Runtime: 2 hours, 44 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Quick Impressions:
Although like most people, I consider the original Blade Runner a great film, I don’t have any deep, personal attachment to it. When I do call the 1982 Blade Runner to mind, I think immediately of the color blue and constant rain.
So for me, the big takeaways from Blade Runner 2049 were the color yellow and occasional snow.
Why is the Los Angeles of the future so yellow and plagued with snow flurries? Who knows? (Probably director Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins). Clearly this isn’t the future Los Angeles of our own world. No, we’re in some parallel reality where Pan Am is still solvent and Atari is huge (or, anyway, its ads are the size of skyscrapers). Based on the replicants running rampant all over the place, I’m guessing the film is set in one of Stephen Hawking’s recent nightmares.
Even though I’m being flippant, there is truth in what I’m saying. See the movie. Everything is yellow. Sometimes it snows. Before our eyes, the worst fears of Hawking are realized (and pretty central to the plot).
At its core, Blade Runner 2049 is a story that asks the age-old question, “What does it mean to be a human being?” (The answer, as always: “Ummmmm….” Nobody knows for sure! But the replicants seem to be on the right track, while all the humans of sound mind and body are presumably off in outer space with no time to devote to such wearying existential crises.)
If you like Blade Runner, you should like 2049, too. It has the same cool, sci-fi noir vibe, which is not surprising since Hampton Francher again wrote the screenplay (with Peter Green this time). It has the most sickening, creepy score since Under the Skin. (I think maybe Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer should win something for this since the relentless, extreme bass ear-assault is so unnerving it makes you want to claw your eyes out!) The movie is also so long that it feels like you could probably watch all twenty-seven different versions of the original during its runtime and still have a few minutes left over.
(I was particularly fixated on the runtime because my husband and I were trying not to be away from home too long. I kept fretting, We have to be home in time to put the kids to bed so that my parents agree to watch them again next time!
Obviously I knew the runtime going into the movie, but as the time before Rick Deckard’s appearance dragged on and on, I kept thinking in horror, “Oh God! It’s really true! This movie really is almost three hours long! Wait! Is Harrison Ford actually in this? Is he going to pull a Luke Skywalker at the end of The Force Awakens? Was all that unusually chatty press just part of some elaborate charade?”
The first thing I said to my husband after the credits was, “If they’d spoken at a normal rate, that would have been half as long!”)
The movie never drags, though, not really. I did catch myself thinking near the beginning of the second hour, “Why did this movie even have a first hour? Did we really need it?” But we probably did.
The Good:
Honestly, I have few complaints about the film. In fact, overall, I think I liked it better than the first one. (I’m not making the bold claim that it’s a greater film, just mentioning that I enjoyed watching it more. I think. Maybe that’s because 2049 gets the amount of narration needed (none) right on the first try. (Yes, of course, I’m aware that the cult status of the first film gave the filmmakers more control this time around.) I think a big factor is that I’ve never liked Sean Young, and I found all the female characters in 2049 nine million times more interesting than any woman in the original. I’m being honest here, not fair. (But you still have time to change my mind, Sean Young! Rene Russo recently pulled it off! Anything is possible!)
I don’t want to spoil the any of the plot twists (as they were spoiled for me by a random comment on a completely unrelated article online). For me, the most exciting epiphany came when I whispered to my husband, “Is that Drax?” And sure enough, Dave Bautista shines in the small but critical role of Sapper Morton.
Ryan Gosling, obviously, is perfect as K. I can’t think of a working actor of his generation better suited to play the strong, silent lead in a noir-esque film. Thinking of him for the part must have taken all of thirty seconds.
And we should all know what to expect from Harrison Ford by now. As always, he delivers. Could there be hope for him to win an Oscar this year? (He certainly deserves one!) (Talk about an understatement!)
Very late in the film, I experienced an unsettling sensation of disorientation. Who was I rooting for again? By this time, I’d spent two hours with K, very engagingly played by Ryan Gosling. But if he and Deckard ever found themselves at odds, then shouldn’t I be on Deckard’s side? (After all, I did meet him first.) Plus despite Gosling’s stellar performance, Ford automatically pulls the audience’s focus once Deckard arrives on the scene.
The messy ambiguities of the final act reminded me a bit of director Denis Villeneuve’s earlier film Prisoners. I found myself thinking, Has there only been an illusion of a protagonist this whole time? Who, if anyone, are the good guys here? Do I even know what’s going on or what’s at stake? (I understood the plot on a literal level, but the metaphysical questions thrown up in the air late in the game were legitimately confusing.)
Aside from K and Deckard, the characters I liked best were female. (That’s probably because aside from the antagonist, all the other main characters are female.) Joi (Ana de Armis) and Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) were extremely captivating. Both actresses had tons of charisma and gave riveting performances, but I think the two characters themselves provide a kind of shorthand necessary for successfully experiencing the film. There’s just something about them. Joi always puts us at ease. Luv always makes us squirm. While I was watching, I was always happiest to see Joi, but after Luv’s final scene, I realized, Yes, she was the best one in the whole movie, all right. They work in tandem. The film needs both of them. I don’t want to dig into specifics, but every time I felt deeply uncomfortable, one of these characters was on the screen.
Ryan Gosling exudes such a stoic male energy, and he’s the one dominating the screen most of the time, yet 2049 is teeming with so many great female characters. I also found Robin Wright’s character quite arresting. I loved watching her, even though something sometimes seemed off about the performance. I kept thinking, It’s so wonderful that Robin Wright is getting all these great parts lately, but her performance seems a little wooden at times. Then later, I realized, Yes, of course, she seemed wooden because she’s the one who isn’t a replicant! The doctor who creates memories is also quite captivating, as is Mackenzie Davis as Mariette. In fact, Mariette’s conversation with K about the tree is one of my favorite bits of dialogue in the film.
I would love to write a series of short essays about this film, but I hesitate to say much of anything here in the interest of not spoiling the movie.
One non-spoilery thing I did love was all the big actors in small parts. I was absolutely delighted to see Barkhad “I’m da captain now” Abdi, Tómas Lemarquis, and, as I’ve mentioned, Dave Bautista pop up for a bit in just the right places. This movie, I thought, had more humor than the original, odd, quirky moments scattered here and there and much of it came from K’s interactions with these huge talents in roles so tiny they were almost cameos.
Best Scene Visually:
What scene in this movie doesn’t make a strong visual impression? Maybe Roger Deakins will finally win that Oscar! Seriously, Blade Runner 2049 glides eerily from one memorable image to the next. Whether you like sweeping archival facilities, blood in the snow, toppled statues, or a handful of bees, Blade Runner 2049 has enough breathtaking images to impress each audience member with a completely different most-visually-memorable scene.
Two very different moments left the biggest impression on me. I loved watching the doctor create memories, mainly because it seemed so decadent. The film didn’t even have to show this. A movie with a lower budget would have found a way to present the same idea much more cheaply, I’m sure. At the time, it felt like a delightful magic trick, included just to charm the audience. I still like the fact that if the movie can go dramatically out of its way to horrify us with a sickening visual, it can also balance that by showing us something so very pleasant.
I also absolutely love the giant, interactive advertisement near the end of the film (the big, blue-haired woman). For me that was the most heart-breaking moment in the film.
I also can’t get an image from K’s most talked about memory out of my head. For the life of me, I cannot think why this rather mundane image should be so hard to shake. I feel like I’ve been a victim of Inception or something. I guess that memory is really a good one. It just won’t quit haunting anybody who comes near it!
Best Action Sequence:
Blade Runner 2049 starts with a bang, but then there are two hours of very minimal action. (I actually have some complaints about the scene in the San Diego dump, though I did love the way this touched on some of Elon Musk’s nightmares about A.I., too. And the Oliver Twisty vibe afterwards was kind of fun.)
Probably the most engaging action sequence introduces Deckard since the visuals here reinforce the unique ambiance of the Blade Runner world, though I think I personally preferred the scene between Luv and Lieutenant Joshi. (Does that count as action?)
The scene of K finally getting some action is really memorable, too. I’m not sure I liked it. But maybe I did.
Best Scene:
The scene that could get Harrison Ford deserved Oscar attention involves his unpleasant conversation with a major antagonist. Here the movie brilliantly teases us by reviving a famously unanswered question from the first film, seeming to offer closure, and then perversely denying clarity once again. It’s a brilliant moment, but what makes it better is one of Ford’s lines. All of these abstract guessing games seem very foolish in the face of the experience he brings to the table.
The defiant answer Ford gives here is one way of answering the entire quandary presented by the film, a sort of in-your-face Cartesian approach to the entire problem. In some ways, I think Deckard’s storyline answers the unfiltered “meaning of life” stuff, while Gosling’s quest explores the usefulness of framing ideologies (like religion and fiction) for tackling that difficult-to-face question.
I like the scene with the giant, blue-haired woman almost just as much, though. It’s so gutting. I’m very fond of Luv’s final moments, as well.
So many scenes in the film were brilliant. I always found Joi and Luv riveting, their interactions with others particularly so. The almost academic (and detective story buff) in me also enjoyed the research-in-the-archives angle. The stuff about the blackout seemed quite clear and well written, and K’s search through available materials was fun to watch.
The Negatives:
Okay I was lying about the most memorable image. If you’ve seen Blade Runner 2049 you know that those disorienting sequences in the Yellow Pyramid of Evil pretty much hog the screen.
Now I like Jared Leto. He’s truly amazing in Dallas Buyers Club and something beautiful in Fight Club, but here his performance is a little too over-the-top for my tastes (which is shocking because I love heavy-handed stuff usually, the weirder the better). To be fair to Leto, my real complaint lies more with the way the character is written than with his performance itself. Niander Wallace makes the entire Suicide Squad seem low key. He’s just so grandiose about his villainy.
The truly dominant visuals of the film are various establishing shots of the bizarro yellow pyramid where all the bad guys hang out. These moments look like rejected scenes from a darker version of The Wizard of Oz or maybe like a weird, disorienting view of the avant-garde water feature in an artsy boutique hotel.
The ways in which Leto’s character are evil make sense. His motives all add up. (And I agree with the premise that such people are usually like this.) But does he have to be so eerily odd in self-presentation style?
Within the narrative, there are pretty easy ways to explain all the absurdities of the character and his lair, but I still found it all more than a little off-putting to experience. (My husband speculated that one of Wallace’s own limitations led him to create certain modifications to his environment in order to keep others on edge. This makes sense, but it’s still so weird in execution.)
Am I really complaining because this part of the film didn’t work, or is it that these aspects worked a little too well and made me unpleasantly uncomfortable since that was the whole idea? It’s probably the latter, but I have to find fault with something!
Overall:
Blade Runner 2049 is one of the most solid sequels I’ve ever seen. It’s a pretty tricky thing to make a successful sequel to a masterpiece. I think everyone involved with this did amazing work, and I’m pretty sure there will be several Oscar nominations in this film’s future. I’m not going to hire anyone who worked on that yellow pyramid to decorate my house, though.