Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

 

You don’t really have to have seen the original Blade Runner (1982) or even know a great deal about it to enjoy Blade Runner 2049, but it does help. While the sequel stands on its own, it has enough references and flashbacks to the original to encourage a viewer to search out the earlier film. LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling) is a replicant (an artificially created being) who works as a blade runner, someone who hunts down older model replicants to destroy them. He discovers information about a child who was born of a replicant, a miracle child given what has been widely assumed about the inability of replicants to reproduce. Under orders from his superior (master?), Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright, who doesn’t get very much to challenge her), K begins trying to track down information about the child. He learns the identity of the child’s mother, Rachael, who was Rick Deckard’s lover in the original film. The film gets to have its way with the audience by providing several hints that K himself could be the miracle child unless he has been given someone else’s memories. He meets Jared Leto’s Niander Wallace, one of the oddest characters ever to appear in a science fiction film, and that’s saying a lot. Wallace, whose company has taken over the replicant business from Tyrell, wants to expand the number of replicants so that they can colonize other worlds. Of course, meeting Wallace means meeting his assistant Luv, played by Sylvia Hoeks with the right amount of cold serenity and badass martial arts skills. This part of the film is rather nonsensical and convoluted in its intricacy, frankly, but it does lead K to information that allows him to track down Deckard (Harrison Ford, injecting some much needed adrenaline into the film’s final hour) in Las Vegas. While all of the film is spectacular in its use of production design and cinematography, the Vegas sequences are the most outstanding. The casino features holographic performances by Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and Liberace; they make nice companion pieces to K’s holographic girlfriend in the movie’s first half. For me, it’s the technical achievements that make this film stand out; Blade Runner 2049 is a showcase for exceptional cinematography, production design, and visual effects. The plot, however, is unnecessarily complicated, and the 160+ minute running time suggests that it could have used some trimming to rid the narrative of some of the secondary plots. Others will undoubtedly like the expansion of the original’s universe, particularly the ways in which some of the looser aspects of the 1982 film get resolved.

Oscar Wins: Best Achievement in Cinematography and Best Achievement in Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Achievement in Production Design, Best Achievement in Sound Editing, and Best Achievement in Sound Mixing