I've got to admit that I was rather
worried when I heard a sequel to the 1982 classic Blade Runner
was being made. I thought that Blade Runner 2049 would wind up
a cheap cash-in trying to belatedly jump start a whole series of
films, like last year's Independence Day: Resurgence. Sometimes
it's good to be wrong.
Blade Runner 2049
takes us back to the future Los Angeles to follow K, a Nexus-9
replicant working as a blade runner for the LAPD. After a routine
“retiring” of a rogue Nexus-8 model, K discovers that there may
have once been a pregnant replicant and he is tasked with
investigating and covering up the potentially volatile revelation.
It's a great story that takes you to some interesting locations, has
a decent twist, and has a great ending that sort of harkens back to
the original's. The film doesn't try too much to copy the plot of the
original and tries its own thing. Will you be lost if you haven't
seen the original? It's hard to tell. I guess it depends on how good
you are at picking stuff up from opening text crawls. As was the case
with Blade Runner,
2049's story moves
along at a very slow pace. And as good as this two hour and
forty-three minute film is, you'll feel every minute of it.
While
this Blade Runner
flick doesn't have any unicorns, it does boast a talented cast that
gives us some engrossing characters. (You can tell because pretty
much every single character in this film cries at some point!) Chief
among them is K, portrayed by Ryan Gosling who does an excellent job
at bringing to life an artificial human undergoing personal crisis,
trying figure out if he has a soul. Harrison Ford also does a fine
job at playing Deckard again. It really does feel like the same
character has returned, and not just another standard Indiana
Jones/Han Solo/who-knows-what's-next “Hey, I'm back” performance.
Blade Runner
is a film that's well-known for its striking visual style and this
tradition has been carried over to its sequel. The cinematography of
Blade Runner 2049
is gorgeous, putting on a dazzling show with landscape shots, smooth
camera pans, and an eye-catching use of colour palette. Future Los
Angeles appears less gritty and just a bit more colourful this time
around, with less fire and smoke filling up the skies. The city's
bright hologram adverts are back and given more life with modern
special effects. The visual effects in 2049
are seamless, just as CG effects should be. In short, 2049's
visuals have a noticeably more 2010's feel to them than a 1980's
feel, which is fine considering that this film takes place 30 years
after the original.
The
same goes for the soundtrack. Blade Runner 2049's
score is still very synth heavy, but with less
keyboard/xylophone/bells/whatever those sounds were. And there's
pretty much no saxophone (or synth equivalent of a saxophone). It
gives the film less of a noir feel (that the original had) and more
of a modern sci-fi feel to it. Again, since this film is of a
slightly different flavour than the first I don't consider this to be
a bad thing.
However,
the film's effect on the state of Blade Runner's
lore might not be so defensible. Don't get me wrong, Blade
Runner 2049 doesn't ruin BL's
story, not by a long shot. But
personally I liked the original's ambiguous ending. 2049
also definitively settles the debate on whether Deckard is a
replicant or not. Fortunately there are other possible fan debates
that might spark from this new film, such as: Where was Luv taking
Deckard near the end? What was up with that dog and what happened to
him?
In
conclusion, Blade Runner 2049
is an excellent science fiction movie made by people who truly care
about its forerunner and its genre. Easily one of the best films of
2017 so far, it's not an altogether necessary sequel, but it is a
worthwhile one. If you're remotely interested – and if you can
stomach lengthy films with a relaxed pace – then I think you'll
quite like it.
Grade:
No comments:
Post a Comment