Like Tears in Rain redux

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

8.6/10 on IMDb
88% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe;
Watch it in cinemas

Watch it if you: Are a fan of the first movie (but you can watch this movie without liking the first);
Are a fan of either Ryan Gosling or Harrison Ford;
Are a fan of the director, Denis Villeneuve;
Like watching dystopian movies;
Want to watch a beautiful and intense film
A lot has happened since the year 2019. After the first Blade Runner (1982) film showed Replicants going rogue and wanting to live like humans, a newer model of Replicants is created. These Replicants, however, are programmed to obey.

I had high expectations for this film, being directed by Denis Villeneuve, the amazing director of Arrival (2016), Sicario (2015), and Prisoners (2013), all fantastic films that I love. I was worried about them turning this into a cash-grab franchise film, but with Denis Villeneuve behind the camera, I had faith. And the movie didn't disappoint!

When I first saw the original Blade Runner numerous times for English, I hated it. With a passion. I thought it was so slow and boring, the sound effects were terrible, it was so dark, and it was just not enjoyable. Some people would pass this off by saying it was an old film so you couldn't expect much, but I always had to point out the fact that Alien (1979) came out earlier and did a great job with effects and sound. So yeah, there wasn't much going for this film.

On the other hand, I really appreciated analysing such a theme-heavy film, and this is the first film where I realised that you could have a bad film with good themes in it. I realised I loved talking about the film, and its themes, and what it represented and meant to us, but watching it was just terrible, especially because we had to watch it so many times in class.

So with many traumatic memories to fall back on whenever someone mentioned Blade Runner, I was hesitant to rewatch it, but recently I finally did, and... it was actually alright. I think because I remembered all the themes and analysis of it, I finally was able to appreciate this film for what it was: a very slow, very dark, but very meaningful movie.

After seeing the trailers and interviews, I was excited for the new Blade Runner movie. What themes would they focus on next? What role is Harrison Ford going to play?

I watched the three short films that they released that served as prequels of the movie, and they were great. I loved the first one with Jared Leto, and it was cool to see Dave Bautista in the second one too. The third was an anime, with beautiful animation.

Needless to say, I was keen going in.

What blew me away in this film was the stunning cinematography. Every single shot looks like a beautiful poster or artwork, but it doesn't detract from the film because it either exemplifies how materialistic this society is, or else it depicts how derelict and dystopian the world in which such a society lives in. The result of our materialism is, ultimately, the degradation of the world.

And you can see how much they used the original film as inspiration, because they were able to emulate both the landscape and city designs, as well as the tone, of the first film. You have the overcrowded streets of a California that's hybrided itself with Tokyo, the aggressive advertising, the dark and bleak city landscape, and the discrimination against the Replicants, who are ultimately just trying to find their place in society.

While heavy inspiration from the first movie means it's an almost guarantee that this film will be slow, I actually found that a lot of the slow scenes were quite fascinating to watch. The film is able to make you either think so much you don't realise how slow the scene is on screen, or see so much that you don't have time to think about how slow it is.

But what I loved is that even though it drew on the first film and used many of its themes, it developed these themes even further and made it into its own film.

While the first film's question was, "What makes us human?", this film asks, "Does it even matter if we're human?" More about this in the spoilers section, but I thought it was great.

Apart from that, the film's score is overwhelmingly great. Not a surprise, since it's Hans Zimmer. That guy is a legend.

Ryan Gosling's performance is fantastic in this. It's probably his best performance; it was so intense, emotional, and raw. He has very little dialogue but his inner thoughts and feelings are so well portrayed through his facial movements and body language.

Harrison Ford also did a great job here. He is a living legend, and again I dont think I've seen him do so great a performance as he did here.

The film has a huge cast, and they all do a great job, but they only have very small roles. In fact, I actually liked Jared Leto's character more in the short film he was in, and I got to learn a lot more about Dave Bautista's character in that short too. You know what, I think I might just watch them again to appreciate some of the things that happened in the movie.

Okay... Spoiler Time!

Click to show/hide spoilers:

In the first film, the theme was, "What makes us human?"

Replicants were created to be "More Human Than Human"; genetically perfect in a society where genetic defects were running rampant. Yet despite their obvious superiority, these Replicants didn't get the same rights that humans got: to live. Both in the metaphorical sense, and in the sense that they were only alive for 4 years.

Then they created Replicants that didn't even know they were Replicants. They had false memories, or real memories of others, implanted in themselves. And the question of what makes us human becomes even more fuzzy. If someone was able to emulate human emotion, retrieve human memories, and feel human things, even if these were fake, what's to say they weren't actually human? If they were designed to be like a human, and truly believed they were a human, how could you say that they aren't one?

In this film, the theme shifts. It's obvious that Replicants are not humans, and this is accepted widely because these Replicants are obedient now. They aren't thinking of rising up against the humans because they want to be them. Instead, they've accepted that they are different to humans. Although physically superior, they remain their slaves. And they are content with that.

Or not.

No, they're probably not content.

Officer K carries himself as someone happy to just do his job: to retire Replicants. He's fine with this, because he was ordered to do it. But we see that all along, what he truly wants is to be human. So much so that his Joi eggs him on, encouraging him to believe that he is a human. He listens to her, forgetting that she was programmed to "say what he wants to hear" and "do what he wants to see".

Then he starts to believe that he is a human. That he has a soul.

His entire character changes. He starts to go against his authority. His test results are nowhere near baseline. He breaks away from the mould of a Replicant. He couldn't do this before, when he was a Replicant, but now with this new knowledge that he was born of a woman (and thus is now a Human), he can start to do all these things. He is no longer preprogrammed. He has autonomy. He now has a sense of purpose: to live. To be human.

But then... he's not human. He's nothing special. He's just another Replicant. Without a soul. Without meaning.

Until he remembers that what it means to be human is to have a choice in this. Replicants are created to follow orders. They don't have choice, but to choose to die for something worthy is to choose to be human. To him, being a human isn't to be birthed from a woman, it's to have a sense of meaning.

At first, I thought the movie was being so obvious. Right when he saw the numbers carved on the tree and he had a flashback, I was like, "Wow, he's a Human? He was born? So now they're going to have a big redemptive story? Doesn't that suck for all the other Replicants who aren't Human? That's a bit lame."

Then I thought, maybe they're trying to make it super obvious so that it's sort of like a dramatic irony where we know that he's a human and that makes it more interesting? Or maybe it's just more interesting that we know the plot twist earlier so we can read into his actions?

But then. PLOT TWIST. For real this time.

But I thought that was great, because you could see how tragic his character arc was, and you truly felt so devastated for him. Props again to Ryan Gosling. A beautiful human being.

And I think what can summarise the whole of this film is the off-handed joke that Harrison Ford makes in response to, "Is he real?" "I don't know, ask him."

That's pretty much the end to my spoilers section, but here are a few side notes:

• I was so mesmerised by the scene with Joi syncing with Mariette, the prostitute; amazing stuff
  
• The baseline test scenes were cool too INTERLINKED (INTERLINKED)
  
• Kite harpoon. Awesome.
  
• Lel, Pale Fire, come back to haunt me
  
• The CGI for Rachel was... holy cow amazing. It didn't even look off.
  
• In one scene, I think when K is in Deckard's hotel/house, the horse figurine makes a shadow that looks like a unicorn, which I thought was a cool nod to the Director's Cut version in 1992 (or whichever one it was that had the unicorn)
  
• I loved the final scene, where K stretches out his hand and feels the snowflakes, which totally juxtaposes the previous scene of Joi in the rain where the water droplets pass through her hand. Here, K is solid, he's not transparent like Joi (how cool was the light going through her, though). He feels things, they don't just pass through him. Human or not, he's real.
  
• This also juxtaposes Dr Stelline, real as ever, born from a woman, a Human Being, stuck in a dome unable to feel the real snow.
  

Overall, this film is a stunning movie. I'd definitely recommend watching it in the cinemas, for the big screen and the great sound system. The film is beautiful to watch, and it has beautiful themes and symbolism. Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford give perfect performances, adding layers to this great, emotional, and intense film. Yes, it's long and yes, it's slow, but the film provides some really deep things to think about, and it builds on the original film really well.