“BLADE RUNNER 2049” GORGEOUS, OVERWHELMING
Sequel to 1982 sci-fi classic is brutal, gorgeous and perfectly chilly
★★★¼ Rated R. 163 minutes.
“Blade Runner 2049” is overwhelming, as it was designed to be. There’s no point in making a sequel to one of history’s best sci-fi films unless it leaves its own mark.
But it’s not just the uniformly gorgeous visuals, restrained pacing or eerie, despotic sound design that gives this new “Blade Runner” its somber magnificence. The film, like a handful of others over the last 35 years, also smartly uses its parent as a jumpingoff point, not a trailer hitch.
Most audiences didn’t think much of director Ridley Scott’s original “Blade Runner” when it was released in 1982, despite the fact that the movie — which starred Harrison Ford as a hardboiled artificial-human (or replicant) hunter — has evolved into a cultural touchstone.
Now it sits with “Metropolis,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and others as one of our most prophetic sci-fi documents, a masterclass in visual storytelling and a dark window into the future, then depicted as 2019-era Los Angeles.
As the title implies, “Blade Runner 2049” starts long enough after the original to feel like its own, slightly different world. Sleek, tasteful special effects set the mood but don’t constantly compete to leave mouths agape, even if it’s clear that director Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival,” “Sicario”) and his team thought hard about how to best use digital wizardry to tell the story.
Amid pulsating holographic advertisements and a constant gray rain, K (Ryan Gosling) solemnly tools around ruined landscapes in his LAPD-issued flying car. The pokerfaced detective is on the hunt for clues that will eventually lead him to Rick Deckard (Ford), the blade runner of the first film, and one who has been missing for three decades.
K’s boss, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright), and K’s constant companion, Joi (a clear-eyed, vulnerable Ana de Armas) provide the structure in his otherwise lonely and brutal life, which is spent “retiring” out-of-date (or less-than-obedient) replicants in dangerous solo
missions. When K starts on a path of self-discovery, he confronts a long-hidden secret that could turn the already ravaged world back toward chaos.
And that’s just the first few minutes.
The less you know about the plot the better, because “2049” feels most vital when it surprises. That falls vaguely in line with the unusually pushy studio edicts about not revealing spoilers for this film. But truly, a blind viewing of “2049” is shot through with a sense that anything can happen at any moment. Some of my favorite scenes weren’t necessarily big action set pieces, but those that cleverly disarmed, then startled me, by sidestepping expectations.
“2049” is not an on-the-nose screed, but it doesn’t shy from topical resonance. In particular, social equality is a threat (in the eyes of the privileged, anyway), corporate excess has butchered the ecosystem, identity is a wet and slippery worm, and self-deception is just another form of endurance.
The ideas in the script, penned by original “Blade Runner” screenwriter Hampton Fancher and Michael Green (“Alien: Covenant,” “Logan”), are as ambitious as they are coolly elusive. But with its mix of futuristic decay and references to classical music, literature and drama (“Peter and the Wolf,” “Treasure Island,” “Macbeth,” etc.), “2049” at least succeeds in doing something Scott tried and bungled in this year’s “Alien” movie — which is sprinkling in a handful of bigpicture, thematic dots and letting viewers connect them on their own.
But while “2049” offers plenty of individual, vaguely related points to ponder, the promise of finding new details in future viewings is just as tantalizing — especially in moments as weirdly hypnotic as the hilariously one-sided fight in a malfunctioning Las Vegas showroom. The movie’s themes might feel maddeningly open-ended, but cinematographer Roger Deakins’ use of lighting — whether in sharp, parallel bars, undulating pools or saturated waves — is as brilliantly considered as any film of the high-def, digital age.
The script contains enough core truths and grand philosophical concepts that no spoiler could touch them, such as the co-dependence of slavery and freedom, or the paradoxical way the future echoes and restates the past.
But the biggest twist comes when you leave the theater and realize how disturbingly close to our own world the one on screen looked and felt, from the degraded environment’s fantastic, oppressive scale to its damp, hyperventilating characters.
With apologies to the original film’s Roy Batty: It needs to be seen to be believed, but it’s less tears in rain; more snowflakes in blood.