Blade Runner 2049 (3D / second-pass / SPOILERS)
Cert: 15 / 163 mins / Dir. Denis Villeneuve / Trailer
It's funny how these things clump together, but this was my second second-pass of a second-installment this week. Pretty sure if I managed to do that again after the weekend I'd get some sort of badge or certificate. I digress.
Having left this Obviously Not Long Enough, I decided Blade Runner 2049 really needed another going over. A work best experienced on a massive screen, the ideal place for this is the cinema of course. And whereas home-based deconstruction can take place whenever you've got a couple of free hours, cinema scheduling means that you've really got to decide within 3-4 weeks if you can get more out of a movie. I'm sure I'll be watching this for years anyway, but I really want to get the most out of it now.
Before I get stuck in, I should say how much I liked the flickering, juddery, interlaced studio idents at the start. Nothing which follows uses this faux-interference aesthetic until the closing credits, and I can only imagine they've been put there to piss off the people who download the film illegally and have that deflating feeling of wasted bandwidth upon pressing Play. Top work!
So. Magnificent though Blade Runner 2049 is, as I suspected rewatching the movie brought no great revelations. Whether Denis Villeneuve's sequel needs more time to bed in culturally and generate more general discussion, or whether the story just has less to say (or more specifically, ask) than its progenitor remains to be seen. With the best will in the world, I suspect it's the latter. This is a fine looking presentation in 3D, even if Roger Deakins says otherwise, although like all post-production conversions, it never feels intrinsically necessary.
Ana de Armas is great as Joi, and Carla Juri also shines as Ana (somewhat confusingly). But this film belongs firmly to Sylvia Hoeks' Luv, the replicant quality administrator and assassin*1. Hoeks owns every single scene she's in here, showing both the aspirational pinnacle and ultimate downfall of perfected human simulation with furious bursts of anger, jealousy and childish petulance. More human than human, indeed.
If you take nothing else away from Blade Runner 2049, Joi seems easily available in a consumer society, but Luv is more intense and will end up killing you…
As a story about manufactured evolution, it's both prescient and timeless. The intricacies of the central plot are much clearer the second time around, even if this robs the film of its smaller and larger conundrums whilst watching. Whereas Blade Runner famously asked more questions than it answered, the more philosophical aspects of BR2049 seem largely wrapped up within its not-inconsiderable run-time.
The discussion throughout the first movie of course was 'can a bioengineered replicant with an organic AI brain be treated as human once it becomes self-aware?. Irrespective of the 'other' as-yet-unanswered question, the answer to this is yes. The creation may not be biologically human, but it's emotionally human. So when BR2049 asks 'yes, but can a holographic simulation with an AI brain be treated as human once it becomes self-aware?, the answer is also clearly yes. Humans are just machines made of meat rather than electronics, and the existence of a metaphysical soul can be neither proved nor disproved using both examples. Discuss.
There's also a brief (and less-explored) pondering over 'if you're implanted with someone else's memories, how can you tell which ones are yours?. But Agent K's belief in his past experiences affects his judgement and actions in the present. Those burned-in reactions and instincts become part of his mind's operating-system, so yes, they're his memories as much as his interpretation of events which occurred the day before. He might not have been there when key childhood events took place, but he remembers them so they're his memories in a very real sense. He didn't 'make' them, but you (probably) didn't make the clothes you're wearing - they're still yours. Discuss.
Additionally, in terms of who is and isn't a replicant and how that affects their outlook and prospects, Villeneuve (or more properly, screenwriter Hampton Fancher) is far more transparent this time around, so the only real lingering discussions are based on the ongoing one from the first Blade Runner anyway*2. All I had after that were plot-based niggles:
• Does the 'natural lifespan' of the new replicants include the time normally allowed for humans to pass through childhood and adolescence, or is it adulthood-onwards? We see them 'born' in their adult bodies, and Sapper certainly appears to have aged - if only because you wouldn't make a replicant which looked like that grizzled 'out of the box', now would you?*3
• How come Sapper wears glasses? Is it because a) He’s trying to disguise himself and/or blend in with the humans to avoid detection? (in-universe explanation), b) As part of his natural lifespan, his eyes are starting to wear out and he can’t get them replaced or repaired without drawing attention to himself? (in-universe explanation), c) The glasses Sapper wears are like those tiny wire-framed ones you typically see in movies with Second World War Jewish refugees wearing them, largely due to their lack of materials/resources at the time, and the film is drawing a visual parallel between the persecution of the Jews and the authorities in Blade Runner hunting down the last of the Nexus 8s, not least to allow for control-freak Niander Wallace’s ‘superior’ models? (out-of-universe explanation), or d) All of the above. Discuss.
• Speaking of superior, how come Agent K just manages to drown Luv so (relatively) quickly? I know these are bio-engineered creations as opposed to wires and pulleys, but you’d think Wallace would have adapted them to either draw the required oxygen from water if they become submerged, or at least be able to hold their breath longer. Wasn’t the original point of the replicants to perform work which was too hazardous for humans, like maintaining the off-world colonies and ships (ie working in freezing and low-oxygen environments)? And now it turns out that if one of them falls asleep in the bath, that’s Game Over? Ridiculous.
• Most importantly: wait, who's looking after Deckard's dog?
Blade Runner.
Absolutely.
Probably. I'll have to get back to you on that one, probably in several years.
As great as this is, not quite.
Nope.
There could be one during the remote-strike attack at the junkyard outside the orphanage, but I can't be certain so I'll side with no.
Level 1: Han Solo's in this.
*1 A job title I'm currently pushing for myself, but my employer won't have it. [ BACK ]
*2 There's no way of dressing this one up, that CGI Rachael is passable until she begins speaking on-camera, then it's absolutely atrocious. One of the few genuine weak-points of the entire film Too much movement in all the wrong parts of the face. It felt less weird when the holographic girlfriend simulation was syncing with an android hooker. Seriously, Rachael and Rogue One Leia need to get in the sea.
I like that Deckard points out to Wallace "Her eyes were green...", because if that's the only thing he can see wrong with this picture then his own clearly aren't working properly, either. From a story perspective, surely Deckard is more likely to have been persuaded to help Wallace if he'd made a 'projected current age' replicant, implying that the pair could somehow go on to make up for lost time, rather than unequally resetting the relationship with an age-gap. This would also have entailed getting the actual human Sean Young back in the studio, and I wouldn't be typing all of this in the first place.
The irony hasn't escaped me, of course, that all of the other replicants in the film are flawless facsimiles of humans since they're played by humans, whereas the Rachael-bot is a literal replicant, and who is so far down The Uncanny Valley that the Los Angeles Pot-holing Society have been called out to rescue her... [ BACK ]
*3 Imagine the day the Ryan Gosling replicant was created, though. The boss comes in and is like "I know you've made this one stab-impervious Terry, but why are the eyes so close together? You do know we have to sell these, right? Would you buy this? ...well I suppose the LAPD might take him, but they're going to pull our trousers down over a discount..." [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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