I enjoy writing little reviews of movies that I have seen because I don’t want my consciousness to function like an old style overhead projector where you have plastic rolls on both sides and the spent content just ends up getting wound up and chucked. In other words, if I make an active attempt at digesting the material, I will commit it to memory in a way I find appropriate.
Why Luv? I think there are literally 1000 ways to write about “Blade Runner” and how it relates to its sequel. I chose to focus on her because I find her more interesting than other characters throughout both films. I won’t speculate as to why the casting brought Sylvia Hoeks to the fore because it is beyond the scope of this little post. Sometimes casting choices are made for very specific reasons like bridging cultures and languages with symbolic figures. Instead, I will cover why her character Luv is so ding danged interesting. She is actually fulfilling the role that Rachael filled for Tyrell. She is sort of a greeter, business manager and goon all rolled into one. Rachael was just allowed to hang out with Tyrell as a receptionist. One could say that this is a sign of the times and a woman in her role would have more responsibilities these days and that is fine. However, she seems to be an upgrade, an expendable upgrade.
OMG did she display emotion. When the newborn woman was being killed, she cried. When she was squeezing the highball glass in Madame’s hand, she cried. It reminds me of how Roy and Pris kissed or how Roy allowed himself to get sad about death but at the same time was unsure. Luv may be displaying emotion now because it is more focused, because she is actually better at it over years of replicant refinement. I like this idea. What is it that bothers her the most? Death of her own kind it seems. She wasn’t shy in saying to Madame that she wanted to make a future with a hybrid replicant-human bridge. She supported life and the preservation of it while K was being asked to destroy that very same bridge. She had little spells of arrogance and showmanship but they were great and still fit. When she killed Coco and Rachael2, she was cold and calculating. Her general demeanor range was apparent, which elevated her emotional moments.
She treated K like a brother otherwise she would have killed him when he was down just after Luv destroyed K’s AI Joi. Or, you could look at it like she wanted K to focus on where he should be placing his affections as she took out the competition. One way that Luv was able to track K was through the AI because she had a realization once Joi went “off the grid” and could not locate K as easily.
Luv was not really a villain in the classic sense because she was fighting for life although she has no idea what Wallace would do if he found the hybrid child. Her name actually was brought up as significant by K but he basically said “you were important enough to Wallace to be given a name”. Neither one of them explored the semantics of the name though which also could be seen as symbolic throughout the movie. Why name her “love”? Hard to say but it is not surprising to see the concept of Love as secondary to cold scientific experimentation and calculation. And, possibly because of that subordination, the life span of “Luv” was shortened. Culturally, the term “Love” as a term of endearment to refer to another person is used far more in Europe than in other English speaking regions and this could have been done to target European audiences as the director is French-Canadian.
Familial love seemed to triumph in the end but there is no real reason why. K grew to appreciate Deckard over time and maybe his memory implants had an impact on his actions. By visiting his daughter in the end, Deckard is bringing the very danger to her that he sought to avoid when she was a child. Obviously Wallace ends up escaping and he can make as many Luvs as he wants. Unless K somehow recovers from his injuries, there will be no one around to protect both the father and daughter from future attacks. If there is no 3rd movie, and I hope there won’t be in so many ways, we can just assume that Wallace is going to be a nice guy and let them live happily ever after.
It took 35 years to make #2 and I think it should take another 35 to make #3. Maybe in the mean time Hollywood will address some of its script writing issues like how to account for the inability to track people in the future. They seemed to have gotten away with diminishing the connection to Asia in this movie and many could see this as an easy way out. You could say the entire continent died out in the famine before Wallace rose to power but there are enough Asian writing characters visible in the film to indicate that at least 3 languages survived. The integration of a Somali speaker in the movie also indicates that Africa may have made it through time but that can’t be said with any accuracy. In my opinion, it says more about casting and that choice reached back to the US Midwest, all the way to the Somali community of Minnesota.
Maybe genetically designed people end up dreaming of wolves dressed as sheep. When K was looking for anomalies in the genetic sequences, the computer was speaking Japanese to him. Why would that particular technology be of Japanese origin and why did it speak Japanese to him but understand English as part of K’s usage of the voice interface? Why Johnnie Walker Black label? And why was he driving a Peugeot as a standard issue LAPD vehicle? Feel free to comment below or send me a message through social media.
