Blade Runner 2049: First Impressions

Thirty-five years after the original landed in theaters, the seminal sci-fi flick Blade Runner has been given it's sequel: Blade Runner 2049. Of course, this begs the question, "Did Blade Runner require a sequel in the first place?"

Nonetheless, the 1982 Ridley Scott-directed film (Which has been refined over the course of several different releases) has always been a strong favorite of mine, and whether necessary or not, I felt it was required of myself to see 2049 in theaters. As such, here are my first impressions, thoughts, and something of a review.

Fair Warning: This Review Contains Spoilers

Intro

Original Blade Runner theatrical poster

Cyberpunk is a strange genre of fiction, yet an exciting and often insightful one. It mixes noir with the high-tech society of the future, while playing on the fears that humanity has regarding lethargy, over-reliance on technology, and the growing apathy that is possessed in a growing a technological landscape of computers and social disassociation. Despite the usual dystopian settings deeply carved into future wastelands of over-bearing technology, cyberpunk has always been fascinatingly human, perhaps because the best stories peel into the human condition to explore what it means to be alive in a world that has seemingly outgrown biological beings in favor of the microchips built by them.

However, there's a good chance that cyberpunk wouldn't be what it is today if it wasn't for the 1982 film Blade Runner, which codified the look, feel, and narrative of a cyberpunk story (As did, of course, the novel Nueromancer by William Gibson, written during the film's production and released two years afterwards). Cyberpunk settings existed to a degree before then—the term cyberpunk is derived from a Bruce Bethke short story also from 1982—but they tended to exist in sci-fi worlds not unlike those seen in Dune or Star Trek, though they usually dealt with the same concepts of dehumanization in a high-tech world. The original novel the film was based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, was also considered to be more sci-fi than cyberpunk in nature and concept.

William Gibson's Neuromancer was as game changing as Blade Runner when it came to developing the cyberpunk mythos. (Image from Amazon)

Polarizing upon release, Blade Runner initially faired rather poorly at the box office. Only years later did critics and audiences come to recognize it as possibly being one of the cinema greats. However, it apparently wasn't ever without fault. Not counting the various TV versions, sneak preview releases, or the unfinished workprint, there have been three official releases of the film: the original theatrical cut, the Director's Cut, and the 2007 Final Cut, with the latter representing director Ridley Scott's ultimate vision. The most notable difference between the cuts is that the the theatrical release contained a noir-esque voice over delivered by Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) that imprinted his thoughts and opinions on events over the film (it also provided some background information on his character and on other otherwise unexplained facets of the film's setting). The voice over was considered a product of studio meddling, and Scott was not pleased with the final product as a result.


The next two major differences lie in a short sequence half-way through the film and its ending. The Director's Cut and Final Cut both include a scene involving a unicorn dream that Deckard has while he plays a piano. This scene is meant to tie into a brief shot at the end of the film involving an origami unicorn left at Deckard's apartment by the LAPD Officer Gaff (Edward James Olmos), inferring that Deckard is an artificial human—called a replicant—and that Gaff is aware of Deckard's dreams. Finally, the original film ended on a "happy" note, where Deckard drives off into the sunset with the replicant Rachael (Sean Young), with the promise that she'll live a normal human lifespan, as opposed to the normal replicant lifespan of four years. In the later cuts, the film ends on a cliff hangar, with Deckard and Rachael heading off into an uncertain future. 


Now, thirty-five years later, the "uncertain future" has been given a continuation. Blade Runner 2049 is set thirty years after the original film, brought to us by Ridley Scott Production and directed by Denis Villeneuve. Lets dive in.

Plot for context (Spoilers!)

Officer K, as portrayed by Ryan Gosling.

Officer K (Ryan Gosling) is a modern replicant working for the LAPD. His job is to retire older model replicants still living on earth, specifically Nexus 8 models. After a routine hit, K discovers the remains of a female that are brought back to LAPD HQ. After an autopsy of the remains, its learned that the remains are of a replicant that died during childbirth. This is unexpected, as replicants are not able to reproduce. Near the site of the remains, K finds another mystery: A birth-date that matches a date located in one of his implanted memories, leaving K to question his identity. 

K later learns that the female was named Rachael, and that she was romantically involved with an ex-Blade Runner named Deckard. K opts to learn more and, along with his holographic-yet-intelligent computer wife Joi (Ana de Armas), sets out on a quest to uncover the missing child of Rachael. This journey takes him to a desolate garbage wasteland where K finds the orphanage that the child had passed through, recognizing it as a location from his memories. There, he finds that records of the child were erased. Furthermore, he discovers a wooden toy that the boy in his memory had left behind there. K goes back to Los Angeles to meet with the memory maker Stelline (Carla Juri) and shows her his memory, wondering if it was real or entirely fabricated. When Stelline confirms it was a real memory from a real person, K concludes he is the missing child.

Afterwards, K seeks out Deckard in an irradiated Las Vegas. However, he's pursued by agents of the Wallace Corporation, who are after Deckard to learn the secrets of replicant reproduction. From Deckard K learns that the child, revealed to be his with Rachael's, was hidden in order to keep them safe from being taken to be studied in a lab as an anomaly. Although K is distraught at Deckard's apparent coldness to his willful separation from the child, K seems to understand nonetheless. After that, the corporation's agents attack, injuring K, killing Joi, and kidnapping Deckard.

Deckard (Harrison Ford) emerges from hiding in Las Vegas.

Though left for dead, K is rescued by a replicant resistance group. Their leader Freyse (Hiam Abbass) reveals herself as the one who delivered Deckard and Rachael's child, and that the child is in fact a girl: Stelline. K is urged to assassinate Deckard to keep what he knows about replicant reproduction out of the corporation president Wallace's (Jared Leto) hands. 

Meanwhile, Deckard is interrogated by Wallace and his right-hand replicant Luv (Sylvia Hoeks). Wallace suggests that Deckard was a replicant purposely programmed to fall in love with Rachael so that they could be forced to reproduce. Deckard refuses to confirm or deny anything about himself or Rachael on any front, however, and Wallace decides to send Deckard away to be tortured for information. Though whisked away by an airspeeder with Luv at the helm, they are tracked down by K and shot down. K engages Luv on foot and, after a lengthy battle, emerges victorious. Deckard is free, and K urges Deckard to accept a fake death so that he may meet his daughter.

Deckard and K return to Stelline, whom Deckard meets for the first time. Outside Stelline's home, K appears to succumb to his wounds inflicted by Luv and dies peacefully under snowfall.

Thoughts

Though Blade Runner was set in a world of rain, Blade Runner 2049 covers the futuristic Los Angeles in thick layers of snowfall instead.

Normally, I like to watch a movie several times before I get too deep into an analytical approach to the plot of a film, so take this as more of a first impression of the film's story (As the blog post name implies). 

So first things first: Overall, I enjoyed the story. I thought it had some good twists and turns, and it remained deeply rooted with its cyberpunk heritage. For example: While the film was as set in a noir story telling style like the first Blade Runner, it was still moored to the idea and feeling with its visual and investigative main character. In fact, in some ways, the story was more faceted than the original, with several different narratives occurring at once, such as K's search for identity, the hunt for answers on replicant reproduction, the freedom of replicants from their makers, and the search for what occurred after the events of the original film. Another classic cyberpunk trope is the plight of the main hero. Usually in these settings, the hero either ends the story no better off than he was at the start of it, or he ends the story even worse off than he was. Rarely do cyberpunk heroes receive a completely happy ending. Officer K is most certainly granted the latter of these two endings (Though he does manage to give someone else a happy ending instead).

One thing I enjoyed about the narration-absent versions of Blade Runner is how little the film holds the audience's hand while guiding them through the film. Much of the films imagery is left up to the viewer to work out in their head. In the original film, replicant builder Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel) mentions that Rachael was experimental. As too what this infers about her ultimate fate then was left unknown, although the original theatrical ending flatly stated it meant she had an open-ended lifespan. Similarly, the original film, in any version, does not make the flat out claim that Deckard is a replicant himself. Rather, its only heavily implied. It's up to the audience to connect the dots, remember the unicorn scene, and to think of Gaff's parting words to Deckard and draw a conclusion by themselves. 

Blade Runner 2049 largely runs with this concept as well, but only occasionally. I couldn't help but feel that certain elements in the film could have been axed due to them being to obvious or being too "hand-holding." A minor complaint related to this is the use of "Location Blurbs" that appeared on the screen during the appearance of new locations. Yes, the original film included this as well, but only once at the beginning to let us know that the bizarre dystopia we were being shown was in fact a modern American city. For example within 2049, we are shown a desolate wasteland filled largely with junk. The screen tells us this is a garbage zone. Seconds later, we see garbage trucks dumping garbage. My complaint here is, the blurb did nothing but tell us what the film was already showing us, and was as such completely unnecessary. 

Blade Runner 2049 follows it predecessor in being a visually stunning film.

If you can recall, much of Blade Runner's theme was set on the meaning of what it meant to be human. To replicant villain Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), it was the ownership of personal memories and life events, to be able to be remembered. It was certainly no mistake in that film that the replicants were portrayed in a far more humanizing manner than the ostensibly human main character! In Blade Runner 2049, the concept now centers on the value of reproduction. Though Rachael was experimental for a replicant, the idea of a replicant ebing able to reproduce was unfathomable. With Rachael's creator, Tyrell, dead (Having been killed by Roy during Blade Runner), the secret of replicant reproduction died with him. Wallace and Luv's primary objective throughout Blade Runner 2049 is too learn the secret, so that Wallace's own replicants could be allowed to reproduce as well. 

However, I do find this a bit odd, but perhaps it's because upon expecting another adventure in "What it means to be human," we get something closer to "What it means to be truly alive," which could be construed as a step backwards or a step forward in the logic. After all, animals can reproduce naturally. If replicants can't, then they really are less than a common mouse. To reproduce is to truly live. To be alive. 

Officer K's story has ups and downs in terms of interest. One of the character's main dilemmas is what's initially a rather lonely looking relationship with a holographic computer wife named Joi, which happens to be an intelligent program distributed en-mass by the Wallace Corporation. K manages to connect with her though by giving her some kind of box that allows her to disconnect from the robot arm installed in K's apartment and travel alongside him. After this moment the character's personality manages to grow and she becomes far less hollow, allowing for a more natural relationship. This eventually evolves into Joi trusting her entire life to K when she encourages him to disconnect her from her home completely when he goes on the run to find Deckard while escaping Wallace's cronies. For Joi, this is about as close to becoming a real person that she can physically become, as she, like the replicants, desires for independence. Tragically, her story ends when Luv destroys her box, killing her, and leaving K alone.

Officer K brings his computer wife Joi (Ana de Armas) into the rain after giving her an independence box, allowing her to actually feel the rain land on her digitized skin.

It's not clear if this is meant to mean much in terms of symbolism, other than an attachment to technology, similar to what we see in the movie Her. However, Joi is treated by K as an actual being, and they do form a close relationship. Perhaps its two machines making the best out of their dull lives. If anything, Joi serves more to the story as an element of world building, showing us that AI has advanced ten-fold and now, like the replicants, is looking for an escape. It builds that cyberpunk feel. After Joi dies, we're returned to the empty hollow feeling of 2049 LA as K finds massive holographic versions of Joi advertising her product to other potential customers. In true cyberpunk fashion, K is left uncertain about his connection to Joi, and is left more bitter than he was before. 

K's search to discover his past is also intriguing, but somewhat annoyingly builds to a red herring. However, that's not to say it wasn't appreciated. I can't imagine what would change if K learned he was born rather than built, other than him realizing that he was seemingly abandoned as a child. I keep mentioning "true cyberpunk fashion," and in truth, it ends about as badly for K as it should when he learns that he is, in fact, a replicant built and not born. However, I can't help but find the idea of a replicant learning that it is actually a human to be an interesting concept. Furthermore, it would make a nice callback to Do Androids Dream, where book Deckard must find out if a fellow bounty hunter is either an android or a human, only to find out that the bounty hunter is a human with the apathy of an android. But like I said, it was a good mystery. And K learning that he was not in fact the son of Deckard and Rachael keeps in tone with the movie's dark aesthetic. 

However, this begs the question: In the film its stated that K isn't programmed to lie. However, when he begins to believe he is not a full blown replicant after all, he musters the ability to lie. But then we find out he is a replicant. So, how does that work? 

Another strange plot point in the film is the introduction of a replicant resistance. After K is left for dead by Luv's gang in Las Vegas, he is found by the resistance and mended. They quickly begin asking him to join them and overthrow Wallace. They even ask K to kill Deckard so Wallace can't learn anything from him. I'm entirely sure what the purpose of this scene was all meant for, though. I guess we learn something about the replicants, but it doesn't amount to anything. K goes after Deckard and his kidnappers, but only to save him and kill Luv. After that he fakes Deckard's death and the resistance isn't mentioned again. Either another red herring, an underdeveloped plot point, or a potential setup for another movie. If the latter, I'm worried about a war film set in the "Blade Runner Universe." It just wouldn't fit, right?

Officer K arrives in an irradiated Las Vegas, one of the film's more gorgeous visual moments.

Well, there's a few other things I may or may not have questions on, but I really do wanna write up some of the things that I simply can't speak negatively about. Really, you can't write a Blade Runner 2049 anything without bringing up just how gorgeous the film looks. Practically every shot is as carefully crafted as it can be, with stark colors, silhouettes, and sci-fi/cyberpunk glory spots all over. It's like they looked at Blade Runner, AKIRA, The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, and said "Hey, lets just do that, and throw in a shit load of Neuromancer alongside it." Blade Runner 2049's LA is doing its best to be the cyberpunk-inspired city of the decade. And you know, while I was iffy about the latest Ghost in the Shell film, I thought that film at least had a solid look nailed down. 2049 takes that and adds twenty layers of grunge and Atari logos on top of it, along with a boat load of extra locales and calls it a day. 

I think what's best about the design of the film's settings is how unique each place looks. Downtown LA is littered with garbage, alternating rain and snow, downtrodden people, graffiti, and massive sized holograms serving as advertisements. Sapper Morton's (Dave Bautista) farm has the classic "used-future" aesthetic, which is a mix of futuristic farm equipment, space age tech, and long outdated utility vehicles that appear to be on their last legs. The Wallace Corporation building is an imposing structure where the desk clerk works in a stone pyramid with a tiny slit built into it for him to communicate with visitors out of. Meanwhile, the execs move about in artful halls and pristine anterooms, while Wallace's own office consists of a an almost Japanese-inspired fish pound with a little chunk of floor in the middle of it with a few soft chairs, a glass table, and some small potted plants. Finally there's irradiated Las Vegas, which is dominated by orange hues, stark silhouettes, broken down casinos, and massive statues of naked women that have broken into ruins not too dissimilar from the ruins of ancient Egypt. Every location is as unique as it is fully realized. 

Visually, the film is nothing short of masterful. It's practically art house. It's almost a shame that the story, while good, is thematically stalled and lacking in verbal poetry. But I'm telling you right now that the production of this film demands to be given an award. We had some good looking films earlier this year, but this one tops them. The last remaining contender is Star Wars Episode VIII, and as good as it looks so far, I still don't think it'll match the artistry that is Blade Runner 2049's visuals, sets, and camerawork. 

Another thing I liked was that the movie did its best to keep that overpopulated feeling that the original film had. Streets are crowded with people, a mishmash of futuristic and dilapidated vehicles roam the streets, and there's people riding bicycles in large packs. Weirdly, but not a bad thing, the apartments in the movie were chock full of people, whereas the original film left buildings rather empty, unless it was something like Zhora's (Joanna Cassidy) dancer building. However, I guess I was just assuming that more people would have moved off-world by now. Although a major point in the book, the idea of people living off-world was really more of a facet of world building in both Blade Runner films as opposed to anything story substance.

In Conclusion

K finds himself in a sticky situation.

Overall, Liked Blade Runner 2049. Visually, it's a damned masterpiece. The story is interesting, with twists and turns at every step of the way. However, the only thing truly lacking is the "deepness" of the film's themes. There were some things to think about, but not as much as Blade Runner, in my opinion. It gave us its story, it showed us that the replicants were still looking for peace and finding what it meant to be alive/human, but the impact was overall middling. 

Fans of cyberpunk, movies, film-making, and sci-fi should enjoy Blade Runner 2049. For casual film goers, the movie is set to a slow pace. There is more action than the previous film, with it appearing at intervals to keep us on our toes. Usually when it does occur, it was fast, unexpected, and incredibly violent, which I liked, actually. But even so it's a slow movie, and although I have no preference over fast or slow (I just like movies), some people may feel differently. 

It's a film that may be best seen in a theater, given its bombastic soundtrack and sound effects, the wide shot visuals, and the strong feeling of "epicness" that it tries so hard for. 

Again, overall, Blade Runner 2049 is a good film. However, it's somewhat disheartening to come out of it wondering if the style outweighed the substance. Although not always a bad thing, it only becomes irritating when the film obviously looks for substance and can't fill the void. I guess that we're left waiting on what comes of the film's impact on future generations. After all, Blade Runner wasn't too well received on its debut. Only in time was its soul realized. For 2049, I wonder if we'll have the opposite outcome.

Images from IMDB's promotional photo gallery unless otherwise noted.