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

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

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

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

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

  • Aculem [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    7 months ago

    I think this is actually the last movie I saw in theaters that truly emotionally affected me on a spiritual level. I think there’s something about the ambiguity of how real the replicants are in both movies that is used for great emotional effect, but the way K ultimately rejected the reality that was handed to him and sacrificed himself in pursuit of a deeper humanity within himself is something that just fuckin’ resonates with me man. I still tear up thinking about it.

    Was an odd experience seeing that the movie was actually quite polarizing. I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about people’s criticisms, and while I understand their reasoning, I ultimately don’t think there’s a single thing this film could have done differently that would have made its emotional impact any stronger. The biggest criticism seems to be the slow pacing, which I understand, but it irks me the most. The pacing is a staple of thoughtful science fiction, (think the original Blade Runner, 2001, Ghost in the Shell) and absolutely serves the purpose of letting the themes, setting, and underlying philosophical questions posed by the movie to stew in the mind and sink in. In that regard, the pacing in this movie is about fucking perfect. The opening scene establishes everything you need to know about the plot with zero filler. In fact, the only times the movie seems to slow down is when K is going through a psychological transformation of some sort. Trying to understand his perspective, why he changes, why meaning emerges out of the events of the movie, is the meat and bones of the whole experience. If you can’t get on board though, yeah, I can imagine it being a bit of a slog.

    Other criticisms like Leto’s performance or the lack of fleshing out Freysa or the resistance also seem kinda silly. They each have like 5 minutes of screen time and ultimately serve their purpose in the story just fine. You don’t really need to know much about them other than their motivations and their importance to the story, which I think they both do just fine. This movie is just simply not about them, and really only serve to remind the viewer that there’s bigger forces at work all vying to control things in their own way.

    Another criticism that caught me off guard is the accusations of misogyny in the film. The movie certainly has a lot to say about the commodification of sexuality, which is another strong point of the film imo. There’s quite a lot I can say about how the movie thinks about gender identity and sexuality, and how it either contributes or detracts from our inner humanity, but there’s an excellent youtube video on that topic so I’ll just link that here: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6GsXBh5PGZU

    But… yeah, anyway, good film. 10/10. It’s kinda strange because while I like Denis Villeneuve, I feel like a lot of his movies don’t really hit the mark that well. Honestly found Dune kinda boring. Would recommend Arrival and Enemy though, those are solid. But 2049, another level man, another level.