#sci fi doesnt have to make me happy but im a lil sick of always being so sad

[swimsauce]

Ugh gonna dump my thoughts here for a moment about robots.

I just watched Mars Express, I liked it overall. It felt like thematically it took alot of queues from Ghost in the Shell and evolved and updated alot of its ideas, as well as Blade Runner 2049 (with the stories wide variety of robot types and other world building tidbits). Those stories all have very nuanced presentations of robots, as the synthetic reproduction of life is shown to be just as sentient as human life throughout the story (regardless if it's ai or a robot or synthetic or some other combo of organic/inorganic parts), but the main conflict/narrarive actively shows how the old human order is bent of subjecting them as well as the already existing human population. And the stories aren't meant to be uplifting, they are most often very, very sad, and operate more as cautionary tales. With Blade Runner 2049 and Mars Express basically showing that old human ways (like capitalism, greed, and the inability to recognize each other's shared humanity) is the downfall of not only humans, but provides continual suffering to those on the outskirts of human civilization (human or robot). That's such a neat theme, it's one of my favorite explorations of human sentience, but I've kinda hit a bit of a roadblock. 1.) I'm getting a bit tired of it always ending so sad. Not that I cant handle sad or bittersweet endings. However I just feel like the nihilistic approach is the default currently. All these pieces bring up these issues and instead of even offering glimpses of a solution to the problems it proposes, the narrative does the equivalent of just laying down and dying, just accepting the fate of humanity and our descendants to be doomed by our current short comings. Its a fine message for your story, its just getting overplayed to the point of frustration. And 2.) I'm not agaisnt fictional cop stories but can any of these cyberpunk/future dystopia with ai/robots/synthetic humans or whatever please have a perspective that isn't cop drama. Like obviously law enforcement is gonna come into play if you wanna explore these fictional societies' rules and laws and where their morals fail or succeed,etc etc, but like. Can we see the robots/ai/synth perspective more? I'm sick of it being some meat head human who's like on stage 1 of scifi ideas still questioning robot sentience when the robots/cool humans are already addressing much more pressing issues like what it means to be alive or some shit. Like I'm sick of the audience POV protag being so basic.

Tldr I love these stories I brought up a lot, and the world's have so much potential for moral dilemmas and stories but it's always the same cop detective stuff that never fully adresses the common person's experience in that reality, which is the most interesting stuff in those stories, as well as always defaulting to the most nihilistic outlook.

[theskyexists]

watching bladerunner 2049

great environmentally destroyed earth there

i believe that the blatant humanity of AI in this film - as well as their blatant ability to love and feel empathy (a huge divergence from the book) while still being treated as inferior and disposable objects is a comment on how we do that to Other humans without blinking.

though also, they can project a hologram, then solidify the hologram - but they can’t clean up the damn atmosphere? like really. I guess that can only be explained by an elite trying to stay on top by keeping capital firmly in their own hands. i was looking at those solar farms and just going....how is that bringing in any energy in this dust?

also the problem i have with Ryan Gosling as this lead dude who’s in love with his adjustable AI hologram is that i never buy him as capable of love in that way. ever. at all. (so possibly it’s the right choice? anyway this whole thing is creepy)

yeah it’s supposed to be like: lol this was just a fantasy

‘a sentimental skin job’ - evidence of funerary practice, of altruistic behaviour (of grief, of empathy?) he says sorry even though by society’s standards the robot’s owed no courtesy? then he thinks the dude ate the baby - like thats not more insulting

so what separates robots from humans is not - eating food, drinking liquor, getting hurt, feeling empathy - but the ability to reproduce??? (but doesnt he need to sleep?)

the argument really is that being born = having a soul? lol thats a crazy wall to build a society on but there’s been stupider and more arbitrary ones. again, maybe that’s the point

a LOT of product placement in this.

it keeps to the same formula though. an investigator who is forced to forego his own empathy to ‘do the job’. Meeting with the local robot company, meeting the secretary in charge made to appeal. etc. etc. i think that’s pretty cool.

this building is very pharaoic. great set

eyyy a reference to the book. a lil origami sheep (got what he wanted)

im getting the impression from this film that ‘androids’ haven’t got a metal thing in their body and they’re just clones. which honestly i also got that sense from the book so that makes sense

ah so the android was based on himself (he looks ryan gosling like? or can i not distinguish white guys?). and this one is based on the K’s configuration of Joi.

Naturally the android to be ‘inspected’ is a woman who gets to be naked and weak and shit.

‘Every leap of civilisation was built off the back of a disposable workforce’ - great. (the film does a good job being like: hm yeah but the world is shit now so how is that leap so super ?)

Yikes i mean uh i know it’s like a commentary on disposable bodies and people as chattel and women as ‘reproducers’ but they’re portraying him and all his  fuckin self-important self-righteous power-hungry megalomaniac rich bitch speeches as a fuckin sermon worth listening to

and if they don’t take him down in this film i will be mad.

and also i wanted to stab his eyes out the moment he put his hand on her belly but unfortunately i get the sense he’s going to stab HER

but well they’re still sticking with the book formula which is still clever, the Investigator being in love with some AI and then having to kill the android that looks just like her because the company doesn’t keep to the law and shit

- i hope they push just a lil bit different since they’ve clearly established the main premise of the book is the opposite in this film - androids DO have empathy, they DO dream of electric sheep (in this case, electric Joi)

I sure hope ‘Luv’ gets to murder Wallace for what he does to this baby android.

I know he’s a rapist capitalist sadist god complex creepbitch but goddamn i sure hope that the movie MEANT for that reading or i will be mad.

he literally did nothing but creep on a CHILD android and then murder her FOR NOTHING. wow. i’ve never wanted androids to take over and kill a human so badly before. This sure is the opposite of Terminator.

i liked mackenzie davis’ performance here.

‘am i the only one who can see the fuckin sunrise, here?’ uhhhh why are you shouting at the android? like, where the fuck are your human officers and bosses? i love how apparently a police boss can just drink on the job? bc sci fi noir. not that ryan gosling manages that. i JUST noticed that she has bare legs, and now they cut to putting them on display. this is going to end badly (im feeling like there’s going to be some sort of sexual power abuse. edit: she was testing his humanity and he deliberately failed teh test to stop her interest in him)

why the fuck would they implant that memory. (but he thinks that it might be real) (but then how would he have ended up there at the police station)

theres a lot of rain in this world

we now move onto the marginal humans that live in the waste, discarded. and how they destroyed without blinking by a marginal android operating on the orders of the richest man alive.

i have to say that watching this movie makes me so happy about trees and blue skies

the marginal children - processing the waste - sick, abused, enslaved.... here all white...supervisor...black. interesting choice. (all this suffering for ‘civilisation’ - the nickel for the colony ships - this is a lot more spicy than the book - a lot more realistic about who suffers and dies for that kind of thing)

starts to seem like he really is the kid - these ‘orphanage’ stairs look a lot like that memory

Gosling is great for this role bc he doesn’t really have to move his face. but god the pace of this film is so SLOW! had to skip a bit of his slow shuffle to the horse man. ‘ohhh i was a real child, from loving parents, oh no i killed my dad! after killing my mum through childbirth! fuck! im the child that im hunting! oh shit! hey i have a soul!’

you’re special because actually you had agency all along and you’ve been using it to murder people wink

i dont understand the AI bit in this. don’t understand why they would hide him with so much care that he’d know nothing about who he was and kill his dad. like. surely that wasn’t the idea. also if the AI is Wallace’s why can’t Luv hack it. also i really kind of dislike her male fantasy self.

I like this Doctor. she is very very sweet and lovely. i dont really know why nobody would come visit her.

so we can read memories, implant memories, project memories not photo realistically ACTUALLY realistically, we can construct memories from the imagination but we can’t -  i repeat - we can’t clean the damn atmosphere?? i mean yes yes yes this is... a perfect example of how capitalism will not necessarily put money into tech that is you know - a good idea for us all collectively but rather into something that can be sold but god DAMN

manipulation eyyyy. already exercising his freedom of mind

really. an android selling sex to an android??? what the fuck lol. it’s a clone implanted with fake memories selling sex to a clone. yeah yeah yeah society has deemed them inhuman purely because they were built but THE POINT IS THEY are human in literally every other sense and controls them through law and brain make-up and then eliminating everybody who grows their brains from baseline? (why are they even paid?? is that supposed to be pavlovian?)

i really don’t understand what this AI is about. i just can’t get over that this really doesn’t seem like a love story

he almost died and then this AI springs sex on him lol. i really. i just really don’t care for this story and that’s possibly because Ryan Gosling is just so fuckin bad at selling any kind of love story like his eyes are always SO DEAD

oh my god im only halfway. oh my god. THIS FILM IS ALMOST THREE HOURS LONG. jfc

this is such an extremely male fantasy it bores me to death. im  a dude who’s badass, powerful, controlled, SPECIAL, also told im special by my very humany AI gf who i installed exactly to my tastes, she desperately wants to have sex with me FOR ME because im just so cool and wonderful despite being so tortured and possessing eyes like a dead fish. 

let’s spend 20 mins on undressing another two women in this film as we, the viewers, and i, the male protagonist just stand and watch. let’s re-emphasise how she’s just a self-learning ai

there’s light? warm light?

and then they have the women fight each other ? cool cool cool. im not saying it’s not realistic, im just saying it’s boring. i thought Mackenzi was going to proposition K for the resistance

still not sure why Luv hasn’t hacked her already. first time the romance feels slightly real

I guess Luv is indoctrinated. i still like police boss don’t hurt her. i mean obv she’s terrible but so is everybody else. she cried...again. so she kills from anger - not because she had to. she kills her the same way Wallace killed the android. i’d love to read a lil analysis about this. later. women-on-women violence

oh she really DID know where he was but kept it from Luv. why? was she willing to die for him? no. her dignity? maybe. The women in this are mysteries. also why is he still allowed to use the car and drone when he’s suspended. that’s pretty fuckin stupid.

hmm giant statues of naked women WITH heels on posed sexily and unthreateningly. im just saying. this is all super psychoanalysis galaxy brain.

gasp there is a real live bee. thats a book call back

and a classic perfectly intact building

HALF OF THIS FILM IS JUST RYAN GOSLING SHUFFLING THROUGH STRIKING LANDSCAPES AND SETS FROWNING JUST SLIGHTLY

it’s got the opposite problem of the book: it is SLOW AS FUCK

how does he know what a piano is

wow K’s really good at de-escalating. why not just be honest. so he got shot, blown up and then? still fine walking. lol they just gotta show off that he’s still a bladerunner! (where the fuck did that name come from...)

here you’re bleeding in your face. ok? he’s also bleeding from the shotwound maybe? that was definitely implied that he got shot.

and K’s also really bad at asking questions lol. thats because all he ever did was shoot people. anyway this is boring again, these two fighting about nothing - some kind of testerony bullshit about zero stakes - but apparently just screaming at the man will help

also im not sure why he assumed Deckard was the father.

harrison ford delivered that well.

‘to strangers’ i fuckin hate ryan gosling i don’t know if its because hes a bad actor or because his interpretation is so shit

so Deckard left, Rachel died in childbirth (really? lol. god do i want to fuckin consume a woman’s story about goddamn dying in childbirth) and Sapper left him at the orphanage? but how the fuck did he then get slotted into police service all official like??? doesnt make sense except Mackenzie’s network’s got something to do with it

ok so it was implied but now confirmed taht androids come with enhancements

oh nooooo she kills his love :( awww. i can’t feel for him at all lol

but she almost kills the kid she so badly wanted to find

i wonder why she’s so sadistic. probably because she learned from wallace. but all the womb - woman - beautifying - controlled by man - in fear of him - in thrall of him - killing other women again and again sadistically while killing men coldly is uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

i just dont care for it you know

also this AI woman turned out to have NO role in the movie except to lavish attention on this dude (make him seem capable of love except ryan gosling can’t move his face) and then be fridged lol

so why does she let him live? fuckin bullshit

look, i like the aesthetic and the world but god the director is wayy too in love with it - SPEED THIS SHIT UP

so actually - if Rachel died in childbirth how is she holding the baby in the pic

“That baby meant that we are more than just slaves”

This could be really cool - like - taking back the means of reproduction!!! This is how we will become a PEOPLE. Freedom through female fertility as a symbol. But because uhhhhh this is all a Male Fantasy it feels decidedly icky and not like that at all. Like, why did they make the kid male? That...makes no sense? if Rachel was the only one who could bear children bc of her ...genes? Why the fuck would you centre the story on somebody who cannot take up that legacy, cannot be that symbol? It’s totally weird

OHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH!!!!! ok lol.

he thought he was the kid but the girl is....but uh then why was there an exact copy. as a red herring? THEN HOW DID HE GET from the orphanage to the fuckin police???

Is Luv supposed to be the girl though? because they keep killing all the female characters so it’s like, uhuh. it’s not mackenzie bc like thatd be silly huh. i mean it would be stupid but they could pull that

if they think he can get at deckard, why not get him to shoot wallace

how did he get a fuckin police car lololololol

ah these super high tech hoovercars have zero defenses against ???  what is he even shooting at them?

Luv’s actress does something very interesting to her voice when she gets emotional or shouts orders - kind of monstrous and inhuman

well he certainly hit them perfectly

WHERE DID HE GET THE POLICE CAR?

“I’m the best one” yeah - i.e. so I cannot be killed by my master as he’s made me do to so many

why do they always INSIST on men killing women by choke. don’t be so fucking stupid. if she can push his head under water she can punch his lights out. SHE LITERALLY JUST HAD A KNIFE - SHE COULD HAVE STABBED HIM IN THE EYE

why would she waste air grunting. she doesn’t even fake him out. i know they’re human so thats counter-instinctual but like, she’s supposed to be an incredible fighter. it’s the same thing with how they have her do all these kicks and he stays standing because women = agility, men = endurance, and then he punches her once and she goes flying. THEY”RE ANDROIDS HARRY. WHY WOULD YOU BUILD GENDER BULLSHIT IN???

so how many women did we see die extremely explicitly and/or aesthetically and/or plot/significantly so far? raechal (childbirth), the android baby (one cut to the womb), the police boss (one cut to the womb), AI girl (one crunch), Luv (one shot and one strangle-drown).

Ryan Gosling can get shot, blown up, killer punched 7 times, get blown up again, have his lung get perforated by schrapnel, be kicked to shit 5 times. he gets a bandage on his nose and takes it off again so thats a total reset apparently. He’s then shot again, kicked to shit again, sliced in the hand, stabbed in a place thats clearly deadly, half drowned - and he STILL KILLS THIS ANDROID WOMAN. HE STILL KILLS THE BEST WALLACE HAS EVER MADE.

WHAT?!!??!?!!

the men get shot from a distance, bombed from a distance, shot from a distance.

im sorry but this sucks.

and then ryan gosling swims all the way to land.

lol why does this script try to convince me that in this advanced fuckin tech society they wouldn’t be able to check for Deckard’s body??? and then he brings him to a place that’s monitored??

oh right the Doctor was the daughter. so.....they lied about her auto-immune disease? she knew that she had given him her memory? why did they do that? im still not clear on that???

how tf and whytf would they send the girl to the orphanage and let her get beat up by some boys, and only then send her to some perfect chamber

ryan gosling always plays such emotionally constipated characters - they never wanna have anything good

THAT’S IT!?!! they’re not going to explain shit?? they’re implying K just died?? leaving Deckard to get picked up by police and Wallace to find the Doctor and and THEY DIDN’T EVEN KILL CREEP EXTROARDINAIRE FUCKING WALLACE???

All they did was kill the abused slave by fucking choke?????