Blade Runner 2049 is a great sequel, and the thing is the most great about it: is not really a sequel. Is its own thing. (By the way, you know? Disregarding what I've just said, In my pop twisted mind, this is a trilogy, and the second one is Oshi Mamoru's 1995 Ghost in the Shell)
It's a Science Fiction film at its core (with a kind of detective neo-noir thing), but the secondary plot is sort of a romantic story between Officer KD9-3.7 (Whom I strongly suspect is a replicant) and an AI called Joi.
First of all, it reminded me - of course -, of the movie Her (2016) But without the whole creepiness of it... I don't know why?!... Maybe because it seems so natural that K being not a human, being a replicant, could fall for an AI... Robots do dream of electrical sheep!
But, you know, at least K doesn't look as much of a perv as Joaquin Phoenix's Theodore! (Maybe just because he doesn't have like a cleft lip?)
They both fell for their Operative Systems, but at least Ryan Goslin is not pretending to fuck thin air while masturbating to the sound of Siri (and he doesn't complain about the hooker's lipquid... that gives him points)
So yeah Spike Jonze's Her, but mainly... Weird!!! Yes, it reminded me of don Quixote!!!
Of course, I wouldn't dare to say that don Quixote, the 17th century Miguel de Cervantes novel, somehow influenced the work of a 2017 science fiction movie (or the other way around).
What I'm trying to say is that art tend to portray the ultimate truths, the eternal ideas, the greater myths...
The same things that affected the audiences (or readers) back in 1605, move us now... Because even though those filthy motherfuckers (literally) dumped the contents of their bedpans right into the already filthy streets, they were not complete savages!!! They were human beings, and they cried and they laughed, and get aroused or simply excited by the same things we do. We are not that different!
So yeah, for me it depicts a topic... I don't know how to call it, maybe: The Fall of the ideal Woman.
We think of don Quixote as this crazy old man that believes to be a chevalier, and goes out to the very prosaic region of La Mancha looking for adventures; but really the novel is about a man that dreams he's in love, that searches for love in the world, and commits and serves to this love unconditionally... at least that's the way don Quixote sees himself.
In his mind he builds this ideal woman, Dulcinea del Toboso, based upon a peasant from a near town: Aldonza Lorenzo.
Among many other things the Quixote is also a romantic novel (there's probably very few chapters were Dulcinea is not at least mentioned once)
And even don Quixote says that a Chevalier without a lady to love, is not a Chevalier at all... (a bit more poetic) and We can say the same thing about Chivalric Romances
(they were like uh... the rom-coms of their time... But of course, not as good as today's material. Civilization has improved.
(By the way, I think there's no Mr. Right for you Hellen Degeneres. And Who da fuck though that a movie where Meg Ryan meets Wolverine - as an 18th century time traveler?!!!- would be a good idea?)
Romance is at the core of Amadis de Gaula and Orlando Furioso; and even in minor works like Cirongilio de Tracia you got tons of love letters and declarations of eternal luuuve.
For don Quixote Dulcinea is like the ultimate ideal of love, because he doesn't even know her! And that's the merit in it.
He madly loves her just of what he has heard of her... And yes that's fucking crazy! but not a lot more than like... I don't know, getting a Russian Bride from a dating website, you know... to sponsor
Then, in the second part of the novel, he wants to actually meet his lady; so he travels to El Toboso... and - of course - because he has never met her before, Sancho Panza, his squire and loyal sidekick, actually tries to deceive his master by making him believe that three random filthy peasants that come from working the fields mounted on their burritos, are Dulcinea del Toboso and two of her virginal maids...
In any chapter of the first part of the novel (1605) don Quixote would just idealize and he would see three gorgeous women, mounting magnificent white horses,dressed as princesses
(like what he did when he met that cocksucker Maritornes)...
But now something weird happens, Don Quixote can only see reality! When there are three smelly, sweaty peasants; he sees lowlife disgusting vulgar peasants; and Sancho is there putting beauty to the picture: lying his ass off; describing how beautiful they are, how refined their movements, how nice their odour feels... the odour is important, don Quixote later says that the thing that really got to him was the garlic smell that came from Dulcinea's mouth!
Same thing happens with our Officer K. He's in love with an AI, she calls him Joe, and he buy her presents (Oh, aren't they cute?).
I don't know how that happened! Is never shown.But he lives in a shitty part of the world where even the little people are being racist to him (and you know, you gotta be pretty fucking low in the social scale when a goddamn midget is calling you a skinjob)
... and then I guess he was feeling lonely, and went
to that Captain Phillips black dude and traded him the AI for some replicant smelly turd
Joi is first introduced to us in 50's garments, so she's like the embodiment of Hollywood's ideal of a Waifu: with a classic meal, having a drink with you, lighting your cigarettes, lifting your feet after a hard long day at the office... bringing you some hookers... and sometimes you just wanna believe your woman when she tells you, with that sweet Siri voice "I always knew you were special" So, yeah, he fell for it.
You, the spectator, start wondering, because you know nothing about this world: Is she fucking real? - you know?- Does she have like real feelings for him? Maybe in the future humanity made AI's evolve so much that now they have like real feelings and shit
Nope! She was just a fucking tramp. A Whore!
She was just saying the things he wanted to hear: because she's selling a product. She is the product!; and that's the most shocking reveal this movie has... Nothing is real, similar to the first Blade Runner when you suddenly discover that even memories could be implanted... and then that Deckard might be really a goddamn unicorn? I didn't get that part...
All this, reminds me of another don Quixote moment when our hero in Montesinos cave has a dream in which Dulcinea in peasant form ask him for - I don't know how to translate this: "prestarle sobre este faldellín [...] media docena de reales" she's asking for money on some undergarments? Which is something the prostitutes back in the 1600s used to say, is the equivalent of:
Our narrators way of saying that Dulcinea-Aldonza was nothing but a prostitute the WHOLE time (there were some allusions made by the playful malice of Sancho... but nothing concrete, you know? This is like definitive: She was a whore, and deep down he knows it.) Imagine the disappointment of our hero. This is a pivotal moment in the novel. Beyond this point don Quixote cannot see other thing but reality. It destroys his soul.
There's nothing left for him now but to die... he cannot continue to be a chevalier! He cannot longer be special in this lousy world of us. Because deep down he knows he was a moron all along.
I can't get why some people only laugh with the Quixote, because at the same time it's so freaking sad, right?!
Same deal here. It's soul crushing for K: the thing that really gets to him is not Luv breaking the inmanator, but later seeing the virtual ad of Joi in her pleasure model version... he is of course seeking her, and what he finds is that... she never existed.
I say: What a dirty dog!
Well in any case it really is a love story. Otherwise why so much emphasis on how faithful he is to her?. He refuses advances from four women (well one milf and three skinjobs really... but what a tempting skinjobs those are, uh?)
Everyone wants to fuck Ryan Gospel these days! I think he could like even fuck the one that is in the glass cage eeeeasily, and not because that little bird is locked and cannot escape, but rather she was kind of flirting with him. From what I got she was a photographer. I didn't get why she was in the movie though... Meh, probably candy for the eye...
(by pelida77)
(by pelida77)
