Movie Review: I’ve Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe in the Stunning "Blade Runner 2049"

Blade Runner 2049 is an absolute vision; a thrilling and thoughtful detective movie for the ages.

Revivifying Ridley Scott franchises is a thankless task. Just ask the filmmakers behind the godawful Alien3 to Alien: Covenant; that is, if they’ve not already fed themselves to a Xenomorph as penance.

It’s why a sequel to Scott’s iconic 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner has always remained just slightly out of reach. Who would dare take on this assuredly doomed mission? Most would buckle under the pressure.

But Denis Villeneuve—coming off a hot streak that began with Oscar nominee Incendies and stretches to Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario and Arrival—has the juice now. And based on Blade Runner 2049, he’s the only director (not currently making four back-to-back Avatars) capable of extending Ridley’s filmic universes. Give him The Counsellor 2: Still Counsellin’ next.

If you’re not familiar with the dystopian world of Blade Runner, here’s what you need to know: Sometime in the future, mankind farms out grunt work to bioengineered humanoids, called ‘replicants’. When any of these synthetic non-people rebel, ‘Blade Runners’ are called in to "retire" them.

In the first flick, set in 2019, Harrison Ford played Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner who may or may not have been a replicant himself. In this sequel, penned by Michael Green and original screenwriter Hampton Fancher, Ryan Gosling takes over the Blade Running (and existential querying), as Officer K. (Both pictures are inspired by the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

By the year 2049, replicants have been given some major upgrades by Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), a manufacturer with a god complex. They’re also especially pliable as slaves to humankind. That is, until K makes a shocking discovery on one of his routine missions that his nervous boss, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright), reckons could lead to all-out war between replicants and humans. K, tormented by his conscience, seeks out an old Blade Runner named Deckard for some answers. What he finds is trouble.

That’s as vague as I can make it, you pesky spoiler-hounds (the only assassins as relentless as Blade Runners). Rest assured, that information comes from the opening act, though you’ll need to wait until well into the feature’s 163-minute running time for Deckard to get his big re-introduction. Ford enjoyed a less-taxing victory lap in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He’s put to real, emotive work here; thankfully Ford proves he still has that movie star sparkle.

Gosling, too, is excellent as K. He’s introduced as a figure of menace, and then slowly reveals his many vulnerabilities, confiding only in girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas) and a ‘memory’ doctor, Ana (Carla Juri). Sylvia Hoeks is also compelling as Luv, Wallace’s relentless, Taylor Swift-inspired personal assistant/hitwoman. She even mimics the waterfall-esque black fringe of Sean Young’s Rachael from the predecessor. Mackenzie Davis, playing a prostitute and looking an awful lot like Darryl Hannah’s Pris, is the sequel’s other doppelgänger, unless you count the production department’s impeccable reconstruction of Blade Runner’s grimy, rain-soaked, neon-tinged L.A. streets.

Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins (in their third collaboration) have delivered a sumptuous visual feast to complement the screenwriters’ otherwise old-fashioned gumshoe detective story. (These Blade Runners are closer to films noir like The Big Sleep and Chinatown than Star Wars.) They retain Scott’s vision of the near-ish future—advanced and decrepit—pausing long enough on Deakins’ landscapes to let us soak in their awesomeness, or stare down its many despairing chasms.

Villeneuve’s taste for droning scores and thudding sound mixes make him a sensible choice as director. Blade Runner was icy and dread-inducing, intended to send viewers on self-interrogating crises. Yet Villeneuve, who examined dehuminisation in Sicario and rehuminisation in Arrival, finds a way out of the abyss this time around, offering a warmer and more emotional resolution than Scott did. Unfortunately, he’s missing an antagonist of the stature of Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty; a fact only magnified by 2049’s abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying final showdown

Nonetheless, Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 honours the original’s legacy and its mysteries, while adding to the mythology. It doesn't diminish the debates that have lingered around the saga for the past three decades; instead, it gives us further opportunities to consider our definition of humanity.

Of course, plenty of movies have done the same since 1982. However, the intersection of technological overreach and dehumanisation through law enforcement has special resonance in 2017. Perhaps Blade Runner and its sequel are not here to simply propose monolithic architecture for the future, or illustrate the logistics of techno-sex with a hologram; maybe they're here to track our social decline, and ease the transition from human rule to rule by a more empathetic species. This year alone, War of the Planet of the Apes and mother! attempted the same, with varying results. Three makes a trend. A very, very depressing trend.

As we reckon with the concept of handing the keys of the planet to our robot butlers, there’s another weighty question to consider: Should there be a sequel to Blade Runner 2049? Villeneuve certainly plots a course for Blade Runner 2050, though, like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, the events he’s teasing might be solely meant for our imagination.

That said, 2049 is so good, I’d be happy for Denis to tempt fate and make another.

4.5/5

In cinemas now. Rated MA15+ for strong violence.

Correction: A previously published version of this review contained a plot detail from the movie's first 15 minutes that could be construed as a spoiler. It has since been removed.

Photo: Sony Pictures