Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
- Thread starter Th3Ch33s3Cak3
- Start date
They're all fake people.
K isn't a real person. He's a replicant. He's a bio engineered slave created for use as labour. He has his fake wife because he's not allowed anything real.
Mariette is a sex worker, and is also strongly implied to be a replicant. She doesn't come onto him, she does her job, which is to show interest in men in hopes they will pay her for sex. It's implied that they are attracted to each other, but again, they're not real people. They are not supposed to have real emotions. The baseline test we see K undergo is attempting to elicit an emotional response, because K isn't supposed to have emotional responses.
When K encounters the Joi poster, he's not realising how fake is relationship with his Joi was. He's realizing that his Joi, whether she was "real" or not, was a unique individual with her own irreplaceable experiences and memories, and that when she died all those moments were lost in time, perhaps like some kind of wet thing in a bigger wet thing.
No because there isn't a question really posed about the nature of love when she does everything she's told to and supposed to do. She's not presented as more than an A.I. acting out it's programmed routine really. The question of actual love would require some kind of evidence of something other than following said routine.
Rachael in Blade Runner 1 is analysed with Deckard saying he finds it hard to determine if she is real or a replicant. The idea being that line is coming more blurry. With Joi she's just an A.I. and there's no more blurring the line of "Maybe she's more than her programming or developed beyond her programming" kind of thing. It's not really love if it's just the code acting as it's meant to be, at least that's my position
The thing being it's implied Mariette actually did more as she slipped a homing device into his pocket so the resistance could track him. It's he as one of the first people he sees when he wakes up having been rescued as such.
Replicants do more than their jobs quite often. E.G. the Replicant it the beginning is a combat medic whose fled the wars and become a protein farmer. The other members of the resistance has also in one way or another broken out to do more than their jobs.
Also her memories and experiences weren't irreplaceable technically if he hadn't deleted the terminal files he could just have restore her from the old version or bought a new Joi and integrated the old memories.
Except then you lose the question of the nature of love extending to A.I.s too and you're only left with an already answered question of can Replicants feel love which has to be assumed to be yes based on both the previous film and the prequel shorts for Blade Runner 2049.
And Joi is a potential extension of that theme beyond the original Blade Runners human vs replicant thing.
Also even if you want to go with just if she can be a replacement the film doesn't do anything with it because Joi is essentially dead anyway so it's not like K has some grand choice of choosing Deckard and his child over Joi. There's no choosing the real over the subservient virtual partner because by the time that choice could come about Joi is already dead essentially.
I don't know if that was about love or caring though.
I think Joi and K share similarities in that they both were in a relationship that meant more to them than it did to the other; Joi with K, and K with Deckard. K really only seems to have Joi around to make himself feel normal, for her to be his replicant so he can feel human. When you see him interact with her K comes across as very relaxed and like a "normal" person, as opposed to when he interacts with other humans where he's very reserved and quiet. And with Joi he doesn't need to, and this means so much to him he a spent what was likely a lot of money to buy this program, eventhough he probably doesn't genuinely love her. But to Joi it does feel real. Real enough to want to physically feel real for him by hiring a prostitute, and for her final words in her final moments to be for him.
K believes himself to really be human and to have a father in Deckard under false pretenses, and when he realizes the truth he's got a choice to make. And that's what I think him seeing that A.I. advert for Joi means. With his relationship with Joi ultimately being fake and her reverting back to her default, will he now do the same now that he's revealed to not be human and that Deckard isn't his father. His feelings are genuine for him, and it gave him a sense of self-worth, even if he might not actually care about Deckard other than the image he projected onto him. You could say he sacrifices himself for his own sense of identity.
Oh wow, you mean the artificial people created as disposable slaves and who are not supposed to do more than mindlessly follow orders are actually capable of growing and changing and having their own experiences which shape who they are. Amazing, I wish there was a movie which explored that concept.
If.
What if the replicants couldn't feel love, but were only simulating it. How would you know?
(That might sound a contrived question, but it's a huge part of the book which the original Blade Runner is based on)
Again, I feel like you guys are reading Joi's plotline extremely pessimistically, and I'm not sure why. Sure, she's literally an object that was created to perform a function for someone else. So are most of the characters in the film. Fixating on the metaphysical question of whether she can "really" feel emotions or whether she occupies the same class of consciousness as the other characters is, I feel, missing the point. She appears to be alive. She has her own experiences and memories, and other people have memories and experiences of her. She is an individual shaped by her own experiences. In that sense, she is real.
Sure, you can read it pessimistically. You can read that she's just an object and that her love for K is a childish fantasy on his part. I get it to an extent, her plotline doesn't sit easy with me. It's kind of misogynistic to have a subservient perfect woman character who dies to motivate our male protagonist (although if you like misogyny, check out this film called Blade Runner). But I don't think she's a red herring, I think she's entirely in keeping with the themes of the film. She's an object who has become more than she was intended to be, like most of the characters.
They're even manufactured by the same company.
Last edited:
Except you were saying Mariette only does her job, which isn't strictly true. Hell the somewhat catty exchange between her and Joi suggests there may be some emotion here and to her there maybe was slightly more to it than her job.
Yes so it can't be specially unique when it could have been copies before so easily.
But in a film all about characters breaking out of the function they were created for Joi never does. So in essence she breaks that thematic chain as such.
Again, you're repeating stuff I've already said.
It is strongly implied that Mariette and K are attracted to each other. However, the fact that she hits on him does not imply this, because it's her job. As you say, it's really that unguarded moment between her and Joi which suggests that there might be more to it.
However, Joi is also part of that exchange. Do you think maybe that might imply some emotion on her part?
Right, but in the film it wasn't copied and was lost.
I mean, if it helps we can replace the word unique with the word distinct. Joi possesses a distinct personal identity which is different from every other Joi. That identity could be copied, but it would still be different from every other Joi identity.
Beyond the fact that Joi does many, many things which do not align with a restrictive interpretation of her intended purpose, beyond the fact that she does exhibit personal motivations, desires and emotions far beyond a restrictive interpretation of her intended purpose. I don't think breaking the function you were created for is an appropriate metric of personhood. Luv, for example, doesn't do that. But Luv is very clearly a person.
Sure, you could argue that Joi was created to simulate love and companionship for K, and she does. You could argue that all of her behaviour, even the behaviour that seems to imply personal desire or emotion, is simply a facade to make her better able to meet K's needs. If that's true though, what does it actually change?
Last edited:
I think I saw Blade Runner 2049 differently from other posters here.
In unrelated news, the Solo movie starts off just as bad as you'd expect a modern Star Wars spin-off to be, but then stops that and becomes ok, probably the best Star Wars film in years, but mostly because the bar isn't set very high.
(Also, every time they say "Crimson Dawn", I'm reminded of Hans Gruber demanding the release of Asian Dawn members in the first Die Hard film)
In unrelated news, the Solo movie starts off just as bad as you'd expect a modern Star Wars spin-off to be, but then stops that and becomes ok, probably the best Star Wars film in years, but mostly because the bar isn't set very high.
(Also, every time they say "Crimson Dawn", I'm reminded of Hans Gruber demanding the release of Asian Dawn members in the first Die Hard film)
Blade Runner 2049 is good. Not, in my opinion, as good as the first one. But as far as sequels go, a lot better than it could reasonably have been expected to be. The plot seems even more like it's mainly just an excuse for worldbuilding than it did in the first movie, Jared Leto is pretty fucking cringe as the main villain and some stuff drags on longer than it probably should. What the movie does suffer from is that most of the first half is dedicated to what's basically Spike Jonze's Her, but with less depth to it. It's not that the relation between K and Joi wasn't potentially interesting, but it didn't really feel to me like it managed to say something that would expand on the themes of the movie. Are we meant to see Joi as a sentient being? Are we meant to see her as a primitive program pretending it's one? One would gravitate to the former, because "If it acts like a person, talks like a person and thinks like a person, it probably deserves to be treated as a person." is kind of one of the main morals of the entire series, but you can just as easily read it as "At the end of the day, Joi actually was just a commodity."
The movie really picks up the moment Harrison Ford shows up and is actually a damn good watch from that point onward. The wordlbduilding, throughout the entire movie, is just as good as in the first one, Ryan Gosling's performance is pretty excellent and Sylvia Hoek is a lot of fun and almost compensates for Leto's awkwardness. I think it's a worthy sucessor to the original Blade Runner. I don't think it quite measures up to it, let alone surpasses it, but it overall does it justice.
The movie really picks up the moment Harrison Ford shows up and is actually a damn good watch from that point onward. The wordlbduilding, throughout the entire movie, is just as good as in the first one, Ryan Gosling's performance is pretty excellent and Sylvia Hoek is a lot of fun and almost compensates for Leto's awkwardness. I think it's a worthy sucessor to the original Blade Runner. I don't think it quite measures up to it, let alone surpasses it, but it overall does it justice.
I disagree about the depth of the character Joi. She is in fact, one of my favorite parts of that film, in the subtle things they imply with her. I actually had planned to do a full thread about her entirely, but I think I'll just sum it up here. MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR 2049 BELOW so, warning.
So, first off, her name itself is highly interesting, given what she is designed to be. Joi. J.O.I. or, as it's known in porn Jerk Off Interactive. A form of porn where you have someone talking to you through the camera, as if they are there watching you beat your meat, or flick your bean. Essentially a sex variant of ASMR. And given what she is, and how she's utilized by customers, I suspect that spelling was completely intentional.
But there is one point, from the original short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, that I think Joi dips into. I'm summarizing as it's been a LONG time since I read Electric Sheep but, basically there was this sort of tv show/VR thing that most of humanity still on earth would plug into and watch on a regular basis, about a guy trying to climb some mountain. The people watching it would feel revitalized by watching his struggles every day or whatever, and it helped them cope with the horrible post-nuclear apocalypse world they lived in. It's later revealed that the entire thing, was a production, specifically to, basically reinforce the feeling of empathy in humanity, that was slowly eroding given the horrible living conditions. Birth rates were almost non-existent, as pollution and radiation were poisoning everything, and crippling depression and isolation had turned most of Earth's human population into a slowly dying species. So this empathy program, was basically to try and offset this issue, and keep humanity acting like a social animal.
To me, the Joi in the film, is an evolution of this concept. First, you buy her, and she is in your home, tied into the network of your apartment. It's explained when K is talking to her during their first interaction in the film, that "he finally bought that remote device for her", implying she had been askin him to buy the upgrade for some time. Now, you could see this as simply a marketing ploy, to get more money from the customer, and on some level I think that's true. But I think there's a lot more to it than that. By getting the upgrade, it's encouraging a VERY insular, solitary person like K, to more regularly venture out into the world, on his off time. He feels more secure doing so with Joi with him, and also probably considers it a form of "going out" with his girlfriend. Now in the film, this is used to set up K to meet some of the other replicants and hook up with the underground movement, but from just a product level, this would simply be a way to get customers out into the world, and interacting, instead of just turtling up in their apartments forever. While he is out, he starts talking to the group of prostitutes, who are all sort of ganging up on him.
You clearly see him physically removing her hand from his body, and looking around nervously before they really start talking. BUT, he doesn't entirely disengage from the last woman. He spends time talking to her, in a tone that seems to suggest he is somewhat interested in her. You can see some attraction, it's very limited, but, I mean it's a person that K is socializing with. When all of his other interactions in public, are usually him disengaging. The way he avoids eye contact with the racist cop that throws the "fucking skinjob" slur at him. The way he avoids his commanding officer's advances. All of it is used to show how he actively tries to not involve himself with anyone else. But this woman, this prostitute, he actually makes eye contact with, he has a casual conversation with her for a few moments. The Joi device chirps, I'm assuming because of some appointment of whatnot, which ends the conversation, but it's clearly a moment of interaction.
Then, later on, we see that Joi, on her own initiative, hired that same prostitute, to come have sex with K. She states the reasons he did it, is she saw that K liked her. She then proceeds to have a equally kinky/beautiful moment of intimacy with K, with the other woman acting as the physical vessel. Which again, is another opportunity for K to establish a link with another person. It's framed as Joi taking their relationship to "another level", and she even cites the reason "she's real, I want to be real for you." To which K replies, in a heartfelt statement "You ARE real to me." Meaning he has genuine feelings for her. So now, Joi, tries to blend those emotions with a real person, via the sex scene. And this if reinforced later, when K is talking to the replicant underground, and the same woman he had sex with, is the one that ultimately convinces him to help their cause. And she doesn't do anything really bad to persuade him. She appeals to his humanity, his emotions, his EMPATHY for his fellow living beings. They all understand K's emotional struggle with what he is, the leader of the underground even says this, when she says "we all hoped we were the Special One." And I think it's safe to say, that he was more receptive to helping them, because Joi took the time, to try and get him to establish that relationship with her.
So, I kind of started rambling there, so let me narrow down my point about all of that stuff above. I feel, that Joi, as she's presented in the film, is an example of, basically an empathy prosthetic, for the failing humanity. Every step of her relationship with K, is an escalating system of trying to get him to reconnect with society. And if that is her basic design parameters, it means that she's doing this for everyone she's been sold to. Which is a fascinating concept for a mass produced product.
Now, on the subject of whether or not she's actually sentient. It's never stated of course, but given the level of technology they are capable of, with literally growing disposable, artificial people, so casually that someone like Jared Leto's character can just kill one that he deems faulty, and think nothing of it, it doesn't seem that big of a stretch to think their AI capability is so advanced, that it's easy to make an actual AI for the Joi product line.
And remember, the advertisements for Joi describe her as "being whatever you need her to be" , implying she's advanced enough to adapt to whatever lover, ALL of her customers might need. That's a level of adaptive software, that probably would require a fully sentient AI level of processing.
But there is one point, from the original short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, that I think Joi dips into. I'm summarizing as it's been a LONG time since I read Electric Sheep but, basically there was this sort of tv show/VR thing that most of humanity still on earth would plug into and watch on a regular basis, about a guy trying to climb some mountain. The people watching it would feel revitalized by watching his struggles every day or whatever, and it helped them cope with the horrible post-nuclear apocalypse world they lived in. It's later revealed that the entire thing, was a production, specifically to, basically reinforce the feeling of empathy in humanity, that was slowly eroding given the horrible living conditions. Birth rates were almost non-existent, as pollution and radiation were poisoning everything, and crippling depression and isolation had turned most of Earth's human population into a slowly dying species. So this empathy program, was basically to try and offset this issue, and keep humanity acting like a social animal.
To me, the Joi in the film, is an evolution of this concept. First, you buy her, and she is in your home, tied into the network of your apartment. It's explained when K is talking to her during their first interaction in the film, that "he finally bought that remote device for her", implying she had been askin him to buy the upgrade for some time. Now, you could see this as simply a marketing ploy, to get more money from the customer, and on some level I think that's true. But I think there's a lot more to it than that. By getting the upgrade, it's encouraging a VERY insular, solitary person like K, to more regularly venture out into the world, on his off time. He feels more secure doing so with Joi with him, and also probably considers it a form of "going out" with his girlfriend. Now in the film, this is used to set up K to meet some of the other replicants and hook up with the underground movement, but from just a product level, this would simply be a way to get customers out into the world, and interacting, instead of just turtling up in their apartments forever. While he is out, he starts talking to the group of prostitutes, who are all sort of ganging up on him.
You clearly see him physically removing her hand from his body, and looking around nervously before they really start talking. BUT, he doesn't entirely disengage from the last woman. He spends time talking to her, in a tone that seems to suggest he is somewhat interested in her. You can see some attraction, it's very limited, but, I mean it's a person that K is socializing with. When all of his other interactions in public, are usually him disengaging. The way he avoids eye contact with the racist cop that throws the "fucking skinjob" slur at him. The way he avoids his commanding officer's advances. All of it is used to show how he actively tries to not involve himself with anyone else. But this woman, this prostitute, he actually makes eye contact with, he has a casual conversation with her for a few moments. The Joi device chirps, I'm assuming because of some appointment of whatnot, which ends the conversation, but it's clearly a moment of interaction.
Then, later on, we see that Joi, on her own initiative, hired that same prostitute, to come have sex with K. She states the reasons he did it, is she saw that K liked her. She then proceeds to have a equally kinky/beautiful moment of intimacy with K, with the other woman acting as the physical vessel. Which again, is another opportunity for K to establish a link with another person. It's framed as Joi taking their relationship to "another level", and she even cites the reason "she's real, I want to be real for you." To which K replies, in a heartfelt statement "You ARE real to me." Meaning he has genuine feelings for her. So now, Joi, tries to blend those emotions with a real person, via the sex scene. And this if reinforced later, when K is talking to the replicant underground, and the same woman he had sex with, is the one that ultimately convinces him to help their cause. And she doesn't do anything really bad to persuade him. She appeals to his humanity, his emotions, his EMPATHY for his fellow living beings. They all understand K's emotional struggle with what he is, the leader of the underground even says this, when she says "we all hoped we were the Special One." And I think it's safe to say, that he was more receptive to helping them, because Joi took the time, to try and get him to establish that relationship with her.
So, I kind of started rambling there, so let me narrow down my point about all of that stuff above. I feel, that Joi, as she's presented in the film, is an example of, basically an empathy prosthetic, for the failing humanity. Every step of her relationship with K, is an escalating system of trying to get him to reconnect with society. And if that is her basic design parameters, it means that she's doing this for everyone she's been sold to. Which is a fascinating concept for a mass produced product.
Now, on the subject of whether or not she's actually sentient. It's never stated of course, but given the level of technology they are capable of, with literally growing disposable, artificial people, so casually that someone like Jared Leto's character can just kill one that he deems faulty, and think nothing of it, it doesn't seem that big of a stretch to think their AI capability is so advanced, that it's easy to make an actual AI for the Joi product line.
And remember, the advertisements for Joi describe her as "being whatever you need her to be" , implying she's advanced enough to adapt to whatever lover, ALL of her customers might need. That's a level of adaptive software, that probably would require a fully sentient AI level of processing.
Grr, I know I had more I wanted to say on that, but I'm at work and I'm constantly being pulled away, and I've lost my train of thought.
So lemme esplain....no, there is too much, lemme sum up. Yes, I agree it's not explored as deeply as a movie entirely ABOUT a relationship between a person and an AI, but I do think they did a lot with the elements they presented, and HOW they presented her in the film, that they did a fantastic job presenting her as a compelling character. One that has, for me at least, been the most interesting aspect of that film, years later. That I still think about and ponder.
Last edited:
I'm one of those people who love the sequel more than the original. I still like and respect the original Blade Runner, but it's got pacing issues no matter which version you're watching.
Last edited:
Jojo Rabbit: Pretty Damn Good / Great
I finally watched this on name recognition alone when it popped up on one of our premium cable channels. I recalled it winning a bunch of awards (I think) or at least garnering a bunch of attention, but I had NO idea what it was about going in. If someone would have told me it’s a warm-hearted and relatively funny take on WW2 Germany told from the perspective of a wannabe-Nazi child who has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend… I would have watched it much sooner out of extreme morbid curiosity. Well worth the watch, though.
I finally watched this on name recognition alone when it popped up on one of our premium cable channels. I recalled it winning a bunch of awards (I think) or at least garnering a bunch of attention, but I had NO idea what it was about going in. If someone would have told me it’s a warm-hearted and relatively funny take on WW2 Germany told from the perspective of a wannabe-Nazi child who has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend… I would have watched it much sooner out of extreme morbid curiosity. Well worth the watch, though.
I think Mariette saying something like "I've been inside you there's not much substance to you" or words to that effect towards Joi does suggest a little bit of envy or spite towards Joi which would be an emotion. Yes Joi was telling her to leave and she was done with her now but it does still come off as Mariette feeling something possibly towards K or she would have just left or not really attacked kind of the character of Joi or made such a reference to Joi not being real as such.
IT would but in theory it could also be replicated as the personal identity was based mostly on K's desires after all Joi can be whatever people want her to be so another Joi would likely just end up as what K wanted similarly.
Luv kind of actually does break part of her intended function. In the prequel short 2036 Nexus Dawn we're shown the next generation of Replicants will always choose the lives of a human over their own it's part of the reason the new Replicants are allowed to be made and Luv is a new replicant but she's shown capable of killing a human and says how she'll lie to cover up the fact she did it intentionally and not in self defence.
If it's true Joi's actions are just a facade then it kind of undermines the question of if there is more or if it's just simulated even just a hint of it would have been a good thing to introduce because then K's loss of Joi would be more impactful as she was definitely entirely different and irreplaceable.
Omg finally a conversation about movies that aren't Star Wars or Marvel! This is good progress, candies for everyone! 
I'm surprised you missed the bit about "Imaginary Hitler and a Hitler Youth" as that was like THE point that always came up with any and all promotional stuff about that film.
But yes, the movie is really damn good. I'd recommend looking up some of the talks that Taiko and members of the cast have done about the effort behind the film, and why they did it. It's very interesting to see them discuss the drive to mock nazi's as a form of defiance, and how bigotry and racism can be indoctrinated.