Probably my favorite movie ever made. I’m so sad it’s doing bad at the box office.
Any of you guys going to see it (again)? What did ya’ll mirrorshade fans think of it?
I’m probably going to watch it 3 times.
It’s doing fairly well at the international box office.
I loved it. I’ve seen a lot of criticism about it being a depressing setting with a complete disregard for equality and diversity, which is really, really weird to me. The whole world is a monument to human degradation deliberately. An optimistic future wouldn’t have any of these things.
It makes me wonder about whether there’s ever been a RPG that can deliver that same feeling of “inhumanity” to the players beyond the typical joking murder-hobos.
Was good. Just flew by despite the long run time. Great job at inviting you into the world.
I’d see it again if I could. A 3 hour movie’s kind of a thing I have to schedule.
I left the theater awed by the sensory experience yet feeling ambivalent, but I appreciate it more upon reflection. There are some plot confusions and contrivances, and Wallace seemed a bit overblown (though his detachment was the point), but the most common criticism I’ve read is of the pacing; people got irritated for example with his finding and unwrapping of the horse (ugh we know what it is why is this taking so long) but the entire thrust of the scene in my mind was he knew what he was finding, didn’t want to find it, but had to (inexorable fate). I see this as ironic impatience for a high tech movie due to high tech culture and its rampant attention deficit, and I was grateful to sink into deliberate scenes in this era of frantic superhero franchise installments. The blaring audio registered as K’s inner turmoil, which felt effectively immersive along with the lighting and visuals. While no character reached the Roy Batty level, overall for me it’s a worthy sequel and the most impactful film since Force Awakens, which was pure nostalgia whereas this operated with much more emotional and intellectual nuance.
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I think this is more a failure of marketing and advertising on their part, which is part of the trouble with the domestic box office. The original BR was a cult classic with pop culture influence, but it wasn’t a big hit nor quintessential viewing for most casual moviegoers, even after all this time. For these people, they got trailers for a cyberpunk action flick, assuming a normal pacing.
There were a lot of people that ended up falling asleep or walking out of the film altogether because it didn’t match expectations at all. This has been widely reported and criticized. I don’t know what they did with the international marketing since it seems to have succeeded overseas, but it was a domestic flop. The trailers should have showed no action at all, focusing entirely on the exploration of the world and emotional investment of the characters.
Here’s a discussion on that topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/76r5qy/other_the_real_reason_blade_runner_2049_is/
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That’s fair, I suppose my icon indicates my difficulty in seeing the film or the trailers from the viewpoint of someone unfamiliar with Blade Runner.
The international box office was better! But it unfortunately has only made 165M out of it’s estimated 300M combined production / marketing budget. Even when movies break even it’s considered a bomb since its a high risk investment and takes a fair amount of time to see a return.
Yeah, I watched the Beyond the Trailer review. She said she couldn’t understand how Bladerunner lacked social progress even though its in the future. Kinda weird since that’s the whole point of cyberpunk / dystopia.
@Landwaker
Yeah, I think people associate high tech films and fast action. I think bladerunner used too high of a budget for the type of film that it is. I think only accessible movies can get away with extreme budgets. Not that I think the budget was wasted or undeserved. I do hope that we can have more high budget movies like this in the future.
By the way, your run on sentences with lots of parenthesis and semicolons is very hard to read lol.
@VyRe40
I’m not sure if bladerunner would have been more successful if it had been more “honest” with it’s trailers. I think people who were bored wouldn’t have watched it in the first place. Personally, I did not equate the trailers to an action movie.
Its a bit sad. Movies are financially rewarded when they are an 7.5/10 for most people. It doesn’t care if it’s never a 10/10 for anyone. I think spiderman is a good example. Everyone thought it was decent but nobody loved it.
I thought kickstarter would change this, but I think people don’t want to take the same risks investors do if there’s no financial reward.
Imagine if there’s a machine that could measure how much you liked something. It would be used for tipping, movies, shopping etc. The price of an item would change depending on how much you like it. I wonder how that would positively/negatively shape our culture. Maybe that’ll be a cool feature in a cyberpunk game.
Yup, and you have to consider that for evalutating the success domestic (US) box office weighs more.
International fees often eat up a larger share of the profits (especially China when you don’t have a local company on board) so BR2049 is, exactly like the first one, a flop.
Which is not really a surprise. None of the stars have huge market draw, the movie’s very long, pondering and brooding and refuses to have a clear yes or no answer towards any of the questions it throws out.
This is a hard sell at the best of times.
For a niche cult classic sequel this was a ludicrous expenditure.
I’m amazed that it happened.
As many of the most successful products stimulate exactly thosed things that make you feel most rewarded, even if you really aren’t, I’m not sure anything would change much.
Perhaps, but imagine if you liked fried chicken and disliked salad. The salad costs less, and you’ll know that its healthy for you. Perhaps thats enough to push you into eating the salad instead. I think we may pursue things that lack immediate pleasure and have a long term reward that the machine can’t detect as pleasure.
While it may seem redundant at first, I think there might be unexpected results from a weird machine like that.
I think it got bad lip from people that felt “tricked” by the marketing, which hurt it more than an honest marketing tactic that could provide better word-of-mouth with a different opening crowd. But eh, there’s probably a whole bunch of factors that led to it flopping domestically. Oh well.
Maybe it’ll perform well when it goes to home video.
It makes me fear for the future of the Dune project. Can an “honest” Dune movie perform well enough for investors given the performance of BR? I can imagine it’s scared a lot of them off the idea.