Seen Unbelievable Things? Part 2 of 2 Quarter Century into A Future

Flim review: Blade Runner 2049

25 years is a funny period of time to think about. Look at the last quarter century I lived through, internet is all I can think of. The bloody thing was still a novelty accessible through desktops I barely used back in 1999. Now it engulfs everything including the bank account my livelihood depends on and is accessible through this tricky thing we call “smart phone”. As for the 25 years to come, personally I would consider anything other than nuclear winter in radiated wasteland a win. But Blader Runner 2049 disagrees and says there might always be something worse…

The French-Canadian Connection

Allow me to start with the shocking and seemingly click baiting result: film director Denis Villeneuve and his Dune flicks had made me hate cinema. It’s because of both something he said and the unsavory type his last flick dragged into the cinema.

Back in October, 2021, Mr. Villeneuve compared watching film to “driving a speedboat”. How rich does this man have to be to forget that big office box numbers require schmucks who cannot even afford to see such vehicle? I mean as despicable as Christopher Nolan was regarding Tenet’s only theatrical release at some height of a plague, his naked reasoning of “I want my fucking money!” I get. Villeneuve’s “one of you” act just fell on its face.

I guess you did not have someone nosey behind you in that speedboat, V-man. In March, 2024, I had to shush a motherfucker behind me watching Dune Part 2. (One schmuck is allowed to despise another on basis of behavior.) Doesn’t help that the “savior of cinema” for many is merely Matrix remade in the image of Lawrene of Arabia. To paraphrase the late Anthony Bourdain: I like those flicks, what’s wrong with you mixing them up like that?

However, with Sicario, Villeneuve seemed to be the right choice for a Blade Runner sequel. In the 2015 thriller, Emily Blunt as Kate Macer does not carry a badge for the anti-narcotic death squad, she is their badge just so people would not rise their eye brows after those commando assassins made their killing on US soil. So, Villeneuve got the sad cop who cannot do much part of Blade Runner covered there.

Villeneuve was not only a more experienced feature director than Ridley Scott during the production of Blade Runner, he is also more clearly a science fiction reader. No, I do not mean the yet-to-be-made Rendezvous with Rama and Villeneuve’s tendency to adapt double winners of Hugo plus Nebula. But rather how the Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang turned into Arrival. The original story only contains the learn process of an alien language and a letter to a doomed child. The movie has genuine friendly alien visitor and ill shit caused by self-proclaimed XCOM nutjobs among homo sapiens. Something likely lifted by from Calculating God, a novel written by truly Canada’s very own Robert J Sawyer. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J K Rowling (Just using her name, so sit down trans folks.) took the Hugo rocket that book was nominated for, by the way.

Villeneuve claimed that he felt pressure making Blade Runner 2049 for he had to stick to a blueprint. But if you ask me, he lacks vision of his own even when he was in charge if those 2 Dune movies are anything to go by. So, let’s take a look at what blueprint he was not too willing to follow is, shall we?

Do “Skin-jobs” Dream of Electric Joi? Yeah, this one does.

Blade Runner 2049’s on-screen words are small, like one-has-to-narrow-their-eyes-in-the-cinema kind of small. Yet none is smaller than “Based on characters from the novel”, just before “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philp K Dick” in the end credits. It’s as if to say that this is not a sequel to Blade Runner but rather than another adaption of the PKD novel.

In some ways it’s. Many elements absent in the 1982 original were added into the 2017 sequel. Like the desolation of the world. The 1982 flick showed a city mixing many types of cultures from different times and space, a mixture one certainly Hideo Kojima would love to live in. The 2017 flick depicts a world 3 decades after Earth’s ecosystem collapsed, where the city streets are mostly empty. The male lead is more or less “married” in this one, if one can call a nice-to-look-at hologram interface of a smart home “spouse”. Or, maybe “pet” is more fitting since this one character would be killed or destroyed by a corporate Replicant woman just like the real sheep Deckard only made the down payment for is killed by Racheal in the book.

Ryan Gosling plays K, a Replicant hunting other deemed hazardous Replicants. In the first scene, K was tasked to kill Sapper Morton played by David Batista (This long-ass movie sure likes to “abuse” its all-star cast as in the likes of Batista and Wood Harris only gets one scene each) and survives being pounded through a concrete wall. K did the job and found a grave near the “retired” Replicant’s home. The deceased and buried turned out to be none other than Racheal from the 1982 original as a search for her child kicked the 2017 film off.

K would seem like the driver Gosling played in 2011’s Drive, a stoic who keeps quiet until he commits acts of violence. However, K is a man of even fewer words since the driver is making a monologue regarding his terms of employment in the opening of Drive while K basically talks only when spoken to. It’s a shame that Blade Runner 2049 does not have voice-over narration. For one thing Gosling’s seething voice was wasted. For another, Gosling provided a comedic voice-over in Shane Black’s Nice Guy, so I for one would love to hear him do a dramatic one. But the weight of 1982’s Blade Runner just dragged its sequel out of the more interesting possibilities.

2010s certainly lacks the club scenes of the 1980s. So, K’s off-time is spent with Joi, a pretty lady interface of his smart home. A house wife’s duty as cook and dancer for her husband is pretty obvious with this one. And oh, she paid for a warm body just so her hubby can have a shag, real thoughtful.

A Song of Bums and Ovens

Replicants giving birth is a fact both supporters and oppressors of those artificial people long for in this one. Their supporters see the face as a symbol for their personhood while their oppressor like Jared Leto’s Mr. Wallace just consider it as one way to increase their number with less efforts. Geeze, this is not a piece of science fiction look forward with awe, but rather than a farce set in a wasteland so the audience can feel better about themselves.

For the second highest billing before the title card, Harrison Ford appears in this one for way too late, 105 minutes into a 164-minute-long flicks. One might have a better time with Terminator, Predator or Robocop with that amount than waiting for a pissed off Mr. Ford appear. To be fair though, Ford’s impatience shown on screen does help to sell the story. K was a uninvited guest to his “man cave” in the future deserted Vegas. The long They Live style farcical fight between Deckard and K more or less puts book’s Deckard mis-venture in a fake police station on the screen. Then Wallace goons showed up and dragged Deckard around, so I guess Ford played the damsel part in the one rather convincing.

Wallace goons are mainly faceless except for a lass called Luv. Again, she kicks K in ways Ridley Scott once envisioned Roy Batty “Bruce Lee” kicking Rick Deckard before the late Rutger Hauer told that limey no. Luv always thought herself as the best Replicant before K drown her in the Pacific (Another thing the one stole from Drive I might add). Some real Old Testament “For I am a jealous God” bullshit for this one keeping destroying Wallace products, in this Baptist’s humble option.

Villeneuve claimed that he would not be around to adapt Frank Herbert’s fourth Dune novel, God Emperor of Dune. Now I had read that rather particular novel, I think Denny boy here did that sand worm human hybrid looking out for humanity bullshit in Jared Leto (More or less the namesake of the aforementioned Dune’s God Emperor, if we can say that jokingly) as Wallace here already. The man wants humanity to own the stars. Though the fictional Leto is at least aware of new technology for space travel while the character played by actor Leto does not seem to be. Wallace only cares about a large enough workforce. Oh, how I miss Dave Peoples, the co-writer of the 1982 original, His gibberish at least put some science fiction feeling into the Scott flick.

Not the good kind of speechless

As I turned Blade Runner 2049 off during the end credits, I felt “speechless”. Not Lance Henriksen being so impressed by Aliens that he cannot say a word to James Cameron kind of speechless. But I set out to review this film yet its 164 minutes long (credits included) run time give me fuck all to think and write about kind of speechless.

Granted the 2017 sequel does have more plot and a central mystery the 1982 original lacks. It might be a more enjoyable movie if it’s around 120 minutes long or less. Sicario and Arrival work fine within that restrain. Whatever fine flavor Blade Runner 2049 could have left in my mouth is truly lost in it run time like tears in rain. People wonder why Blade Runner as franchise does not succeed as much, I am more baffled by how it is still not dead yet in a time when its neon city landscape became part of space opera and other subgenre within sci-fi.

(Fin)