When I first heard, a couple years ago, that they were making a sequel to Blade Runner, I was pretty much like, “Okay. Whatever.” Then I probably went off to play through Batman: Arkham Knight for the fifth time or something. I didn’t think a sequel was necessary, but I wasn’t struck with the rage that many diehard fans of the original experienced. It was inconsequential. But when I heard that Denis Villeneuve was going to direct, I got a little interested. And when I heard that Roger Deakins was going to shoot it, I allowed myself a modicum of excitement. I have now seen this sequel twice, and I am not ashamed to admit to you that I was a fool. I should have lost my shit immediately. Because Blade Runner 2049 is so kickass, I’m willing to say that it’s better than the original.
Blade Runner is a movie which is very much viewed through the lens of nostalgia, which we all know tends to make us forget about flaws. Pogs were stupid, but if a stranger walked up to me on the street and told me that, we would find ourselves embroiled in a physical altercation. I have so many fond pog-related memories that I am willing to redact recollections of going to the pog store (MJ Designs, for some reason) and fighting all those mouth-breathing heathens for the last Dragon Ball Z or X-Men-themed piece of cardboard, ultimately losing and going home with one that had a public-domain picture of Dracula, and another which featured, like, the kid from Bobby’s World or some shit. Likewise, people are rather forgiving of the original Blade Runner. There are certain basic aspects of filmmaking where it falls short. The performances, for example. The guy who plays Deckard’s boss delivers every line with exactly the same inflection I imagine Burt Reynolds would employ if he knew you were about to sit on a whoopie cushion, and could barely keep his anticipation in check. Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford, and Rutger Hauer is Jesus Christ, but most of the other actors leave much to be desired. 2049 doesn’t have even one standout shitty performance. Sure, people have been complaining about Ryan Gosling’s two-dimensional portrayal, but he’s playing a genetically-manufactured slave designed to keep his few emotions under strict control. You could say that Ryan Gosling portrays all his characters in this fashion, and you would be correct, but it works here. Schwarzenegger was a great choice to play the Terminator, because that role didn’t require him to emote. It’s not James Cameron’s fault that people saw that movie and were like, “I want to cast that man to play a character who has a complex and nuanced philosophical perspective.” In the world of Blade Runner 2049, Baby Goose’s wooden delivery makes sense. Plus, Harrison Ford is even more Harrison Ford here, and he acts as if he gives a damn for the first time in a while. The Force Awakens wasn’t him at his most enthusiastic, and Cowboys and Aliens was so phoned in, Verizon technically counts as an executive producer. I don’t know, maybe that doctor movie he made with Brendan Fraser a few years back is a different story, but I didn’t see that movie, because while my time is definitely not valuable, it isn’t worthless.
When comparing the sequel to the original on a more technical level, it isn’t even close. Much of filmmaking seems more like engineering than art, and 2049 is damn-near structurally impregnable. The cinematography is as beautiful as one would expect from probably the best director of photography in the history of the industry, and I know the editing is good, because I didn’t notice it. The sound design is great, and the production design makes you feel like you’re in the world they built. These are things the original is really good at, too, so in this sense, 2049 feels more like a natural progression, as opposed to out-and-out superiority. But when you start to look closer, there are cracks in the original’s engineering which would be shameful today, and the sequel has none of them. It’s hard to compare two films made 35 years apart, because we understand the technological limitations of the past, but those limitations don’t play a prominent role in the differences I’m talking about. Where the original really shines is in its groundbreaking use of existing technology and creative working around of constraints. So, I’m not saying that movies are better now because we have computers or whatever. I’m saying that there is a scene in Blade Runner where I can see a female character’s stunt double’s dong flopping around, and it takes me out of the viewing experience somewhat. The continuity of characters’ genitals from shot to shot is not a recently-burgeoning cinematic concept. I mean, hell, there are famously five different versions of the movie. Imagine if Picasso had had to repaint “Guernica” four times before people really responded to it. I know filmmaking isn’t a spontaneous artform, and there are always tweaks to be made, but five seems a little high. The original theatrical release had Harrison Ford doing some half-baked hard-boiled voiceover, and it sucked. The only person I’ve ever heard say anything nice about this version of the film is Denis Villeneuve, and, when he was given the only chance anyone in the world would ever have to apply its style to the sequel, he was like, “nah, fuck that.” We’re talking about the initial version that was released in theaters. Usually, if that sucks, that’s it. Getting one mulligan is a luxury most things are never afforded, and this movie got four. Who knows how many things that suck could become influential cultural artifacts if they got the same treatment? The voiceover fiasco is indicative of a major lack of narrative clarity, and the multiple cuts of the film are muddy when it comes to other aspects of the story. Namely, the big question: is Deckard a replicant?
No, of course he’s not a fucking replicant, and anyone who thinks otherwise is crazy. I know Ridley Scott thinks he is, and he directed the movie, but he didn’t write it, and it really isn’t up to him. At some point, the movie belongs to its viewers, and the assumptions you had when making it don’t matter anymore. If it came out, after all these years, that Hitchcock made Psycho under the tacit belief that Norman Bates was in fact the reptilian head of the Rothschild family, people would be like, “Ooo-kay,” and just go back to understanding what that movie is really about. It’s not like Ridley Scott is infallible. He thought it would be a good idea to make that movie where Russel Crowe quits his job to run a vineyard for a year. He was wrong about that. And he’s wrong about Deckard being a replicant. The whole point of the story is that while Deckard uses the replicants’ lack of empathy as an excuse to kill them, he himself lacks empathy, but to an even greater degree, because, being human, emotional growth is not necessary. His supposed inherent superiority makes him a pretty righteous dickhole, and it’s not until he finds empathy for the replicants that he comes in to his own as a human being. Him being a replicant would negate that, because it wouldn’t require him to learn anything. He would still be a selfish ass, only accepting of others like him. Actually, Deckard ends up switching places with the replicants, since even after he’s learned his lesson, he’s still by far less emotionally mature than the subjects he was hunting. To classify his sex scene with Rachael as anything other than rape would be, to put it lightly, Cosby-esque. He ends the film not as the replicants’ equal, but as their moral inferior. The final cut of the original seems to understand this, since it leaves the replicant question unanswered, but 2049 takes it further, basically asking why we should care in the first place. Central to the plot of the sequel is the fact that, after the events of the original, Deckard and Rachael have a child. This shouldn’t be possible, as Rachael is not a human. The film then follows the search for their missing child, now a full-grown adult. The child’s birth is miraculous, but it would be made significantly less so if it turned out Deckard was a replicant. That would make it simply a technological trick that Jared Leto’s kimono-clad replicant creator hadn’t yet figured out. But, if Deckard is a human, his and Rachael’s procreation becomes a world-shattering event, proving that there really isn’t a difference between the two species. As Robin Wright’s character explains, their society is built upon the idea that humans and replicants are different, and anything which threatened to destroy that illusion would likely cause a war. The actual answer to the question of whether Deckard is a replicant should be that it doesn’t matter. Replicants are clearly alive, and any excuses people use to discriminate against them are no different from the argument that it was okay to steal people from Africa because they didn’t wear the same type of pants as the white guys. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, don’t fucking enslave it, you doofus.
Blade Runner 2049 is not a perfect film, and there are areas where I think it is inferior to the original. I like Hans Zimmer, but there are moments in his score where it felt like he just let his cat walk on his keyboard and called it a day. The original Vangelis score, however, is the perfect combination of future-cool and soap opera sappy. Also, the sequel has been accused of being less than inclusive when it comes to race, and I’m afraid I have to agree. The original at least acknowledged that beautiful Caucasian people would not be the majority forever, and while James Hong’s delivery of “I make-a you eyes” probably didn’t do modern-day Asians any favors, at least he was in the movie. There are arguments to be made for why the story might not call for racial inclusion, but, when you think about the real world, you realize that those arguments could have been addressed in a way that both gave jobs to minority actors and made us question our ideas of race. This movie, like the recent live-action Ghost in the Shell, missed a wonderful opportunity to turn Hollywood white-washing on its side by asking why, when we imagine the perfect human, do we automatically think of Scarlett Johansson or Ryan Gosling? It’s not as bad as casting Christian Bale as Moses (which, holy shit, I had forgotten was Ridley Scott’s doing until right now), but it is a case of untapped potential. The movie tackles ideas of existentialism, free will, whether one’s soul is tied to one’s birth, and whether your incorporeal digital girlfriend truly loves you or is merely programmed to make you believe so, so I think that, barring a more diverse cast, they at least could have thrown in a couple lines to make us think about racial issues. It might have made the movie longer, but anybody who says that the pace of 2049 is too slow has obviously forgotten about that scene in the original where Harrison Ford zooms in and out on a photograph for six minutes.
Ultimately, though, I love this movie, and I think it is better than its predecessor. I’m afraid to call it the greatest sequel ever, because Secret of the Ooze had Vanilla Ice in it, and because that would diminish the achievement. Blade Runner 2049 is one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, regardless of the origins of its story. This type of movie does not come along very often, especially in this country, and Villeneuve and friends have definitely capitalized on the rare opportunity. Plus, the press tour has resulted in multiple clips of Harrison Ford goofing off and bursting out in uncontrollable, raucous laughter, and if you aren’t in to that, I have a few questions for you. You’re in the desert, and you happen upon a tortoise….