True story: when I heard the long-rumored Blade Runner sequel had
been greenlit for a 2017 release, I created a new Word document I
titled 'Tears in the Lame' where I jotted down notes, questions, and
half-formed screeds in anticipation of destroying
this movie. For 2 years it sat in the corner of my Macbook's desktop
while I amassed rumors and progress reports like so much diseased
offal, ammunition soon to be hurled from my trebuchet of fanboy hate.
I had an entire sub-set of bullets listing the insurmountable
problems caused solely by the gulf of time since the original film.
I cited Harrison Ford's advancing age, Ryan Gosling's too-pretty mug,
Ridley Scott's see-sawing track record...the works. Most of all, I
had the beginnings of what (might) have been a valid point about
exegesis (as Harlan Ellison defines it) and how the world Blade
Runner wrought is an infinitely
more cynical place thanks to its influence; a world, ironically,
where a film like Blade Runner is
no longer sustainable. Audiences fueling the present glut of fantasy
and sci-fi would hate and fear another foray into that seminal
dystopia, for all the things it was (too brainy, too subtle, too
gray, too slow) and for the things it lacked
(slo-mo explosions; cutesy, bespectacled hackers, kung fu-inspired
gunplay, an SNL-alum sidekick for witty banter). And what it lacked
most of all was enough refried, sequel-ready plot scrapings to turn
it into a billion-dollar franchise, the only kind of franchise worth
having these days.
My point, ultimately, was this:
why desecrate the graves of well-spoken dead? Blade Runner
was as good as it was (it only
took 5 versions to get there!) and, more importantly, it had
influenced and guided the genre inestimably in the three-and-a-half
decades since its theatrical release. That world – my world –
was better because of it. Why, oh why, would you sully it with a
damn sequel?
As the expression goes: I don't mind being wrong as long as I can
correct my mistakes.
This piece is my penance, the
review that IS instead of the half-cocked rant that might have been.
Because Blade Runner 2049
is that rarest of rare gems, a Sasquatch high-fiving the Loch Ness
monster while riding a unicorn: it is a truly spectacular sequel. It
eschews the easy path of revisiting old stories in favor of a wholly
new one, one that stays true to the core questions raised by the
original while daring to go farther. It cares not a wit for the
audience's comfort level and doesn't sugar-coat or soft-boil
anything, and in so doing tells a meaningful tale that never panders,
never demeans, but provokes an inspired discomfort that leaves you
hot, squirming, aching for answers, and riveted. It elaborates, it
explores, it probes at the black edges of this murky universe without
ever revealing its magician's tricks, and it deepens the Blade Runner
mythology in a way that feels utterly right.
And I was utterly wrong to doubt
that it could be done.
Thirty years have passed since that fateful night in November, 2019
when burned-out Blade Runner Rick Deckard was forcibly un-retired to
seek and destroy four escaped replicants, the bio-engineered
dopplegangers who had evolved to become 'more human than human', now
a danger to mere mortals. He survived with his limbs intact but his
soul forever scarred, vanishing the following day with Rachael, a
prototype model with whom he had fallen in love. Thanks to Ridley
Scott's periodic tinkering with the film's cut, Deckard's
sunshine-and-lollipops happy ending (forced on Scott by a skittish
studio) never actually happened; we know only that he fled under
cover of night with Rachael in tow, their future uncertain. Now in
2049 the replicant's creator, the Tyrell Corporation, has gone
bankrupt, Los Angeles is being crushed between of its own surging
population and the implacable advance of the Pacific Ocean, and a
massive data blackout has wiped three decades of computer records
from existence. In the midst of it all, the Blade Runners still ply
their trade.
Things have changed; things have stayed the same. The original film
opened on an Edward Gorey-meets-H.R.Geiger vista of an oppressively
dark, starless sky lit by acres of neon and industrial blow-off pipes
belching flames above a thicket of grim skyscrapers – a darkling
conjecture of what our world might be extrapolated from what it
already was in 1982. 2049 opens with the same shot tweaked
for our times: an oppressively white, bright, sun-bleached desert
covered end-to-end with solar panels, the gauzy, pearlescent sky
stabbed through with soulless gray regulator towers. Heat, once a
waste product to be spewed into the uncaring night, has become a
precious commodity, every joule of power a treasure. And just beyond
that, a new scene, jarring, disquieting, and bizarre but somehow
completely appropriate: an earth-ocean of automated protein farms,
thousands of antiseptic acres laid out like a patchwork puzzle, a few
of them bearing a tantalizing hint of green. Green? Are we sure
this is a Blade Runner movie?
But oh yes, any doubts you harbor at the onset are quickly dispelled
by the stunning art direction, at once a homage to Syd Mead's
techno-future stylings that inspired the original and intuitive,
organic forays into uncharted territories. The forests of glittering
steel obelisks remain, as do the 10-story electronic billboards
(sporting Atari and Pan-Am logos among other defunct companies, a
simple but brilliant means of keeping the world internally
consistent). Police cruisers – those flying cars we were promised
would be here by now – still swoop and dive between the glass
canyons like gunmetal herons and the hookers still man their corners
in transparent plastic overcoats. As then, so now, you feel the
oppressive weight of the city on your shoulders and taste the salt
tang of sweat-stink in the corners of your mouth as the smog-tinted
sky presses down on you. When it rains you feel no relief, only
chagrin that you'll now be as sodden as you feel. You yearn to tug
Gosling's fashionable fur collar over your face to horde just a whiff
or two of breathable air. Then the scene shifts and you're someplace
you've never been before, a place that looks different but feels
somehow the same: the farms, the minimalist art-deco offices of the
Wallace Corporation – walls forever bathed in scintillating
reflections from water you never see – or yes, even the Las Vegas
strip, depopulated courtesy of a dirty bomb attack, crusted in
unnatural, heavy desert soot, quietly horrifying in its emptiness.
Roger Ebert once remarked that one of the hallmarks of a well-made
movie is when a scene is more beautiful than it needs to be to
accomplish its purpose. 2049 does this in virtually every
scene. It requires patience as a viewer, and a willingness to enjoy
the moment rather than lick one's chops for the next provocative
segue, but it is worth it.
Out of a genuine desire not to spoil this film for anyone who plans
to see it, I will spare my usual ruminations on the plot save a few
tidbits. This constitutes a sacrifice for me, because I make a game
out of summarizing complex plots, one which I enjoy wholeheartedly.
But the surprises – as few as the Internet can leave alive – are
worth the price of my silence.
Suffice to say, the torch has been passed to Gosling, who does a
frankly terrific job carrying the bulk of the film as a Blade Runner
named simply “K”, who chances upon a box of apparently human
remains buried beneath a remote farm (after an encounter with a
surprisingly good Dave Bautista). His discovery sets him on a case
30 years cold about a vanished detective named Deckard and the events
of that fateful night that ended with the murder of Eldon Tyrell, the
'father' of all replicants. Tyrell's creations have not gone extinct
as we might assume, but rather evolved and flourished under the
stewardship of uber-genuis Niander Wallace (Jared Leto in a strong,
short performance that proves acting that burns twice as bright
should burn half as long), who has vastly improved the designs of the
glitchy Nexus 6 models and mass-produced more pliant versions without
the failsafe 4-year lifespan. Looking vaguely like both David Koresh
and Jesus, Wallace offers some of the most profound ruminations of
the nature of humanity, slavery, the abstract definition of life, and
the function – or lack thereof – of a soul. But he is no loving
god. He wants a world in which replicants can create life all their
own, making him the progenitor of an entirely new species. His
vision puts him on a collision course with K, who, despite orders
from his superior (the always great, under-used Robin Wright) exceeds
his mandate to bury the dead case and continues his manhunt. In the
process he unwittingly leads Wallace and his femme fatale enforcer
Luv straight to the heart of the enigma: Deckard himself.
Harrison Ford has always been hard to read as actors go. His
charisma and everyman charm counterbalances his lack of classic
thespian flair. Even as a young man he always seemed like that
gives-no-shits neighbor who trades a six-pack to help you with your
movie rather than a constipated stage jockey pining for an Oscar. It
is difficult to tell whether he consciously injects shades and
subtleties, little mannerisms, and minor tics to distinguish his
many, admittedly similar characters or whether he just recites the
lines he's given and, like Han Solo, trusts his innate charm to win
the day. In the last decade we've seen Ford resurrect no fewer than
three of his classic roles: Solo, Indiana Jones, and now Deckard, and
I can say for my own part the greatest joy of each (minus everything
else about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) has been the distinct
sense that nothing's changed save for some grayer hairs. It is
especially prevalent in 2049; that feeling he has once again
shrugged into an old character like a favorite shirt warm from the
hamper – not so clean as it once was, but sentimental, broken-in
and snug. Perhaps Ford's greatest contribution in his acting golden
years is his ability to project that impression of the comfortable
familiar out to his audience. By the second act we've been subjected
to so much high-caliber emotional whiplash that Deckard's haggard
face feels like a hot toddy and a warm blanket. Scoring another big
payday to bark dialogue and toss some stage punches might be enough
for an actor. But Ford outdoes himself here, reaching deeper than I
can recall since Witness to mine Deckard's ravaged emotional
state and produce some truly profound moments. An early scene with
Gosling has Agent K asking Deckard a seemingly simple question –
the name of the replicant with whom he fell in love. Ford takes a
lifetime to answer, appearing to hold back an ocean of pain, and when
he finally utters a terse “Rachael” it truly feels as though he
hasn't said the name said aloud in 30 years and the the effort is
physically draining.
Love doesn't get the credit it deserves as one of the anchoring
themes of Blade Runner. In a film – now a film series –
that finds so many ways to ask 'What is human?', we sometimes forget
that it posits another rhetorical query that serves as both a second
question and an answer: 'What does it matter?' For when one
has loved, what matters the details? Again, 2049 finds a new
way to explore an old motif, mirroring Deckard's doomed romance with
K's relationship with Joi, a virtual companion who appears as an
intangible hologram, albeit a stunningly beautiful, thoroughly
life-like one. Relative newcomer Ana de Aramas is a quiet, joyous
revelation as a K's better half, a computer program who laughs when
she's happy, sulks when she's sad, and cries unabashedly when she
sees rain falling from open sky for the first time. 35 years hence
and Roy Batty's 'tears in the rain' have been made manifest; it's
crazy to think I almost missed that during my first viewing. While
Joi naturally serves as a grounding agent and sounding board for K,
she is awarded many small moments to thrive on her own. This only
serves to upend us, and poor K, all the more powerfully when Joi's
face is seen plastered on billboards and neon pink holo-projections
for the Wallace Corporation, a jarring reminder she is merely a
digital fake, a logo no more alive than the Starbucks mermaid.
Ultimately 2049 circles back to the grand thesis that has
always been the heart of Blade Runner – not, perhaps, a
wholly original one, but one explored by any sci-fi with guts: who we
are and where we come from is insignificant compared to the choices
we make with the time that is left to us. That choice could be as
simple as offering a kind word to a grieving stranger or as
impossible as falling in love, but they are our choices to
make with consequences we rightly own. “No choice?” Deckard asks
Bryant, his commanding officer in the original. “No choice, pal,”
is the answer, but we know in our hearts that wasn't true. Deckard
could have told Bryant to shove it. That he didn't speaks volumes to
his character. Trite observation? Maybe. But it's funny how often
we miss things like that in the dearth of glitzy exploda-fests
cramming our theaters these days. 2049 cares enough to let us
see the hero unfold in due time. K is inundated with easy
choices and happy paths, but elects time and again to take the harder
route, unconvinced of success but virtually certain heartache and
scorn awaits him at the finish line. We see a dozen stark
opportunities for him to turn back and when he doesn't, we root for
him all the more. That this film takes the time to let us arrive at
that catharsis at our own pace is a testament to its quality.
Happily, this film makes no attempt to order our thoughts or provide
easy answers, though it does wrap up the mystery in a way that is
extremely satisfying and provides something close to closure, which
is the only real concession to 2049 as a proper sequel. It
won't spawn another billion-dollar franchise and thank all the gods
above and below for that. But it is a riveting experience, a rare
cinematic odyssey, and a thoroughly worthy conclusion to one of the
greatest stories in science fiction.
And with that, I claim absolution.
