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.