Blade Runner 2049

Bit, maybe this is perfect.  Wasn't the first one the same way?  I was a kid when the first one came out, with Star Wars fresh on my mind and I didn't give it 10 minutes.  It wasn't until 20 years later I fell in love with it.  
 
I have never really understood the action mindset after I got out of my teens.  I always wanted a deep story for the action to compliment.  To me, action is pointless if there's no drama behind it, which requires story and that takes time and talent.  
 
We are also spoiled with the glory that is "television" right now.  The long form nature of series and the quality we are getting today makes movies feel too rushed and hyperactive, for me.  I almost don't care much for movies at all.  Almost...
 
But I've been waiting for this one...I hope to see it with the same sensory alterations you enjoyed.  

I seem to recall that the first one was also a slow starter. I read that the studio was hoping for $50 million in it's first weekend, but I wonder how long it took the original to make that much (inflation adjusted) money?
Plus, Blade Runner kept coming back to theaters every few years and gained more popularity over time.
 
The critics's  blurbs in the ads are positive (I don't think there would be a "boring Sci-Fi dreck" blurb in the trailers, though) but since when have the critics ever affected the sales numbers?

I'm really looking forward to seeing 2049. Probably over the weekend...

Big fan of the original and I make a point of seeing it at least every 3 to 4 years. An absolute classic as far as I'm concerned.

I usually shed a year at the end of Roy Batty's speech at the end *sniff*

Quite under-rated, Rutger Hauer. Terrifying in 'The Hitcher'. Enjoyed his cameo in 'Sin City' too.

Slightly OT, but related since this is about the original Bladerunner musical score.  Check this out (~8 minutes in length):
 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lTpIqVw37y
 
This guy really knows his synthesizer stuff.  Very impressive IMO.

jamesg1213
Quite under-rated, Rutger Hauer. Terrifying in 'The Hitcher'. Enjoyed his cameo in 'Sin City' too.

I thought every actor was a cameo in Sin City, no?

Hi,
 
I'm actually hoping they show the Van Gogh film here in Portland ... I think it will be much more interesting than the "sequel" ... to one of the prettiest films ever made, when one mixes all its music, cinematography, direction, details ... and little things all over that are just ... amazing.
 
I'm going to catch this sequel, and likely in the big screen, but I will be honest with you ... if it does not stand up, I'm going to cram it ... there were way too many things that were beautifully done on the other film, and so far all the publicity in this, is just a bunch of words about the story, and no details about the rest of the film, and that means that ... it's not likely to be half as far out as the other one.
 
One last thing ... when the original came out, so many film critics were thrown off that the film was badly rated, but it was one of those films that stuck to people's memories - the right kind of people, not the jaded film reviewers -- and the film became a classic within 10 years, when it finally caught up with its money, and it's likely that the DVD market is what made this film ... because since that first day of its release, it has been monstrous. 
 
I am not sure that the sequel will live that long. While I like Hans Zimmer and a lot of his work, I am not sure that he can do something like Vangelis did, that helped the film so much, and was so well used. Hans Zimmer, however, worked with Nicolas Roeg several times, and he was one of the very first folks that showed MTV what to do a few years later ... and Nic was a part of "PERFORMANCE", which had one of the first and most famous videos ... Mick Jagger doing "Memo from Turner" (and Turner is the main character in the film -- Jagger!) .Hans came to this film later, and the likelihood is that he just did fill ins here and there, but in terms of adjusting it, to even come close to the work done by Vangelis ... this is already a difference from the original, some of which was choreographed and written around the music more than a handful of moments. BIG DIFFERENCE. 

jamesg1213

Moshkito
 ...
 While I like Jan Hammer and a lot of his work ...
...

 
Jan Hammer isn't involved with the soundtrack, Hans Zimmer is though.

 
Corrected ... unintentional brain fart at age 66!

bjornpdx
I saw Blade Runner when it first came out and saw it again recently.
Kind of a shock to see that Roy Baty's "incept" date was Jan 2016. That was last year!  Where are all those
flying cars?

Can't tell ya Bjorn, the answer would just go right over your head! 
 
(The "real" answer is that the Government began brainwashing people to be stupider to the point where they can barely drive a non-flying car!  You live in Portland, you've seen plenty of evidence of this I'm sure!  )

Worth noting that the source book for Bladerunner, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' by Philip K Dick, was published in 1968, but set in 1992!
 
I suppose with the 'space-race' in full flight, anything seemed possible.

Watched it.
 
Sitting on the fence...

Saw BR2049 this past Sunday evening.  Overall, BR2049 is awesome, epic, dark, sad, lonely, and definitely respected the original.  Ryan Gosling was great.  Joi (Ana de Armas) was adorable.  I am a fan of the original masterpiece from 1982.  However, perhaps it was because it was a Sunday evening, but there was a total of 8 of us in the theater.  That's pretty abysmal.
 
My biggest beef was, and remains to this day, the audio.  It sounded like crap!  Hans Zimmer, despite his professionalism, experience, and technique really phoned this one in, IMO.
 

 
Distortion...and lots of it!  The theater had the volume cranked a little too loud overall, but HOLY BOTTOM-END, BATMAN!  The speakers were over-driven to the point of clipping.  Was it on purpose to perhaps be "edgy?"  When I heard a character's voice become nastily distorted (i.e. big-time crunch) during a big, low-end part, I knew at that point that "Nope, definitely not on purpose!"

So I got on Youtube and listened to a few of the tracks.  While none clipped in my headphones as harshly as I heard in the theater, all of them had HUGE, OVERPOWERING BOTTOM-END...so much in fact that I would question everything that is "right" with mixing/mastering.  A bottom-end so big, that when analyzed, has energy 60Hz and lower almost up to 0dB. And evvverrrythiiiinnng had bass in the movie.  Thankfully no hackneyed bass-drops, but a flying car that weighs maybe 3,000 pounds should, IMO, sound a little zippy or jet-turbine-like and not like a continuous thunderstorm inside the hull of an oil tanker ship!
 
Furthermore, it's super muddy.  It was as if Hans used multiple instances of LoAir, RBass on the bass channels, creating that muddy-as-Hell-wobbly-subharmonic-crap while over-driving tape saturation on the Master which affected the mids/highs...including voice-overs, which seem to have been completely ignored during the mix-down to film.  I mean, come on!  Hans Zimmer is like this big name in everything, right?  He even has his own "Master Class" ("...There's a question...oooh, kind of a dodgy question!").  Maybe he gets paid by the plugin?  Ridiculous!

Overall, the end of my rant will say that the low-end in Blade Runner 2049 is absolutely killing the overall quality of the score in general and definitely killing the sound systems in theaters!  Maybe this could be a contributing factor in its poor ticket sales?  At this point, I hope the Blu-Ray release will have remastered audio, because IMO, it desperately needs it.

The volume was too loud in the theater I saw it in, too. Not to the point of distortion, but certainly above the sweet spot. Given that theater systems are calibrated, I'm assuming the hot mix was intentional.
 
It probably wasn't Hans Zimmer's idea; the most painful parts were low-frequency sound effects. In contrast, one complaint I had about Wonder Woman was the music wasn't up enough in the mix. It would seem Herr Zimmer has little influence over the mixing process.
 
And to be fair to Hans, he was brought in very late in the game, just six weeks before the film's release and after most of the music had already been composed and recorded. The official credits don't even mention the original composer, but I've read that a total of four composers contributed music.
 
They could have saved a lot of time and money - and kept true to the original - by just hiring Vangelis to start with.
 
The list of audio engineers is long enough to form two or three softball teams. While both of the mixers named have extensive filmographies, few of their past projects stand out for sound (Kung Fu Panda 3, Monster Trucks). One of them does list Apocalypse Now among his credits, but that was a long time ago and back then he was probably the intern who brought coffee.