Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - Review
Originally published August, 2018Blade Runner, in particular "The Final Cut," is one of my favorite movies. It's a movie that was a box-office bomb when it originally came out, but it grew in popularity over time. Eventually, it was re-cut and re-released multiple times to new fans to the point that Blade Runner fans have to ask each other for clarification: "which version is your favorite?" Since its ascendance in popularity, it's become a widely beloved film and it has served as a powerful influence for movies, TV, video games, etc. Despite all this reverence, we've gone a long time without a sequel or even a spin-off from the Blade Runner universe. I considered that a good thing because it allowed Blade Runner to exist on its own, and because, by the time I became a fan of the franchise, I had little faith that Hollywood would be able to make another film set in that universe without screwing it up. Thus, when Blade Runner 2049 was announced, I was less than excited.
My lack of excitement continued to drop off when I saw that Harrison Ford was going to be in the sequel as well. Perhaps most fans were excited to see Ford reprise his role as Deckard from the original film, but I was not. The decision to include him for the sake of his character meant that this was a direct sequel, despite the fact that Blade Runner had a large and broad universe, capable of holding a variety of stories that did not need to include that character. His presence here also eliminated certain ambiguous and speculated outcomes from the original, which was a bit of a bummer. Needless to say, my expectations were somewhat low when I decided to finally watch Blade Runner 2049. By the time it was over (3 hours later), I was surprised to find that mostly I enjoyed it.
Pros
Music and sound effects are great and fit the film
Visual effects are impressive with some truly memorable moments
Tone and pacing are similar to first movie
Reserved with its action sequences
Reserved and ambiguous with some details
Colorful and well shot in most parts
An interesting protagonist with some interesting themes around him
Jared Leto is a creepier and more effective villain than his Joker
Cons
Dependent on the first movie and characters from it
Too looooooong
Some action sequences are too dark or shot too far away to see anything
Uncanny valley special effects around the face of a returning character
Exposition overdose with flashbacks and explanations
Bad font choice for on-screen text
Plot & Thoughts
K (Ryan Gosling) works for the LAPD as a Blade Runner: a detective/bounty hunter who is tasked with locating and exterminating rogue androids. K also happens to be an android. After killing a.k.a. "retiring" an android out in a remote location somewhere in California, he discovers the remains of a body buried beside a dead tree. The remains prove to be that of an android from the Tyrell corporation, which was the big conglomerate android manufacturer in the first film. In the 30 years since the events of the first Blade Runner, the Tyrell corporation has since dissolved and more advanced androids are now created in by the Wallace corporation, owned by the reclusive and ominous Niander Wallace (Jared Leto).
Despite all the advancements in android manufacturing, there's one thing about the Tyrell models that Wallace has been unable to replicate or was even aware of being possible. The remains that K found indicate that the android died in childbirth, which means that somehow an android was capable of reproduction. I'm not sure how this is possible, but I'm also not sure how it would be impossible for more advanced companies to create androids that could do this again, considering how much we know about the reproductive process. The film doesn't bother to answer questions like these, or any others that pop up along the way about the nature of android physiology, tastes, or desires. Nonetheless, the mystery of who the child is and where that child has gone since then is an interesting enough premise for the story to follow.
The stakes are raised due to some extra variables in the situation. K's boss thinks that this born android is alive and a threat to society's structure (humans > androids) and wants it eliminated before its existence is revealed to the public. Wallace wants the anomaly found so that he can study it or dissect to see how he might be able to replicate the reproductive technology he's missing in his androids. Meanwhile, other rogue groups see this mysterious child as a way to demonstrate that androids are people too, not just slaves to work beneath humans; so, they want the child to be found to become their messiah.
It's a complicated and interesting story that is made more interesting by the protagonist K. Though K is an android, he shows more emotional complexity and depth than one would expect. It's mostly demonstrated through his interactions with his holographic girlfriend, at first. However, as he gets deeper into the investigation and discovers more clues, memories that were implanted in him at his inception become increasingly important to his task, to the point of questioning his own existence and whether or not the memories he has are real.
Making K a somewhat unreliable protagonist is a smart choice from a storytelling perspective. It makes him inherently more interesting because we don't know whether or not anything he knows is real, and neither does he. It's a mystery layered on top of another mystery, while making his story more involved with the bigger overarching story. It gives his character additional motivation, which seems believable enough to make him go out on his own for the sake of solving the mystery at all costs.
It's a shame then that so much of the story is tied to characters from the original movie. It creates a level of importance around those characters that never needed to be there in the first place. Blade Runner 2049's story takes place 30+ years after the original, so there's no reason they couldn't have just created the same premise out of characters we never met. It's a missed opportunity to allow both movies to stand on their own, and to allow sequels to follow without the need of being tied to the original in some way. It's an interesting world with seemingly endless possibilities for interesting stories to be told.
The filmmakers here obviously had the skill necessary to create a worthy sequel because they managed to capture some of the smaller background details and unspoken storytelling techniques the first movie had—not including the version with the bored Harrison Ford narration. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the sequel is desperately flirting with its inspiration. The pacing, the cinematography, the music, and the style of 2049 are very similar to the original. It even opens with the same sort of close-up shot of an eyeball, and it uses dialogue clips taken straight from the original. Even the music and sound effects were convincingly appropriate for Blade Runner 2049. Much of the music sounds like it was pulled right out of the original movie, with a few remixes to make it a bit more advanced and industrial. The set design, the outfits, and the backgrounds all seemed like natural fits for this sequel and helped add to the experience.
Whether a positive or negative for its dedication to being a faithful sequel, Blade Runner 2049 is too long, and it had some unnecessary sequences that added to its length, including some moments where plot points were spelled out for you to make sure you understood everything. The length of the film was somewhat tolerable due to the amount of effort paid to making the world interesting and immersive. Nonetheless, if you never liked any of the 20 versions of the original Blade Runner, or if you didn't like the quiet, slow pace of the future-noir story, this still isn't going to be your cup of tea. 2049 is an homage to the original in some ways, and doesn't stray too far from its source material, for better or worse.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Perhaps my low expectations for Blade Runner 2049 colored my experience better than had I been completely neutral, but I ended up enjoying it, overall. It's too long and unnecessarily ties itself to characters from the first movie in a way that diminishes the values of those characters and both films. However, it is still an intriguing enough mystery in a vibrant and detailed world with some interesting new characters that managed to keep my interest through its 2 hour 50 minute run-time.
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