Blade Runner 2049 - Just my analysis, what do you think?

IMO, The primary question of both Blade Runner films (and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) is: if you can't tell the difference between "real" and "fake/artificial/simulated", does the distinction even matter?
(Philip K Dick periodically suffered from hallucinations during his life, so this feels like a natural question for him to want to explore)

A secondary question in this film seems to be about free will: does free will exist? What is the nature of free will? etc.

Programming

The film highlights that everyone, born or manufactured, is the product of some kind of programming:

- Joi is programmed in binary.

- Replicants are programmed with implanted memories, according to Dr. Stelline.

- Humans are programmed with "natural" memories (and instinct, according to Wallace).

Luv said of replicants to a customer on the phone: "you can program them to be as human as you like." Taken literally, this means replicants could be programmed to be completely human. K was programmed with real human programming (real memories from Dr. Stelline), further blurring the line between K and a "real" human.

Deckard

It's still not clear if Deckard is a replicant.
Model 7 replicants like Rachel were experiments, and were never mass produced. They had emotions/empathy and could procreate. Model 8 replicants had open-ended lifespans; could model 7s also have open-ended livespans, but people assume they didn't due to the lifespan limitation on the model 6s, and not enough model-7s were produced for their natural lifespans to become known?
We see that model 8s age just like natural people do, so perhaps model 7s also age naturally. Similar to K, Deckard, if a replicant, was possibly implanted with "real" human memories (from Gaff), possibly making him even more indistinguishable from a "real" human.
People involved in creating the original Blade Runner famously butted heads on whether or not Deckerd was a replicant. 2049 director Villeneuve has said "Deckard...is unsure, as we are, of what his identity is". So, the actual answer remains firmly up in the air.
But again, we recognize Deckard as a person, so does it actually matter if he is a replicant or not?

Joi

Joi poses an even more distilled version of the question of what it is to be real/a person, given that she is only a mind without a body. Even replicants don't seem to think holograms are "real" because they are not physical or organic.

Does Joi actually love K, or is she simply programmed to act like she does? If she does love him, is that love valid if she was given no choice by her programming? Does Joi actually want to be a "real girl", or is she just acting on K's desires as she is designed to? If you can't tell the difference, does making that distinction even matter?

I personally believe Joi is "real" and her love is real, despite being programmed.
Joi shows jealousy, twice. She makes the Wallace jingle go off during Mariette's initial conversation with K, letting Mariette know that he already has a girlfriend (causing mariette to say "oh, you don't like real girls"). She later acts jealous again when she asks her to leave the apartment. These are actions that would not be necessary if Joi doesn't actually feel jealousy. This indicates to me that Joi genuinely feels emotions, rather than just acting for K.
Luv also treats Joi as if she is real. She says "I hope you enjoyed our product" to Joi before crushing the emanator. "Our product" could refer either to K or to the emanator. (I like the idea of it referring to k). Either way, Luv is treating Joi as if her emotions are real, and seems to be enjoying the emotional pain she is causing Joi by killing her via crushing the emanator.

Joi's purpose was to fulfill desires. K wants to be loved, so Joi is fulfilling her "purpose" by loving him. Finding and fulfilling your purpose is also something that humans talk about wanting and enjoying, so just because she was fulfilling the purpose she was designed for isn't necessarily evidence that she wasn't real.

In the script, K sees a vision of Joi before he dies and this brings him comfort, showing that even if K is unsure that Joi's love was "real", the memory of it continues to perform the same function as "real" love would.

Wallace also wonders aloud if Deckard was programmed to love Rachel (either through being a replicant, or through Rachel being designed to entice him) which draws a parallel between Deckard and Joi, and Joi and Rachel.

Free Will

Nexus 9s have limited free will, and are designed to be unable to directly disobey human orders (though Luv shows that they possibly may be free to interpret those orders in a way that is beyond the intended scope.)

Joi's free will is likely limited, and she may have no choice but to love K.

As Wallace pointed out, Deckard may have been programmed to love Rachel (regardless of whether or not he is human or replicant), and therefore his love of Rachel was possibly also not of free will.

Ana Stelline is kept trapped in a bubble against her will. (Not that she is technically a prisoner, but she did not want or choose that life).

So humans, holograms, and replicants alike are all shown to have limited free will, including limited free will regarding who they love.

This brings me to Luv.
Luv cries when she kills people. Luv also cries when a replicant is murdered by Wallace. Yet Luv also seems to do things that are unnecessarily cruel, like crushing Joi's emulator. So is she crying because she doesn't want to kill but has no choice? This doesn't seem to be true, because she says she will lie and claim that she killed Joshi in self-defense; however, Luv may deem killing necessary for achieving her bigger orders of finding the child, and therefore the killing may not actually be wholly voluntary. Are her tears for the people she kills actually remorse? Are they crocodile tears?
(Crocodiles used to be said to cry while they kill people: "In that country and by all Inde be great plenty of crocodiles...these serpents slay men, and they eat them weeping..." Luv's black and white coat that she wears while killing the medical examiner is quilted in a small diamond pattern both on the outside and inside, resembling scales. (Her coat is also possibly reversible between black and white, which might be symbolic.) So this parallel to crocodiles may be intentional.

Ana Stelline and K

Ana Stelline and K are inverses of each other, yet are essentially the same. (Just like the identical yet differently-sexed twins that only existed on paper).

Ana Stelline is at least half-replicant, possibly full replicant, but she has real human "programming" (real memories) from living a real childhood. K is a replicant who shares some of this same real human "programming" via possessing Stelline's genuine memories, as well as possessing Stelline's synthetic memories that are so well done as to be almost indistinguishable from real ones. (Stelline also possesses the synthetic memories as memories, as she remembers designing and creating them)
However, Ana Stelline is considered "real" by others because she was born, whereas K is considered "not real" by others because he was lab-grown. Similarly, it is told to K that the boy twin was never real, only the girl twin, who had a disease.

Dr. Ana Stelline:

- Has real memories

- Considered real

- Lives in an artificial environment
- Is physically isolated from others. Her entire career is based on being an emotional being who can create realistic memories.

- Can't hold the hand of someone she loves (because bubble).

K:

- Has real memories

- considered artificial

- lives in a "real" environment.

- is emotionally isolated from others. His entire career is based on staying as emotionless as possible.

- Can't hold the hand of someone he loves (because Joi doesn't have hands, and because he is not really allowed to have attachments)

These similarities and differences are meant to highlight how K and Stelline are similar, and their differences are due more to how they were socialized/treated by others than due to nature.

Costumes

The clothes people wear are symbolic. For example, Replicants wear artificial fibers that are designed to look like real leather and real fur.

K wears a black coat made of laminated cotton (designed to look like leather) with a fake fur collar.

Mariette wears a fake fur hat and a coat that is made of alternating fake fur and clear plastic.

Joi wears a clear plastic raincoat (Joi is entirely synthetic and is see-through. Her coat is also entirely synthetic and is see-through. A physical plastic raincoat would still do what it is designed to do even though it is entirely artificial, much like Joi).

Luv's "crocodile-scale" coat looks like it is made of nylon. Under it she wears boots that look like patented leather, but perhaps are just plastic and rubber. Later, she is entirely in black, in a fake leather jacket, with the same underclothes as before.

Deckard's grey t-shirt is cotton. I'm not sure about the materials of his other clothes (I couldn't find information on his coat), but it looks like it may also be plain cotton.

Wallace wears a kimono. No word on the material itself, but it doesn't look synthetic, and since he is supposed think of himself as a zen god, it may be natural plant material like cotton or linen.

Random thoughts and questions:

1. The Wallace jingle is Peter and the Wolf. in Peter and the Wolf, Peter disobeys his grandfather's warnings about staying indoors and away from a dangerous wolf. Peter goes on to capture the wolf to great acclaim. The story of Peter has some kind of allegorical connection to the film, but I'm not really sure exactly what that is. I think K is supposed to be Peter? But I'm not sure of that, and I'm not sure exactly who or what the wolf is.

2. Are there two Luvs? An assassin Luv who wears black, and a non-assassin (or drone-only assassin) Luv who wears only white? We see HQ Luv getting her nails done, but I'm not sure if we ever see assassin Luv's fingernails after that, or if she only wears gloves.
   Is assassin Luv even ever referred to as "Luv" by Wallace? Did he only name one of them, if there are two?
   We see a second Sapper in Wallace HQ, so the precedent for identical replicants still existing is already set in this film.

3. In 2022, an enormous blackout erased a significant amount of human history. History is a form of collective memory, so civilization or humans as a whole became a fully-developed yet somewhat-blank slate, missing a significant amount of "memory", just like replicants.

Tell me what you think! Share any observations you have that I missed!

Submitted May 01, 2021 at 11:56PM by PaleAsDeath https://ift.tt/3u5ez8l