K-SCORE: 95
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writer: Hampton Fancher, Michael Green
Based on: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Dave Bautista, Jared Leto, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Carla Juri
Spoiler Level: Minor
I laughed when I heard they were remaking Blade Runner. The original is a contemplative film following the narrative of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep where Philip K. Dick asks interesting questions about the worth of life by exploring artificial intelligence. I like the original. It’s a pioneering film. But you can’t just remake it because those questions have already been asked and explored in cinema a hundred times now, sometimes well like in Ex Machina and sometimes horribly like in the-Siri-is-alive-and-here’s-a-mustache-to-look-at Her. The other problem I foresaw is that the original has a story that’s really difficult to continue. You can’t exactly make a Blade Run Faster and have it live up to the complex intellectualism of the 1982 classic. Even if Ford hadn’t aged thirty-five years before reprising his role, the intentionally ambiguous ending to the original would be ruined if a writer simply chose one route or the other, replicant or not, and then told some definitive story with that concept in mind. Blade Runner 2049 was written by geniuses. They approached the film clearly understanding all those problems and polished their narrative to perfection until they had a film that rises above. It’s simultaneously a continuation of the story and a deeper and better probing into the questions raised by the first film, and it in no way detracts from all that the first accomplishes.
“Through every twist of the plot... I found no fault and no hole.”
In Blade Runner 2049, Ryan Gosling plays K, a new model replicant that has Decker’s previously legendary job of blade runner, hunting down older model replicants that had the construction defect of wanting to live independent lives, not as slaves to mankind that created them. Through the finding of a miracle replicant child, K begins to question the blurred lines between man and machine, and makes assumptions about his own past based on memories he was told were implanted in his brain. His chase leads him back to the shut down Tyrell corporation and the old blade runner himself, where he’ll be smack in between rebel replicants seeking to violently take their independence and the company who created him, which would see humanity expand into outer space with the artificial intelligent slave labor force they need. Through every twist of the plot, every new lead K has to follow, every ancillary character and universe add-on, I found no fault and no hole. It’s compelling throughout.
By form it’s gorgeous. The original film had a distinct 80s sci-fi dystopian style where technology is everywhere but integrated in a way that’s unfriendly, where buildings are too large for their occupants, and where natural settings are distant, dark, foggy, and abandoned. Blade Runner 2049 recaptures this feel and expands magnificently upon it. It’s a more visually striking film than what Alex Kurtzman created in the 80s, but it has the right tone. To be fair, this is the easy part. Take what you see from the first and use the better cinematographical capabilities of the modern era and expand. That’s what they do.
Really the only issue I can take with the movie in general is one I have with the first film as well. Despite the claims of the plot that replicants are essential to creating massive labor forces that allow humans to expand both here on Earth and beyond, it doesn’t really feel that way. Most replicants seem to be slow-moving, slow-talking, solitary creatures and most people are nowhere to be found. It’s an empty universe where that whole “our race is getting too big for our world” sci-fi trope has to be assumed but is never seen. When the cars are flying around between these megacorporations’ headquarters, you just want to ask, “Where’s all the traffic?” And whenever anyone is at street level, outside, between the buildings, or even in them, you want to ask, “Where is everyone?” If no one else lives in K’s apartment, you’d think he could afford something better than a one-bedroom. What is told to me about the world of Blade Runner 2049 is sensible and consistent with the plot, but inconsistent with most settings. It’s still entertaining and effective.
The greatest triumph though is in the themes explored by these characters, settings, and plotlines. Film professors everywhere must be losing their minds right now knowing they can assign essays not just on how and why Decker questions his humanity but also on how K ends up feeling so insignificant upon learning his true origins. Twice as many prompts! Two times the assignments! They can make their students expostulate on the connection between sexuality and empathy, forcing them to think about hormones and consciousness and what it means to be a living thing. They can use both films now to tease the fickle nature of memory and pray that students will drop 3000 words on such topics and leave their classrooms richer for the experience of getting to watch and contemplate true cinema. But I’m not gonna. I wrote those essays, took those tests, argued with those very professors, graduated in good standing, and can now spend my nights playing video games and ruining my dinner with cookies.
And! I can talk about what I want to talk about with regard to the movies I see, which, in the case of Blade Runner 2049 is the skyscraper-sized naked girl hologram. What, as a society, do we have to do before we can get fifty-story high pornography? Seriously! Back to the Future promised flying cars by 2015 and I’m taker Ubers in 2017. Escape from Los Angeles promised life or death basketball by 1998 and I’m watching Dwight Howard accumulate fifteen fouls in a game in 2017 without anyone blowing him up. Let’s not fuck this up too. We need to make a promise to each other as a society that thirty-two years from now we’ll be able to walk alone in the rain on a skyway staring at breasts literally the size of elephants.