Day: March 4, 2021

…it never manifested, not even a little bit. Just remember that.

Obviously a fascinating cult film and a phenomenal atmosphere thing, but the perpetual nightscape, constant acid rain, smokestacks belching fireballs into the black muck, too many people, vast disparities between street culture and high-rise corporate sanctums, flying taxis, huge video billboards, Times Square meets corporate Bangkok meets smoggy Seoul meets endless squalor….Blade Runner was basically over-imagined, over-produced and quite delusional.

Three and 1/3 years ago: Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner milieu — nightmarish, gloom-ridden, poisoned — is obviously a trip in itself and great to wallow in, but the sprawl of real-world Los Angeles has exposed that realm as absolute noir-fetish fanboy bullshit.

“Blade Runner 2049 is, of course, a prophecy of ecological run to come, and that’s where we’re definitely heading with criminals like Scott Pruitt running the EPA,” I wrote on 10.7.17, “but BR49‘s idea of what Los Angeles will look like 32 years hence is almost surely just as ludicrous as Scott’s.

The twin Blade Runner realms have sunk their visions into our heads and will probably never be dissipated. But facts are facts. Los Angeles of 2021 doesn’t bear the faintest resemblance to Ridley Scott’s nightmare city. Because 39 years after the release of Scott’s film, today’s Los Angeles isn’t even accidentally reflected by Scott’s toxic metropolis. Air quality and Long Beach oil refineries aside, there isn’t even a coincidental depiction that rings true.

George Orwell’s 1984 wasn’t validated by reality 37 years ago, but it has been semi-validated since, at least as far as everyone having lost their privacy and paying obsessive attention to Big Brother-ish Twitter banshees doing their level best to intimidate, condemn and control.

But the Los Angeles of today isn’t even suggested by Scott’s toxic metropolis. Air quality and Long Beach oil refineries aside, there isn’t even a coincidental depiction that rings true.

Excerpt: “Where did the Blade Runner universe actually come from? From legitimate fears of industrial ruination, of course, but also from the despairing, fatalistic moods and attitudes that once resided inside Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Hampton Fancher, David Peoples, Jordan Cronenweth, and, one could argue today, from the devotional geeks who regard the handed-down Blade Runner vision as absolute gospel, and have now made a film about that devotion.”

Kelly Marie Tran, whose Rose Tico character in The Last Jedi (2017) and The Rise of Skywalker (’19) struck me as engaged and agreeable, is on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter. The core conveyance of Rebecca Sun’s profile piece is basically “okay, that was tough and people can be cruel, but I’m back and all the stronger for it.”

The title is “The Resurrection of Kelly Marie Tran: On Surviving Star Wars Bullying, the Pressures of Representation, and Raya and the Last Dragon.”

The basic paraphrased message of the piece is (a) “the fanboys tried to hurt me and actually did for a while, but I bounced back and here I am”, and (b) “I’ve also dropped a noticable amount of weight in order to look good in sequined gowns while at the same time telling the Instagram bullies to go eff themselves.”

Why exactly was Tran subjected to so much racist and sexist online harassment by Star Wars neckbeards? Esquire‘s Dom Nero posted the following on 6.5.18:

“Since the earliest promos for The Force Awakens, members of this testosterone-fueled community have flooded the internet with their regressive criticisms that Star Wars seems to no longer be a white male-led franchise. In spite of virtually every movie in the new Disney iteration of the series being headlined by white actors, many fans feel that there is a ‘social justice warrior’ or ‘liberal’ conspiracy within the new Star Wars films — and it’s no surprise that this level of unrest has come about only when Kathleen Kennedy, a woman, stepped in to be the new president of Lucasfilm.

“These fans were especially, as they would say, triggered by Tran’s character in The Last Jedi, namely because she is (a) an Asian-American of Vietnamese descent, b) a woman, and (c) not the [right kind of] Hollywood female body type.”

More or less delighted by the 1.6.21 sacking of the Capitol building because of his sociopathic obstinacy and totalitarian strong man instincts, ex-President Trump didn’t want to send the the D.C. National Guard over to the Capitol. He conveyed his position to various loyalists and flunkies — particularly acting defense secretary Christopher Miller and Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, the younger brother of rabid Trump dog and acolyte Michael Flynn.

And this, according to a 3.3.21 Washington Post article by Dana Milbank titled “Did the Pentagon wait for Trump’s approval before defending the Capitol?“, is fundamentally why it took three hours and 19 minutes for any help to show up.

I thought this was generally known, at least among those with a basic inclination to consider facts. Yesterday Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, discussed how it all went down from his perspective. He received authorization to assist Capitol police at 5:08 pm.

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