A Satisfactory Replicant: A Review of Blade Runner 2049

To get the heresy out of the way: I have never been all that enamored of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). Yes, the film is well made and visually stunning, and it certainly stands head and shoulders over all the other, usual lamentable adaptations of Philip K. Dick stories in the three decades after its release. But it remains the prototype for a sort of science fiction film that sadly has become increasingly commonplace: the routine action film with a patina of profundity to provide the comforting illusion that one is not really watching a routine action film (one recent, and egregious example being Scott’s own Alien: Covenant [2017 – review here]). 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) merits the status of the greatest science fiction film ever made in part because it makes absolutely no concessions to popular taste, foregrounding its predictions and ideas without the distractions of chase scenes and gun battles; and praise the film all you like, but you cannot make the same statement about Blade Runner.

But you are here today not to learn what I think about Scott’s Blade Runner, but rather what I think about Denis Villeneuve’s just-released sequel to the film, Blade Runner 2049. And I think it’s a pretty good film. Its sequences of gratuitous violence are infrequent and almost perfunctory, as if they were inserted primarily to pay homage to its distinguished precursor; the film’s focus of attention is rather an intriguing mystery involving Blade Runner’s now-deceased replicant Rachael (Sean Young), who we now learn had the unprecedented ability to give birth to a child. Still, the film isn’t quite as good as director Denis Villeneuve evidently thinks it is, imbuing the film with an aura of self-importance and excess that should have been addressed with some judicious editing. In other words, Blade Runner 2049 might have been, like its predecessor, an admirable two-hour film; but it was unwisely released with a running time of two hours and forty-three minutes.

However, before unleashing my complaints and quibbles, I should discuss all the things that the film is doing right. In its world of 2049, a new inventor-tycoon, Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), has supplanted Blade Runner’s Eldon Tyrell as the creator of a new generation of replicants that are safely obedient and hence allowed to live on Earth; but some of the bad old replicants remain on the loose, so blade runners like the replicant Joe (Ryan Gosling) are still needed to track them down and eliminate them. Co-screenwriters Hampton Fancher (who also co-wrote the original Blade Runner) and Michael Green might have taken the easy way out by replicating the original’s plot, dispatching Gosling to chase after another batch of nasty replicants, but a mission of this sort is instead completed as the film’s opening gambit, signaling that other, more original concerns will be animating its story. Both Gosling’s superior officer Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright) and Wallace’s chief enforcer Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) want to find Rachael’s child and suppress all knowledge of his or her existence, fearing that evidence of child-bearing replicants might disrupt a social order dependent upon, in Wallace’s words, a “disposable workforce” of artificial slaves. If they can have children, as one character puts it, replicants must “have a soul” and hence would be entitled to equal rights, the goal of a group of replicant rebels led by Freysa (Hiam Abbass). The only predictable element in the ensuing narrative is the eventual appearance of the child’s father Deckard (Harrison Ford) as Joe’s ally in resolving what Freysa calls the “puzzle” of the child’s identity and whereabouts.

After meeting the challenge of extending the original film’s story without mimicking it, the filmmakers next had to match Blade Runner’s evocatively decadent environment, and they have devoted a large portion of their $185,000,000 budget to recreating, on an even more massive scale, the future Los Angeles first crafted by artist Syd Mead (who receives a “Special Thanks” in the credits). Thirty years after the time of the first film, Los Angeles is still dark, decaying, and dreary, afflicted with constant rain, though it is also decorated with garish neon signs and advertising holograms, and Joe must make his way through crowds of homeless people in the hallways to get to his apartment. (By the way, one aspect of Blade Runner’s future that quickly made it seem dated – the prominently displayed names of soon-to-be-defunct companies – is defiantly reiterated in this film, with large signs for “Atari” and “Pan Am,” though more recent companies like Diageo are also featured.) Further, Joe’s quest for answers later takes him outside the city to an expansive plain devoted to “waste processing” near San Diego that is also the site of a makeshift orphanage, and he ends up in a deserted Las Vegas, with the distinctive Luxor pyramid now standing amidst the ruins of newer casinos offering still-functioning holograms of entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. It’s all very impressive, but it seems unimaginative simply because so many other films have already imitated the look of what I have termed the “Blade Runner future” (most recently, Ghost in the Shell [2017 – review here]).

Any film based on the works of Philip K. Dick must also address the problem of distinguishing illusions from reality, and Blade Runner 2049 does so on several levels. The replicants, of course, look human but aren’t, though the film, again declining to revisit its precursor’s plot, does not explore any uncertainties about whether a given character is a human or a replicant. We know from the start that Joe is a replicant, and the film never addresses the unresolved question of whether Deckard is a replicant. Joe’s girlfriend is a computer program which displays itself as a beautiful hologram named Joi (Ana de Armas), and at one point she strives to “synch” with an actual woman, the replicant prostitute Mariette (Mackenzie Davis), to provide Joe with a physical lover. (Significantly, the actress closely resembles Blade Runner’s replicant prostitute, Daryl Hannah.) But one questions whether Joi’s expressions of love for Joe are sincere, or merely a product of her programming. Deckard has a loyal dog as his companion, but he doesn’t know whether or not it is real – even though, later on, he paradoxically asserts that “I know what’s real” and rejects a perfect duplicate of his beloved Rachael. Joe has vivid childhood memories about hiding a beloved wooden horse from a gang of bullies, but he isn’t sure whether they are real or artificial; to find out, he visits Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri), who earns a living by creating false memories and selling them to Wallace to be implanted in his replicants. She also has an immune deficiency requiring her isolation from other people, so she lives in a large chamber where holograms provide her with interesting surroundings. She became good at her job, she explains, because “if I wanted to see the world, I had to imagine it.” There is a reason, perhaps, why one of the songs the hologram Elvis sings is “Suspicious Minds” – for this is a world where everyone must be suspicious of what’s in their own minds.

As for my complaints and quibbles: in the first place, one can definitely raise questions about the film’s internal logic. Blade Runner 2049 simply ignores a key plot point in the original film: the fact that Tyrell’s replicants are designed to die after four years, a trait that Tyrell states cannot be altered. If the Tyrell Corporation has long been out of business, as the film asserts, then all of its faulty replicants should be dead by now, and there would be no need for blade runners to search for them. Also, since children inherit the intrinsic characteristics of their parents, a child from a replicant parent should die at the age of four. Further, we are told that Wallace’s new replicants have been accepted on Earth because they are incapable of disobeying orders; yet in the course of the film Joe starts disobeying orders, and he encounters an entire group of disobedient replicants, presumably also manufactured by Wallace. Living in a world of advanced technology, and regularly accompanied by a helpful drone, Joe would undoubtedly have the ability to detect and remove a homing device slipped into his pocket, and after he is followed by the bad guys to Las Vegas, they inexplicably fail to capture him – simply to keep the plot in motion.

One can also question the relentless poverty evident in the world of 2049; while the police and Wallace’s corporation have access to all sorts of advanced devices, everyday people live in shabby apartments with gas-burning stoves, recalling the “Grapes of Wrath future” that I have observed in other films; one sees an old-fashioned upright piano and grand piano, but no electric keyboards. But we are told that “synthetic farming” and the new, improved replicants have now revitalized the economy, and this surely would have led to some urban renewal, eliminating some of those run-down buildings and slums, as well as modest improvements in household appliances. For heaven’s sake, even today, one doesn’t have to be rich to own a television or a microwave oven, two of the many amenities not observed in Joe’s apartment.

Villeneuve’s film fails to make proper use of one of its greatest assets – Harrison Ford, reprising the role of blade runner Rick Deckard. Trailers, advertisements, and the film’s credits all convey the impression that he and Gosling are the film’s stars; in fact, viewers must wait a very long time before Ford even appears. Further, while J. J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015 – review here) wisely and quickly puts Ford’s Han Solo back to work, doing what he had always done best, Villeneuve gives Ford’s Deckard little to do: after a skirmish with Joe, he is immediately captured, and spends the rest of the film passively observing Joe’s heroics. In contrast, Gosling seems overused; as a contemporary star with greater clout, Gosling perhaps insisted upon being the film’s constant center of attention, but it’s a strategy that backfires, as one eventually grows weary of looking at him. This is particularly true because of one of the film’s recurring features: an extended scene, with some of the film’s ponderously slow music blaring in the background, wherein the camera lingers endlessly on Gosling’s utterly expressionless face as he purportedly experiences some wrenching emotional episode. But these tributes to the Keanu Reeves school of acting have absolutely no impact at all, other than making one wonder whether Gosling’s contract specified that the film had to include thirty minutes of close-ups.

But the real problem may be Villeneuve’s referenced sense that he is making a great film, and great films must proceed at a stately pace to allow audiences time to fully appreciate its awesome visuals, complex dramas, and provocative themes. Thus, Gosling’s face is not the only thing that the film’s cameras linger endlessly on. This approach worked in 2001: A Space Odyssey because its visual effects were at the time genuinely innovative and its themes were genuinely thought-provoking; here, as noted, the visual effects will already be familiar to most viewers, and the warmed-over themes from the first film do not provoke a great deal of thought, so the film’s determination to take things slowly merely seems pretentious. And as in other films, people are occasionally burdened with portentous utterances that do not seem appropriate for their characters: a manipulative manufacturer of replicants, for example, would not announce, “I need the child to teach them [the replicants] all to fly,” and the leader of a band of desperate rebels would not announce, “Dying for the right cause is the most human thing we can do.”

Great films must also have literary references in their scaffolding, and when Joi suggests that Joe should read Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962), it could be Fancher and Green’s way of informing audiences that their film is similarly filled with deep allusions to literature and popular culture. But the only obvious text on the screenwriters’ minds was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883). I can’t be sure, but the abandoned casino where Deckard resides is probably Treasure Island, as intimated when he quotes Ben Gunn, the madman exiled on Stevenson’s island who asks, “You mightn’t happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted, mostly – and woke up again, and here I were.” And I suppose that Joe’s quest for Deckard’s missing child is a treasure hunt of sorts, though I can’t discern any other relationship between Stevenson’s novel and the film. I am also unable to explain the relevance of the film’s repeated use of Peter’s theme from Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (1936) and the Frank Sinatra song “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” (1943), though both are arguably stories about dangerous journeys.

Pondering the film’s fondness for Gosling’s soulful face brings up an interesting difference between the male stars of Hollywood’s past and the male stars of today. Harrison Ford was one of the last representatives of the old-style action hero: he was basically tough, but occasionally he could be sensitive. Ryan Gosling typifies the contemporary action hero: he is basically sensitive, but occasionally he can be tough. I have noted elsewhere that Chris Pratt, another example of this trend, regularly seems to be overdoing the sensitive thing, and I think Gosling is overdoing it here. These sensitive men might be regarded as a natural reaction to another new Hollywood icon, the tough-as-nails woman, here represented by Joe’s boss Joshi and chief antagonist Luv; but filmmakers remain reluctant to make such women their heroes and surround them with male supporting characters, though the success of Wonder Woman (2017 – review here) might change some minds. And why not? In this case, if Gosling and Sylvia Hoeks had switched roles, having a female replicant as the lead would have required only minor adjustments to the screenplay.

Perhaps, though, a woman will star in the next Blade Runner film – which producers are already planning, even though no official announcements have been made. After all, no one invests $185,000,000 in a film without expecting it to be a huge success, and no one expecting a huge success will fail to anticipate making a sequel. The smoking guns here are that the film carefully keeps both its major stars and one of its chief villains alive, ready to reappear if called upon, and leaves the fates of the replicants yearning to be free unresolved. If a sequel does materialize, one hopes that as a condition of their returns, Harrison Ford and the equally underutilized Edward James Olmos would insist on more meaningful roles, and to escape the monotony of gloomy Los Angeles cityscapes, the screenwriters might take their characters “offworld” to one of the inhabited planets, where it appears that people are forging a different and brighter future for humanity. After all, one of the characteristics of truly great films is that they do not timidly cling to the patterns of their precursors – a problem that Blade Runner 2049, for all its virtues, does not entirely avoid.

-Gary Westfahl

Gary Westfahl has published 25 books about science fiction and fantasy, including Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits (2005), The Spacesuit Film: A History, 1918-1969 (2012), A Sense-of-Wonderful Century: Explorations of Science Fiction and Fantasy Films (2012); excerpts from these and his other books are available at his World of Westfahl website. He has also published hundreds of articles, reviews, and contributions to reference books. His most recent books are the three-volume A Day in a Working Life: 300 Trades and Professions through History (2015) and An Alien Abroad: Science Fiction Columns from Interzone (2016), now available from Wildside Press; ; his forthcoming books include Arthur C. Clarke and Bridges to Science Fiction and Fantasy: Outstanding Essays from the J. Lloyd Eaton Conferences.

7 thoughts on “A Satisfactory Replicant: A Review of Blade Runner 2049

  • October 19, 2017 at 12:45 pm
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    Formally, everything is propelled by the fact that a replicant baby will by its very existence free replicants from slavery. This is nonsense.

    Dramatically, the show focuses on K, who despite being a replicant has no difficulty whatsoever in defying his orders. This is entirely believable because K is always sensitive, if now downright empathetic, unlike Deckard in the original movie. That’s why his final decision to save Deckard is merely a tribute to Harrison Ford’s career. And an excuse to openly crib Vangelis on the sound track. Joi’s love for him is the movie’s tribute to Ryan Gosling’s star power.

    Jared Leto effectively communicates the show’s determination that hubris is Satanic by being a demon of the blackest hue, without any nuance whatsoever. Unfortunately, since the creator character is also a stand in for God, this leaves the question of how a happy ending is plausible?

    Reply
  • October 20, 2017 at 9:40 am
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    Just a couple of comments (though on my single viewing of _Blade Runner 2_ I may be in error).

    “rejects a perfect duplicate of his beloved Rachael.”

    Deckard says her eye colour is wrong

    “_Blade Runner 2049_ simply ignores a key plot point in the original film: the fact that Tyrell’s replicants are designed to die after four years, a trait that Tyrell states cannot be altered.”

    This was not my reading at all. Tyrell’s comment about not being able to alter I took to referring to existing (already made) replicants. Today we could do little to alter _your_ lifespan (you already exist and have many years under your belt), but we could alter (maximise) your baby child’s life span through diet, avoiding pollutants and carcinogens etc. We might even soon even be able to edit out (using CRISPR) and bad genes from your gametes or single, fertilised cell embryo of your child. (I view life through the prism of bioscience.)

    So, Tyrell cannot alter the existing renegade Nexus replicants’ lifespan but might develop a way of creating new models of replicants with new features including a longer lifespan. And we are told in the original film that Rachel is ‘special’.

    “we are told that Wallace’s new replicants have been accepted on Earth because they are incapable of disobeying orders;”

    Well, do your really believe all manufacturers’ claims???

    “One can also question the relentless poverty evident in the world of 2049…”

    Perhaps explainable by the best and brightest and healthiest already having left the Earth for the stars leaving behind a ruined Earth and damaged humans (who now need the new replicants to get by, yet who are resented as ‘skin jobs’).

    Gary – I greatly enjoy your reviews, and maybe I’m missing something? I just thought that your critique in this case was unjustifiably a little harsh in places. The film seemed more logical to me.

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  • October 23, 2017 at 3:49 pm
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    Knowing the Dick story Blade, Runner , 1982), seemed to thin it out and action-o-fy it…. and almost ignore one of Dick’s main plot questions. (By the by odd to pick DADOES, not really one of Dick’s best works.)
    Still I loved the milieu.
    Scott sure had an eye for production design and still has.(He seems to have grown a tin ear for story in the last ‘Alien’ movies … he left The Martian alone and that was fine.) I knew about Syd Mead’s involvement , later found out about Scott trying to hire Jean Giraud, who was busy.
    I wonder if Giraud got something? , because they just flat used a lot of his art and design.
    What struck me about the 1982 Blade Runner was how the ‘scene’ felt like Galaxy Magazine in the 1950s. The Future on a chipped plate. I don’t know if Giraud was influenced by Emsh , but the echoes are there, or it was Scott channeling Galaxy? Or both?
    I also say that because much of Blade Runner reminded me of early Dick and Kornbluth and Pohl and Bester…. as they appeared in H L Gold’s Galaxy Magazine.
    Blade Runner took knocks for it’s story, and the seams show, but I was comfortable enough with it.

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  • October 23, 2017 at 8:58 pm
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    They did not ignore the 4-year limit at all. That was a limitation of the Nexus 6 models that were running about in the original Blade Runner.

    There are now Nexus 8 models in 2049 and – as stated in the opening scroll that you were perhaps too engrossed in checking your e-mail on your cell phone to have noticed – do not have a pre-set lifespan. The reason for their being Blade Runners in 2049 is not to run down the long-dead Nexus 6s, but to run down replicants like Rachel who – had you been paying attention during the 1982 film – was the first of her kind NOT to have a pre-determined lifespan.

    Like it or don’t. Your choice. But don’t make up fake flaws to justify your opinion.

    I gave it a 4 out of 5 in my review. And you might be surprised I agree with you about the film being too long.

    https://scifiscribe.com/2017/10/23/blade-runner-2049-a-review/

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    • September 23, 2018 at 6:41 pm
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      I likewise noted the reviewer’s mistake on the lifespan but with a different twist. Tyrrell claims the Nexus 6 has a four year lifespan but never explicitly states that was a limit of Nexus engineering. I took it to mean the limit was ARTIFICIAL, put in place to prevent the inevitable psychological development which would take place after that time. Replicants died after 4 years as a method to keep them under control of humans, not because of some deficiency in their design.

      Batty’s conversation with Tyrell about extending his life span does hold true in the sense that significantly modifying the genetic code of a mature organism can lead to drastic and undesirable side effects. However Tyrell obviously got past the four-year barrier because the Nexus 7 and Nexus 8 models had open ended life spans. This was clearly stated in the opening text crawl.

      Regarding the new models and their ability to lie and disregard orders, I’m with the parent poster. I would expect Wallace to make exaggerated claims about the reliability of his product. That’s the only way he could reinstate their production.

      Reply
  • January 28, 2018 at 6:07 pm
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    Till I counted, there are 9 Oscar nominations for 2017 there was room for a 10th. Not sure happened.
    I think Blade Runner 2049 has the honor of NO NOMINATION.
    I think Blade Runner 2049 falls into that category of ‘outlier’. The Academy has never been good at picking the best lasting artistic merit. For instance Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is now number 1 on the world’s most prestigious film poll, the British Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time. Vertigo had no nomination for best film of 1958. John Ford’s The Searchers is number 7th on the BFI list. The Searchers, one of the greatest westerns ever made, got no Oscar nominations , in any category!, in 1957 for that 1956 film (that is amazing). 2001: A Space Odyssey, number 6 on the BFI list, you guessed it, no nomination for best film of 1968. Note Blade Runner(1982) is number 69 on the BFI list , not nominated in 1983 for best film. Best film for 1982 was a very good film Gandhi, Gandhi is not in the BFI’s top 100. My sense of things about Blade Runner 2049 is that in a several years it will be in the BFI’s top 100. So it goes.

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  • October 18, 2023 at 12:35 pm
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    A Satisfactory Replicant” offers an insightful review of “Blade Runner 2049,” highlighting its stunning cinematography, rich storytelling, and thought-provoking exploration of identity and ethics. With a masterful blend of action and introspection, the film delivers a compelling narrative that resonates deeply with audiences, making it a must-watch sci-fi epic.

    Reply

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