Blade Runner 2049 review

Do Androids Make Good Movies? Well after last year's HBO mini-series Westworld and the recent release of the film Blade Runner 2049, I would say yes. Okay, androids didn't make these productions, at least I don't think so. But the use of androids as characters in drama has done some important things. It has allowed science fiction to explore what it means to be human.

Based on  Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner 2049 is the sequel to the 1982 film Blade Runner. It takes place about 28 years later. Rogue replicants which are sythetic humans or androids are hunted down.. That doesn't mean there aren't replicants. It's just that the new versions are obedient to humans and don't cause trouble. In fact, some replicants are sued to terminate the rogue replicants. They are called blade runners.  K (Ryan Gosling) is one of them.  He's also a replicant.    When K terminates a replicant posing as a farmer, he finds a trunk of bones which has an extraordinary secret that could lead to war between replicants and humans. Oh I forgot, Deckard (Harrison Ford) from the first movie shows up in the last third of they movie. Hey, no spoiler, it's in the trailer.

Also, I didn't spoil the movie by telling you that K is a replicant. It's in the first few  minutes of the film. Yeah, unlike Producer Ridley Scott who made the first one and has been running around saying that Deckard (Harrison Ford) was a replicant. That's not clear in the first movie and I'm pretty sure Deckard in the novel is human. (ComicBook.com) But I digress. Ryan Gosling again demonstrates he's a fine actor. Here, he's a replicant but he's one that borders on having human empathy. He has virtual girlfriend, Joi (Ana De Armas) whom he dotes on. that begs the question, "Can androids love?" Harrison Ford turns in an atypical Ford performance. He's not a rogue, or particularly macho. His Deckard actually has warmth. Jared Leto should be  happy that he got the part as the blind Wallace, the morally challenged industrialist who is now producing replicants for a slave force.  It makes up for that frightening Joker in Suicide Squad.   Sylvia Hoeks is Wallace's replicant henchman or should I say henchwoman.  She is strikingly similar to Rachel from the first movie and the novel.   She's a terminator without empathy.   

Blade Runner's writer Hampton Fancher returns  to write the sequel's screenplay along with Michael Green.   (Logan).  These two are experienced at marrying film noir with science fiction.  And like the first film, this is a film noir.  And like that genre, this movie is more than action picture or science fiction opera, it's an essay on the human condition.  Themes on human existence are present.  What effect are human memories, a theme in some of Dick's novels.

Director Dennis Villeneuve (Arrival)  picks up Ridley Scott's mantle and produces a  magnificent looking film.  As much as I wanted more city landscapes, one must remember that this is earth after a great war.  That's why there is so many dusty scenes.  Perhaps, that is a weakness, the lack of exposition and why in the first movie there was a first person voice over.  Blade Runner 2049 requires you to pay attention.  There's a scene where K interviews an expert in memory construction for replicants.  I wanted to criticize it for tts length.    But in the scope of the entire film, I now realize how important it was.

Another theme  in both the novel and these two movies is  the definition of life.  Do humans have souls?  Is that why there are scenes of eyes.?   Are they windows to souls?    In Blade Runner 2049, there are scenes of female nudity.  It's sexual.  But it's relative to the human condition.  The act of sex is what creates humans.  Women are the sex of the species that brings life into the world.  And what about androids? If they become sentient, do androids reproduce? Or is that the human condition?

Traditional film noir mysteries don't give any solutions to the mysteries until the third act.  You'll be able to deduct fifty percent of the mystery in this movie after the announcement of the first plot point, i.e. the bones in the trunk.    But that's not the point of this movie.  Blade Runner 2049  shows the world with light and shadow.   It's not clear as to who is right and who is wrong.    This film is literate, intelligent and thought provoking. It will stand along its predecessor and like it, get better as time goes by.  The grade is A.