Blade Runner 2049
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Written by: Hampton Fancher and Michael Green
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Sylvia Hoeks, Ana de Armas, Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Davis, Robin Wright, Jared Leto, Carla Juri, Dave Bautista, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi
Sci-Fi/Thriller - 163 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 Sep 2017
Written by: Hampton Fancher and Michael Green
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Sylvia Hoeks, Ana de Armas, Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Davis, Robin Wright, Jared Leto, Carla Juri, Dave Bautista, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi
Sci-Fi/Thriller - 163 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 Sep 2017
I was too late for 1982’s Blade Runner. Like Tron, also from that year and orbiting a similar science-fiction genre, I experienced it later on the small screen and knew little of its previous impact. Neo-noir? That concept arrived much later. What I remember most is the space Ridley Scott gave the audience, both in atmosphere and in pacing. When I first saw it, my 17 year-old self thought Blade Runner was a snooze fest. I lacked the patience and practice to puzzle out and absorb the themes Scott wanted to explore. It is obvious Denis Villeneuve picked up on Ridley Scott’s intentions back then. Taking over directorial duties for the sequel, Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve creates a modern masterpiece.
Villeneuve kept the space. At close to three hours long, there are extended stretches of Ryan Gosling’s ‘K’ (Song to Song) just going through his police procedural motions. Traveling from here to there in his flying car and analytically walking through unfamiliar territory may sound tedious and overdrawn, but combine it with what makes it cinematic, specifically the cinematography by Roger Deakins and the score by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer, and these travelogues may not be long enough. It says something when you know you would not go anywhere near the place if you were actually there, a radiated desert or a claustrophobic apartment, but Deakins paints it as somewhere you want to be right now.
Villeneuve kept the space. At close to three hours long, there are extended stretches of Ryan Gosling’s ‘K’ (Song to Song) just going through his police procedural motions. Traveling from here to there in his flying car and analytically walking through unfamiliar territory may sound tedious and overdrawn, but combine it with what makes it cinematic, specifically the cinematography by Roger Deakins and the score by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer, and these travelogues may not be long enough. It says something when you know you would not go anywhere near the place if you were actually there, a radiated desert or a claustrophobic apartment, but Deakins paints it as somewhere you want to be right now.
K’s apartment is barely large enough for one as his squalid building looks like the thousand others stacked right up against it. It makes the idea of the ‘space’ I was just talking about sound as if I am describing a different film. Even the synthetic farmland, which saved humanity from extinction, is bunched up and closed in. Farms are supposed to be spread out and the mind’s eye version of wide open spaces. Farms in 2049 are towers penned in by ring upon ring of solar panels. The garbage dumps, which are now the size of cities, are mountains so tall no horizon can be seen. So, Villeneuve’s space is not physical; it’s not room to maneuver. It’s deliberate pacing and steady momentum.
K is a Blade Runner, a specialized cop who hunts older model replicants, just like Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), from the previous generation. Replicants are modern now; they are smart phones compared to the older Nexus 8 models which are more like flip phones. First of all, newer model replicants obey. They lack the capacity to rebel. Villeneuve doesn’t show us any other Blade Runners which may mean the world is running out of older Nexus 8s to hunt down. Something that has overtly increased, however, are those building-sized advertisements which many people will recognize from the 1982 original.
Blade Runner’s most enduring image is the Asian female staring out from a 30-story video screen as a car flies in front of it. In 2049, all sides of every building are bright neon ads. These 3D holographs swirl and shine right into your apartment; they may even interact with you on the street. Complaints? You mean, how dare you get into the way of an advertisement; not the other way around. Replicants and flying cars are the most science-fiction part of the story, but I am cynical enough to believe this is the direction ads are headed. At least the ads help to distract the populace from the crumbling landscape behind them. Nature was already collapsing in 2019 in Scott’s film, and 30 years on, it’s far worse. Humanity dug out all of the resources the Earth had to give and the humans repaid it with mountain ranges of trash. Maybe that’s why everyone we see stares at nothing or would as soon attack K as look at him.
I know you want to read about the plot, but I’m not going to talk about it; most reviewers will not. Not only have Villeneuve and the studio provided specific guidelines of what to stay away from, but come on, go in blind for once. I never watch previews and try my best not to know anything about films before I see them; you may be surprised how much this ignorance enhances your enjoyment of a film. You’re not anticipating that one scene you saw beat to death in commercials or that one line that was funny the first time but functions now only as a marker. But, consider brushing up on the source material. 2049 can be enjoyed on its own merits as a standalone, but juxtaposed with a fresh viewing of the original, the reminder will deepen your connection to the characters and any surprises.
The original and the sequel have two different directors, but Villeneuve honors the aesthetics of the Blade Runner world while coaxing forth its own identity. Before, there was the Tyrell Corporation who created the glitchy replicants; now, there is the Wallace Corporation, a business so powerful and ruthless it may function more as the central government than any other law of the land. The closest we ever get to government is local law enforcement, so perhaps the Wallace Corporation are the arbiters of good and evil. Packaging it all together is the score, nostalgically reminiscent of Vangelis’s earlier work. Villeneuve fired his long-time composer, Jóhann Jóhannsson, who most recently excelled on the score for Arrival and was Oscar-nominated for Sicario. Wallfisch and Zimmer took over and created a sound I expect to pop up again around Oscar time. Even though it’s a sequel based on previous material, 2049 is quite similar to Villeneuve’s most recent film, Arrival. Not only are the empty outdoor spaces and claustrophobic interiors back, but take a look at Wallace’s empty but confining meeting room; it is not far off from Arrival’s spaceship where the humans met the aliens. Most eyebrow raising of all, Villeneuve made a sequel better than original, a feat which happens once a decade or so, and the sequel is one of the best film’s of the year; a distinction which almost never happens.
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