[MaZa]

I have seen Blade Runner only once YEARS ago. But I just didnt really get it. Perhaps I should watch it again some day. But so far I have to vote Matrix. It was simply awesome movie in both entertaiment value and also storywise. Too bad its sequels butchered the whole serie IMHO. They were good, but only in entertaiment department. Original Matrix was so much more.

 

[davidhunternyc]

^^^ Yes, I agree that the sequels to the Matrix undermined the whole series. As soon as the real world became another level of the Matrix, I felt that the entire series became mannered. Whereas in the first movie, their was the real world and the world of the Matrix. It was a simple and elegant premise.

 

[captainzoli]

For me, Blade Runner is a far better movie than The Matrix. I enjoyed the first Matrix movie, but really felt like summer blockbuster. I have always felt that Blade Runner works on so many different levels, from sci-fi action to commentary on what it is to be human and the human condition.

 

[davidhunternyc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by captainzoli /img/forum/go_quote.gif For me, Blade Runner is a far better movie than The Matrix. I enjoyed the first Matrix movie, but really felt like summer blockbuster. I have always felt that Blade Runner works on so many different levels, from sci-fi action to commentary on what it is to be human and the human condition.

One thing I wanted to let you know about the Matrix, is that it wasn't a summer blockbuster at all. In fact, when it opened, it was a sleeper in the movie theaters and it was pretty much a bust. I don't know how it happened, but I saw the movie on the third day after it opened here in NYC. I had never heard of it and I didn't know what it was about. I can't even remember for the life of me why my friend and I had chosen to see this film. He had never heard of it either. Besides us there were maybe 4 or 5 other people in the entire theater. For New York, that is pretty amazing considering the lack of theater venues and the crowds at most of them. Somehow intuitively I just knew, in the scene where Agent Smith drives the truck into the telephone booth to kill Trinity, that she disappeared inside the phone. I was hooked and I found the disappearance to be an extremely intriguing idea. Anyway, after the movie I was just stunned for days. I guess what made the film more pertinent is that it wasn't advertised and nobody knew about it. It was something that I discovered on my own and it felt private. For the next few months I became an apostle and told everyone I knew to see the movie. However, everyone I told had never heard of it and most didn't see it. The few that did became converts.

 

[Zodduska]

I was lucky enough to be working at a movie theater with some friends when the Matrix was released and we watched it the night before all by ourselves.. it was an epic experience while eating nachos and smoking in the theater, but the movie relies too heavily on Michael Bay-ish action and flash to be able to compete with a classic like Blade Runner.

IMHO Keanu is terrible, Ghost in the Shell is a much better film and a more realistic realization of the same ideas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arainach /img/forum/go_quote.gif Blade Runner here. While the first Matrix was a great movie, the second and third were so horrible that they even retroactively degrade the quality of the first, unfortunately. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a true Sci-Fi classic, and Blade Runner was a well-done adaptation of it.

QFT

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xxsphshadowxx /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'd probably go with the Matrix. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was much better then the movie Bladerunner.

Indeed, I am highly ambivalent about Blade Runner. PKD was not a great writer by any rational criteria, but was (I think) a good ideas man and if I had never read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep I suspect I would like Blade Runner (in all 3 versions I own including the bloated 4 disc set

) a good deal more. PKD has been the victim of a substantial number of book-to-film crimes and is not in a position to defend himself.

I thought A Scanner Darkly was the best PKD adaptation I have seen , the mood and presentation suit the material pretty well.

Screamers (Second variety) was a bit meh
Total Recall (We can remember it for you wholesale) was okay
Paycheck was wholly off-beam
Minority Report misssed the whole point completely
Impostor was not bad but rather stretched
Next (The Golden Man) was a bloody abomination (Cris is not human or benign, that is the whole point)

Now a film vesion of "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" would be worth waiting for...

 

[grawk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles /img/forum/go_quote.gif Indeed, I am highly ambivalent about Blade Runner. PKD was not a great writer by any rational criteria,

Mileage varies.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk /img/forum/go_quote.gif Mileage varies.

Sure, it is just my opinion. I have a lot of affection for PKD, he is my favourite author by a long way ( I am re-reading The Three Stigmata at the moment) , but PKD wanders , his books often stutter to a halt unresolved, his prose is highly variable and his characters often wafer thin.

None of this really matters as it is the underlying ideas that are so fascinating.

 

[grawk]

Great writers are often given leeway with their style and structure that lesser authors aren't...

 

[synaesthetic]

The Matrix is mediocre cyberpunk at best, coated with a thick veneer of Hong Kong blood opera.

Blade Runner is more true to the genre, and an absolute classic Harrison Ford movie.

 

[frank99]

I love Matrix, especially like the idea of the virtual computer generated world that plug human in. I still ask myself sometimes that how do I know I am not in the Matrix like that? maybe god create the world just like the Mainframe create the matrix?

 

[davidhunternyc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by frank99 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I love Matrix, especially like the idea of the virtual computer generated world that plug human in. I still ask myself sometimes that how do I know I am not in the Matrix like that? maybe god create the world just like the Mainframe create the matrix?

...doesn't sound like mediocre cyberpunk to me!

 

[synaesthetic]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the first movie (but not the sequels; they were horrible).

 

[davidhunternyc]

O.K., so I went to Netflix to check out Ghost in the Shell and I saw the preview. I didn't know it was going to be animation. However, in the 30 second preview I saw a couple of scenes that looks like the Matrix copied from. One; the battle scene in the lobby, and two; when Trinity is falling from a building on her back as she is shooting an agent. Ahh, so you say, this makes the Matrix an inferior film. Who cares what I say, Picasso said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal."