Blade Runner 2049 + Hugo Dramatic Long ballot

[psocoptera]

Blade Runner 2049 was definitely not the worst thing I've ever watched because it was on a Hugo ballot, but there seems to be something every year that's just like "yup, I would have been fine to skip that". I thought they did a really good job making a sequel to the first one! Really captured the atmospheric, moody, aesthetic-driven feeling of it! Great cinematography and some really striking visuals. But ultimately this is another murderer-cop anti-hero doing more murders, with the ultimate reward of the rapist-murderer from the first movie getting to meet his caged daughter, yay, I guess? I dunno, it sucks that Deckard got to be a character and Rachael got to be some bones in a box, and it sucks that this movie was full of women but they all revolved around men (you sort of get the feeling the one-eyed replicant lady trying to start a revolution for freedom is having a more interesting movie somewhere offscreen), and it sucks that I had to see Jared Leto's face who totally throws me the fuck out of suspension of disbelief in a movie because now instead of thinking about the characters I'm being worried for his coworkers and hoping they were safe from being harassed by him while filming, and it sucks that we didn't get some interesting third-act twist in which the hologram sexbot and Wallace's admin faced off or teamed up or *something*... I really thought there was going to be more there, in that one of them is a Wallace product and the other one presumably has access to any backdoors/overrides/data collection, but nothing ever really happened with that. And, I don't know, I will be the first to admit that I am *really, really picky* about plotlines around fertility, but the whole conceit of the one blessed mother and holy child and everyone caring so much which people came out of uteruses and which ones came out of plastic bags, I don't know, I found it tiresome. And sure you can be like "that was the point! it's all just an aside to the evils of capitalism/slavery/kyriarchy/etc", but, I dunno, there is something exhausting about watching a movie in which everyone really cares about the wrong thing.

In the scene where Luv remotely blows up all the people trying jack K's flying car, it occurred to me that it would be sort of hilarious if one of them turned out to be the all-important child, like, whoooops, maybe you shouldn't have shot forty people from space without checking IDs if you're in the middle of a manhunt for an irreplaceable person? Like, obviously the scene composition told us that these were faceless, nameless NPCs, but it would have been an AMAZING comment on drone warfare if it turned out that sometimes crowds of people include... people. Sigh. Anyways, I'm vaguely curious about the rest of *that* movie, where everyone has to figure out what their goals are now that the MacGuffin is out of the picture.

Anyways, I've now seen all six movies, so a little space, and then I'll put my ballot ranking and some thoughts behind another cut.

Space!

Another cut!

I had made the prediction when the finalists came out that Shape of Water would win, as the best fit of some vague cross-section of seriousness, originality/independence/non-franchisiness, and crowd-pleasingness that I think characterizes the winners pretty well if you look back at what they were up against. Not universally, but generally. This year in particular I suspect there's a subpopulation of dudes who would prefer not to see TLJ or WW win, and significant split of non-hater franchise enthusiasts between TLJ, WW, and Thor. I can't wait to try to analyze some numbers. Anyways, this is all an aside to my personal ballot. Which is difficult. I have come to realize that in my personal heart of hearts, what I really want is for the Hugo award to go to Get Out, for its combination of a genuinely original and creative idea with serious, sharp social commentary. I also feel weird *voting* for Get Out because in some ways I enjoyed it the least - I wouldn't have even been able to watch it if I hadn't read a thorough summary first. I try not to talk a lot about "objective quality" vs "enjoyment"... I feel like that's a kind of snobbish way of claiming that some kinds of enjoyment are more important than others, when what you really mean by "quality" is "you enjoyed this in a way that you expect some other people to also like, who share that taste whose opinions you value". But, dang it, in this case I guess I feel like my appreciation of Get Out, a movie I never want to see again, is closer to the kind of appreciation I want to have for the Hugo award winner than my appreciation for movies like TLJ, WW, or Thor that brought me great joy and I look forward to watching more times in my life? I guess that's where I am? So, as of now, I'm going to say:

1. Get Out
2. Wonder Woman
3. The Shape of Water
4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Blade Runner 2049

(I would definitely rather see Blade Runner win than No Award; this may be surprising to anyone who just read how many times I used the word "sucks" in the above paragraphs, but it was a beautifully made genuine science fiction film, and my personal distaste for some of the plot choices doesn't invalidate that. If my fellow Hugo voters love it I can respect that.)

Comments

[glassonion]

I stubbed out my ballot before looking at yours, though i have an awful lot of "this may move up or down" on mine. Like you, i'm putting everything above No Award, and like you i have Blade Runner and Ragnarok at the bottom.

Otherwise... i dunno. I think i didn't like Shape of Water as much as you did. For which i have no explanation other than "not my kind of art film". And maybe that's why i totally disagree with your prediction - i don't think it has a chance at the award; i think it will go to either Get Out or tLJ.

This may not be reasonable, fair, or helpful, but i wound up mentally giving Blade Runner a lot of brownie points for having a more-or-less-gender-balanced secondary cast. I mean, i know some of them were cast that way so they could flirt with Ryan Gosling within the bounds of Compulsory Dystopian Future Heterosexuality, and some of them were cast that way because of the MacGuffin and etc. But it's also something which is not that fucking difficult, in the particular sense that there is almost never a plot reason it won't work. About half of people are women, so about half of talking people in your movie can be women, and it will employ some actresses and let me enjoy the occasional Bechdel-passing interrogation/knife fight, which almost never happens, because any movie with female leads couldn't possibly have female antagonists. So, like, everything you said in your review is true, plus there was literally 90 minutes of staring at Ryan Gosling's face and i don't understand why. But nonetheless i found the secondary casting refreshing and i am giving them credit for it.

[psocoptera]

I think that is totally reasonable re Blade Runner casting - I also wish every movie would do that so it makes sense to appreciate it when they actually do. Also yay having very different predictions, I think that adds to the fun of this sport. I guess we will see. :)

[glynhogen]

I was kind of on edge while watching Blade Runner 2049, because I knew Jared Leto was going to pop up onscreen. I ended up finding him less distracting than I'd expected, basically no more distracting than anyone else in a poorly written part, but that's about the only thing in the movie that turned out better than expected. Like, if you don't have gorgeous production design, it's not worth doing, so that was both very pretty and also just a check mark, like you have to have craft services and you have to have sets with monumental architecture, etc., and I guess if you have Robin Wright she has to channel Claire Underwood, which I'm there for but no extra points. I am still sort of impressed by how icky they managed to go--in the sense of the narrative supporting the ick as opposed to icky actions (a rapey noir scene works; saying it was less rapey based on voice analysis thirty years later is...not good on many levels)--even before getting to the fertility plot. Which...if you want to do R.U.R., then do R.U.R., but you kind of need to commit to killing all the humans (who, in this movie as opposed to the first one, you've decided are the only ones that count as people). But I suspect the one-eyed revolutionary, the sexbot, the hologram, and the admin could've come up with a much more nuanced and workable plan than "kill all humans," and I, too, would've been there for that movie. They could even keep Ryan Gosling as eye candy.