty classroom with my wireless headphones nodding my head going o-kaaaay I think I get this... The notion of a fitting ending being in play and all. I really was stumped as to hpw the curtain could come down on Killian and Michael or only one of them. The ending I never imagined is always the best one. Well done. On to Cold Hard Ground.
I finished Falling Glass yesterday sitting in my empty classroom with my wireless headphones nodding my head going o-kaaaay I think I get this... The notion of a fitting ending being in play and all. I really was stumped as to hpw the curtain could come down on Killian and Michael or only one of them. The ending I never imagined is always the best one. Well done. On to Cold Hard Ground.
You know the market will win this one.
I wonder what percentage of people have a preference for the ambiguous ending vs. those who favor a signed sealed and delivered one.
If Deckard is a replicant he is a lousy one. He takes a beating from every other replicant in the film, even the girls.
What worries me is the fella who wrote the script for the first Blade Runner, David Webb Peoples (who also wrote Unforgiven and 12 Monkeys), is not being mentioned in relation to this project anywhere. That's not good.
Watched The Final Cut (and all the rest of the 5-DVD set) recently and also re-read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I agree it makes no sense if Deckard is a replicant. The whole point is the comparison between the beta-minus person and the alpha-plus android. In the book, Pris, Roy & Roy's wife hole up with JF Isidore (forerunner of Sebastian). Isidore is a diseased chickenhead and inferior to them in so many ways. Pris snips the legs off a (real) spider to see "if if needs them all". Isidore's horror encapsulates the difference between human and android.
Genre, right?
Then I want an ending that reveals the human condition. The dim spark of humanity (love and empathy and true compassion) is always up against the more powerful cold-blooded henchmen of the material universe.
The Judge Holdens, the Ayn Rand psychopaths, Big Brother and his minions--the Dark Force rules the universe. The light is alien here, a fugitive.
Victories of the light, of the humanities, of peace and love and compassion and kindness, are only temporary victories in this material vale. The best the light can do is to continue to be a fugitive, a candle still burning in the darkness, not yet extinguished.
I want an ending where Mr. Potter still has the stolen money and the upper hand, and where Jimmy Stewart still recognizes the need for gratitude for what light exists. Where it turns out that the only opposition to Big Brother is sponsored and manipulated by Big Brother himself.
That's how it goes.
Everybody knows.
BLADE RUNNER works because some of the humans are inhumane while the non-human robots earn our compassion.
Any sequel ought not to mess with that dynamic.
I agree with Seana-the market drives the machine, and sadly, a highly original program will not gain the audience of a period drama. (With the the curious exception of Dr. Who) The producers will direct their efforts at movie public which wants it all tied up neatly with a bow. You all know that.
Lil, sometimes it's possible to believe that the American Revolution never happened, such is our deep adulation of the British class system.
Richard, that's a very noir sensibility. Not that I disapprove.
Rasta
Glad you liked the ending of Falling Glass. I did get a few complaints at the time and occasionally they still trickle in, but I think that that ending works best for that story.
Seana
Whats so great about the last minute of the Graduate is that you can more or less believe anything you want as the ending.
Matt
A mistake not getting Peoples. He's a very talented scriptwriter. But then its also clear that he and Scott butted heads and we know where the power lies in Hollywood between the writer and the director.
Edge House
The whole Deckard is a replicant seems like a last minute idea. Certainly it never came up at the script meetings or was told to Harrison Ford during the shoot. The unicorn sequence was actually test footage for Scott's next film Legend so the less said about that the better I would have thought.
Richard
But the last thing on Earth you'd want to see is a sequel where Mr Potter gets his comeuppance and Jimmy Stewart is utterly triumphant. That would spoil everything. Sometimes you have to leave well enough alone.
The problem with for example Spielberg is that he got used to giving people what they wanted instead of what they needed.
Its like when they cut all the anti semitism from Band of Brothers because Spielberg and Hanks didnt want to see our heroes as less than heroic. That was a mistake. They still would have been heroes but men of their time.
Lil, Seana
I havent seen Downton Abbey but I do find the American obsession with the British period drama to be somewhat demoralising.
I liked Upstairs Downstairs back in the day, but I thought it did really take the constrictions of downstairs life very seriously. It was popular, I think, because at least no one in America had thought very much about the downstairs lot before--thought of them as real lives.
I'm watching Downton Abbey because it's pretty and it has good actors. Not Gordon Jackson good, but nonetheless. But I am completely perplexed why it has become such a phenomenon when it's really a retread with better cinematography and a nicer house to look at. The plot is completely predictable. But everywhere I turn people are completely obsessed with it. They're even doing a Downton Abbey display at the bookshop.
Best cash cow PBS has had in a while, though.
Seana
Again, I havent seen it and I trust your judgement that its put together well but I think that long term the success of Downton Abbey is bad for everyone. Bad for the British film industry because thats the stuff they will keep making because it sells in America. Bad for Americans because this warped view of England is what they want and crave and will continue to want and crave. Bad for writers because as long as the escapism of Downton Abbey is popular their contemporary stories will be exlcuded. Bad for PBS because it ties the network to elitism and Anglophilia which puts off an entire section of the American audience that otherwise might be attracted to the network.
In Downton Abbey, and I do watch it, you have a lot of politically correct notions, WWI and the effects on families, the changing roles of women, and the intrusion of the "Americans" into English life (as Imagined by Americans). The show has uniformly good acting, clothes to drool over and production values that are often too much to take in. Just as "Sherlock" appeals in a totally different genre with good writing, one is getting quality, along with a fantasy of what English life is like. There's just more elegance to it than the the soaps here in the states. It is a little like the images of spinsters on bicycles. Americans prefer their knowledge of other cultures prettified, and they are looking for entertainment. Frankly, a cash cow for bookshops and PBS is not such a bad thing.
Lil
But my point is that the voices that are being excluded by this PBS obsession with British period drama might be an even bigger cash cow but we'll never know because the programmers at PBS are intensely conservative and adverse to risk taking.
Lil
For me this is just about the worst thing that can happen to PBS because from now on this is the kind of programming they will look for and the programmers will pitch their shows at the very narrow demo that likes Downton Abbey.
I mostly agree with Adrian, although I liked the way they exploited Anglophilia with Foyle's War, giving us no-nothings a fair amount of education on WWII as it was lived in England, and also giving us Michael Kitchen, which was more than enough just in itself.
PBS is doomed anyway, I'm afraid, Downton Abbey or no.
The trouble is that there those who would call me elitist because I read Irish crime fiction, or watch strange movies like "The Killer Inside Me." I agree wholeheartedly with you about more exposure needed for quality, more meaty stuff, for writers of different genres and topics, and I do everything I can to talk up you guys-especially you-but the public at large doesn't necessarily want that kind of good stuff. I know you have your reservations about Sherlock, but I am thrilled that they are doing it and showing it here, and it is actually attracting an audience. I'm sorry if I upset you, but I, for one, am grateful that there is television that is high quality, and well done.
There are some who would call you elitist just for reading, Lil.
It isn't that people shouldn't watch Downton Abbey if they enjoy it--even I enjoy it enough to watch it despite my complaints,but the problem is how risk averse the whole set up is. Although this seems to be true of almost anything that requires money to survive these days.
More than that, though, is that books, TV and movies seem to feel that they have to flatter their niche market to survive. It's very much a closed loop.
I think that's the despair I feel. I think that what is a money maker is, in the end, not my cup of tea. It's sad when a book makes it to the top of the NYTimes best seller list. The good author is thrilled, it makes money, but what is selling really and consistently formulaic retreads over and over again. But they make money for themselves,for the bookshop, for the publisher, which reinforces the notion of what sells, and there you go. I don't think that has changed much over the years; I just hope there is enough of a market for the lesser known creations for them to survive.
Right--I don't think it has changed so much as it has accelerated.
But of course, there are pockets of vitality all over the place, the wonderful Irish crime fiction world being one of them.
I'm not trying to troll here, but I'm part of the minority of Scott fanboys who aren't crazy about Bladerunner. To me, it's a good but not great movie that doesn't deserve the hype. Perhaps expectations killed the movie for me--I was waiting to be blown away, and wasn't.
That being said, I've only seen the theatrical cut so maybe I'm not fully informed here.
The wife and I enjoy Downtown Abbey. For me, it's not Anglophilia--I don't long for society to regress to a caste system at all. I just think it makes for interesting drama. Class in America seems to be more of an afterthought, at least for the circles I run in, so it's intriguing to watch class-based drama.
-Brian O
Well, Brian, at least Lil's off the hook now, anyway...
Downtown Abbey might be a better show than Downton Abbey--a lot more happenin', a lot more goin' on.
Seana, Lil
I really think I should stop commenting now on a show I have never seen! There really is a limit to such speculations even for me :)
Brian
I encourage disagreement. Hell I even encourage trolling but I am a little mystified as to what your objections could possibly be, especially if you like Ridley Scott.
What Scott films do you prefer to Blade Runner?
Thank you for letting me off the hook, Seana, and Adrian. I've been feeling badly. I get carried away sometimes. The thing is I don't even disagree with you. To me, it's a quandary and I wish I had a solution.
Lil, I don't think you were ever actually on the hook, to be honest.
If people didn't get carried away and express half-formulated opinions, there wouldn't be much point to the blogosphere, I reckon.
Oh,I just renoticed that K.W. Jeter was mentioned at the beginning of the thread and I just happened to have caught him on my friend Rick Kleffel's show tonight. He was talking very positively about ebooks and how they have given him and some of his sci-fi writing pals a whole new lease on life. He's got traditional publishers for his commercially successful books, but he wanted to try writing a crime series and he knew there would be no takers so he's just been pumping them out as ebooks. He thinks that a new golden era of publishing is coming up. Bad time for all the intermediary types like booksellers and traditional publishers, but I have to say I kind of agree.
Speaking of TV, has anybody seen Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys? OH MY GOD, it's original and SO funny. I love it. But it's not so politically correct and I suppose Chris Lilley is probably hearing about that. Oh, well, you usually break a few eggs if you’re going to make an omelet, right?
-- cheryl
What station is it, Cheryl?
Oh, sorry, HBO (the season finale was last Sunday).
Thanks. I'll probably have to wait till it goes to DVD.
Seana
I've read a couple of Jeter's books and thought they were pretty good.
Cheryl
Yeah I've seen it and I agree funny stuff indeed.
Adrian -
Alien is Scott's best film IMHO, followed by Gladiator. I think those two are better films than Bladerunner. I also like Kingdom of Heaven (director's cut), Black Hawk Down, and even Black Rain.
Bladerunner is just ... good. Yeah, I love the atmosphere and mise en scene and all that film school crap about it, but I can't say what keeps it from being great for me. Like I said, though, I haven't seen the Director's Cut which is supposed to be better.
Brian O
Re: Seana, "Richard, that's a very noir sensibility."
Yes, but it is also naturalism. Think of, say, Jack London's "To Build A Fire." The coldfolgers, the men who worship Money, are in charge.
Damon Runyon used to say that all life is 6-5 against. While Big Money controls the government, the odds against the humanities are much greater than that.
Few people read once out of school, and fewer still read fiction. Of that small number, fewer still get to the point where they can read, enjoy, and understand serious fiction (including the best genre) for pleasure and enlightenment.
But everyone goes to the movies.
Philip K. Dick was at first delighted with Ridley Scott's film and said so. But in his newly published THE EXEGESIS OF PHILIP K. DICK, he says that the movie ruined the purity of the book.
In the footnotes, the editors (including Jonathon Lethem) do a lot of headscratching over his Christ/Satan interpretations.
Personally, I think the novel is better because it leaves more open to interpretation. But moviegoers cannot stand as much ambiguity as readers.
It will be interesting to see how it goes.
Brian
You must be talking about a different Kingdom of Heaven. The one I'm thinking of stars Orlando Bloom. Let me just say that again. Orlando. Bloom. You're a lawyer aren't you Bri? I remember this thing from law school called res ipsa loquitor: the thing speaks for itself, i.e. no more evidence is required. You only need mention the accident itself. In this case the accident ws casting Orlando Bloom as the lead in the/any movie.
With you on Gladiator though. Terrific film, shame Olly Reed died though. Again with you on BHD.
Richard
You're absolutely right. Reading books used to be the thing that people did. Now the majority of people never read a book or if they do its one or two a year. Reading serious literature is very much a cult activity. Who outside an English dept reads Tobias Smollett or say Richard Henry Dana?
I got this mixed up with the 70s movie thread for a minute because I was thinking how Downton Abbey is bad for PBS because it keeps PBS from addressing American issues.
This week I watched The Deer Hunter and read all the stuff about Charles Murray(is that his name?) book about the collapse of the white working class in America and I realized one thing the working class (white or otherwise) doesn't have in America is art.
We'll probably never know if there is a market in America for a working class TV show but we can be pretty sure there'll be a lot more British period pieces.
Richard, it has been a long, long, long time since I read To Build a Fire. May be time for another look. Jack London came to Santa Cruz at one point in his many travels, so he's almost a local boy.
There has to be working class art, John, because there have to be working class artists. If you look at shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent, you know that at least there are a thousand aspirations to it.
Book groups are why a lot of people read fiction these days. And those people are mostly women.
Although I'd say mysteries and crime novels, like the other genres, are the places people still read for pleasure and not out of obligation.
American Idol and America's ot Talent are the opposite of what I'm talking about - they all want to be stars. It's that aspiring to 'get out' we've discussed before.
Now would seem like a great time for PBS to tap into some of America's forgotten history instead of Downton Abbey but it's not going to happen.
I see what you're saying, John. I just mean that just because we don't hear about working class art doesn't mean it isn't going on.
And don't most artists want to break out into a wider audience? Or is that not as inevitable as I think it is?
Well, that's the essential question of art, isn't it? How much do I have to comprise to get a bigger audience? I haven't seen much American Idol, but my guess is that most contestants would do *anything* to be famous singers but don't have much to say, really.
I remember way back when "Upstairs Downstairs" was first on TV there was an American version set in Boston called "Beacon Hill," but it didn't really catch on. I guess we'll see some kind of American version of Downton Abbey but it won't be on PBS.
Oh, I understand PBS doesn't have much money and buying an already produced show is a lot cheaper than making one.
Still, I don't believe that the whole market is served. The movie and TV (and book) businesses really only see part of the market and when questioned say that things that fall outside of the narrow area they're interested in (like Adrian's take on Belfast in 1981) "don't sell." Maybe they're completely right.
But there's more of a chance of a sequel to Blade Runner than there is to something that really digs into the American experience very much. And I just think that's too bad.
Well, actually I agree with you, for the most part,John.
I don't actually watch American Idol or any of those things, although for awhile I enjoyed Last Comic Standing. It's funny, though that we've had a couple of big American Idol contestants here, one of them being James Durbin. I don't really know his whole story, but I think he was the kind of kid who had some learning disabilities and a hard life and the whole town pretty much got inspired to watch him rise. I think he got almost to the top position but he came back as a hero and he really seems to be a class act. They had some celebration of him at the Boardwalk and everyone who went seems to remember it as a really special day. I stood a bit outside the whole phenomenon, but I think it was one of those cases where he brought alot of people along with him.
Santa Cruz may not seem to be working class, but large segments of it are, really.
John
Yes this is my point if they actually looked for stories in America, in an America that no one else was looking at they might find some great stuff. But they wont do that. Better to keep churning out period mysteries.
Seana
I know you got upset with me a few weeks ago because I was dissing Death Comes To Pemberley before I actually read it. Well now I've read it and I have to say that I didn't think it was very good at all. It lacked Austen's wit and verve and my goodness was it slow.
Great--I just asked them to save me a copy of Pemberly in used books, so now I'll probably have to read it too. I kind of liked the opening when I skimmed it though.
I've decided that Parrot and Olivier gets better at about page 157. But that is sure a long time to wait.
I watched the end of season 2 Downton Abbey last night. I don't think my problem with it, although I don't seem to have MUCH of a problem with it since I've watched all of it, is that the plot is so completely predictable. No one EVER does anything you wouldn't expect, and everything is resolved just as it has to be. Although paradoxically, the characters don't stay true to their original formulation between season one and season two, and the fact that there is a war in between is not enough of an explanation.
the fuck they are makin' a sequel if i can help it haha...i can think of hundreds of thousands of reasons...
as you intimate, the film and especially the ending does tie the whole piece up perfectly, much more so when the original non voiceover cut was released....the ambiguity of deckard's presence..is he or isn't he a replicant...is what did it for me...
anything else would just be crud...so there!
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