Mrs. Cheese Fry decided to screen the 1982 classic Blade Runner in anticipation of watching the new sequel. It was the first time she'd seen it. Mrs. Fry delivered the expected dose of skeptical shrugs and eye rolls.
Here are some samples of her commentary.
"I don't know if I can take another hour of this narration" regarding Harrison Ford's noir-inspired voiceover. We explained in detail the infamous history of the narration and she did a great job pretending to be interested.
"Why is it so dark?" asking about the purposefully bleak cinematography - all but one scene takes place at night - suggesting an ecological disaster.
"We're not going to see him naked even though we saw that other woman show everything" stating in a nutshell Hollywood's longtime aversion to male nudity. For the record, Harrison Ford did take his shirt all the way off moments after this criticism was leveled. But he definitely didn't have the sort of nudity rider in his contract that costar Joanna Cassidy had in hers.
"What's with all of the old TV sets?" noticing that the filmmakers in 1981 failed to properly foresee and include flatscreen displays in their production design, opting instead for clunky, boxy CRT displays that were dated as of 1991.
"Of course she'll do what he wants - she's a robot" referring to the now-controversial moment when Harrison Ford refuses to let Sean Young leave his apartment and throws her against the wall for a forced kiss. Replicants still have free will, we explained, which is one of the reasons why Blade Runners have jobs.
"So... where'd they get all of that blood?" asking about the bloody deaths of Replicants, not yet getting that Replicants aren't mechanical, but altered biological lifeforms. Again, she feigned interest but mostly got annoyed that we kept pausing the movie for a geeked-out discussion of the minutiae of Replicants and Blade Runners and director Ridley Scott's rainy, neon-soaked vision of 2019 Los Angeles.
"Where the heck's that Gaff guy during all of this?" referencing the climactic fight between Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer and wondering why Ford didn't have backup. Gaff's the Edward James Olmos character - a Blade Runner rival - who appears in three short scenes total. It's not like they're Glover and Gibson in the Lethal Weapon movies, you know?
But did she like the movie? "I could have not seen it."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment