This could make me visit the cinema
I haven't bothered for years, nothing has seemed worth it.
Of course if I do and the film is bad I may have to track you down and kill you.
Blade Runner 2049 review: Scott's vision versus Villeneuve's skill
Stepping into the cinema to watch Blade Runner 2049 was a nervous moment; after The Phantom Menace and Prometheus, was another studio about to take a steaming dump on a pivotal film of my youth? The omens were good. Director Denis Villeneuve gave us probably the best sci-fi film of last year in Arrival and his previous film, …
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Friday 6th October 2017 16:41 GMT Mark 110
Re: This could make me visit the cinema
Oh bugger - nearly didn't read this in case it was bad. I have yet to read a vaguely critical review. Been trying to manage my expectations, but now El Vulture likes it thats completely out the window.
Anyway - lets just hope the iMax in Manchester doesn't burn down before Sunday afternoon . . .
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Friday 6th October 2017 13:49 GMT Simon Harris
Hasn't Atari been through a bit of a rebirth?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/07/17/atari-reveals-first-pictures-new-games-console/
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Friday 6th October 2017 17:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Pan Am Logo
I would not be at all surprised if the Pan Am logo becomes a bit of a meme in further Sci-Fi films, in part because of the films that have already featured it but also because the company is now long-defunct, which probably makes its use easier.
I would also not be at all surprised if this does not happen.
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Monday 9th October 2017 08:20 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Pan Am Logo
IIRC at the moment the Pan Am logo is owned by a railway logistics outfit.
Looks..... Yup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Systems
"It formerly held a now-defunct airline division." - gotta love the revisionism there. No mention of the original which collapsed in 1991 and got hoovered up.
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Monday 9th October 2017 10:57 GMT batfink
Re: Pan Am Logo
@Grunty - and Johnny Walker have actually released a limited edition bottle as seen in BR2049. Yours for £100 on Amazon (as usual, $100 in US I believe). I did consider it for a while and then worked out how much other whiskey I could buy for £100. Very cool thing to have though.
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Sunday 8th October 2017 19:16 GMT Gary Bickford
Pan Am - They'llll beeeee baaack
In today's world of old logos and brands being bought and revivified, it could happen. The original Pan Am was a much more entrepreneurial company than I ever realized. Pan Am was very much a startup when it talked Boeing into building the original 314 Clippers, promising to buy them if built. (They actually only bought six of the original and six more of the 314A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_314_Clipper)
I don't know who owns the trademark today, but I could see Jeff Bezos buying the brand for a hypothetical service using Blue Origin launch vehicles for its competitor to Musk's SpaceX suborbital flight service, or even an orbital shuttle service to space stations and such.
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Monday 9th October 2017 08:35 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Pan Am - They'llll beeeee baaack
"Pan Am was very much a startup when it talked Boeing into building the original 314 Clippers,"
It was a different era then, particularly in regard to attitudes to market dominance.
Pan Am might never have existed if the Boeing group wasn't forcibly broken up under antitrust laws some years earlier (It became Boeing Airplane company, United Airlines and United Aircraft Corporation) in the wake of the Air Mail scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Mail_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Aircraft_and_Transport_Corporation makes interesting reading and shows that Boeing's current antics(*) aren't anything new.
At some point the pendulum is going to swing back and perhaps another Pan Am will spring up.
(*) managing to get a 220% import duty applied to aircraft in a market segment it doesn't even manufacture for.
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Friday 6th October 2017 12:25 GMT Joerg
Another awful reboot like Prometheus...
..another atrocious movie by Ridley Scott like the awful Prometheus and Alien Covenant weren't enough already.
Now they released an atrocious Blade Runner sequel reboot so pretentious forced and hollow trying to mimic the original in a silly way and with a too long runtime for a very slow boring pacing.
Long gone are the times in which Ridley Scott could direct top-notch sci-fi movies Alien and Blade Runner. Now anything directed or produced by him is an absolute mess and a silly pathetic joke.
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Friday 6th October 2017 12:45 GMT Dave 126
Re: Another awful reboot like Prometheus...
This film was directed by Denis Villeneuve, not Ridley Scott. It is a sequel not a reboot. You don't seem to be very well informed for someone with feelings so strong; one wonders why you went to see 2049 in the first place. If you haven't seen it then shut up.
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Sunday 8th October 2017 09:46 GMT Dan 55
Re: Another awful reboot like Prometheus...
Ok, spoilers:
The whole Xenomorph race being the product of a demented robot? Engineers who might have perhaps travelled the galaxy seeding and destroying life being reduced to a bunch of villagers getting wiped out by a demented robot? It's bollocks and it ruins both films.
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Monday 9th October 2017 19:21 GMT cosmogoblin
Re: Another awful reboot like Prometheus...
Have you seen it?
It's definitely not a reboot (which I have as little love for as you, by the way - BSG excepted). And the story is definitely not the same as the original. I kept trying to predict the twists, based on movies in general and the original in particular, and failed almost every time.
I suppose you could say the pace is slow - at least for the first half. I very much liked it, and thought it worked well, but that's a matter of preference.
Bear in mind also that if you don't like the direction (I did), Ridley Scott was little more than an executive producer.
Still, in the interests of balance, it's interesting to see my first poor review of 2049.
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Friday 6th October 2017 15:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Arrival? good?
I thought it was fantastic, a bit like the original Alien, all suspense, but not much action....different tastes.
Alien was a horror movie disguised as sci-fi. Same with Prometheus (except the Final Girl escapes with half of another character). Haven't seen Covenant yet.
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Friday 6th October 2017 16:54 GMT Mark 110
Re: Arrival? good?
Alien was a horror film in space (though it had quite a bit of critique of corporate machinations). Aliens was a miltiary action film in space (with overt critique or corporate machinations. [Two of my favourite films btw - I love pure Space Opera as well - Star Wars, 5th Element], The only moral / ethical dimension in Alien(s) was the actions of 'The Corporation'.
Blade Runner was different. It was a detective thriller but it asked deeper moral / ethical questions about the nature of humanity and human society. Thats what the best SciFi does uses dystopian futures, or alien interactions, or reflections on the past, or the challenges of technological advances to reflect on our belief systems. The genius of Blade Runner was it built that moral/ethical narrative around a brilliant detective film noir.
Can't wait to see the new one.
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Monday 9th October 2017 08:39 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Arrival? good?
"Thats what the best SciFi does"
Indeed. Good science fiction uses technology not as an end in itself but to raise "what if?" questions about the societies that result as well as even deeper questions about human nature.
I've referred to it as "speculative fiction" on more than one occasion.
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Friday 6th October 2017 18:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Covenant
I just saw Covenant the other day.
Really not sure wether to like it or hate it, suprisingly. I think Michael Fassbender does a fantastic job in both Prometheus and Covenant (doubly so in the latter - watch it to see what I mean about that). Don't rate many of the other characters though in either movie, apart from Charlise Theron.
The plotlines are properly silly in Prometheus and Covenant had me almost yelling at the TV when the few characters involved seem to completely forget about the welfare of the 2,000 colonists who they're transporting in cryosleep in order to save a couple of their colleagues...
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Monday 9th October 2017 09:18 GMT Mooseman
Re: Arrival? good?
"Geiger, apparently, hated the poor quality 'Alien' they created for the first couple of movies. Little more that a guy in a rubber suit"
That's why I like the UK cut of Alien - you barely see the creature, while the US version I watched had, yes, a guy in a rubber suit running around.
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Monday 9th October 2017 10:11 GMT Sir Runcible Spoon
Re: Arrival? good?
How did you manage to see through your hands?
I remember watching the face hugger attack on frame-advance on my super-duper VHS player of the time and being mightily impressed that it still looked real and, if anything, scarier. If you've never done that, I highly recommend it. There's so much in that split second you don't actually see in real-time.
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Tuesday 17th October 2017 14:19 GMT Sweep
Re: Arrival? good?
In the theatrical release you hardly see the alien and it's much better for it. In the Director's cut it is much more apparent that's it's a slow moving prop/ guy in a rubber suit. The DC also has that weird scene with 2 of the crew turning into eggs which throws the pacing off near the end (it was left out of the theatrical cut for good reason).
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Saturday 7th October 2017 14:46 GMT MacroRodent
Re: Arrival? good?
"Arrival" is one of the very few science fiction films that takes seriously the problems we really might face with communicating with extra-terrestrials. One could compare it to "Solaris" (the Tarkovsky version), although it is mercifully not as slow. In most other films, the aliens come speaking perfect English, or there is a magical translation computer (or babelfish).
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Saturday 7th October 2017 18:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Arrival? good?
"...the problems of communicating with extra terrestrials..."
Well let's face it, when 'leaders' are reduced to feeling that using twatter to talk to each other is a route to clear communication then what chance do the rest of us have?
I'm reminded of how a simple phrase three word phrase can be misconstrued with catastrophic consequences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man
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Friday 6th October 2017 12:34 GMT Dave 126
Product placement
Pan Am, Bell and IBM are featured in Kubrick's 2001. The original Blade Runner featured Pan Am, Coca Cola, Cuisinart, Bulova, Dentyne, Jovan and Budweiser.
https://typesetinthefuture.com/2016/06/19/bladerunner/
The above link is fun.... For example, it has a close-up of the prop newspaper taken from an onset photograph. The Headline reads: FARMING THE OCEANS, THE MOON AND ANTARCTICA. WORLDWIDE COMPUTER LINKUP PLANNED
Biting the hand that feeds IT
