Blade Runner 2049

When the original Blade Runner came out in 1982, it took a bit of time for people to really warm up to it despite being known as a cult favorite today, with audiences and especially critics outright hating it to begin with. Over the years though, its cult status as well as its influence on the cyberpunk sci-fi genre led to many people retroactively considering it a staple of the genre and a classic film, and movies with classic status often get the sequel treatment later down the line. However, with only one book to salvage from and the licensing issues halting the production for over 25 years, it took until 2017 for this sequel, Blade Runner 2049, to be released. Unlike its previous, this movie was met with wonderful critical and audience reception upon its release, even getting itself a few Oscar nods despite the box office not matching that level of adoration (grossing $267.5 million against its $150 – 185 million budget and earning a loss of $80 million). People seemed to enjoy what the movie did the same, what it did different, and were happy that one of their most beloved sci-fi movies was back in the limelight, but was it able to properly shake off the components that originally pushed people away the first time around? In the year 2049, a new Blade Runner named K (played by Ryan Gosling) discovers while out on his usual job of hunting and exterminating retired rogue replicants, the remains of a female replicant which seemingly died while giving birth, something that is supposed to be impossible for a replicant to do. With his superior, Lieutenant Joshi (played by Robin Wright) fearing that this discovery could bring about a revolution, he is tasked with finding and ”retiring” this anonymous child before anyone else comes into contact with her. He does this by following memories within his mind that are supposedly the child, leading to places that might also tie into his own past and confliction on whether or not he is himself a replicant or not. Also looking for the child is the Wallace Corporation, in which their leader, Niander (played by Jared Leto) wishes to get the child in order to discover the secrets of replicant repopulation, and K has to find them first before that happens, even enlisting the help of former Blade Runner, Rick Deckard (played again by Harrison Ford) to do so. This movie feels like it isn’t restricted to the problems of the first movie yet is held back with its own set of problems, which makes the movie overall harmless, but also pretty forgettable.

One of the biggest faults with the original movie was its poor handling of its tone and plot structure. The initial story set-up was pretty cool and interesting, yet it was also matched with a laborious and ineffective storytelling that held the film hostage until the literal climax of the movie, instead focusing on a lot of symbolic motifs that certainly had subjects and themes to dissect, but wasn’t match with a solid enough cast, world, or storyline to make those elements engaging. In contrast, this movie actually has a pretty solid story structure; with a pretty clear direction, a solid goal, and enough of an idea of pacing to make it function perfectly fine. As a replacement director, Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve is a solid person to lead an environment like Blade Runner with his technical and often cold yet cinematic delivery being prime for the world of this universe, and it does result in a familiar tone and visuals. But in spite of this, things start to fall apart once the story itself written by Hampton Fancher (who also worked on the screenplay along with Michael Green) starts to unfold. In comparing the two, this one is definitely less complex and interesting with its premise, going in the exact direction you would expect it to go and feels very traditional sci-fi in its logic, world, and process, which the original Blade Runner (to its credit) didn’t. The whole concept of tracking down a child that could change the course of a new species of life, but could also prove disastrous for humanity and result in it becoming the less dominant species, isn’t anything that original as it’s been done a lot better in other stories (I Am Legend literally popularize this idea with its original book years prior) but this movie could totally work that into its environment and character set-up if enough unique elements are added in to make it its own thing, and the movie doesn’t really do that. There are some fun ideas that fit with this futuristic world like injected memories that show someone else’s life through others eyes, holographic romantic partners that debate whether they can love a person and a child being born from a robotic human, but not only have they still been done before in other stories, but they aren’t taken in an interesting direction that takes advantage of the environment or what the Blade Runner franchise can do. It trades being confusing yet slightly interesting like its previous and becomes much easier to follow, but much safer in the process. The movie isn’t a terrible sit as despite its almost three-hour long length (which is a credit to the direction), it’s just that it won’t be stuck in your mind like other sci-fi movies do.

It’s hard to pretend like the characters were really anything special in the first movie as none of them outside of the villains were distinct or memorable. They were cliched, dull in execution and felt like any typical character within an old-fashion sci-fi or film noir, and here, they just kind of feel like stale archetypes of any standard sci-fi story. None of them are really allowed to be unique, feel like distinct characters with interesting past, and because the film spends a lot of time with most of them and not much on the actual world building (which is bizarre given the popularity of this world design), it sucks out any potential intrigue or depth that could be added to this environment because the people that populate it aren’t that much different from any standard character in any other standard science fiction story. The lead is led in a horribly bland direction despite there being some decent potential (it thankfully doesn’t go in the obvious direction you’d expect it to, but what it is replaced with is so bland and uninteresting that it actively whatever intrigue the character had and turned him into a stagnant NPC-like character). Ryan Gosling’s monotone bland expression is annoyingly dull to watch, but it just feels like a directing issue as he’s proven before that he can be good in the right movie. Despite multiple attempts at leading a film, his constant failures prove that while he might be good at playing the light-hearted goofy guy, he’s not a straight-faced leading man and that is very obvious here. He’s neither expressive nor robotic enough to be engaging, instead left in that horrible middle-ground that offers up nothing special. The villains are barely utilized (with Jared Leto being especially awful in such a brief yet painfully pompous portrayal), old characters like Harrison Ford’s Deckard are just cameos that feel really unnecessary in the grand scheme of the story and aren’t really allowed to develop or grow (at least outside of the realms of predictable plot lines for recycled legacy characters would allow), and whatever new characters are introduced like Ana de Armas as K’s A. I girlfriend, Joi, are just more wasted concepts not handled correctly. The movie decides to take each character in their most boring direction, therefore having no distinct elements and therefore being completely forgettable.  As performances go, they have absolutely nothing to work with, but nobody stands out as really bad at all, just unmemorable.

Probably one of the few elements that actually manages to feel mostly the same as the first is its sense of production and presentation. The original movie had a cool environment for the time and showed it off in a memorable way that wasn’t ground-breaking but demonstrated a presence and personality that would become iconic for the genre. This movie does the same by getting famous cinematographer, Roger Deakins (whose worked on movies like Skyfall, No Country for Old Men, and 1917) to help give this environment a fantastic feeling of scale and grandeur. Each location is angled or filmed in a way that effortlessly visualizes the area in a dramatically grandiose manner regardless of where it is or how uninteresting it looks. Unfortunately, while the locations are filmed expertly, it can’t hide that they just aren’t that interesting looking, especially for current sci-fi with a production design by Dennis Gassner that is strangely hollow and empty. The original got a past for being a touch generic because it was the first to do it, but in 2017, there have been far more interesting dystopian futures that manage to make themselves still look lively despite lacking any strong colors. This movie has color in it but not enough for it to balance out the majority of the grey landscapes the movie shows off (which are also not made interesting and feels like a component of Villeneuve’s style). While the first movie was obsessed with deep blue, this movie seems obsessed with deep yellow; a lot of the fancier environments use that color and while it’s nice at first, it gets tiring when it’s all the movie has to offer. Because of how ineffective the world-building is since things are either never explained or not developed drastically enough to be that different, this environment isn’t an interesting sci-fi environment, as it’s not doing anything that other environments haven’t done already. In a genre like sci-fi, it thrives on visualizing the unfamiliar and making it commonplace and seeing art-deco houses isn’t enough to be unique anymore.

It’s hard to say exactly what these two movies are doing to appeal to others so strongly, but whatever the reason, it does seem to have an audience that loves it despite its obvious faults. While the first one is arguably not as well put together as this one with having the benefit of better technology and more time dedicated to screenwriting, its easily the less memorable one as the original at least tried to include interesting commentary and visual symbolism. Despite whether it worked or not, it wanted to be more than just a generic sci-fi movie, and unfortunately, that’s what this movie feels like, a basic harmless sci-fi action movie that leaves little impression and only uses its environment and visual design for face value only. It’s not an awful sit, it could entertain for its running time, and nothing will stick out as noticeably foul, but it will most likely leave your mind the second you leave as it has nothing new or intriguing to say. Decide for yourself if this franchise is meant for you, otherwise it might be better to just keep fawning over The Matrix.