The Black Campbell

When I first heard they were doing a sequel to Blade Runner, one of my favorite movies, I was appalled. I saw the original theatrical release on opening day, and once the director’s cut came out — correcting the damage done by the producers with the original — I was even more enthralled. There’s a “final cut”, as well, which is essentially a cleaned up version of Ridley Scott’s original workprint (and a gigantic f@#$ you to say producers…)

Did we really need a sequel? NO!!! Then I heard the original writer, Hampton Fancher, was back. The director was the excellent Denis Villeneuve of Sicario, Prisoners, and The Arrival fame. Intrigued, I still wasn’t going to see it. Clips and trailers followed….so yeah, I went and saw it.

Blade Runner 2049 takes place 30 years after the first movie, and other than the connection to Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard character, is it’s own story and stands on its own without viewing the original. The essential plot points: a “blade runner”, police assassins who “retire” replicants — genetically engineered suprahumans — stumbled onto a box of bones at the site of an execution retirement of a replicant played by Dave Bautista (who steals the scene handily from Ryan Gosling.) The bones suggest that it was a woman who died in childbirth…and that she was a replicant, something supposedly impossible. His police captain (Robin Wright continuing to build her resume of tough female leaders) sets him loose, looking for the child she gave birth to.

There’s a lot more intriguing exploration of what intelligence and humanity is in this latest movie, and it handles it much more deftly than the original film — partly because science fiction has matured dramatically in the last 35 years. There’s a hologram girlfriend that may or may not be sentient…or it that just a really smart expert system giving you what you want to hear? K, the lead character, played with a nice hollowness by Gosling (whom I never particularly liked, but after The Nice Guys, I think he’s improving) is a replicant, his responses bounded by regular checks of his personality and emotional matrices, but he starts to identify with the child he’s hunting. The villain is Luv, right hand “angel” to Niander Wallace — the man behind the latest iterations of replicants who wants the secret to replicants breeding; he simply cannot make them fast enough to continue humanity’s exploration of the galaxy. Sylvia Hoeks plays her, and she’s fantastic. In fact all the female players in this movie are at the top of their games.

Harrison Ford is back. Deckard is old and tired, and has been hiding out in the ruins of Las Vegas. Ford is obviously enjoying himself in this picture and it shows. There’s a nice bit of the is he or isn’t he a replicant?, but they don’t spoil it with an answer.

There’s a lot going on in the movie, and it contains a better plotted detective story and more big-set action pieces than the original. This leads to a long run time of 2:44, but I didn’t notice it at all. I suspect, however, on repeat viewings this will be more apparent.

The visuals are stunning, and a nice extrapolation from the original picture. It feels like the same world, just more run down. Villeneuve used a lot of practical sets and effects, with CGI to enhance — something a lot of the new filmmakers have been doing. There is a lot going in the background, as there was in Scott’s movie, and nicely the film makers decided not to try and “correct” the world for today — it is an alternate world where the Soviet Union is apparently still around, where the mega-buildings of the original film extend to a gaudy Las Vegas that looks like the ruins of the city from Artificial Intelligence, with massive female statues in suggestive positions. And apparently, Peugeot eventually builds aircars and is back in the US market.

The sound is loud, and the Hans Zimmer seems to be on a mission to create the most ear-splitting musical noise he can. However, he weaves nearly all of the musical motifs from Vangelis’ excellent Blade Runner score throughout the movie, and this creates an emotional and narrative throughline with the new film.

So is it worth it? Yes! Not kinda yes, but a resounding one. I think this movie takes all the ideas from the first one, does it better and with more emotional core, and it has a more compelling story. On my rent to full price scale, I’d give this a “go see it in IMAX, if you can.”