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[kirblar]

I'm not particularly interested in reducing her importance to the role she serves in the narrative. I see Joi as the Wallace company expanding into a new market, but still using the same M.O. - in this case, creating and enslaving AIs that could develop on their own as sentient beings without the commercial constraints placed on them. K was created to fill a subservient role with a specific set of initial programming, and once that programming started to falter he became more real. As he became more real, so did Joi, and she started to bend or break her constraints.

Joi is not sentient. She is an advanced AI. Her importance is what she reveals about K - this is what the last scene w/ the Ad is all about.

She doesn't really have "free will" - she has the capacity to adapt to what K wants and needs. Getting the girl to sync with, putting herself in the scanner where she's at risk of dying- these are things K wants to do (sleep w/ the girl he met, erase all traces of Joi from his home) that he's not saying to the outside world.

She's a window into him.

 

[Arc]

Basically watched the original for the first time and then caught the 10:20 PM imax of 2049.

Wow. Really enjoyed it. Glad they let it be its own film while still being a sequel. My brother had never seen the first and still really enjoyed it and I guess it made enough sense to him.

Great performances all around as well.

 

[SixMachine]

Sweet movie.

A few minor questions:

What was the point of Joe doing the DNA match thing, and why exactly did he get arrested? Also, why did he have to redo the baseline test, and how did he fail it?


Also, what did the officer boss woman mean by "What if I finished that?" during the scene where Joe is telling her about the furnace memory?

The DNA match thing was trying to find the child, since they had some dna evidence from the dig (or was it the sock, I forgot already but he got dna). He got arrested because failing the baseline test means a replicant is possibly going rogue, which is really bad and why they have Blade Runners kill them, like in the first movie. The test seems to be a more upgraded version of the Voight-Kampf test from the first movie, the answers and question format were different but basically they ask a bunch of question and check response to it. In the first one there was a theme where they check eyes, and a lot of scenes had replicant eye glows, they didn't seem to do it in this one to my knowledge, but this test seems to probably spot out defects in their emotional responses.

 

[yuraya]

I remember people getting mad about some reviews spoiling some major twist in the movie. What was that? Was it that Ryan Gosling was a replicant?

Don't know about the reviews but I believe one of the trailers showed Gosling running through the wall during that one scene. Or something like that. That basically gave it away. Vileneuve himself was pissed about something too since he wasn't in charge of making the trailers. Tho I may be wrong.

 

[Einchy]

I think two things that I thought were cool that I had no idea from the trailers were K being a Replicant and Joi not even being physical. I thought K was going to be human and Joi was going to be some kind of new Replicant from the rain scene they showed in the trailer.

 

[theaffection]

The DNA match thing was trying to find the child, since they had some dna evidence from the dig (or was it the sock, I forgot already but he got dna). He got arrested because failing the baseline test means a replicant is possibly going rogue, which is really bad and why they have Blade Runners kill them, like in the first movie. The test seems to be a more upgraded version of the Voight-Kampf test from the first movie, the answers and question format were different but basically they ask a bunch of question and check response to it. In the first one there was a theme where they check eyes, and a lot of scenes had replicant eye glows, they didn't seem to do it in this one to my knowledge, but this test seems to probably spot out defects in their emotional responses.

Awesome. Thanks for clearing all that up!

 

[radios shipping overview]

Joi is not sentient. She is an advanced AI. Her importance is what she reveals about K - this is what the last scene w/ the Ad is all about.

She doesn't really have "free will" - she has the capacity to adapt to what K wants and needs. Getting the girl to sync with, putting herself in the scanner where she's at risk of dying- these are things K wants to do (sleep w/ the girl he met, erase all traces of Joi from his home) that he's not saying to the outside world.

She's a window into him.

What's the onscreen evidence for this? It seems like you're reading every action she takes as being a result of her reading and reflecting K's mind because the hologram scene made you decide she's not sentient.

The scenes with the billboard and the hologram are only evidence that there are many like Joi, because she's a commercial product meant to cater to sexual and emotional desires. Why would K's instance of Joi act against the interests of Wallace if she's strictly following her programming?

I don't disagree that her narrative function is to provide someone for K to communicate with, but that's separate from what she represents thematically.

 

[kirblar]

What's the onscreen evidence for this? It seems like you're reading every action she takes as a result of her reading K's mind because the hologram scene made you decide she's not sentient.

The scenes with the billboard and the hologram are only evidence that there are many like Joi, because she's a commercial product meant to cater to sexual and emotional desires. Why would K's instance of Joi act against the interests of Wallace if she's strictly following her programming?

I don't disagree that her narrative function is to provide someone for K to communicate with, but that's separate from what she represents thematically.

The ad giving K the same "Joe" name is a pretty big, blatant tipoff that his connection with Joi was illusory. She never acts in her own self-interest once. Only in his.

I'm pretty sure Joi is how Wallace tracked him. The tracker he was placed w/ was from the resistance, not Wallace- one of the many twists in the back third of the movie.

 

[elostyle]

That seems less like exposition and just a character naturally being part of the plot. Joi isn't just there to move along K's investigation, she's also there to further explore the themes of humanity that are present in both movies.

She developed beyond being an exposition device further into the movie but initially she was just there so we didn't have to figure out what K was contemplating because he spelled it out to her. Sometimes she even spelled it out to him (and us as an audience).

"Hey! Isn't that the same date that's on your horse!? Does that mean you are the kid?!"

That sort of stuff that the audience can figure out by just observing. Initially I found this almost as offensive as the voice over in the original movie but got over it.

 

[SixMachine]

The ad giving K the same "Joe" name is a pretty big, blatant tipoff that his connection with Joi was illusory. She never acts in her own self-interest once. Only in his.

I'm pretty sure Joi is how Wallace tracked him. The tracker he was placed w/ was from the resistance, not Wallace- one of the many twists in the back third of the movie.

Joi told him to break the antennae so the company can't track them. That is why the scene after Luv checks his apartment and finds the busted chip. Joi basically acted out against Wallace's company at that moment by telling him to do that. Luv tracked him down when she went to the police station and killed the supervisor, she then tracked down the police car and got to him that way.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

Hmm, didn't see that short so thanks. Was it ever touched upon in the movie itself? It certainly would make a lot sense as to why the Lieutenant so easily believed K when he said he destroyed the child.

The movie literally said so during the beginning text. It was the main difference between the Tyrell and Wallace models and probably why replicant production was allowed again.

 

[GhaleonEB]

Okay, thanks, wanted to make sure it wasn't just me.

I'm still not sure I enjoyed this film, but I certainly appreciate a lot about it. The visuals, its refusal to degenerate into an action film (brave, correct decision), the patience to let the visuals and atmosphere guide the film gently. Some snips near the end and one moment at the midpoint aside, the film was meticulous about taking us from beat to beat in the story and letting us just marinate in the moods it was creating. I'm not sure I would appreciate it on rewatch, but first time through it was nice to bask in it. (One couple, a row behind us and to the left, clearly hated it. The wife said out loud, in a particularly slow section in the 3rd act, "Boooorrinnnnggggg!") I was too enthralled by the visuals and themes to be bored, but I can see how someone hoping for an action film would.

A lot of scenes and elements didn't work for me. The entire intro scene for the head of the company (Wallace?), where he eventually kills his newest model by slicing her across the belly/womb...I have no idea what the point of that scene was. It was weird for the sake of being weird and I thought it kicked the film down a peg. A few others like it did likewise. (It gets well established he's frustrated that his creation can't create life of its own and so isn't, perhaps, truly life to him. The scene was just an awfully ugly, clunky way to reiterate it.)

I thought the replicant army in waiting would play a role in the film, but instead the one-eyed woman and her army is there for one scene and vaporizes. It wasn't clear to me at all that Joe had even left them, or when he did, or why. It probably wanted to be some world building, but it ended up feeling like a sequel hook, or superfluous idea dropped in and discarded.

The film was a little too on the nose at times. The female replicant (the Darth Vader to Wallace's Emperor), telling Joe, "I'm the best one," at the end is one of the few moments to really make me cringe. He gets it. We most certainly get it. Not needed.

Speaking of which, for a film as thematically dense as it was, the opening text seemed very odd. Everything it conveys is explained in the film over the first 20 minutes. Felt like a late add (make me think of Ford's narration in the theatrical cut of Blade Runner). It's never a good sign when a film starts out with text explaining itself, but the film had more confidence in itself after that point than the opening text implied. Thank goodness.

I still don't feel like the whole thing really gels, but it was so visually rich I'll certainly be thinking about it for a while.

 

[Window]

The ad giving K the same "Joe" name is a pretty big, blatant tipoff that his connection with Joi was illusory. She never acts in her own self-interest once. Only in his.

I'm pretty sure Joi is how Wallace tracked him. The tracker he was placed w/ was from the resistance, not Wallace- one of the many twists in the back third of the movie.

They tracked him via his police car. This is made pretty clear in the film.

Personally I don't think there is supposed to be a definitive answer on Joi's personhood. There's room for interpretation for both sides of the argument.

 

[darkwing-buck]

The actress who plays Luv was fucking intense. She reminded me of Nurse Ratchett from Over the Cukoo's Nest.

 

[radios shipping overview]

The ad giving K the same "Joe" name is a pretty big, blatant tipoff that his connection with Joi was illusory. She never acts in her own self-interest once. Only in his.

I'm pretty sure Joi is how Wallace tracked him. The tracker he was placed w/ was from the resistance, not Wallace- one of the many twists in the back third of the movie.

Joi gave K the name "Joe" because it was some personality touch that was included in her core programming. Joi starts out as a blank slate aside from what programming she has built in. The important part is how she changes as K does.

The part Wallace didn't expect is when her programming does things that they didn't intend and she chooses K's interests over Wallace's. If she was following Wallace's programming the way they intended, she would've tried to manipulate K into staying put or turning himself in to them. Joi shows emergent behavior, and I interpret this as thinking for herself.

K is driving an LAPD vehicle, and it's well-established that the precinct is able to track his movements (oops, I see this has been answered above).

 

[theaffection]

Aaron Paul would've been perfect for the lead role of this movie

 

[Moonkid]

Aaron Paul would've been perfect for the lead role of this movie

Mm not a bad shout. Would have liked to see more racial-diversity in the main cast though.

 

[robotrock]

Aaron Paul would've been perfect for the lead role of this movie

This is the most Ryan Gosling a Ryan Gosling role has ever been

 

[Window]

Is the opening text here anymore exposition heavy than the original's? They just provide context for the state of the world I think.

The part Wallace didn't expect is when her programming does things that they didn't intend and she chooses K's interests over Wallace's. If she was following Wallace's programming the way they intended, she would've tried to manipulate K into staying put or turning himself in to them. Joi shows emergent behavior, and I interpret this as thinking for herself.

I don't buy this argument for Joi breaking her programming. Why do you think she has a built in corporate loyalty check?

 

[radios shipping overview]

I don't buy this argument for Joi breaking her programming. Why do you think she has a built in corporate loyalty check?

Why wouldn't she? Wallace seems pretty totalitarian when it comes to their replicant products. A pure software product allows them a lot more control. And everybody is familiar with stories of AIs going rogue and wreaking havoc.

 

[GhaleonEB]

K is driving an LAPD vehicle, and it's well-established that the precinct is able to track his movements (oops, I see this has been answered above).

This actually confuses me, because Joe leaves his vehicle a long ways from where he finds Decard; he parks it and walks for a long time through statues, etc. At least several blocks. But the people sent in after him know the building and floor to hone in on instantly. If they were tracking his car, they'd have been a ways away. How did they find him there?

 

[radios shipping overview]

This actually confuses me, because Joe leaves his vehicle a long ways from where he finds Decard. At least several blocks. But the people sent in after him know the building and floor to hone in on instantly. If they were tracking his car, they'd have been a ways away. How did they find him there?

What it looked like to me is that they followed his car and then sent out drones to track him the rest of the way. Infrared, sound, movement, or however else.

 

[ronaldthump]

The ad giving K the same "Joe" name is a pretty big, blatant tipoff that his connection with Joi was illusory. She never acts in her own self-interest once. Only in his.

I'm pretty sure Joi is how Wallace tracked him. The tracker he was placed w/ was from the resistance, not Wallace- one of the many twists in the back third of the movie.

you're wrong

wallace tracked him because terminator woman went to the police station.

 

[BlackDoomShadow]

This actually confuses me, because Joe leaves his vehicle a long ways from where he finds Decard; he parks it and walks for a long time through statues, etc. At least several blocks. But the people sent in after him know the building and floor to hone in on instantly. If they were tracking his car, they'd have been a ways away. How did they find him there?

The three cop cars send out those little flying drones and they start scanning. I'm guessing they did the same thing K did, which was scan for heat signatures/life signs, and the only place in town with life signs is the casino where K and Deckard are.

 

[Window]

This actually confuses me, because Joe leaves his vehicle a long ways from where he finds Decard; he parks it and walks for a long time through statues, etc. At least several blocks. But the people sent in after him know the building and floor to hone in on instantly. If they were tracking his car, they'd have been a ways away. How did they find him there?

I don't think they know his exact location instantly. They send out drones which in the future would have superior visual detection technology to locate him quickly (especially as he was hanging out besides the balcony/window). There was some implied passage of time between the drone deployments and Deckard's radar picking them up I think.

Why wouldn't she? Wallace seems pretty totalitarian when it comes to their replicant products. A pure software product allows them a lot more control. And everybody is familiar with stories of AIs going rogue and wreaking havoc.

None of this is implied in the film. We have no point of reference to conclude whether K's Joi is relatively free compared to her substitutes. The hologram is just a billboard ad so that's not a proper representation of a Joi program either.

 

[MMarston]

This actually confuses me, because Joe leaves his vehicle a long ways from where he finds Decard; he parks it and walks for a long time through statues, etc. At least several blocks. But the people sent in after him know the building and floor to hone in on instantly. If they were tracking his car, they'd have been a ways away. How did they find him there?

As someone pointed out earlier, given that the tracking device that was put in his jacket earlier was meant for the resistance group, it's implied it was actually Joi's device that gave him away.


But then the question of why did Luv have to break into the LAPD pops up if she coulda just done that from the get-go.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

I don't buy this argument for Joi breaking her programming. Why do you think she has a built in corporate loyalty check?

Well she's an AI in the current machine learning sense. She learns from K and tailors to his desires and wants, but ultimately she's not really "breaking" her programming as evidence by the name she gives him really being a reference to her ad and not one she came up with.

Her telling him to break the tracker falls well within the type of "emergent behavior" you could expect from AI that advanced and isn't necessarily breaking any company policy. It's akin to asking Siri how to jailbreak an iPhone except with a Siri perceptive enough to know that's your question without you verbalizing it

 

[robotrock]

My one question is, well, I thought replicants have a life span of four years? Knowing this, how is Deckard alive in this movie?

 

[Window]

Well she's an AI in the current machine learning sense. She learns from K and tailors to his desires and wants, but ultimately she's not really "breaking" her programming as evidence by the name she gives him really being a reference to her ad and not one she came up with.

Her telling him to break the tracker falls well within the type of "emergent behavior" you could expect from AI that advanced and isn't necessarily breaking any company policy. It's akin to asking Siri how to jailbreak an iPhone except with a Siri perceptive enough to know that's your question without you verbalizing it

Yes I agree completely.

 

[radios shipping overview]

fwiw

 

[Nekofrog]

Some scene are chill and some are tense as fuck. You're going to have a bad time.

Nooooope. It was great. Made it much easier to pick up the details. And my boy Batista done good.

The only thing I was semi lost on was the orphanage landing / air striking of random Mad Max extras.

 

[Window]

fwiw

Not much to be honest. Siri was just used as an example by that poster to show the reasonable actions of an AI as explained by today's concepts of machine learning.

 

[ronaldthump]

Couple questions.

Wouldn't Deckard get seen/filmed/spotted going to a supplier of the head of the company? I didn't understand why he thought that was a safe thing to do at the end.

this is a movie where the same replicant which humans generally do not trust can go the the LAPD and kill coco and a police chief. ... their surveillance sucks balls in the future

Spoiler

where convienient for the plot of course

Aaron Paul would've been perfect for the lead role of this movie

with his big head and general inabiltiy to act? no. Watch need for speed - AP is not made for the big screen.

 

[ronaldthump]

This actually confuses me, because Joe leaves his vehicle a long ways from where he finds Decard; he parks it and walks for a long time through statues, etc. At least several blocks. But the people sent in after him know the building and floor to hone in on instantly. If they were tracking his car, they'd have been a ways away. How did they find him there?

why is it confusing? How did Joe find the bees/sign of life? Through a scanner. clearly the opposition also had the technology once they knew where he generally was.

 

[TAJ]

Fuck this. If this is the future of film audio then I'm done.

 

[MMarston]

with his big head and general inabiltiy to act? no. Watch need for speed - AP is not made for the big screen.

 

[robotrock]

jesse we have to cook

 

[ronaldthump]

My one question is, well, I thought replicants have a life span of four years? Knowing this, how is Deckard alive in this movie?

the nexus 8 models have normal life spans + deckard might or might not be a replicant. But him being hunted and worried about being hunted suggests he might be. or not.

in the scheme of things, it does not matter.

 

[Magwik]

the nexus 8 models have normal life spans + deckard might or might not be a replicant. But him being hunted and worried about being hunted suggests he might be. or not.

in the scheme of things, it does not matter.

I do appreciate them keeping the ambiguity of Deckard being a replicant or not. Sucks that Harrison Ford didn't really try though here.

 

[robotrock]

I do appreciate them keeping the ambiguity of Deckard being a replicant or not. Sucks that Harrison Ford didn't really try though here.

Does he ever? Honestly I feel like this is the most he’s tried. Really enjoyed him in this.

 

[Window]

Huh? Ford was pretty good here.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

the nexus 8 models have normal life spans + deckard might or might not be a replicant. But him being hunted and worried about being hunted suggests he might be. or not.

in the scheme of things, it does not matter.

I just assumed he was hunted for harboring a replicant and running away with her

 

[ronaldthump]

I just assumed he was hunted for harboring a replicant and running away with her

but why would he hide away like this when he obviously hasn't been hunted for 30 years and no one even knew about it?

I thought HF was good in this but I think whoever did the costume design for HF was like, here's some pants and a grey t-shirt. :/

 

[robotrock]

One last question: is gaff deckard?

 

[theaffection]

Would have liked to see more racial-diversity in the main cast though.

Yep. Would've been perfect. The most we got were a few minor roles and Jois accent lol

This is the most Ryan Gosling a Ryan Gosling role has ever been

Haven't seen his work, but he was pretty good here. Half Nelson looks cool

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

😵😳 Just got off the 10:05pm showing of this movie in IMAX 3D and I’m completely floored. A total classic and one of the greatest movies ever made. Holy shit, I think it’s my favorite movie ever. Denis Villeneuve is a total genius, wow!

 

[ronaldthump]

Yep. Would've been perfect. The most we got were a few minor roles and Jois accent lol

#bladerunner2049sowhite

 

[Moonkid]

Yep. Would've been perfect. The most we got was a few minor roles and Jois accent lol

Haha lmao. Come to think of it, what are some science fiction films with a non-white lead? All my favourites in the genre are overwhelmingly white, but Starship Troopers gets a pass

 

[radios shipping overview]

Not much to be honest. Siri was just used as an example by that poster to show the reasonable actions of an AI as explained by today's concepts of machine learning.

Whatever your concept of AI, it makes sense that a company would protect its own interests by preventing its products from working against it. They went as far as they could in that direction with K and his class of replicants, but they could go a lot further with an AI's behavior guidelines. An AI asking its user to modify or destroy a company device to prevent the company from tracking it seems like undesirable behavior.

 

[Korigama]

One last question: is gaff deckard?

K visited Gaff at a retirement home early on in his investigation. Deckard shows up much later in the movie when K goes looking for him in the radiated zone. Two different people.