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Blade Runner 2049
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Based on the 1982 film by Ridley Scott, adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
MTRCB Rating: R13

The rare instance when the sequel expands on the original spectacularly and then launches off on its own.

SPOILERS BEWARE

The year is 2049 – Earth is an over-populated, dingy, polluted world where next-generation bioengineered androids called Replicants are integrated to live alongside humans and do their bidding. The place may have flying cars, but social integration is still under construction at that time.

The story follows Officer K (Ryan Gosling) – a replicant working in the LAPD as a blade runner who hunts down and “retires” rogue old-model replicants who essentially refuse to die.

Officer K discovers evidence of a female replicant who died from childbirth around 30 years before – a shocking revelation that threatens to disrupt world order. Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) orders Officer K to get rid of the evidence and to hunt and destroy the replicant child, but it is an order that K disobeys. Call it genetically-engineered gut feeling.

His own investigation brings him to the office of tech giant Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) who manufactures the current model of replicants. Wallace’s replicant assistant Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) identifies K’s evidence as the remains of old-model replicant Rachael, linked to former blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) who has disappeared.

With the constant prodding of his holographic girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas) on how special he is, K begins to doubt his identity and believes that the answers lie with finding Deckard. Unknown to K, Wallace is bent on finding Deckard and the replicant child to boost his production of replicants for Earth and elsewhere and, well, essentially become god. Hail corporate greed.

Clocking at 2hours and 43minutes, the sequel is nearly half an hour longer than the 1982 Ridley Scott original. Blade Runner 2049 can be seen on its own but would be better if seen after the original.

I could only imagine Villeneuve and his team dissecting Philip K. Dick’s novel and the mythology of the original Blade Runner film in their quest to expand the Replicant universe.

It wasn’t enough that they made a sequel that carried the pieces of the original film, so much so that a series of short films depicting events prior 2049 but after the original 2019 events were released online a month prior to Villeneuve’s film. For obvious reasons, we have reached film franchise territory way beyond video games, anime and TV shows.

Blade Runner 2049 – The Years Between | official short films

It won’t be surprising then to encounter spinoffs and ancillary products in the future outside the Deckard narrative.

Without a doubt, the Blade Runner series is known for its striking visuals. 2049’s design, very much like its replicants, are upgrades over the predecessor’s design – from the costumes to the music to the art direction and lighting. “Upgrade” might be even the wrong term – as the original worked mighty fine on its own back in the day. Contemporization might be a more appropriate description. Visuals are 2049’s strongest assets. If somebody can invent neo-neo-noir (post-neo-noir,) they have done so here. See this in IMAX if you can.

Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049 in association with Columbia Pictures, domestic distribution by Warner Bros. Pictures and international distribution by Sony Pictures Releasing International.

RYAN GOSLING as K in Alcon EntertainmentÕs sci fi thriller BLADE RUNNER 2049 in association with Columbia Pictures, domestic distribution by Warner Bros. Pictures and international distribution by Sony Pictures Releasing International.

Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049 in association with Columbia Pictures, domestic distribution by Warner Bros. Pictures and international distribution by Sony Pictures Releasing International.

Jared Leto in Blade Runner 2049 in association with Columbia Pictures, domestic distribution by Warner Bros. Pictures and international distribution by Sony Pictures Releasing International.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 in association with Columbia Pictures, domestic distribution by Warner Bros. Pictures and international distribution by Sony Pictures Releasing International.

The collaboration between Cinematographer Roger Deakins, Production Designer Dennis Gassner and the visual effects team has resulted in some of the most memorable cinematic images in recent times, including a couple of scenes that can be considered new and unique.

It would be easy to credit the legendary Deakins for these striking images, but clearly, the film has been designed from the ground up.  Instead of the gritty, graphic chiaroscuro of the original, Deakins offers super-saturated bleakness and in the case of Wallace’s office, creeping, rippling light. While 2049 retains some cyberpunk in its DNA, 2049 feels less dystopian and foreboding (more on this later.) While the original is punk-sweaty-sexy, 2049 sleek and more sensual. The voice-activated camera scan is an improved version of the original scan photo scene. The DNA machine looks like a Moviola. Even the garbage dumps look arranged.

There’s a deliberate pace here – a conscious unfolding of time that amplifies the otherworldly feel of the film. Ridley Scott’s cut of the original similarly carried this pace – one of the main complaints viewers had back then. [Curiously the Years Between shorts do not have this pace (never mind that they are shorts) but serve only to deepen the Replicant narrative.]

Two scenes are noteworthy because of their ingenuity – one involving the memory designer Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) and another that’s the holographic version of the famous scene in the 1990 movie Ghost.

2049 stays true to its cyberpunk sci-fi roots that it still explores the nature of humanity and artificial life and the overwatch of giant corporations in a post-apocalyptic/ low life high tech/ noir. Dream sequences involving horses are likely throwbacks to Dick’s novel, the same as Deckard’s unicorn dreams in 1982. Replacing Tyrell is Wallace, delivered by Leto with a deliberate enunciation that can only be described as Agent Smith-y from The Matrix (1999) and quite Carl Sagan (who can be heard in this video here.) I think he’s channeling some form of bodhisattva-level enlightened human being.

Ford ‘s blue-collar scruffy charm has worked for most of his nearly six-decade career and  was just the right fit as a young Deckard who falls for a replicant, but his older Deckard here actually feels like he’s lived off of his years in hiding on nothing but the idea that someday the cops will find him. Dare I say he’s more human?

But 2049 doesn’t ask big, bold new questions the way the first one already did. 2049 strikes me a little cold – Villeneuve tends toward the cerebral and the removed in his films, coldest of which was The Arrival (2016.) It’s not a bad thing, it’s just that a Villeneuve film tends to make his audience think more than to feel. In my dictionary, a good film makes you do both.

My big “but” for this film is that it is not archetypal the way Ridley Scott’s is. Blade Runner the original is classic 1980s – punk, big hair, neon, flying cars and synthed by Vangelis. Question is, how do you make a movie these days to be quintessential of this decade?

Curiously, 2049 feels less dystopian – probably an after-effect of its sleek design – but 2049 has little or no foreboding doom, despite pronouncements of impending war between humans and replicants. Again, this is the coldness I am referring to. The film’s most palpable tension is during the climactic struggle between K and Luv.

K’s fate is neither bittersweet nor sad – it just is. Finally, the film ends on the original blade runner Deckard – without putting the debate on his identity to rest. This ending narrowly throws off the narrative, maybe because it wasn’t truly about K from the beginning? Maybe we’ll know in the next sequel, hopefully not called War For the Planet of the Replicants.