Blade Runner 2049

BLADE RUNNER 2049

** SPOILERS **

In the grey, polluted skies above Los Angeles circa 2049, and in the filthy streets below hunts the lonely Replicant. He knows what he is. Everyone around him knows what he is. He is a Blade Runner; a cop who hunts down and 'retires' other robots of his kind. How he feels about this - how he feels about anything - he keeps to himself. "This one doesn't even smile," a pleasure model Replicant (Mackenzie Davis) says to him. He does, sometimes. In the spare moments of his life when he finds Joi (Ana de Armas). 

K (Ryan Gosling), the Replicant in question, finds the meaning of his entire artificial life challenged in Blade Runner 2049. A sequel that should never have been made. A sequel that should never be, but is - a magnificent, immersive, visually impeccable, wondrous tour de force by director Denis Villeneuve and producer Sir Ridley Scott, the father of the original Blade Runner. Villeneuve achieved the impossible and crafted a follow up to one of the most acclaimed science fiction films ever made that honors everything that has endured for 35 years while going further, deeper, and grander. In 1989, Tim Burton's Batman was hailed as "The Movie of the Decade" as a marketing tool. Blade Runner 2049 is The Movie of the Decade. 

Villeneuve's Los Angeles, 30 years more stark, bleak, apocalyptic, and exceedingly beautiful than Scott's vision of 2019, is lonely, brutish and cold, populated by haggard life, both 'real' and artificial. It's a world where a man-made machine falls in love with a man-made hologram, but that love is as real and quantifiable as anything else, even if human beings scoff that both machines lack 'a soul.' Though women are hyper-sexualized in holographic advertisements and in the public statues of a desolate, abandoned Las Vegas, it's the men who are utterly broken inside.

Every important male in the movie, from K, to Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista) the poor Nexus 8 model Replicant he retires to kick off the film, to Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), the blind, prophesying billionaire tyrant who manufactures Replicants but yearns to profit from them being able to create themselves, is a pitiable creature in their own right. The women of this world, real and artificial, are made of stronger stuff, from K's one true love, the sprightly hologram Joi, to his stern but fair LAPD Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright) to the Replicant revolutionary Freysa (Hiam Abbass) to the bright and isolated programmer of Replicant memories Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) to the villain of the piece, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks). It takes a special kind of Replicant to inherit the torch of Best Blade Runner Baddie from Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in the original, but Luv is a revelation as Wallace's stunning yet brutal enforcer, desperate to be seen and loved by her creator. When Luv overwhelms K in their climactic fight, she announces with glee "I'm the best one!" and she is. From Wallace with Luv.

The world of Blade Runner 2049 is on the cusp of a revolution K unwittingly finds himself at the center of when he finds a literal box of bones. The mysteries tie to the disappearance of the main characters from the original film, Rachael (Sean Young, who reappears as she looked in the 1982 original thanks to computer-generated magic) and Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the original titular Blade Runner. K wishing that what he finds about himself is true is the deeply moving through line upon which all of his actions hang, and his investigations leads to violence, more questions, and ultimately to Deckard himself. The fight, they drink, they bond, they are ripped apart violently. In the end, most (but not all) questions are answered and Deckard is given the gift of family he was forced to abandon for 30 years. Ford has revived his most beloved and iconic 80's film roles like Indiana Jones and Han Solo in the last decade, but his performance as Deckard is his best, most gripping, emotional, and resonant. "Who am I to you?" Deckard asks K in the final moments of the film. K smiles, unable to find the words. The final moment of Blade Runner 2049 is Deckard facing his daughter, separated by a wall of glass, the weary and sad old model facing the bright and hopeful future, while K lies in the snow, ready to retire, having lived and shown us things we people wouldn't believe.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (****)

BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT

 

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."

Seeing Blade Runner as a boy was like witnessing a fortune telling of my future. I knew when I first laid eyes on Rick Deckard, the laconic blade runner who hunts Replicants in dystopian Los Angeles circa 2019, I'd end up just like him in three specific ways. First, I would have a short haircut. (I actually had a variation of Harrison Ford's Caesar haircut for a while in the '90s.) Second, I would still be single in my 30's. (Kudos to me for keeping that dream alive.) Third and most importantly, like Deckard, I'd be willing to have sex with a robot. (If she looked like Sean Young, although I'm sure when they're eventually invented, fembots will be much hotter.)

The 1992 Director's Cut of Blade Runner has always been the definitive version for me. I've watched it at least a dozen times over the last 15 years. I've also seen the theatrical cut on video with the voice over and more upbeat ending. The harsher, colder, more impenetrable Director's Cut, even with its unicorn dream that Sir Ridley Scott thinks supposedly "proves" Deckard is a Replicant, resonates with me much more.

Deckard has never been a hero by any measure a traditional hero is defined. He shoots a Replicant in the back. He coldly and cruelly reveals to Rachael that all of her memories are implanted from Tyrell's niece, which means she's a Replicant. He then calls Rachael while he's on a case and asks her out even after the way he treated her. Worst of all is their "love scene", where he becomes alarmingly violent both physically and emotionally as he forces himself on Rachael.

The "love scene" is an example of just how vital the score by Vangelis is. Vangelis' haunting music may be the single most important component of Blade Runner. Without the score laid over the "love scene", for example, it would play much, much differently. You can replace the word "love" with "robot rape".

Personally, I still don't believe Deckard is a Replicant. It just doesn't make sense from what we're shown of him and how his few associates behave towards him in the movie. The arguments towards him being a Replicant -- Unicorn! He has red eyes in one shot! More unicorns! -- don't wash with me. Deckard being human -- in some ways being more cruel and dangerous than the robots he hunts -- is the way I prefer to view his character. It makes for a better, more resonant story than "Deckard was a robot all along!" Sir Ridley can insert all the unicorns he wants into his movie, but I'll never buy Rick Deckard is a robot. But the beauty of Blade Runner is that it's ambiguous enough for either interpretation.

After years of blundering about with the rights to the film, the 20th anniversary restoration of Blade Runner in 2002 was completely blown, but here now for the 25th anniversary is the Final Cut, which Sir Ridley promises is the definitive Blade Runner. Having finally seen the Final Cut, it really ain't all that different from the Director's Cut. It actually is just the Director's Cut with a few added shots here and there and some altered or added dialogue noticable only to nerds who know the lines by heart. (That'd be me.)

Here's what I noticed as new or different:

* Bryant giving a bit more information about Leon to Deckard.

* A couple of added shots of the spinner in the air as Deckard heads to the Tyrell building to Voight-Kampf Rachael.

* A shot of Deckard's car entering the garage of his apartment building.

* The death of Zhora has finally been fixed where it is no longer clearly a stuntman in the wig that Deckard shoots in the back and crashes through glass.

* The dialogue where Rachael asks Deckard what he would do if she ran is different. In the Director's Cut the lines are: "Would you come after me? Shoot me?" In the Final Cut the words are now "Hunt me?" To which Deckard replies in the Director's Cut: "No. But someone would." But the Final Cut, there's a new line in the middle: "No. I owe you one. But someone would."

* When Roy Batty confronts Tyrell, in the Final Cut he demands, "I want more life, father." Much more polite than in the Director's Cut: "I want more life, fucker."

(In both instances, I prefer the Director's Cut's dialogue.)

The pivotal, iconic, climactic dialogue from Roy Batty (invented on set by Rutger Hauer) thankfully remains untouched:

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've seen c-beams glitter in the dark of Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like... tears in rain."

It would have been lunacy to change anything about that scene; in a way the entire experience of watching the movie hinges on it.

Despite the minor additions and alterations, I'm glad to see the Final Cut is the same bleak, sad, difficult, and strangely moving Blade Runner I've loved for half my life. They just don't make 'em like that anymore. 

"Too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?"