Blade Runner 2049

I am a huge fan of the ‘Final Cut’ of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: a hard science fiction story with film noir elements sewn in, making a dense cult classic for any film fan. There’s also Harrison Ford, unforgettable music, cinematography, and themes that dig into your skin without you realizing it - until it’s too late. That was the original, so how does the sequel, an epic narrative starting thirty years later, compare? Roger Deakins pours his heart and soul into this film with his visual masterwork, and a lot of people are talking about him winning an Oscar for "Best Cinematography." Every scene is shot beautifully, and the score is loud and explosive yet still connects to the music from the original. The props are very noteworthy, Blade Runner introduced one of the most famous guns in science fiction, and Blade Runner 2049 knows; there is also a prop that plays a key element to the story, just like the original, but I won’t go too much into detail.

Blade Runner 2049 as a movie is astonishing and proves the genius that is Denis Villeneuve. He is the most impressive director right now; Arrival, Sicario, Prisoners, Enemy, and now this movie show how passion and skill make the best movies. Now, the problem with this movie is that it is two things: a hard rated R movie and a hard Science Fiction movie. Those two don’t normally come together, and the fact that it is not doing very well at the box office shows it. ‘Hard Sci-Fi’ is the far end of the spectrum, the only physically relatable objects in the frame are either symbols to greater meaning or questioned completely on their existence. A main component of this world is that some people are not human, they are replicants, and their memories are programs implanted in their minds so that they act like us. That is Hard Sci-Fi. Most times, I recommend people to go see a movie blind, trailers can give away too much of the plot and ruin the fun of revelations, but a movie like this, I would tell them to look up a trailer or maybe a short (three shorts were released to bridge the thirty years between the original and the sequel) so that they know the tone and style of what they are walking into. These shorts, trailers, and rated R warnings are all on IMDb.

Ryan Gosling is my favorite actor right now. He nailed it out of the park in The Nice Guys, and is my favorite part of La La Land. He is also in Drive, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Blue Valentine, movies I have not seen but are high on my list. He is great in this movie, even though he never smiles or shows any anxiety. His love interest was a unique element that I was not expecting, and it surprised me on how it was executed. His romance was a microcosm of the theme, and it really resonated each time it appeared. Uniquely, the movie centers around Ryan Gosling’s character, a blade runner cop hunting down replicants, but the world does not. It mentions this several times, and his reaction to what is happening and what he has to do is very intriguing and fresh. This performance gives a new angle on Ryan Gosling that most people have not seen before, including me, and I was impressed on how vibrant he could show his emotions through a straight face.

Harrison Ford is in this movie, it’s in the trailers and the poster so it isn’t a surprise, but he doesn’t show up until the third act. I think he did a pretty good job, and there was a clear chemistry between him and Gosling, which reminded me of The Nice Guys in a fun way. His appearance was awesome, but when he was thrown into the conflict the story began to stumble. It wasn’t his fault, but the idea of trying to connect the two stories was inevitable, and saving it for the third act was not the best way of handling it. Eventually Ryan Gosling took the narrative reigns and the movie was back on its own path to a satisfying end.

I said that it wasn’t Ford’s fault for the story to degrade, and it wasn’t. It was Jared Leto’s Niander Wallace. He was the only character that fell short of the spectacle, and the fact that Niander is two letters away from meander might be a not-so-subtle hint at his dramatic presence. He cranks up the Hard Sci-Fi up to eleven and keeps it there for the entire runtime with long monologues and bizarre set design. The other characters at least have a knife fight or a shoot out to give levity to their purpose. Wallace is a blind man, so it makes sense that he does not step out of his compound, but he acts like a god. Not a hotshot or a man prideful of his achievements, but an actual god. Wallace is the creator of the new replicant models, which infects his brain like a parasite. His servant, he calls her an angel, does the fighting for him, quite well actually, but that takes away the drama from his purpose. The protagonist and his adversary never come face to face. Other characters with the same moral intentions meet them, but they never are in the same room. Does this story need that encounter? No, it is much larger than that, but I would have preferred something that sparks a direct moral argument instead of random monologues from a blind man pretending to be a god. His servant, the true antagonist of the movie, cannot be the main antagonist because she is a servant. She is sent to kill people, nothing more to her than that. She is a terrifying replicant, mirrored by Wallace’s treatment of his creations, but she has no reason for her actions other than her being under the control of her blind god. These two characters are very intriguing and I enjoyed the replicant fight scenes, but if somehow the writers molded those characters into one this film would have been flawless. It would have been a completely different movie: more action and less blasphemy, which might have helped with the box office as well as kicking out Jared Leto. It would be a movie that the common audiences and I would rather see, but with what Villeneuve was trying to create, I understand why he went with his approach.

If you want to see a pure example of what cinema can do, go see this movie. It has a style and flare that makes a marvel movie look like a five-year-old’s crayon sketch, and the themes interwoven with the characters jump out of the screen every time the musical score explodes. It has great actors, a master in the director’s chair, an Oscar-worthy eye of color and camera work, and a story that wraps them all together and somehow makes sense. It may not be as emotional or relatable as Arrival, or as chilling and unforgiving as Prisoners, but Denis Villeneuve has put his mark on 2017 and just like the title, it is thirty years ahead of its time.

Story Rating: 8/10

Character Rating: 7/10