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Blade Runner is one of the few movies much better than the book the movie is based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick.
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Originally Posted by Mark S.
Very much agreed. I admire the "shift" that P.K. Dick brought to science fiction. But it has to be said: He was a bad writer. Painfully bad at times.
If one bases the assertion "PKD was a bad writer" on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it's a shaky one, at best.
Read The Man in the High Castle of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer and get back to me.
If you happen across a copy of The Divine Invasion (which contains copious streams of dialogue), that one won't change your mind one bit.
Sheep? was written in the Sixties. It's a Sixties novel. A lot of premodern SF doesn't have a lot of concrete science. They're stories in futuristic and otherworldly settings. The premises are outlandish. There's a lot more Why? and What if? than This is how it will be...*
Take Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley. I love it. It was a novella that should have stayed a novella, but Zelazny expanded it for publication on its own. It's a cool post-apocalyptic adventure novel. It's a yarn. But the science in it is an afterthought. It's not really SF, it's fantasy. It's got actual creatures — monsters, for our protagonist to face down. The movie's quite different (fewer monsters, more cockroaches), especially the beginning, and its science is even more hokey. But it's still a cool movie.
Oh, and John Carpenter lifted the beginning of Damnation Alley for Escape from New York. Snake Plissken is Hell Tanner.
*That's why Harlan Ellison is one of the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century. He didn't give a rat's arse about "science" but he also didn't throw caution to the wind and liberally use lame tropes, like time travel, to make his stories work. His stories concerned people, not weaponry and spacecrafts, even though he used those elements.
I saw Blade Runner shortly after the film was released. Outstanding movie and I still watch it. I like it best with Matt Decker’s narration. Critics have since poo pooed the narration. Blade Runner is one of the few movies much better than the book the movie is based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick.
Totally agree with that. So you and I and Mark S were those three guys who liked it immediately.
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The Thing is based on a short story called Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. writing under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart. Mr. Campbell’s wife’s name was Donna, just an interesting aside. The Thing was panned by the critics as being too bloody and violent, liking the 1950s version The Thing From Another World. The 1982 version was much more closely based on the short story, though.
I thought it was....effective. I won't say it was bad...objectively speaking it was extremely good, as a movie.
But I haven't needed to watch it again. It's in the same category as "Deliverance," another movie I though was, objectively speaking, effective and extremely good and I've never needed to watch it again.
Very much agreed. I admire the "shift" that P.K. Dick brought to science fiction. But it has to be said: He was a bad writer. Painfully bad at times.
I actually rewatched BLADE RUNNER 2049 a couple of weeks ago. There is certainly a lot to admire there. It's visually stunning. Great music and sound. And there are some very moving scenes. But the movie has a lot of problems, and unlike its predecessor, its central premise isn't strong enough to overcome that.
If you care about spoilers in a movie that came out years ago, stop reading.
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The premise that drives the conflict of BLADE RUNNER 2049 is that a replicant became pregnant, thereby "proving" that they are alive, which will spark revolution and the downfall of society. Huh? Whuh? Not only does the movie fail to prove that assertion, but it doesn't explain why the consequences will happen.
The point of the original BLADE RUNNER was two-edged (pun intended): 1. What makes us human? 2. What happens when we lose that?
And very early in that movie, we get an answer: Empathy. If we suffer when another suffers, that makes us human. Early replicants couldn't really do that, which is why the Voight-Kampf test could detect them. But then along comes Nexus 6 and beyond. And Rachel asks the vital question, "Have you ever taken that test yourself?"
And the story does a great job showing that humanity has lost its humanity, but the replicants have literally become "more human than human." That is the entire point of the climactic ending, which even Ridley Scott has failed to understand.
But BLADE RUNNER 2049 apparently forgets all that and makes a silly assertion: The ability to conceive a child makes us human. Even at face value, that makes no sense at all. None. And why will that spark a revolution to topple society? Umm ... because Robin Wright Penn says so?
So yes, BLADE RUNNER remains one of my all-time favorite movies. But the sequel? Not so much.
Great description of the basic conceit of the first movie. Interesting that Scott could have spent so much time with the story and fail to understand it. But he doesn't.
And I won't disagree with your description of the second movie. But my, was it gorgeous. It was an experience.
If one bases the assertion "PKD was a bad writer" on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it's a shaky one, at best.
Read The Man in the High Castle of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer and get back to me.
If you happen across a copy of The Divine Invasion (which contains copious streams of dialogue), that one won't change your mind one bit.
Sheep? was written in the Sixties. It's a Sixties novel. A lot of premodern SF doesn't have a lot of concrete science. They're stories in futuristic and otherworldly settings. The premises are outlandish. There's a lot more Why? and What if? than This is how it will be...*
Take Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley. I love it. It was a novella that should have stayed a novella, but Zelazny expanded it for publication on its own. It's a cool post-apocalyptic adventure novel. It's a yarn. But the science in it is an afterthought. It's not really SF, it's fantasy. It's got actual creatures — monsters, for our protagonist to face down. The movie's quite different (fewer monsters, more cockroaches), especially the beginning, and its science is even more hokey. But it's still a cool movie.
Oh, and John Carpenter lifted the beginning of Damnation Alley for Escape from New York. Snake Plissken is Hell Tanner.
*That's why Harlan Ellison is one of the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century. He didn't give a rat's arse about "science" but he also didn't throw caution to the wind and liberally use lame tropes, like time travel, to make his stories work. His stories concerned people, not weaponry and spacecrafts, even though he used those elements.
Did you mean to contain your criticism to 60s SF? The SF of the 50s tended to be extremely hard. And there were still hard SF writers going into the 60s, like Pournelle, Clarke, and Niven.
Interesting that Scott could have spent so much time with the story and fail to understand it. But he doesn't.
Scott is the greatest visual director of his generation. But he has no story sense. He never really had one, but was lucky enough to land some good scripts. His fortune seems to have deserted him in that regard over the past 20 years.
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Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk
And I won't disagree with your description of the second movie. But my, was it gorgeous. It was an experience.
Yup. I'd rank it up there with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. It's an artistic masterpiece, even if the story is a failure on many significant levels.
Scott is the greatest visual director of his generation. But he has no story sense. He never really had one, but was lucky enough to land some good scripts. His fortune seems to have deserted him in that regard over the past 20 years.
Yup. I'd rank it up there with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. It's an artistic masterpiece, even if the story is a failure on many significant levels.
I watch a lot of short features on YouTube, animations and SF, which are usually visually stunning but also usually disappoint in story. Inevitably, those disappointed stories are written by the visual artists.
Top-notch visual artistry is a subset. Top-notch storytelling is also a subset. It's not surprising that the intersection of the two subsets is very small.
Scott is the greatest visual director of his generation. But he has no story sense. He never really had one, but was lucky enough to land some good scripts. His fortune seems to have deserted him in that regard over the past 20 years.
Scott and Kubrick. There are some other guys who aren't too shabby.
Did you mean to contain your criticism to 60s SF? The SF of the 50s tended to be extremely hard. And there were still hard SF writers going into the 60s, like Pournelle, Clarke, and Niven.
Some of it's hard, sure, but again, more about concepts and theoretical stuff. I like Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama far more than 2001, and it smacks more of hard SF. Heck, I like Childhood's End more than 2001.
Fred Hoyle, a British astrophysicist, wrote a cool book in the Fifties called The Black Cloud. The big titular mass floats into our solar system and takes up residence around our sun, which, as you can figure, has devastating results on our planet thanks to the sudden loss of heat, light and warmth.
But...the cloud seems to possess a certain...intelligence! Our scientists learn we can communicate with it. Turns out it's an alien organism. (Sounds pretty Star Trek-y, eh?)
Finally, Cloud-Thing decides to make an exit and even tells us why: another Cloud-Thing in a distant solar system (for us, it would be like travelling down the block) has stopped sending, so it's going to go find out what the heck is up. The End. That novel's regarded as "hard" SF, but to me it reads like science fantasy.
I don't like military SF, but Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel The Forever War was too good for me to put down. It's hard SF that deals expertly with time dilation, future warfare, advanced medical tech, sexual identity and other things. It won both the Nebula and Hugo (and Locus followed suit) and was most deserving. Heinlein told Haldeman he felt it was the best story in a future setting he'd ever read. If that isn't the ultimate kudos, I don't know what is. Heinlein's Starship Troopers was a pretty sweet military SF outing for its time, but The Forever War buried it. And while so many authors end their novels on a lousy, often ambiguous note, Haldeman's ending for The Forever War was letter-perfect.
Scott and Kubrick. There are some other guys who aren't too shabby.
Sure, and both Scott and Kubrick share the same fault: While their movies are visual masterpieces, oftentimes the story falls flat.
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Huh? Whuh? Not only does the movie fail to prove that assertion, but it doesn't explain why the consequences will happen. 
