Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049 (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from www.freefall-productions.com)

2017 / US / 144 minutes

“Did it never occur to you that that was why you were summoned in the first place? Designed to do nothing short of fall for her right then and there. That is, if you were designed…”

Director: Denis Villeneuve / Screenplay: Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick / Director of Photography: Roger Deakins / Music: Benjamin Wallfisch & Hans Zimmer / Production: Bud Yorkin, Broderick Johnson, Andrew A. Kosove and Ridley Scott for Columbia Pictures / Cast: Ryan Gosling (“K”), Harrison Ford (Rick Deckard), Ana de Armas (Joi), Sylvia Hoeks (Luv), Robin Wright (Lieutenant Joshi), Mackenzie Davis (Mariette), Carla Juri (Dr. Ana Stelline), Lennie James (Mr. Cotton), David Bautista (Sapper Morton), Jared Leto (Niander Wallace), Edward James Olmos (Gaff), Barkhad Abdi (Doctor Badger), Hiam Abbas (Freysa), Wood Harris (Nandez).

In 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens proved that follow- up’s to classic films after decades- long gaps (the Star Wars prequels don’t count) were not only popular with hardcore fans but also attractive to general audiences. Whilst there had been “Legacy Sequels” before (most notably, Harrison Ford’s first return to one of his iconic roles in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008), Fury Road and The Force Awakens were game- changers.

   Both introduced almost entirely new, “Next Generation” casts to appeal to modern audiences and both also displayed almost religious respect for their ancestors (Fury Road with its whole attitude and feel attached to a new story and The Force Awakens with its deliberately retro, prequel- ignoring look attached to a recycled one). So, with long- running rights disputes finally settled, the time finally seemed right to return to a much darker and complex Sci- Fi world.

   Initially a financial failure and only a modest critical success, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) had been well and truly re- evaluated as a masterpiece of the genre (and by many as one of the greatest films of all time) in the intervening thirty years. For a long time, Scott looked likely to direct the long- awaited sequel himself but ultimately stepped aside due to his commitment to his Alien prequels (which, given the decidedly middling results with them, was probably a good thing in hindsight).

   Although Scott stayed on as a producer, directing duties went to French Canadian Denis Villeneuve, who had impressed with the brutal thriller Sicario (2015) and the hard SF drama Arrival (2016). With the original film’s screenwriter Hampton Fancher on board, Villeneuve also recruited the best possible cinematographer in Roger Deakins (a workmanlike presence for decades but only recently the subject of critical acclaim himself for his work on Skyfall (2012) and Sicario).

   With reality fast catching up to Blade Runner’s fictional setting (the first film was set in 2019), Blade Runner 2049 presents us with a faithful continuation of that imagined world rather than going for a rethought modernisation of it. And, if anything, Villeneuve’s film is even more obsessively reverent to its source material than either Fury Road or The Force Awakens. But, at the same time, it takes a much deeper dive into previously unexplored parts of its universe, expanding upon the ideas of the original without contradicting any of them.

   2049 opens with a scene Fancher reworked from an early draft of the original film’s script (he and Scott had discussed it in detail in a 2007 documentary) but soon goes off in its own direction as we follow new, replicant (artificial human) Blade Runner “K” (Ryan Gosling) on a mission literally trying to solve the mysteries of the past.

   Discovering that the only long- dead “Nexus 7” replicant (who turns out to have been Rachael (Sean Young) from the original) achieved the supposedly impossible by having a child, K sets about trying to identify who it could be while three different forces (his LAPD bosses, the Wallace Corporation and the Replicant Freedom Movement) also want to find out for their own reasons.

   K’s search leads him first to unstable industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) and his fearsome replicant enforcer Luv (Sylvia Hoeks, who brings several interesting dimensions to an ostensibly villainous role) and retired Blade Runner Gaff (Edward James Olmos in another brief reprisal of his role from the first film).

   Ultimately, however, the secret to replicant reproduction resides with the first film’s protagonist, Ford’s Rick Deckard, the Blade Runner who disappeared with Rachael thirty years earlier. Although Ford is only really around for an extended cameo in the final act, Deckard haunts the film’s narrative like Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949) or Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), to the point that he’s pretty much always there, even- or perhaps especially- when he’s not.

   We still only ever hear about what goes on “Off- World”, but 2049 does finally leave the city (technically, the original film briefly did too, although only in the theatrical cut’s tacked on happy ending removed from subsequent versions) to explore other places. The film’s look is impressively well thought out and feels like an organic progression from the original, particularly the way the buildings have changed.

   As with the first film, the level of background detail is astounding but the filmmakers still remind us that three decades have gone by and there have been huge changes (most obviously, the completely haywire climate and the enormous sea wall protecting the city from the overflowing ocean). There are even several deliberately anachronistic touches (the USSR still existing, advertisements from long defunct companies) to remind us this isn’t just a version of the future, but a now knowingly “Alternate” future.

   2049 also wisely retains the original’s sense of mystery (we still don’t find out if Deckard is a replicant himself) murky morality (Robin Wright’s Joshi believes she’s saving the world by destroying all hope of replicant societal advancement) and ambiguous motivations (is the conflicted Luv planning her own replicant rebellion?)

   Whilst the film lacks the original’s freshness (as well as Scott’s personal connection to the material and an antagonist quite as memorable as Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty), it still defeats almost all the odds to become a worthy successor to a true classic. Unfortunately though, it would suffer the same fate at the box office.

   Long, complex, slow- paced and R rated, 2049 was a financial disappointment despite rave reviews. Even so, Scott and Fancher have both made suggestions for a further continuation. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another 35 years.