Blade Runner 2049 is a sequel to one of my favorite science fiction movies of all time, and is set 30 years after the events of the first movie. The film follows Ryan Gosling's character K as he follows a difficult case in his line of work as a Blade Runner. In this fictional universe, modern science has successfully created replications of human beings known as replicants, and society uses them more or less as slaves. Blade Runners are more or less cops who exist to track down and retire (kill) replicants who have disobeyed their masters. The core theme of Blade Runner revolves around what is it that makes an individual a human and what the worth of humanity is, as well as how technology presents challenges to those judgments. Blade Runner 2049 runs with these themes as well, albeit set in an even more futuristic world in the same universe.
The film has a ton of strengths, and the foremost of these is the visual achivement of the movie. This movie is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and the direction of the action is absolutely perfect. It really captures the gritty, noir feel of the first film, but jacks up the budget substantially, allowing for some truly exemplary cinematic accomplishments. The whole team that worked on this side of the movie did a superb job on this film, and it really shows.
The thematic work in this movie was fairly spot on to the original film, although it definitely takes a bit more of a mainstream approach to the film than the original. If Blade Runner operated primarily on a level of ambiguity and challenging audiences, then Blade Runner 2049 works best by teasing around that edge, but giving the audience more hard and fast answers to the questions posed by the film. The ethics of the characters in this movie are generally much more clear than in the first, and the fates of those characters are fairly well defined, especially compared to the complete cliffhanger of the first movie. I prefer the more open ended narrative structure of the original, but this will definitely be more pleasing to the vast majority of moviegoers, and was done quite well, so I have few problems with it. If you were doing a straight side story with different characters in this universe, then you could really take the same narrative approach of the original, but this is a sequel featuring several recurring characters, so some clarity is unavoidable. It is definitely more challenging than the vast majority of Hollywood movies, though, so I think they toed the line pretty nicely here.
The music was very good, and added nicely to the overall feel of the film. It definitely had a nicely retro feel to it, and would have felt right at home in the original film.
The script was generally smartly written, and feels very much in the same universe as the original's. It develops a nice plot, and has plenty of hooks and twists throughout to keep you engaged.
I felt like the movie was too long at a whopping 163 minutes, but after thinking about it, I can't really find too much to cut out. But if I'm getting antsy by the end of the movie, I think a professional filmmaker probably could have found 12 minutes to cut.
My biggest disappointment with the film was the lack of interest that I had in Gosling's character. I feel like he did a fine job of performing the character, but he just wasn't written terribly well, which was shielded a bit by the fact that many surrounding characters were much more interesting. I absolutely love Gosling, and three of my favorite films of the last 10 years have him as star (La La Land, Drive, and The Place Beyond the Pines). But I found myself genuinely bored by him, aside from his little storyline with his AI roommate, and I actually found that concept more interesting than his performance in it.
The rest of the cast delivers above average performances, but no one really stands out as a shining star of the movie, unlike the original, which featured excellent performances by Harrison Ford, Sean Young, and Rutger Hauer. I felt like Harrison Ford was really underused in this film, although I generally don't like when they drag back actors to do a new film in a series 30 years after the fact (Harrison Ford seems to have this happen to him all of the time).
Anyway, I thought that Blade Runner 2049 was a good movie, and a worthy addition to the Blade Runner universe. It's not for everyone, but I think it does enough of a good job of channeling the spirit of the original while also shaving off some of the delightfully rough edges that made the original so challenging to the average audience. It's a shame that it bombed, because I'd love to see a followup that fixes some of the problems with the movie, but it gave enough to warrant it an 8.8/10.
-TRO
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