One Hour Movie Reviews Presents Review #003: Blade Runner 2049

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents:

Review #003 – Blade Runner 2049

Released: October 6^th, 2017

Viewed: October 6^th, 2017 7:00 PM

Writing start time: October 6^th, 2017 11:07 PM

Blade Runner 2049 is the sequel to Ridley Scott's... masterpiece? Cult classic? science-fiction film Blade Runner. In it, Harrison Ford plays a titular Blade Runner, a cop tasked with hunting down replicants, illegal androids so human-like that it takes a detective to find one and “retire”. I thought the first movie had excellent world building, a unique aesthetic, great sound design and almost inscrutable characters and motivations. It left Blade Runner feeling like it was a beautiful mess and would certainly be a tough act to follow. For better or worse, Blade Runner 2049 does just that.

The movie begins with a screen's worth of text to cover the 30 year time gap between movies. In short, things have only gotten worse but different. Essentially the world's food supply is saved from ecological disasters by a super genius who then uses his new fortune to purchase what was left of the Tyrell Corporation, the inventors of replicants, to form a new company and create a new brand of replicants that are guaranteed to be loyal. To that end replicants have found many legitimate places to take root in society even if they aren't accepted.

That brings us to “K”, played by Ryan Gosling, who is this movie's Blade Runner and is also a replicant. K begins the movie being tasked with hunting down a new generation of illegal replicants. Remains found on the site of his first retirement leads K on a path to a much bigger case for a missing person who means a whole lot to a couple of powerful groups of people. Along the way Gosling walks with excellent posture through many sets reminiscent of the first movie and, other than a single shot at the opening, manages to give updated and original looks to the grungy, Used Future of the original Blade Runner.

K gains two primary allies in travels. First is Joi, played by the lovely Ana de Armas, who is a holographic housekeeper programmed to give her owner anything they want and that ends up being more than either of them bargained for. The second is Rick Deckard himself, returning from the first movie and played by an increasingly limping Harrison Ford. Deckard enters the picture when it turns out that he is a person of interest between the two competing factions.

I bring up these factions now because this is where the movie shows some serious cracks. One side is led by Jared Leto's Niander Wallace, who solved the food crisis and the other is led by a character who I'm not even sure got a name. Some motivations are spelled out, others are left a mystery and the paths to their success and their intentions with the important missing person are also unclear. It's possible that this was left in the dark because another sequel is going to give this movie greater meaning but in the meantime even Deckard asks a character “why” and he is answered with a shrug.

On top of this a couple of other basic decisions by the film makers lead to other problems. First, the text used for location transitions and the opening information crawl is so tiny that I had a hard time making it out from my third row seat. Second, the music which was scored as a clear homage to the original, fails to find any real melody or theme to counteract its bass heavy and screeching klaxon approach.

Theme is the major flaw of this movie. There is some good use of the idea of artificial beings yearning for more above their original programming and self-determinism but it doesn't have much to do with what exists of the plot. Plus all the future stuff is great to see as the technology has certainly improved during the 30 year time skip but nothing is made to reflect anything from modern day like its original did with its wall-to-wall advertisements.

In the end this is a movie that is all dressed up with nowhere to go. Even if the goal of this movie was to have a sequel that would have been fine if it had put a few more of its cards on the table. Still, with as much thought that went into the world building and a sex scene that probably uses more special effects than I've ever seen in a movie I appreciated the originality it had to offer, even if it didn't have enough to say. It's a low recommended movie at two and a half stars. You may enjoy the spectacle and some good ideas but I would be surprised if Blade Runner 2049 even has half the impact of its original.

One Hour Classic Movie Reviews Presents Review #001C: Blade Runner

One Hour Classic Movie Reviews Presents:

Review #001C – Blade Runner (2009 Final Cut)

Released: June 25^th, 1982

Viewed: October 4^th, 2017, 7:00 PM

Writing start time: October 4^th, 2017, 9:10 PM

I've been wanting to see Blade Runner for quite some time. It seems like one of those seminal science fiction movies that should have been part of my movie diet earlier on. Problem is that the movie predates me by two and a half years so by the time I would have been old enough to be allowed to see bare breasts, gaping gunshot wounds and speculative thoughts in my movies I would already be lamenting about how bad the Star Wars prequel trilogy was.

What I'm saying is that I think I missed the boat when it comes to Ridley Scott's much lauded Blade Runner. Now, I've done some studying on the history of the movie and have watched through a synopsis of the film and seen a couple of “did you know” videos online before watching this so the whole thing was thoroughly spoiled for me before going in. That goes against what One Hour Reviews are about as I really only want to know what the trailers have to say and that's it. For these “classic” reviews I'm going to have more knowledge and bias simply because a lot of these films have entered public lexicon by the time I get to writing a review of them for my puny Internet blog. I picked the 2009 Final Cut out of all seven available cuts simply because it's what I could rent off of YouTube and it's supposedly the only cut of the movie that was 100% under Ridley Scott's creative control. I know I lose out on some voice over and gain some scene which apparently provide clarity over other cuts but I'm going to just tell it to you straight: Blade Runner is kind of a mess.

For those that don't know it all by now I'll summarize the plot. Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner. A Blade Runner is a detective meant to hunt down replicants, a brand of android slave labor now illegal on Earth, who are shot and killed, or “retired” once they are identified. Deckard is apparently the best Blade Runner in the business because he is pulled out of retirement in the opening scenes and then proceeds to have very basic facts spelled out to him, and therefore the audience. Maybe all the alcohol he imbibes throughout the movie implies that he has some memory problems due to previous drinking issues.

Deckard's task is to hunt down and retire four replicants who have returned to Earth for unknown reasons. The four are lead by Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, a super combat model of replicant who seems to represent the Aryan ideal. It turns out that Roy and the other replicants are seeking their creator in an attempt to prolong their artificially short life and mostly want to stay under the radar while they complete their goal since their very existence is punishable by death. Too bad they keep racking up the body count to remain incognito.

This is all set against the backdrop of Los Angeles in the far flung future of 2019. The LA of this time is over crowded and almost always raining with neon being the lighting of choice and advertisements taking up space on any flat space big enough to support it. Looks like some things were predicted correctly. To my understanding Blade Runner's appeal was drawn largely from being one of the first realizations of the cyberpunk genre on film. The lighting is usually dim or doesn't work, the weather adds a layer of mist and obscurity to everything at street level and Chinese has taken over as an equal language to English. Oh, yeah, and flying cars.

I'm sure the spectacle and set dressing was set to impress back in the day but now that the Used Future setting has been seen so much that I think it doesn't hold up so well over time, especially not if the first viewing is done 35 years later. But that's not why the movie doesn't work for me. As far as the movie having some good ideas in its loose adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and being well-shot and lit all of the characters are a complete puzzle. None of the characters really act human. For the replicants that's understandable: they are so human but they aren't so their mannerisms falling into the uncanny valley makes sense. But all of the others who are beneath suspicion also either talk flatly, emote in only one way, or fail to react in any natural way. Added on top of this is some really choppy editing and occasionally jarring film composition and it feels like a lot of visual pieces that don't really connect. This left me feeling that everything was in a completely bizarre state of unreal.

Maybe that was the point. Much of the discussion of the film after the fact seems to regard “was X a replicant the whole time?” If everyone in the world acts strangely then anyone could be a robot! I don't think having hidden robots excuses questionable directing and acting. It feels like a lot of this discussion wallpapers over either a slight misfire from a younger Ridley Scott or a budget that couldn't support an ambitious film. In either case, it's a movie with a fair amount going on but in the 35 years that have passed since it can't possibly be top dog in the sci-fi world anymore.

I'll give it two and a half stars. There's a lot to talk about in this one but I can't say I completely enjoyed it.