Delorean90

I'm hearing that this trailer is awesome, but I've been avoiding it. I was already gonna see the film, the last trailer already extra-sold me. I think I want to just experience it in full from this point.

I understand that you're in it for the holistic experience more than anything else (correct me if I'm wrong), but it doesn't take an extravagant amount of extra attention to the music to recognize moments within it that you like. You say you're interested in great cues as highlights; well, highlights are exactly what people feel are missing when they point these cues out. "Rescuing Sarah" and "Anakin's Dark Deeds" are perfect examples, where the climactic material of both are either shortened or omitted entirely.

 

The big picture may be the most important thing, but it would be nothing without its parts.

I always thought that if Decard being a replicant twist feels really cheap and robs the film of all its complexity and meaning... You don't need that.

I don't understand how that would change anything. The point is made, regardless of Deckard's origin. After all, it's about the philosophy, not about the true origin of a character. I love the suggestion. In retrospect, I think it would've been naive not to suggest it, especially in a world with that kind of technology available. I only regret that Scott made the suggestion too explicit when he reinserted the unicorn sequence into the movie (DC and FC).


Alex

Unicorn doesn't necessarily has to mean that he's a replicant. There are far more interesting intepretations than this one. I don't mind it being suggested, as you say, and, as Hampton Fancher once said, it's more interesting as a question.

Karol

Agreed.  I like the idea of the unicorn origami being Gaff's way of letting Deckard know that he could've killed Rachel, but he's going to let them run (even if only on a head start), almost a "Round up the usual suspects" moment.

Also, I feel that if Deckard's a replicant, it becomes a far more plotty, sci-fi twist thing than anything that contributes substantially or beneficially to the principle themes at play.  Once Deckard is a replicant, I have to start thinking about things like why they would program a top blade runner replicant to hate his job.  With Deckard as a human, I find the climax especially to be FAR more satisfying and rich.  Now, if the film had been constructed around the replicant or not question, then perhaps I might feel differently.  But once your main human character is revealed to not be so, then you can't know if anyone in the film is human, and then the questions and themes raised by the replicants confronting real people with their own humanity start to take less prominence, and that's just not as interesting to me.

"What's wrong, dear?"
"Oh, it's that damned caption contest.  Blume finally posted a new one, and then Incanus just had to show off..."

I finally got to see the latest restoration of Metropolis this past summer (the same summer I saw Blade Runner, fittingly enough!), and I loved it to bits.  A truly iconic film, and Gottfried Huppertz did a superb job with the score, which definitely deserves more recognition.

I was arguing with a coworker that said she will never watch a film made before 2000. Her only exception was Hook, which is her favorite movie.

The Accidental Tourist

Really good film.  It was nice to watch a film about flesh-and-blood, three-dimensional people, dealing with life situations without caricature.  Kathleen Turner isn't painted as a villain, when she could so easily be.  The situation simply is what it is and these people have to sort through it.  The tone is balanced very nicely, serious where it needs to be but with a sympathetic touch and good-natured dose of humor.  The performances ranged from enjoyable to excellent--the scene when Macon goes to Muriel's house to leave the note was just beautifully done on the part of Kasdan, Hurt, and Davis. Loved Williams's score, and John Bailey's cinematography was absolutely lovely.  Recommended!

You

Holds me tight.

"Don't go there, girlfriend!  Mmhm!"

I want to know the 13 secret spoilers!

It really is.  Thanks for kicking this off, Ren!

Delorean90: best teeth on JWFan?

Aw, shucks!  

Oh, so much to say here.  I won't try to respond to all criticisms at the moment, but I will say that I definitely loved this film.  I was both satisfied with it as a conclusion and also relieved that, IMO, they really pulled this thing off.  While I enjoyed TDK a lot, it left me with some nagging issues, and TDKR almost completely addressed those.  Alfred's speech to Bruce was excellent--moving, and addressing the beefs I had with the conclusion of TDK.  In fact, I love the fact that this film is, in many ways, a response to the Joker's philosophies and the actions taken on both sides in that film.  I've felt that there's been a bit of a Tyler Durden effect with the Joker that I find more disturbing than anything in this film, and the reason I find the film less disturbing is because it's saying, "Yeah, it's all manipulation.  This doesn't go anywhere good."  You could argue that the execution of that could've been more potent, but I'm glad Nolan went where he did with the film.  Having seen it in a marathon at the theater (which I'm SO glad I did), I see a very clear growth arc with the three films: the young optimism of Begins (at least by the ending), the adolescent confrontation with previously unmet darkness and evil in TDK, and finally the facing of truth and reality with a balanced maturity, neither naively ignorant or fatalistically bleak.

I thought the music was, in many ways, an improvement, with an expanded palette of chromatic melody (Selina Kyle) and orchestration (the trumpet runs associated with Bane's actions).  There were even some rather memorable musical moments--I quite appreciated the handling of (I think) the second attempt to escape from the pit, with the slowing string passage.  Seeing all three films, I found that, partly in TDK, but even moreso in TDKR, a lot of times the weak link was the heroic moments for Batman.  I felt that Zimmer fell back too much on what always seemed like a tracked bit for Batman suiting up for the climax of Begins--one of my least favorite musical moments from the film, BTW.  It was almost as if he spent so much effort on scoring everything else that he didn't put any into finding interesting ways of varying the heroic material.  I do think that, given the fact that he wasn't going to simply change the entire style on the third film, we got about as good a score as we could have hoped for.

Even though spoilers are allowed here, I am reticent to speak on the ending since people are reading here that haven't seen it.  I will say that I thought it was superb, and even though it theoretically could have gone certain ways, I feel that the ending we were given best suits the trilogy as a whole, and puts the thing in perspective as the story of Bruce Wayne in an amazing way.  It really makes the grounded tone of the films make a whole lot of sense, because they have managed to both pay tribute to the established mythos and go in a different direction from many incarnations up to this point.

Don't try.  There are some things that they wouldn't understand, couldn't understand...shouldn't understand.