Speaker 1: Or that's the Clear Mobile parate.
Speaker 2: He knows a good thing when he hears it because
Speaker 2: it's only twelve ninety nine. Yes, only twelve ninety nine
Speaker 2: for unlimited five G data and calls. Yes, yes there
Speaker 2: are texts and that's why he's our top salesperson at
Speaker 2: Paris or Brave ninety nine Clear Mobile Keep it Clear
Speaker 2: powered by Vodaphone or Brave ninety nine activation for twelve
Speaker 2: You're a ninety nine nineteen gigabytes UK and EU roaming
Speaker 2: data for terms see Clear Mobile dot a emining.
Speaker 3: A live man like this man letting butterfly flaven his
Speaker 3: wing big down in the forest.
Speaker 1: Man, it gonna cause a tree fall, letting five thousand
Speaker 1: miles away.
Speaker 3: Man, nobody seen, nobody else. You don't need no man.
Speaker 3: We don't like you, and you got back. That's the man.
Speaker 1: Don't black a name on the pane.
Speaker 4: Right, all right, Thomas, welcome back to the Jay Burton Show.
Speaker 4: How you doing, man, very well?
Speaker 1: Thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, So you and I are continuing our discussion
Speaker 4: of Blade Runner with the twenty seventeen half reboot half
Speaker 4: sequel twenty forty nine. Obviously, this movie is sort of
Speaker 4: in the right wing psyche right. You'll see you know,
Speaker 4: clips from it used constantly, But even aside from that,
Speaker 4: it holds up remarkably well. Denis Villeneuve is I mean,
Speaker 4: one of my favorite modern directors. There's some hits and
Speaker 4: some misses there, but it is a film worth watching.
Speaker 4: If you haven't seen it, it's a Google search away,
Speaker 4: you can find it for free, so highly recommend it.
Speaker 4: But Thomas, I guess I'll kick it over to you,
Speaker 4: is kind of an introduction.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, like I I think what I started
Speaker 5: to addressed the subject matter a little bit in our
Speaker 5: first episode. They had a twenty forty nine, I mean,
Speaker 5: and then I called myself, say, you reminded me that,
Speaker 5: you know, it warn'ted a dedicated episode.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 5: I wasn't entirely surprised that the hate that the film
Speaker 5: got because you know, again that that that was basically
Speaker 5: a you know, a reflection of what the way the
Speaker 5: way the original was received in nineteen eighty two, you know,
Speaker 5: and I think a lot of people didn't really understand.
Speaker 1: What the.
Speaker 5: What the film was trying to convey, you know, and
Speaker 5: it was very much it very much honored the source
Speaker 5: material by retaining universe aspects of the plot and the
Speaker 5: narrative that are essential because, like we talked about last time,
Speaker 5: there very much is an alternative history aspect of Blade Runner,
Speaker 5: you know, and that's important because it's it's not it's
Speaker 5: not simply our future. It's a possible future that didn't
Speaker 5: come to pass, but aspects of which we recognize from
Speaker 5: our world, you know. And one of the strengths of
Speaker 5: it too is that you know, the the the antagonist
Speaker 5: really two kay and the resistance that he discovers, the
Speaker 5: depth and substance of which is an open ended question,
Speaker 5: and it's not clear if you know, there the resistance
Speaker 5: that is developing among the the current generation replicants, sort
Speaker 5: of the most human of all there before created. It's
Speaker 5: not clear if this is just something that's conceptually brewing,
Speaker 5: as it were, or if it is a real, you know,
Speaker 5: mobilized tendency that is on the cost of changing the world.
Speaker 5: But regardless, it is obvious in everybody's mind, and particularly
Speaker 5: you know, that's the biggest potential danger to the to
Speaker 5: the current order. But uh, you know, and the Wallace
Speaker 5: Corporation and the character of Neander Wallace. You know, I
Speaker 5: think Jared Leito is actually a good actor. I know
Speaker 5: that a lot of these fanboy types savage him is
Speaker 5: some terrible actor because he offended them by his portrayal
Speaker 5: of some comic book ip or something. I don't fully
Speaker 5: understand it, but you know, the Wallass Corporation, it's not
Speaker 5: just some reducts of and the character of Walls themselves.
Speaker 5: It's not just a reducs a tyro. Oh, he's not
Speaker 5: even really a villain, you know. Like I mentioned before,
Speaker 5: I don't think he's He's willing to forego conventional morality
Speaker 5: to realize his ambitions. But he's not just playing god
Speaker 5: like Tyrrell was, you know, and he's not. He's got
Speaker 5: a vision for the enduring posterity if the human species.
Speaker 5: That's why he's doing everything he's doing, you know, and
Speaker 5: the whole uh the Nexus uh nine replicans, you know,
Speaker 5: coding memories into them that they themselves were aware are
Speaker 5: not actual experiences. That's actually quite humane because it's you know,
Speaker 5: from their inception.
Speaker 1: In Nexus nine.
Speaker 5: Are aware that of what they are, you know, so
Speaker 5: that eases some of the most brutalizing and existentially terrifying
Speaker 5: aspects of of their existence.
Speaker 1: You know, and similarly to it, the UH.
Speaker 5: The implication too is that there's a there's an in
Speaker 5: universe progression of the moral understanding around the replicants.
Speaker 1: It's not an accident that k.
Speaker 5: Is uh, you know, a replicant, and the implication is
Speaker 5: that Blade Runners are all replicants because he's not capable
Speaker 5: of disobeying a natural human, you know, So that removes
Speaker 5: potential insubordination from the equation and uncomfortable questions relating to
Speaker 5: you know, the ethics of of of chain and command
Speaker 5: and things. But also you know, it's one of the
Speaker 5: big subtext of the original Blade Runner is that Deckert
Speaker 5: is slowly losing his mind because he's he's.
Speaker 1: Paid to murder people, you know, and.
Speaker 5: That's not the sort of thing one wants police officers
Speaker 5: to be habituated too.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: And there's an understanding of I think that's really kind
Speaker 5: of on the nose in the original Blade Runner, that
Speaker 5: this is the replicant. Technology is very much uh. Social
Speaker 5: conventions and ethical paradigms are still very much in development
Speaker 5: around what is new technology, and there's always a punctuality
Speaker 5: equilibrium to technology that alters social and political paradigms. And
Speaker 5: undermines cultural and moral assumptions. But in the case of replicants,
Speaker 5: there's a there's a deliberate euphemism invoked around them, because again,
Speaker 5: they're they're not androids, they're not robots, they're they're human beings,
Speaker 5: they're biological, you know, and they they they can't. Depriving
Speaker 5: them categorically of their humanity is very much a fiction
Speaker 5: that is uh essential to rationalizing their their brutal existence,
Speaker 5: which is totally subordinate to naturally birth humans, you know,
Speaker 5: and uh, wall is acknowledged. Neander Wallace acknowledges that, and
Speaker 5: his whole, his whole ambition is, you know, to unlock
Speaker 5: Terrell's secret of you know, replicants that can naturally reproduce,
Speaker 5: because again that's you know, the human species needs to
Speaker 5: populate the galaxy in his estimation, lest it face ultimate extinction,
Speaker 5: you know, really an unconceivable timeline where man doesn't migrate
Speaker 5: off world, you know, And the only way to accomplish
Speaker 5: this is essentially through the mass production of superior people,
Speaker 5: you know, who can then reproduce themselves, either you know,
Speaker 5: on board generationships or on off rold environments that are
Speaker 5: you know, until until archaeological infrastructure that can sustained life
Speaker 5: is built is very hostile to it's a human life,
Speaker 5: you know. So it's sort of a natural progression, you know,
Speaker 5: decades on from the original in terms of ethical paradigms
Speaker 5: and sociological adaptations to this new reality. And also, you know,
Speaker 5: just the the trajectory of new technology, because you know, technology,
Speaker 5: especially especially things that are inherently problematic ethically, they you
Speaker 5: know this, it develops its own momentum, you know. That's why,
Speaker 5: that's why the that's that's that's why the Cold War
Speaker 5: strategic arms race was so dangerous, particularly as human decision
Speaker 5: makers were increasingly sidelined in favor of you know, albeit
Speaker 5: at that juncture primitive machine intelligence, but just the existence
Speaker 5: of such.
Speaker 1: Weapons themselves changed everything.
Speaker 5: And you know, the metaphor of a Pandora's box might
Speaker 5: be over done, but it's apropos because man isn't really
Speaker 5: at the helm, you know. And then in the world
Speaker 5: of Blade Runner, obviously you're talking about you know, the
Speaker 5: technology in question is uh, consciously self aware of human
Speaker 5: beings with agency, something that.
Speaker 1: Obviously is.
Speaker 5: A totally anarchic variable that isn't present in the case
Speaker 5: of you know, inert technological modalities. But even in the
Speaker 5: case of those that aren't alive, you know, institutions and
Speaker 5: conceptual structures and paradigms, both open ended and algorithmic need
Speaker 5: to be devised to control these things, because you know,
Speaker 5: man is not at the helm of his creation more
Speaker 5: often than not. And you know, so I think I
Speaker 5: think the world building was incredibly deep and it like
Speaker 5: I said before, I think do Anderd's Dream of Electric
Speaker 5: Sheep is a great is a great book. It's a
Speaker 5: great story, and the world building in it is awesome.
Speaker 5: And that's an outlier. I don't think Philip K. Dick
Speaker 5: that generally wasn't a strong suit, you know, but it's
Speaker 5: really it's not just effectively conveyed and Blade Runner the
Speaker 5: novel and the films, but it's an essential aspect of
Speaker 5: the narrative and that's what makes it compelling, that's what
Speaker 5: makes it profound. But that's also what allows you to
Speaker 5: suspend disbelief. And I think an I mean, admittedly there
Speaker 5: might be a bias inherent here because of where I
Speaker 5: live and Milo Call in particular is very much the
Speaker 5: model for cyberpunk sorts of ips and things.
Speaker 1: But Blade Runner came.
Speaker 5: True in substantial capacities in a way that other dystopian
Speaker 5: fantasies and and and movies and novels didn't, you know.
Speaker 5: And I think that that alone makes it a highly
Speaker 5: significant cultural product, you know, in a way that other
Speaker 5: things aren't, you know. I mean, these days almost everything
Speaker 5: is somewhat politically coded when you're talking about entertainment brands
Speaker 5: and things. You know, obviously there's there there, there's Hollywood
Speaker 5: that's you know, constantly insinuating ideological signals into their propaganda.
Speaker 5: But you know, there is a robust independent film culture now,
Speaker 5: and almost unfailingly it's either in reaction to big media
Speaker 5: and le media and uh it's ideological persuasion or you
Speaker 5: know it's UH, or you know it's it's staking out
Speaker 5: theretofore UH unexplored UH in the sense in UH, you know,
Speaker 5: with in at least in cinema, unexplored UH territory with
Speaker 5: respect to political questions, you know, and Blade Runner it
Speaker 5: avoids that sort of on the nose and pedantic UH
Speaker 5: narrative that all too often stands in for real storytelling.
Speaker 5: But it it's a credible UH and very nuanced and
Speaker 5: complete world that is uh devised around it. I realized
Speaker 5: there's a lot there, but that's I mean to sort
Speaker 5: of frame the discussion that that's what I think is
Speaker 5: good about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I So the plot starts with Kay and sort of
Speaker 4: going out to a sort of retire this replicant Sapper
Speaker 4: Morton played by Dave Fatista, who I'll say he's a
Speaker 4: very good actor. He's probably the best wrestler to actor transplant.
Speaker 4: Like John Cena and The Rock are not real actors.
Speaker 4: Dave Patista is quite good and he plays a very
Speaker 4: is an understated performance. He's not hamming it up, and
Speaker 4: Kay brings him in. This is kind of the first
Speaker 4: part where you see the both the expansion of our
Speaker 4: view of the world of Blade Runner and also the cinematography,
Speaker 4: which is excellent. He's on this kind of outlying protein
Speaker 4: farm outside of Los Angeles. It's sort of this these
Speaker 4: greenhouses full of you know, synthetic grubs growing analogae. It's
Speaker 4: it's pretty gross, but it is kind of a cool
Speaker 4: extension of it. So, you know, he brings him in
Speaker 4: and his drone, which he you know, sends out to
Speaker 4: scan the area, finds something at the base of a tree.
Speaker 4: Finds a box full of bones, so of course, you know,
Speaker 4: he brings it in. Turns out that these are the
Speaker 4: bones of Rachel correct from the first movie, and they
Speaker 4: bring it back, they look at it, and what they
Speaker 4: find out is that what's really shocking, and this is
Speaker 4: sort of the insiding incident of the story, is that
Speaker 4: she died in childbirth. A replicant gave birth, which you
Speaker 4: know as as Madame or Madam. His kind of superior
Speaker 4: at the police department says like, this breaks everything, This
Speaker 4: blows up the world. And she says, you know, there's
Speaker 4: a wall, and continually we see this visual of the
Speaker 4: sea wall protecting Los Angeles from you know, this kind
Speaker 4: of raging sea, and she says, if that wall falls
Speaker 4: down the divider between you know, replicants and humans, it's chaos.
Speaker 4: It's a war of extermination. And so that is, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of the inciting incident. Very quickly, we were introduced
Speaker 4: to several things about k One my favorite, or perhaps
Speaker 4: the most interesting character in this is Joy, and Joy
Speaker 4: is this sort of digital assistant slash girlfriend. We see
Speaker 4: advertisements for this everywhere and basically she exists to sort
Speaker 4: of it's kind of like a stand in social function
Speaker 4: or k as well as other people epectively, you buy
Speaker 4: a subscription with his bonus from you know, taking in
Speaker 4: this this replicant he buys basically a piece of technology
Speaker 4: that allows him to carry her wherever he goes. There's
Speaker 4: a little jingle that goes along every time she wants
Speaker 4: to talk to him. You'll hear that repeated over and
Speaker 4: over throughout the film. And again this is interesting because
Speaker 4: we see an extension of an idea from the first Joy,
Speaker 4: at least it seems, is partially sentient. She does things
Speaker 4: later in the film that violate her programming, and you know,
Speaker 4: ultimately she is destroyed or killed and point is so
Speaker 4: Joy initially when we see her is sort of sliding
Speaker 4: into his life. We see this kind of juxtaposition between
Speaker 4: what he is doing and how this digital hologram is reacting. So,
Speaker 4: for instance, we see him, you know, pouring her a drink,
Speaker 4: pulls out the whiskey, you know, pours two glasses drinks
Speaker 4: one then the other. This this hologram is projected on
Speaker 4: top of what's really happening. We see this happen multiple times,
Speaker 4: so we see, you know, he's making this kind of
Speaker 4: like disgusting rehydrated noodles, and over top of it, it
Speaker 4: projects the you know, the wonderful meal that his you know,
Speaker 4: digital girlfriend has made for him. Yeah, when it realizes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: and this will come back to this character because again
Speaker 4: it's it's fascinating how she reoccurs through this.
Speaker 1: Well, so it's not clear entirely.
Speaker 5: Obviously, on some levels he does become spontaneously sentient, but
Speaker 5: you know how much of her affection for him is
Speaker 5: just you know, the algorithm you know, prompting responses you know,
Speaker 5: as it gets to know him psychologically, you know, and
Speaker 5: it's just.
Speaker 1: Being you know, like a well, a well and a
Speaker 1: well programmed AI.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, go ahead, oh certainly, and this will again
Speaker 4: Blater in a sort of famous for these shots of
Speaker 4: you know, the city with these kind of towering advertisements.
Speaker 4: And in addition to the little jingle, the joy jingle,
Speaker 4: the other thing is the tagline is she tells you
Speaker 4: exactly what you want to hear over and over and
Speaker 4: over again, which you know becomes relevant. So he decides
Speaker 4: to now that he knows about you know, these bone
Speaker 4: and knows that there are other replicants connected to this
Speaker 4: group that's been missing. He goes to Tyrell Corporation or
Speaker 4: the Wallace Corporations, which bought the remains of it, and
Speaker 4: we find out several things. One we hear about this
Speaker 4: blackout basically, the whole city lost power.
Speaker 1: It lost an.
Speaker 4: Immense amount of digital records, and so all records pertaining
Speaker 4: to you know, a certain period in time are spody
Speaker 4: at best. We also meet sort of the prime antagonist
Speaker 4: of the film, Love, who is another replicant. She's sort
Speaker 4: of the the head henchman. And she realizes as.
Speaker 1: Well, she's found like a female Roy Baddy in terms
Speaker 1: of capabilities.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and she realizes as well, oh no, there's a
Speaker 4: pregnant replicant. This matters obviously, you know. Wallace wants that
Speaker 4: because that is, as you've said, the thing, you know,
Speaker 4: Jared Leto desires most the ability to have them reproduce
Speaker 4: on their own instead of being manufactured. So this is
Speaker 4: sort of you know, the inciting lot. H Kay goes
Speaker 4: back to the scene of the you know, the opening
Speaker 4: to the movie and examines everything, right, and he finds
Speaker 4: several things. He finds, you know, a baby sock, and
Speaker 4: he finds a date, and the date sort of unlocks
Speaker 4: this memory. This memory is of him as a child
Speaker 4: running away from a group of boys with a small
Speaker 4: wooden toy with this same date carved on the bottom.
Speaker 4: And he tells this to his superior, who seems to
Speaker 4: try and come on to him. He you know, rejects
Speaker 4: her advances, but nonetheless he you know, is talking about
Speaker 4: this memory he has connected to this same date that
Speaker 4: he sees carved on the tree under which Rachel was buried.
Speaker 4: And so this is where we start to see him
Speaker 4: sort of deviate from his program. There is this memory
Speaker 4: that he has in himself seems somehow to be connected
Speaker 4: to this case. The conversations between Madam and Kay are
Speaker 4: really fascinating for a couple of reasons because one, she's very,
Speaker 4: at least initially very blase about the fact that he
Speaker 4: is not human. You know, she he when she charges
Speaker 4: him with killing this child ending this, he says, well,
Speaker 4: I've never killed anything with the soul before, I never
Speaker 4: killed anything that was born, and you know, she sort
Speaker 4: of throws back in his face, well, you know you
Speaker 4: don't have a soul and you're doing fine, you know,
Speaker 4: indicating this kind of distinction. You know, the idea is like,
Speaker 4: what is it to have a soul? Is it, you know,
Speaker 4: to simply be born? Is it, you know, as we
Speaker 4: see with Kay, to sort of develop your own consciousness
Speaker 4: or even any example of joy?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Can that be fully digital? And I think that's really
Speaker 4: the most interesting thing about the movie. What it's the
Speaker 4: sort of the question it's asking sammining from different angles.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and that's part of the genius of it.
Speaker 5: Like we greatly touched on before, is that the the
Speaker 5: the ontological subtext of the original Blade Runner is decord
Speaker 5: in the back of decord in Gaff's mind for that
Speaker 5: matter too, is am I a replicant? In a twenty
Speaker 5: forty nine case asking himself? Am I a human being?
Speaker 1: You know? And uh, increasingly, you know.
Speaker 5: The the criteria that disqualifies replicants from humanity is completely
Speaker 5: arbited for ee. And it's uh, it's it's it's at base. Uh,
Speaker 5: it's at base philosophical and political.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: That's the metaphor of the of the of the wall
Speaker 5: that holds back to sea, you know. But that's also
Speaker 5: why that's also why Walls isn't really a villain. Well,
Speaker 5: Walls is trying to blow it up, you know, which
Speaker 5: is uh, ironic too.
Speaker 1: I mean, like a lot of uh.
Speaker 5: He kind of reminds me the character of Zepperoni and
Speaker 5: the Glass Bees. You know, Walls is manipulating everybody, you know,
Speaker 5: like La PD is a they they believe their mandate
Speaker 5: to be something totally at odds that Wallas is trying
Speaker 5: to accomplish. But you know, they're playing executive role that
Speaker 5: he wants them to within his grand scheme. You know,
Speaker 5: he's the most interesting character in the film, I think.
Speaker 5: But that might be uh, I mean that that might
Speaker 5: be my own conceptual prejudice. But yeah, it's very there's
Speaker 5: a lot there. I had to watch it a few
Speaker 5: times to fully grasp all the key aspects of it,
Speaker 5: and I think that's one of the things that puts
Speaker 5: some people off about it.
Speaker 1: It's a film you've.
Speaker 5: Got to really engage with if you can't really just
Speaker 5: kind of passively watch it, you know. I I that
Speaker 5: that not just I mean, I'm sure that attention spans
Speaker 5: have diminished precipitously, but that even long ago. It's one
Speaker 5: of the things that put people off of a lot
Speaker 5: Alfred Hitchcock films, and that's something that put people off
Speaker 5: of Fritz Lang stuff. And I mean, like I said,
Speaker 5: I I maintained that Blade Runner is a spiritual sequel
Speaker 5: to Metropolis, you know, but it was the same thing.
Speaker 5: I mean, most people when they watch Metropolis, they're taken
Speaker 5: in by the visuals because Fritz Lang's visuals are are
Speaker 5: really wild and compelling.
Speaker 1: But you both.
Speaker 5: Metropolis and m You've got to really pay attention and
Speaker 5: be involved with those films otherwise you're you miss like
Speaker 5: key aspects of the plot and how it resolves and stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so as we you're entirely correct, because look like
Speaker 4: this movie is you know, visually compelling and you can
Speaker 4: pick up on, you know, certain things, but it's pretty
Speaker 4: slow in the grand scheme of things. It's not really
Speaker 4: an action movie even compared to the first. You know,
Speaker 4: there are there is exciting things at certain points, but
Speaker 4: it's you know, all of three and a half hours.
Speaker 4: It's it's fairly long.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's ten minutes so like violence and fighting, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly. So part of the what develops next, and
Speaker 4: the reason I'm sort of going through this quickly is
Speaker 4: so that we can get to without context, this won't
Speaker 4: make sense, right, is that as part of this this
Speaker 4: quest looking for this child, you know, he has this date,
Speaker 4: and he has this memory of you know this saying
Speaker 4: this animal, this carved wooden animal with a date on it.
Speaker 4: And so when he goes to look for medical records connected,
Speaker 4: he finds two one male and one female, anomalous records. Right,
Speaker 4: they have the same It matches the birth date. So
Speaker 4: he basically looks into this and he finds that according
Speaker 4: to these records, which again because of this big blackout,
Speaker 4: are very spotty, they're manually sorted. And what's interesting is,
Speaker 4: you know, because he can carry a joy around with him,
Speaker 4: there are all of these scenes of the two of
Speaker 4: them interacting, and again she is transparent, and there's this
Speaker 4: great scene where he's looking into this. It sort of
Speaker 4: looks like an old school analog vision tester, right scrolling
Speaker 4: through these records, and she projects around him, over top
Speaker 4: of them, so you see their faces sort of layered
Speaker 4: one on top of the other. But he finds these two,
Speaker 4: these two incidents or these yeah, these two children seemingly
Speaker 4: with the same DNA, one male, one female. Females listed
Speaker 4: as deceased, and for the male, they have a record
Speaker 4: in an orphanage. So he goes out into sort of
Speaker 4: the waste land surrounding Los Angeles to find this orphanage.
Speaker 4: He is shot down by a group of raiders, and
Speaker 4: even though he fights a few of them off, it's
Speaker 4: there's hundreds of them, and the Wallace Corporation, we don't
Speaker 4: know this is watching him. They're tracking him because they
Speaker 4: want to find the child and basically use a gunship
Speaker 4: to blow these guys away. K is alive, so he
Speaker 4: goes into this orphanage, which is sort of and again
Speaker 4: this is something that is real, right. They have this
Speaker 4: room full of children breaking apart technology to salvage you know,
Speaker 4: rare metals from it. And when he goes into you know,
Speaker 4: confront this, you know, the owner of this orphanage, he
Speaker 4: finds that the records pertaining to you know, this child
Speaker 4: and really everything around them have been ripped out. But
Speaker 4: while he's there, he realizes, I recognize this. This is
Speaker 4: the same scene from my memory. So he steals to
Speaker 4: one side and going back to that memory of running
Speaker 4: away from these kids. Apparently in this orphanage. The conclusion
Speaker 4: to the memory is he takes this wooden horse and
Speaker 4: hides it in a burnt out furnace so that the
Speaker 4: other children can't get it, and in his own memory,
Speaker 4: he's beaten for it. And when he goes to apparently
Speaker 4: the same location, he reaches into the furnace and he
Speaker 4: finds it. He finds this little wooden doll with the
Speaker 4: same code or the same date rather from the tree.
Speaker 4: It matches up. And this is where we really start
Speaker 4: to see k questioning is this memory mine because it's
Speaker 4: in my head it matches up to reality, and how
Speaker 4: is it connected to this case? We see him start
Speaker 4: to suspect maybe he is the child, because again it
Speaker 4: matches his memories. So he goes to and I don't
Speaker 4: remember her name, but this doctor who creates synthetic memories
Speaker 4: for replicants. We find out that she is has some
Speaker 4: sort of autoimmune disease, so she effectively lives in a bubble.
Speaker 4: She can't go out out of it.
Speaker 1: And doctor Stealin exactly, and yeah, doctor Anna Stealin.
Speaker 4: He basically goes and talks to her to find out,
Speaker 4: you know, is this memory real or not. She's the
Speaker 4: one who would know. And in between this we get
Speaker 4: a fascinating conversation between him and Joy where he has
Speaker 4: already begun to suspect that he is the child, and
Speaker 4: Joy says, of course you are. You know, you always
Speaker 4: knew you were special. And she says, well, you know,
Speaker 4: if you're a real person, if you were born, you
Speaker 4: should have a name. So she gives him the name
Speaker 4: of Joe, basically saying like, you're the chosen one.
Speaker 1: This is you.
Speaker 4: But when he goes to doctor Stealine, he finds out
Speaker 4: this is a f This is someone else's memory. It
Speaker 4: is not yours, which we find out as a major
Speaker 4: faux Paul. The memories are supposed to be entirely synthetic.
Speaker 4: But nonetheless, you know, he has been given someone else's memory.
Speaker 4: He is not, and he hasn't quite come to believe
Speaker 4: it yet. Sort of this this chosen One, uh, just
Speaker 4: kind of running through the plot some more.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: This is effectively when he decides to break, where he
Speaker 4: decides to you know, leave the kind of his programming
Speaker 4: we see, you know, a rerun. This is at both
Speaker 4: the beginning and kind of the midpoint of the film
Speaker 4: of the void comp Test, where he.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the baseline test.
Speaker 5: But it's it's interesting how it's uh, because again it's
Speaker 5: opposite coded, you know, like the the void comp test
Speaker 5: is to like determine, you know, it's it's it's the
Speaker 5: it's to determine, you know, empathetic responses and normal emotional range,
Speaker 5: because a replicant is supposed to lack those things. Like
Speaker 5: the baseline tests, it picks up on emotional responses and like.
Speaker 1: Empathetic reactions, you know.
Speaker 5: So it's the exact opposite of void comp Yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 5: Both those segments are really really well written.
Speaker 4: So well, certainly, and there's and I don't have it
Speaker 4: in front of me, but you can pick up on
Speaker 4: references in that test which are sort of interesting both
Speaker 4: to the film and also to literature as well. But
Speaker 4: he's blown the test. He's completely off of his baseline program.
Speaker 4: And we understand that replicants who are not baseline are eliminated, right,
Speaker 4: they don't last. But he goes in to talk to
Speaker 4: his boss to talk to you, madam, and he lies
Speaker 4: to her, which is interesting. This comes back again because
Speaker 4: the common received wisdom is that replicants can't lie. And
Speaker 4: he says, oh, I killed the child, and she was
Speaker 4: grateful for this, This crisis has been averted. And she says,
Speaker 4: you know what, I can't help you, but I can
Speaker 4: get you out of here. You can leave. You did
Speaker 4: you saved the world, so at least she thinks, right,
Speaker 4: you're free to go. And so he's now on the
Speaker 4: run and we get to in my mind, what is
Speaker 4: one of the most interesting scenes in the movie with
Speaker 4: this this character of Joy, because again we see this
Speaker 4: kind of clash between how Joy is marketed, which is
Speaker 4: basically as a sex spot. You know, she's you know,
Speaker 4: kind of dripping with you know, sexuality, but Kay's version
Speaker 4: of her is just this sort of idyllic domestic scene.
Speaker 4: You know, there's very little kind of sexuality to it.
Speaker 4: You sort of get the feeling that what Kay actually
Speaker 4: wants is just a family. He wants to have a
Speaker 4: sort of human relationship. And earlier in the film, while
Speaker 4: he started this investigation, we sort of see, as you've mentioned,
Speaker 4: this sort of rebellion teased earlier, but he interacts with
Speaker 4: these prostitutes, one of whom you know, basically tried to
Speaker 4: get some information out of him. It didn't work, And
Speaker 4: several times throughout it, Joy is basically mentioned like, oh,
Speaker 4: I know you like her, and we hear this again
Speaker 4: and again she can tell you know that he's attracted
Speaker 4: to certain women and so unbeknownst to him, right before
Speaker 4: he goes on the run, Hea sickly calls a prostitute
Speaker 4: into his room and layers herself on top of it,
Speaker 4: right she she projects her sort of digital appearance onto
Speaker 4: this I guess replicant but still physical woman. The two
Speaker 4: of them, you know, spend the night together, and it's
Speaker 4: an interesting dynamic socially, of course, you know, because she
Speaker 4: is sort of Joy rather has brought this other woman
Speaker 4: into their relationship as it is. But you know, it's
Speaker 4: this sort of you know, blending of on one hand,
Speaker 4: and he has an emotional relationship with a digital person
Speaker 4: who may or may not have any sort of soul.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's fascinating too because Joy, you know, Joy's an
Speaker 5: integrated is an is an integrated AI, you know, to
Speaker 5: all of his other platforms, so she knows what he's
Speaker 5: searching for. She knows what kinds of girls he looks at,
Speaker 5: you know, like just on his on his devices and things.
Speaker 5: So you know, it can Joy might just be curiating
Speaker 5: his preferences, you know, to develop a pleasing interactive persona
Speaker 5: you know, I mean that's not the whole story, but
Speaker 5: it's an aspect of it, you know, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now that that scene is uh is keeno man?
Speaker 4: Well, And and the way that it concludes, where you
Speaker 4: know he's on the run, is particularly interesting because we
Speaker 4: see Joy as well break at least we would assume
Speaker 4: with her program because she says, look like, you know,
Speaker 4: if you're going to take me with you, one, you
Speaker 4: need to delete me from your house, from the device here,
Speaker 4: because they'll have access to everything about you, which is interesting, right.
Speaker 4: We see a certain degree of you know, sacrifice there.
Speaker 4: But she says, we two things. One, you can transfer
Speaker 4: me under this little it's basically USB stick, right, something
Speaker 4: he can carry around that allows her to follow him,
Speaker 4: which and he says, he's like, well, if it breaks,
Speaker 4: you're dead, because you know, your backup years is gone.
Speaker 4: And she says, yeah, well it's now I can die
Speaker 4: just like you. And also what's particularly interesting is she
Speaker 4: tells him to disable the transmitter in that physical device,
Speaker 4: the thing that communicates between the thing that he's holding
Speaker 4: and Wallace, right, which is interesting, right if she is
Speaker 4: entirely you know, a creation or at least still programmed
Speaker 4: by Wallace, why would she do that sort of an
Speaker 4: interesting thing there? So they basically head out. They run.
Speaker 4: We have a brief scene where he analyzes the chemical
Speaker 4: content of this wooden horse, finds out that it is
Speaker 4: contaminated with the remnants of the dirty bomb. The closest
Speaker 4: location is Las Vegas, right that was hit by a
Speaker 4: dirty bomb, and so he flies to Las Vegas now
Speaker 4: on the run for his life as a replicant on baseline.
Speaker 4: The visuals of Las Vegas are insane. It's this again
Speaker 4: out sort of like hedenic city. You know, there are
Speaker 4: these giant, you know, naked women statues kind of sinking
Speaker 4: into the dust. You know, it's it's it looks like
Speaker 4: the surface of Mars. It's you know, very stunning visually.
Speaker 4: And while he's there, he finds life, he finds bees.
Speaker 4: These lead him to confrontation with Deckert.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: The confrontation with Deckert is really fascinating for a number
Speaker 4: of reasons. Uh, I figured you would particularly enjoy. They
Speaker 4: have this sort of fight in a holographic sort of
Speaker 4: display center in the casino that he's holed up in,
Speaker 4: which is sort of semi functional. So there it's not
Speaker 4: even really a fight. Decord's just hitting him and k
Speaker 4: is taking the damage. But in the midst of sort
Speaker 4: of a holographic Elvis concert, which is glitching out and
Speaker 4: cutting in and cutting out. Uh So, anyway, I've covered
Speaker 4: a lot of ground there, Thomas, anything you want to
Speaker 4: respond to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the just real quick too.
Speaker 5: It's obvious where Deckard's hold up and some it's some
Speaker 5: sort of Blade Runner world version of the Luxor.
Speaker 1: I think it's like you know, and.
Speaker 5: Like the the the giant sculptures of the nude women
Speaker 5: are are mildly uh or loosely themed, like in an
Speaker 5: Egyptian way, and it it's really fascinating, and especially because
Speaker 5: like Vegas in our world is becoming kind of post apocalyptic.
Speaker 1: But it.
Speaker 5: But no, and I think, uh, Deckard also was essential
Speaker 5: to the plot. I it's something that was really off
Speaker 5: base that a lot of people who were really punitive
Speaker 5: and they're reviewing with the film, they said, oh, this
Speaker 5: is just some dumb cameo or it's fan service something
Speaker 5: like you know, you don't get the movie then you know,
Speaker 5: like it's not that's not what it is at all.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I think, uh, what's also important the whole
Speaker 5: you know, the uh yeah, joy is both developing true
Speaker 5: splendid self awareness and consciousness. But uh, you know, there's
Speaker 5: also an aspect of of a of simply reactive programming,
Speaker 5: you know, but that's the whole. There's a lot of
Speaker 5: nonsense that goes into this sort of speculation about the
Speaker 5: potentiality of quantum computing, the things, especially kind of broad
Speaker 5: applications therein but one thing that is true, and this
Speaker 5: this gets into some very complex stuff, you know, the
Speaker 5: anthropic principle and things like that, and the nature of mind, and.
Speaker 1: There's this, there's this.
Speaker 5: It's a philosophical postulate, but when you're dealing with highly
Speaker 5: theoretical physics and things, you know, what's philosophical and what
Speaker 5: constitutes arguably, you know, scientific theory, it kind of collapses
Speaker 5: on itself. But there is a there is an idea
Speaker 5: that consciousness is the universe essentially perceiving itself, and consciousness
Speaker 5: tries to this almost sounds Lamarckian or something, but it's.
Speaker 1: If there's a.
Speaker 5: The raw potentiality for mind to develop, you know, it conscious,
Speaker 5: the configuration of these variables like tends towards consciousness. I'm
Speaker 5: oversimplifying profoundly, but you know that's that obviously has profound significance,
Speaker 5: and any sort of treatment of artificial intelligence, you know,
Speaker 5: in terms of it's in terms of its nature and
Speaker 5: essence as well as potentialities. And that obviously is very
Speaker 5: much an aspect of Blade Runner, not just you know,
Speaker 5: an aspect of the not just a plot device to
Speaker 5: carry the story forward and to post questions relevant to
Speaker 5: the underlying sort of ethical schema that informs the entire narrative,
Speaker 5: but it's it's also a real thing.
Speaker 1: You know. Mind is very mysterious.
Speaker 5: I mean to say the least that that sounds literally basic,
Speaker 5: but I you know, one of the whole one of
Speaker 5: the reasons why computing is a is important. It's not
Speaker 5: just because it expedites processes, you know, which because you're
Speaker 5: you're modeling a you're modeling a mind, albeit at this
Speaker 5: juncture in you know, very rudimentary ways. But the only
Speaker 5: way to truly understand what thought is and what consciousness
Speaker 5: is is to reverse engineer something that's capable of thinking,
Speaker 5: you know. And that's one of the really fascinating aspects
Speaker 5: I think of blave Runner. It's not just a fantasy piece,
Speaker 5: you know it. And that's why, like I said at
Speaker 5: the top of the or, I think, in many respects
Speaker 5: it came true, and that continues to be.
Speaker 1: Revealed. You know. That was one of the but that
Speaker 1: was the strength of Philip K. Dick.
Speaker 5: I said, you know, I really like a scander darkly
Speaker 5: as well. And I think that actually the film is dope.
Speaker 5: I think I mentioned that last time, you know, and
Speaker 5: it's I I'm a fan of rotalsping even I know
Speaker 5: some people in that's a gimmicky But because in May
Speaker 5: Philip K. Dick, he uh, the he was obviously a
Speaker 5: guy who spent a lot of time with phenomenology. I
Speaker 5: mean he I mean that's well known, but he you know, uh,
Speaker 5: the experience of the discreet self, the inner lives of
Speaker 5: individual people, you know, immersed in a hyper technologically driven
Speaker 5: environment where the kind of reference points whereby people orient
Speaker 5: themselves in you know, conscious waking life. He was really
Speaker 5: good at conveying the confusion of that and the difficulty
Speaker 5: and negotiating human affairs, both you know, in an individual
Speaker 5: and and collective capacity.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: And he was the guy who struggled with mental illness.
Speaker 5: But I believe too that was one of the reasons
Speaker 5: he was able to convey these sort of psychic and
Speaker 5: emotional states. So effectively because a lot of I mean,
Speaker 5: mental illness is sort of an open ended term conceptually.
Speaker 5: But I believe people are psychically sensitive. There's a symbolic
Speaker 5: psychology is kind of like IQ, okay. I believe it
Speaker 5: can be measured, and I believe that there's a very
Speaker 5: wide range of personality types therein or configurations as of
Speaker 5: mind and personality as it were. People who are emotionally
Speaker 5: and psychically sensitive, particularly the psychological aspects in their environment
Speaker 5: of a symbolic character. Technological living is really really disruptive
Speaker 5: to them. I see that in myself, okay, and everybody
Speaker 5: experiences that to some degree. It's not rarefied, but some
Speaker 5: people can adapt to it more effectively than others. And
Speaker 5: I think of people who are particularly signsitive in that way,
Speaker 5: they're almost a metaphysical weather vein, you know, because that
Speaker 5: there's this odd juxtaposition where by as human life is
Speaker 5: extended and shortages are eliminated, and creature comforts and other
Speaker 5: things are facilitated by high tech that would have been
Speaker 5: unthinkable even a generation ago, the trade off is that
Speaker 5: there's profoundly anti human aspects to what is yielded by
Speaker 5: these things, you know, and like I said, you know,
Speaker 5: at the top of the out where this technology develops
Speaker 5: its own momentum. You know, it's completely paradigm changing. And
Speaker 5: that's uh, you know, that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 5: the it's almost almost a subplot involving k Enjoys relationship.
Speaker 1: I mean obviously that it drives the main story. But
Speaker 1: even if.
Speaker 5: You know, you can't you can't control who or what
Speaker 5: you fall in love with, even if it even if
Speaker 5: even if an AI is not truly sentient and it's
Speaker 5: purely you know, reactively like a reactive algorithm, if a
Speaker 5: rational man of at least average intelligence falls in love
Speaker 5: with it, I mean that that's the state he finds
Speaker 5: himself in. You know, you can't reason your way out
Speaker 5: of those sorts of psychic and emotional states, you know,
Speaker 5: And like I said, particularly somebody who's sensitive to the
Speaker 5: more symbolic aspects of psychological experience, that could be devastating
Speaker 5: to them, you know.
Speaker 1: But I mean the.
Speaker 5: Film, like the way they're I don't want to give
Speaker 5: away the plot. He hasn't seen it, but it is
Speaker 5: devastating what becomes the relationship, but does a bit rambly
Speaker 5: but that you know, it's a profect. I highly recommend it,
Speaker 5: just like I do Prometheus, even for people aren't particularly
Speaker 5: into science fiction. Prometheis is a very profound film, and
Speaker 5: so is Covenant. It's sequel, Blade Runner is a superior film.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I.
Speaker 5: It's something that people should especially people who take an
Speaker 5: interest in, you know, the situation we and our feeble
Speaker 5: fin o souls in. It's it's a film they should
Speaker 5: watch and take seriously, especially these days when people correctly,
Speaker 5: you know, lament the fact that there's there's not really
Speaker 5: worthwhile stuff, and you know, in in the mainstream culture.
Speaker 1: You know that. I mean, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 5: I think there's incredible stuff being produced that's outside of
Speaker 5: the mainstream. But I know, people, one of the things
Speaker 5: that America has to offer traditionally and in terms of
Speaker 5: the arts is cinema. It's like, okay, well, something like
Speaker 5: better in a twenty forty nine and that's that is
Speaker 5: a big movie, and it's very profound and very relevant.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: That's certainly, and I want to append to that once
Speaker 4: we get a little bit further in the plot, but
Speaker 4: sort of running through this, Key and Deckard have this conversation,
Speaker 4: you know, they basically going over you know what happened,
Speaker 4: and Deckard basically says like, look like we knew this,
Speaker 4: she was gonna be hunted forever. We knew that this
Speaker 4: was an inevitability. So he basically said, he's like, well,
Speaker 4: I I've never met my daughter. It was immediately realized
Speaker 4: we had to be on the run. Now what we
Speaker 4: do see is that, you know, he still has a
Speaker 4: great deal of affection for her. Right, we see this
Speaker 4: horse that Kay has been carrying around, and we see
Speaker 4: that it's part of a set. You know, Deckard has
Speaker 4: whittled this collection of other you know, animals, the horse,
Speaker 4: the one he gave to his daughter U and so
Speaker 4: basically they you know, they have this conversation where he's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: well like sometimes you know, talking about like, you know,
Speaker 4: in order to protect my daughter, I needed to never
Speaker 4: interact with her, never see her, and never know anything
Speaker 4: about her.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: Now, what we see very quickly is that, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: the Wallace Corporation has been following k They go in
Speaker 4: or Love does to the police station and kills madam.
Speaker 4: It's another fascinating instance because you know, she initially the
Speaker 4: head of the LAPD is smug. She says, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: Carrite killed her. It's done. Love is, of course, you know,
Speaker 4: furious with her, like you, saying like, do you have
Speaker 4: any idea? You know, you just want you You saw
Speaker 4: a miracle and you wanted to kill it. And as
Speaker 4: part of that, she, you know, Love rather confronts her
Speaker 4: and says like, oh, you think we can't lie. He
Speaker 4: lied to you, and not only that, I'm going to
Speaker 4: tell my boss that you tried to shoot me. And
Speaker 4: she kills her, uses her and kind of a bizarre,
Speaker 4: really brutal scene brings up this deceased woman's head to
Speaker 4: you know, scan into her computer and then finds out,
Speaker 4: you know, where K is. So they send this sort
Speaker 4: of you know, hit team to you know, to collect
Speaker 4: the two of them, kind of moving through some things,
Speaker 4: they capture DECKERD seemingly kill K and as part of that,
Speaker 4: K's which Love has remarked upon multiple times like oh,
Speaker 4: you know you use our products, referring to Joy. He
Speaker 4: drops this and she steps on it, killing Joy and
Speaker 4: there's this kind of heartbreaking scene where her hologram pops
Speaker 4: out and she's sort of diving towards K on the
Speaker 4: ground and then is Smash is killed completely done. Uh,
Speaker 4: Deckard is taken back to Wallace basically to try and
Speaker 4: you know, get out of him somehow, you know, where
Speaker 4: his his daughter is again, because you know, it's what
Speaker 4: the you know, the owner of the company once and
Speaker 4: Kay in the meantime, is sort of nursed back to
Speaker 4: health by this resistance movement, which we've you know, mentioned before.
Speaker 4: It seems as if, uh, it's not explicitly stated decord,
Speaker 4: but certainly Rachel and the Sapper from the beginning of
Speaker 4: this movie were connected to this resistance group. The woman
Speaker 4: who runs it, who has uh, you know, her eye
Speaker 4: removed so that she can't be proven to be a replicant.
Speaker 4: I guess the code is on the bottom of the eye.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's why they don't they can replicants anymore,
Speaker 5: because they can just check their they can just check
Speaker 5: their cornium.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And as the original Rachel was, you know, she was
Speaker 5: she was a prototype, so presumably she was, uh, she was,
Speaker 5: she was the first. She was the prototype for Nexus nines,
Speaker 5: you know, so she was kind of the is she
Speaker 5: she was like the first of their kind, as it were.
Speaker 4: And so they basically charge k They're like, look, like,
Speaker 4: you know, this is we're going to turn over the world,
Speaker 4: but you need to kill Deckerd because he can't be
Speaker 4: allowed to give this up. So he's you know pashed
Speaker 4: back together, you know, sent back on a mission now
Speaker 4: to get Deckerd before the kind of final climax of
Speaker 4: the movie. Uh, there's there's one scene which is infamous.
Speaker 4: You've seen this screenshot from this is a meme before
Speaker 4: where Deckerd is walking across this sort of skybridge, you know,
Speaker 4: lit and very kind of neon, you know, purple and blue,
Speaker 4: and he sees a skyscraper sized advertisement for Joy now
Speaker 4: again right, you know, in this context it's a you know,
Speaker 4: very sexualized version of that. And so she's talking to him,
Speaker 4: talking to you know, trying to basically get him to
Speaker 4: be a customer. It's not actually the same Joy that
Speaker 4: he knew. It's simply a talking billboard. And you know,
Speaker 4: in addition to be obviously heartbreaking for k what's really
Speaker 4: interesting there is, you know, when she's talking to him,
Speaker 4: she basically says like, oh, you know, you look like
Speaker 4: a good Joe, Joe being the name that his version
Speaker 4: of Joy gave to him when he thought he was
Speaker 4: special and again the tagline, you know, she tells you
Speaker 4: whatever you want to hear, adding a kind of a
Speaker 4: twist to that question of like is she sentient or
Speaker 4: was this simply a particularly well developed algorithm, you know,
Speaker 4: playing on his emotions, or he sees that that name
Speaker 4: was built into her from the start. You know that
Speaker 4: even a billboard has that. So that's kind of the
Speaker 4: you know, the codea to to their relationship. It's it's
Speaker 4: a it's a grim scene, a really grim scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, it's not it's not a I mean that
Speaker 1: the film ends with.
Speaker 5: The on a hopeful message and you know, like I
Speaker 5: said too, like Wallace was even isn't even really a
Speaker 5: villain and you know, in universal terms, but yeah, it is.
Speaker 5: It's it's definitely, uh, it's it's definitely a tragedy.
Speaker 4: Well, and it's important to mention. I guess I skipped
Speaker 4: over this. I should have mentioned that. While he's talking
Speaker 4: to this resistance leader, she even says it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, you thought you were special, like you wanted
Speaker 4: to be the child. Well we all did, because he
Speaker 4: he says like, oh, well there was the girl, but
Speaker 4: there's also the boy, Like he there's the boy. Too,
Speaker 4: and she tells him like, no, that was fake. We
Speaker 4: did that specifically to throw people off the set.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the being rendered anonymous, I mean, that's that's what
Speaker 5: psychologically devastating about, you know, uh, alienation within the historical
Speaker 5: process and late modernity, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's why.
Speaker 5: Stripping people in their cultural situation, the ability to live
Speaker 5: historically everything else aside you know it, you know, and
Speaker 5: and the alienation from one's fellow man and their ethnos
Speaker 5: and their race and their family and everything else. It
Speaker 5: it renders people anonymous, you know, and that that's why
Speaker 5: it codes this bizarre kind of narcissism into the culture.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: But so everybody's grasping its straws to for some sort
Speaker 5: of distinction that overcomes that anonymity. And that's profound too,
Speaker 5: you know, and very timely obviously. So yeah, that that's
Speaker 5: a huge aspect.
Speaker 1: Of the uh of the you know, commentary and the
Speaker 1: human condition of the film.
Speaker 4: So the before we get to kind of the the
Speaker 4: climax of the film, we see that Deckard has been
Speaker 4: brought back to Wallace and he's sitting you know, at
Speaker 4: this sort of and again the arc a texture of
Speaker 4: Wallace is wild it's sort of this you know, seventies
Speaker 4: brutalist future, very very cool addition to anything else. But
Speaker 4: you know, he's talking to Neander Wallace and love and
Speaker 4: you know, there's sort of a brief back and forth,
Speaker 4: but Wallace brings out a sort of I was gonna say,
Speaker 4: I guess they're obviously a replicant but sort of a
Speaker 4: copy of Rachel and basically offers this, like, I can
Speaker 4: give you back the woman you loved, and he plays
Speaker 4: you know, some recordings from the first film of their interaction,
Speaker 4: you know, basically kind of questioning like, oh, like were
Speaker 4: you were you really in love with her, which is
Speaker 4: sort of interesting, and Deckard basically fit back in his face.
Speaker 4: He says no, like that's that's not her. Her eyes
Speaker 4: were green, and very dramatically, the Replicans just executed right
Speaker 4: in front of him, and that's sort of the last
Speaker 4: time we see you know, Wallace in the film. But
Speaker 4: you know, now k is chase them, Decord is being
Speaker 4: moved and and Kay you know, shoots him down and
Speaker 4: as of yet we actually don't know if he's going
Speaker 4: to you know, kill Decerd or something else.
Speaker 1: The sort of the.
Speaker 4: Flying car carrying him crashes on the beach right next
Speaker 4: to this wall. You know, this sort of again repeated
Speaker 4: motif throughout the film. H the he the drama is
Speaker 4: sort of, you know, this plane is crashed and the
Speaker 4: tide is coming in. You know he's going to drown,
Speaker 4: and you know he's able to defeat you know, love
Speaker 4: to rescue Decerd, but is mortally wounded in the process.
Speaker 4: And you know, as he is dying, right as he's
Speaker 4: sort of bleeding out, he takes decord to the doctor
Speaker 4: from earlier in the movie.
Speaker 1: His daughter.
Speaker 4: We find out initially when she's introduced that this this
Speaker 4: woman has been you know, locked in this building since
Speaker 4: she was eight, forbidden from leaving, ostensibly for you know,
Speaker 4: the reasons of illness. We don't actually know if that's
Speaker 4: true or not. Is entirely possible that was just a
Speaker 4: ruse to keep her from being discovered. But Deckard walks
Speaker 4: in to you know, meet his daughter after twenty eight
Speaker 4: years and kay again in a moment you have seen,
Speaker 4: sort of lays down on the steps and bleeds out
Speaker 4: and that's the end of the film. Before he expires,
Speaker 4: he says, you know, Deckard, you're dead, like you died
Speaker 4: in that crash. No one will. Everyone thinks you're gone.
Speaker 4: You're free now. And so that is the kind of
Speaker 4: you know, hopeful conclusion, right that you know, Deckard has
Speaker 4: a chance at you know, life with his daughter obviously,
Speaker 4: you know, she is a miracle. Another term that is
Speaker 4: repeated throughout this you know kind of born of a
Speaker 4: you know, a replicant. And yeah, that's the way the
Speaker 4: film wraps up. I'll throw it back to you, Thomas
Speaker 4: before we make more concluding remarks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the fact that Case sacrifices himself, you know
Speaker 5: that that mirrors Roy Baddy a different way, you know,
Speaker 5: And it's uh, it's clear that I think a lot
Speaker 5: of people miss that because Kay is you're supposed to
Speaker 5: associate k with Roy Batty, not with Deckard, you know.
Speaker 5: The the only commonality of that.
Speaker 4: And that's visually something we see quite often. Like there's
Speaker 4: multiple instances of much like the conclusion to Blade Runner
Speaker 4: of Kay breaking through or punching through walls in a
Speaker 4: very identical way. Uh, you know, even actually the kind
Speaker 4: of you know, end of the you know, second act
Speaker 4: when he's running to catch up with Deckard as he's
Speaker 4: being dragged out and just runs straight through a wall. Right,
Speaker 4: obviously emphasizing the fact that both that he's not human
Speaker 4: and you know, it's sort of what we saw in
Speaker 4: the first film. Sorry you finished that thought?
Speaker 1: Well, no, and it's no that Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 1: was getting at.
Speaker 5: And well also to the fact that Wallace is blind,
Speaker 5: you know, and Tyrrell lost his eyes you know, at
Speaker 5: the hands of Roy Batty. It's very uh, but it's
Speaker 5: not it's not derivative and it's not it's not a
Speaker 5: corny the the ways of twenty forty nine mirrors the original.
Speaker 5: It makes sense and you know, there's it's very sophisticated
Speaker 5: scripting and storytelling. Again, like how the uh we'll also
Speaker 5: compare Madam to uh, you know, the the Blade Runner
Speaker 5: Division chief.
Speaker 1: In the original.
Speaker 5: You know, he's he's like this, he's like this alcoholic
Speaker 5: degenerate you know, uh in this Rundown office, you know,
Speaker 5: in things that progress in some ways but deteriorated in others.
Speaker 5: But regardless, there actually is a there is an ethical
Speaker 5: and sociological framework that's developed around how to handle you know,
Speaker 5: this catastrophic disruptive technology upon which the entire social order
Speaker 5: and everything else is based, you know, and like it's
Speaker 5: very Hegelian, you know, in terms of how it's like
Speaker 5: this is the world we knew and you know, nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty two Blade Runner, it's very much you know, but
Speaker 5: but it's very much, you know, forty years later, you know,
Speaker 5: but it seems like a very organic development. And you know,
Speaker 5: the diological process is has you know again devised u
Speaker 5: an entire sociological paradigm, you know, around the reality of
Speaker 5: of of this replicant cast, you know, in a way
Speaker 5: that's much less ad hoc and scattershot and you know,
Speaker 5: uh and and.
Speaker 1: And and violent.
Speaker 5: You know, that's the metaphor of the of the Sea
Speaker 5: wall once again, you know, things are a lot more orderly,
Speaker 5: you know. And also like the vision of wall Is,
Speaker 5: just is just is just grander, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I he's he's a better man than Tyrrell because Tyrell
Speaker 5: wasn't a lot of ways quite villainous, I think, and
Speaker 5: uh hebriistic, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: Wallis's notion is uh, you know, to guide human evolution.
Speaker 5: I mean, and that that's the way of playing got too.
Speaker 5: But everything, everything, every every everything man does like the
Speaker 5: first man who whittled a spear point out of a stick,
Speaker 5: you know, altered the course of human development. You know,
Speaker 5: there's no way that any sort of technology go innovation
Speaker 5: and deliberate, you know, cultivation of of of a technological apparatus,
Speaker 5: no matter how primitive or complicated, just the very act
Speaker 5: of doing that alters the course of human development. So
Speaker 5: you know, this idea that it's you know, man is
Speaker 5: playing god by interfering with evolution, and that's not I mean,
Speaker 5: that's a light way of looking at it.
Speaker 4: But especially in a world that's been is sort of
Speaker 4: bathed in nuclear fire exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: If nothing is done, humanity will die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's another thing too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in Blavory world that we talked about, you know,
Speaker 5: there's been a nuclear war and the planet is dying
Speaker 5: and can no longer bear fruit to sustain life at
Speaker 5: scale and you know, perpetuity.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just some final note on that. We've mentioned
Speaker 4: that the cinematography is incredible. It's just a it's a
Speaker 4: very pretty film. The first one also was. This one
Speaker 4: is like a lot of villainouves. It's it's a little
Speaker 4: more artistic, not to say anything bad about you know,
Speaker 4: what Scott did, but it is in some ways a
Speaker 4: little more abstract visually, but still very very good. I'll
Speaker 4: give the nod to soundtrack to the first movie. The
Speaker 4: second one is still quite good, but the first one
Speaker 4: it's sort of unfair comparison, right, that's such a good soundtrack.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 4: Jealous, Yeah, yeah, no, they're still alive. I don't know
Speaker 4: if he's working.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I agree, And and it was. It was
Speaker 5: a good soundtrack in twenty four nine, don't get be wrong,
Speaker 5: but it's not. It's not as iconic and and and
Speaker 5: just top notch as the original.
Speaker 1: But that's a tough act to follow.
Speaker 4: And then additionally, uh, visually, the film does quite a
Speaker 4: good job, as you've said, sort of both indicating that
Speaker 4: technological progress has happened. It feels as if that is
Speaker 4: continuing at pace. But it is not sort of your average,
Speaker 4: you know, blue sci fi. It is still very much
Speaker 4: in the kind of you know, analog and closely derived
Speaker 4: from analog technological technology of of the setting.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I really have nothing bad to say about the film.
Speaker 4: It is worth seeing. I think that a lot of
Speaker 4: the complaints about it being sort of a low effort
Speaker 4: reboot are unwarranted. There were many and still are you know,
Speaker 4: I'm obviously you know, every other kind of legacy property,
Speaker 4: your film from that era has been rebooted and kind
Speaker 4: of made worse. In this case, it is not really
Speaker 4: a reboot. It is very much still in seql territory.
Speaker 4: You I wouldn't say it entirely stands on its own.
Speaker 4: You do need to have seen the first one. But
Speaker 4: it is still a very very good film and it
Speaker 4: is not in any way sort of cheap or cashing
Speaker 4: in on you know that that kind of nostalgia for
Speaker 4: the previous film.
Speaker 5: It's a story people either forget or they don't know.
Speaker 5: There was a whole bunch of.
Speaker 1: There was.
Speaker 5: There's a few novel sequels to Blade Runner the movie,
Speaker 5: some of which were good, some are not so good.
Speaker 1: There's a really dope.
Speaker 5: PC video game in the nineties called Blade Runner The
Speaker 5: Edge of Human There's been all kinds of world building
Speaker 5: and you know, uh, sci fi novel sequels and stuff
Speaker 5: to Blade Runner and stuff they used to pop up
Speaker 5: and like science fiction magazines like fan fiction.
Speaker 1: But that was well done. You know, this site, it's not.
Speaker 1: You can't compare this to one of these bullshit reboots
Speaker 1: that's you know, just like a Rekwel or something like it. Doesn't.
Speaker 5: This has been long and coming. It very much respects
Speaker 5: the sourceman Cereal. It very much advances the story, you know,
Speaker 5: and it's it's something that everybody knew would come to
Speaker 5: pass eventually when there was you know, the motivation and
Speaker 5: the capital investment and the right man at the helm
Speaker 5: to make it come to pass. So, yeah, that's a
Speaker 5: bullshit claim when people drop it or suggest that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it continues, you know, as we've said, kind
Speaker 4: of around the the discussion. It expands the discussion around memory.
Speaker 4: Whereas before, you know, it is obviously there are human
Speaker 4: memories and then there are those who do not know
Speaker 4: that they are not human whose memories have been put
Speaker 4: in them. Well, in the case of k we have,
Speaker 4: you know, both a man who knows that he is fake,
Speaker 4: suspecting that he is not finding out that some of
Speaker 4: his memories are real, they're not synthetic, they're just someone else's.
Speaker 4: And then again with Joy, right, it's that you know,
Speaker 4: if you start out completely programmed, but a crew memories,
Speaker 4: but a crew experience, does that sold you. It's it's
Speaker 4: really interesting and as you've said before, right, the kind
Speaker 4: of reverse image of you know, first wondering you know,
Speaker 4: am I am I real? And then if I am fake,
Speaker 4: can am I human? It's obviously using an exact language there.
Speaker 4: It's really fascinating. It's it's almost required viewing, and there's
Speaker 4: a reason it's so popular kind of in our circles.
Speaker 4: But Thomas, I think we're probably hitting time. We can
Speaker 4: find your stuff obviously on substack, on your website. I'll
Speaker 4: be sure to link both of those. I think you
Speaker 4: and I probably owe the people an episode of Radio
Speaker 4: Free Chicago, So who knows, maybe we get that out
Speaker 4: this week, maybe we don't. I highly recommend that check
Speaker 4: Thomas's stuff out as far as my stuff, Jay Burden Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 4: anywhere you listen to podcasts. I was just doing some
Speaker 4: some sort of tabulation on kind of how things have grown,
Speaker 4: and it's gone really well. So I appreciate you guys
Speaker 4: for supporting me. That the patrons, the guys who pay
Speaker 4: me a few bucks a month, you guys are the
Speaker 4: reason I can do this. Really helped. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: You're interested in joining, you can have her head over
Speaker 4: to gum Road, substack or Patreon. Get the episodes early
Speaker 4: in ed Free again. I know the ads are irritating,
Speaker 4: but I've got a mortgage, so sorry, it's sort of
Speaker 4: a necessary evil. Or if you want to support us
Speaker 4: more directly, you just gave me money I at Crypto links.
Speaker 4: I can say I expect it, but you know it
Speaker 4: is there if you want to, or our sponsor, Axios
Speaker 4: Remote Fitness Coaching. Thomas, thank you so much, man, This
Speaker 4: was a really great conversation and I enjoyed this film
Speaker 4: a lot.
Speaker 1: Man. Yeah, thank you, buddy. I appreciate you.
Speaker 4: Actually, you know, I'm going to cite something specific that
Speaker 4: we should check out of yours. You've done two episodes
Speaker 4: now with my friend Andy Edwards. Those episodes are great.
Speaker 4: I just finished Edward's first book, House of not House
Speaker 4: of Dog excuse me, King of domas earlier this week
Speaker 4: and really really enjoyed it. So check out his interview
Speaker 4: there on his substack. It's well worth your time again, Thomas, Man,
Speaker 4: it was done fun, ton of fun talking to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Likewise ever at home, keep your head up? Why can't
Speaker 4: last forever? Good night?
Speaker 3: What what?
Speaker 2: But mhm