Tears In The Rain
February 11, 2017 8:46 AM   Subscribe

Tears In The Rain is an 11 minute short film set in the Blade Runner universe, a fan-made prequel of sorts. The Creators Project has an article about it, if you like to read those sorts of things.
posted by hippybear (18 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
For the budget, they did an amazing job at the look and feel of the world. I only wish that someone among the numerous executive producers had taken another look at the script. One more draft could have cleaned it up enough to not actually have entirely unnecessary contradictions with Blade Runner. A prequel with a replicant that has implanted memories but is a Nexus 3? Tiny details that didn't even need to be wrong.
posted by tclark at 8:51 AM on February 11, 2017


Where is a Nexus 3 even mentioned in Blade Runner? There's no reason to believe that memories weren't being planted in replicants. What made Rachel so hard to suss out as being a Nexus 6 is that she had memories from a real person (Tyrell's niece) implanted in her. Earlier Nexus models could have had a set of memories implanted that were sort of standard issue, mix and match cards for each replicant, etc.

I'm curious to know what you think the contradictions are.
posted by hippybear at 9:00 AM on February 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Simple little take on the "Have you ever accidentally retired a human?" question. Very well done.

I could have done without the explicit callbacks to Blade Runner in the dialog, though. They worked more like hitting a huge speed bump than anything else and actually popped you out of the story for a moment.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:31 AM on February 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


But what happened to the budgie?
posted by lagomorphius at 10:23 AM on February 11, 2017


But what happened to the budgie?

In my headcanon, it's perching on a C-Beam near the Tannhäuser Gate.
posted by otherchaz at 10:57 AM on February 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


I don't know, I think Tyrell's conversation with Deckard makes it clear that Rachel is an experiment, and that replicants don't usually have implanted memories...that the standard setup of having the cognitive capabilities of a human without the emotional maturity of a lifetime of experience is causing problems. It also sounds like replicants are usually all too aware they are replicants, as they're basically slaves, and more than likely physically copies of one another. But really, in the bladerunner universe there's an argument that nothing can really be contradictory - everything is so vague, noone is trustworthy and identity and truth seem to be a blurry and shifting idea at best.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:51 AM on February 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm curious to know what you think the contradictions are.
Tyrell: Commerce, is our goal here at Tyrell. More human than human is our motto. Rachael is an experiment, nothing more. We began to recognize in them strange obsession. After all they are emotional inexperienced with only a few years in which to store up the experiences which you and I take for granted. If we gift them the past we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and consequently we can control them better.
Deckard: Memories. You're talking about memories.
Leon and the other escaped replicants obsessively took and kept photographs in the effort to build a scaffold for their memories and experiences.

The implantation of memories is an experiment and first tried on Rachael, and she is the only replicant (aside from Deckard *cough*) who explicitly doesn't know she is one. I doubt a janitor would have been considered a valuable enough replicant for the memory implantation process.

Batty, Zhora, Pris, and Leon are all Nexus 6, the latest version, so it is reasonable to conclude that in a prequel, implanted memories would not be standard, and neither would the knowledge of the capability to do so. Switch up the script in this short to not specify a Nexus model and you pretty much clear up my problem with it. It could be November 2020 rather than 2019.

Having this be an unspecified later-day sequel would also make sense because the Blade Runner in the short actually uses Leon's quotes "painful to live in fear" and "an itch you can never scratch" during his interrogation (and could have been picked up in any report or communication Deckard had after Leon's "retirement" by Rachael).

So yeah, a couple very simple changes would have not pulled me out of the extremely well crafted feel of the short: don't specify the model, and mention that JF Sebastian was the name of some Tyrell corp employee who had died.
posted by tclark at 12:00 PM on February 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


But the point of the short is that Kampff becomes worried that he's made a mistake and helps develop the Voight-Kampff test which is being used at the beginning of Blade Runner.

And yeah, I do accept that part of the script says a thing that goes against this particular short.

But you can't move this to being AFTER the film. The point of it is not that, even if it is imperfectly executed.
posted by hippybear at 12:05 PM on February 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think it's just not feasible to keep implanted memories in the script and have it be a prequel. Other changes would have had to be made. Something perhaps like the replicant is so profoundly deep denial about it that he's completely lost in the delusion, and is so certain and realistic and sells it so well to Kampff that it rattles him and he later works on developing the test because he really did wonder, if only briefly, that he'd accidentally "retired a human by mistake."
posted by tclark at 12:12 PM on February 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


That was depressing. I remember when Blade Runner was my favorite movie, but now I am more interested in light. The world is dark enough without using any imagination. I wonder if this means I am destined to watch only Steven Universe reruns.
posted by eggkeeper at 1:36 PM on February 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


Shouldn't it be "Tears In Rain" ?
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 6:56 PM on February 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


YES IT SHOULD
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:48 AM on February 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


I remember when cyberpunk was misunderstood, and when it became edgy, and then cliche. Lately, it's all coming true and turning mundane. And that ought to be terrifying.
posted by Area Control at 8:48 AM on February 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


"FFS, it's "Tears In Rain'" was my immediate reaction, rhamphorhynchus. How do you make a fan film and get the signature line wrong? Isn't obsessing over those details part of fandom?

/stupid aggravation over trivial thing
posted by nubs at 8:52 AM on February 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


So are we then to believe that Rachel (and Deckard, really) are actually less advanced models than the Nexus 6? I was always kind of tainted by the original Dick story's assertion that earlier models were more obviously robotic, in that Terminator sort of "The 600 series had rubber skin" way. I concluded that the false memories were an advanced or experimental technique they'd hoped to exploit later.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 10:08 AM on February 12, 2017


As for the Leon quotes, I think it's reasonable given the context of their use in the original film as a kind of angry taunt that they were a reference to something Deckard would have known.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 10:12 AM on February 12, 2017


I hope the new Blade Runner movie with Drive in it finally answers the question about what C-beams actually are since Ridley Scott is a huge throbbing Tannhauser Gate who likes to strip the mystery and wonder out of all the mythologies he has a hand in creating. "Facehuggers as big as cows, of course!"
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:00 PM on February 12, 2017


I assume they are along the continuum between B-beams and D-beams, but I'm not sure which direction the scale goes.
posted by hippybear at 7:04 PM on February 12, 2017


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