Oct 08, 2017 03:35 PM
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Officer KD6.3-7 (Ryan Gosling) is the Blade Runner, an LAPD cop who “retires” “replicants” in Blade Runner 2049. The sequel to Ridley Scott’s classic original releases 35 years since. Deckard (Harrison Ford) is still there playing a different role this time around to the original “Blade Runner” who gets to kill/ retire replicants.
The sequel to Blade Runner has all the spectacle, romance and themes that resonates to this day. All things humans can do the androids cannot per se or could they? Of, course. Only if the replicants give birth they can gain an ascendency over the human race. The humans may think the replicantssss. But Niander Wallace (Jerard Leto) who helms Wallace Warp proves they can reproduce these androids.
The Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) film set in Los Angeles is an ode to the provocative Ridley Scott film, which raises big questions about human memory, and portrayed a futuristic earth. All nerdy sci-fi films have one thing in common they aims big.
The Nexus 6 series are nigh-immortals with powers to call the shots, whereas their successor replicants are slaves to the humans. The replicants (Androids) are factious, have memory implants and they struggle with an identity crisis. Do they have one? May be Deckard is a mortal and who knows Officer “K” is Nexus - both has animal instincts nonetheless. The movie gives no inklinks as to who they really are we walkout with questions than answers.
It has been 30 years since Deckard has been in hiding in an off-world colony with a grimy ambiance and incessant rain. Officer “K” can only take a shower in seconds - the rain has dirt and is an ideal backdrop for the dystopian earth. Phew. The dark weather, the towering buildings in LA (Metropolis in movies like these) and the neon glares emitting from LAPD’s flying cars are back in Blade Runner 2049. In fact, the theme music by Hans Zimmer heightens the experience of watching the sequel to Blade Runner on a theater. What a retrospective comeback film this is.
Very little between them, though one gets the feeling the 1982 film enjoys the “first movers advantage” as it should being a seminal work in sci-fi genre. However, amid all the brilliant visuals from cinematographer Roger Deakins (Fargo) the standout scenes belongs to the entire team of the sequel.
The first one posits Deckard and Officer “K” in a fistfight. As the two really takes their mortality to the test in an LA bar, the movie’s off-world setting, we make all the guessworks about who they are. The choreography is stellar and the fight unravels amid a moving hologram of Frank Sinatra in the backdrop. In the dystopian year 2049 sinatra remains as mysterious as ever.
In the second scene I loved, “K” hugs Joi (Ana de Armas) another hologram who loves him and he loves back. Just as the two gets to kiss, “K” gets a voice call from the LAPD and he departs to the baseline and back to the office as the Blade Runner.
2 hours and 40 minutes running time, yet its “the stuff that dreams are made of”. Roger Deakins take a bow!
