Blade Runner

The weirdest thing about the future is that this is now the future we once predicted. Twenty years ago, we thought of “now” as “the year 1982,” and we thought what life would be exactly. Roger Ebert said in his review, “Little could we have guessed that there would be no world government, that the cars would look like boxes instead of rocket ships, and that there would still be rock 'n' roll on the radio.”

“Blade Runner,” released in 1982, asks the audience to think its own future, in “the year 2020.” The movie is set in a Los Angeles that looks like a futuristic Tokyo, with giant billboards picturing smiling Japanese girls drinking Coca-Cola. Ebert said, “I would have predicted L.A. would be Hispanic, but never mind.” It looks amazing.

Ebert goes on to say, “The city is dominated by almost inconceivably huge skyscrapers that look like the Merchandise Mart, times ten.” People’s mode of transportation are compact cars that fly, hover, climb and jump. (In a lot of fictional futures, people seem to get around the city in private aircraft. Can you think of the traffic?) However, at ground level, the L.A. of the future is an urban jungle.

The movie stars Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, a cop who walks confidently through the city’s dangerous streets. He is laconic, sarcastic, experienced. He has a hard mission. A group of “replicants,” A.I.’s who look just like humans, have escaped from “off-world,” and are trying to blend themselves into Earth.

Deckard’s mission is to find them and eliminate them. Anyone who has read this far can think what occurs next: He falls in love with one of the replicants. She may not be really human, but what a joke.

Ebert noted, “This basic story comes from a Philip K. Dick novel with the intriguing title, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The book examined the differences between humans and thinking machines, and circled warily around the question of memory: Does it make an android's personal memories less valid if they are inspried by someone else's experiences -- especially if the android does not know that?”

Ford says he originally wanted to be in “Blade Runner” was because he found such questions interesting. However, director Ridley Scott said the greater challenge was creating that future world. Scott is a master of production design, of imagining other worlds of the future (“Alien”) and the past (“The Duellists”).

He looks more worried with making his film worlds than occupying them with believable characters, and that’s the trouble this time. “Blade Runner” is an amazingly interesting visual success, but not so much in story.

The special effects were done by Douglas Trumbull, whose other films include “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Silent Running,” and who is about as good as anyone else at using miniatures, animation, drawings, visual effects and other ways of tricking what you’re seeing.

The visual environments he makes for this film are wonderful to see, and there’s a sense of detail, as well. Ebert said, “We don't just get the skyways and the monolithic skyscrapers and the sky-taxis, we also get notions about how restaurants, clothes and home furnishing will look in 2020 (not too different).” “Blade Runner” is worth seeing just to see this mastery.

However, the movie’s weakness is that it lets the special effects work overpower its story. For is tough and modest in the main role, and Rutger Hauer and Sean Young are successful as two of the replicants, but the movie isn’t really fascinated in these people – or cyborgs.

Ebert said, “The obligatory love affair is pro forma, the villains are standard issue, and the climax is yet one more of those cliffhangers, with Ford dangling over an abyss by his fingertips.” The movie has the same problem as the replicants: Instead of flesh and blood, it wants robotic humans.

Everyone says this is the best sci-fi movie ever made. Now, I like the movie, and I think everyone should watch it, but I don’t think this is the best sci-fi films ever. I have seen better sci-fi movies, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like the movie. I think it’s one of the best in visuals and I do give it a recommendation, which everyone should see.

Now we come to the surprising sequel, “Blade Runner 2049,” which came out nine days ago. Thirty years after what happened in the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, played by Ryan Gosling, uncovers a hidden secret that has the possibility to disclose what’s left of society into nonexistence. K’s mission takes him on a journey to find Rick Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.

Brian Lloyd said in his review, “It's not hyperbole to say that Blade Runner was a cultural touchstone and influenced countless pieces of art since 1982 - design, music, fiction, filmmaking, fashion, whatever. Blade Runner has driven itself under the skin and become as much a part of our DNA as any film has before or since, almost to the point where you can't look at rain and neon in a film and not think of it. The fact that Ridley Scott came back to the film so many times in order to perfect it means that it's a work of art that bears repeat viewing and the same can be said for Blade Runner 2049. It requires repeat viewings, if only to see how and where it reaches you and why.”

Without getting into spoilers, the story picks up thirty years after what happened in the first film and sees the state of California in a complete cloud of grey skies and permanent rain. K is a replicant who works with the LAPD to find his own type and get rid of them. When he goes to track an earlier version named Sapper, played by Dave Bautista, he finds out something that has both a deep, personal connection for him and something much larger than he could possibly think. Lloyd is right when he said, “Compared to the first film, 2049's story is far less defined by noir tropes than the original. We may see K slugging back whiskey and wearing a trenchcoat, but there's an emptiness to it that speaks more to K's character than anything else.” The film makes a statement in introducing characters – like Robin Wright’s tough police chief called only as Madam, or Mackenzie Davis’ “pleasure model” character, Mariette – and either not using them fully, or inserting them in the story only to get rid of them later on.

The biggest problem in “Blade Runner 2049” is, sadly, the structure and the story. Lloyd mentioned, “Technically, it's nothing short of a marvel and you will not find a better-looking film than this all year - or maybe ever.” The way how Roger Deakins’ cinematography works in conjunction with Denis Villeneuve’s use of production and sound design is really amazing. Lloyd credited, “The screen just washes over you, to the point that you'll almost forget to blink in spaces. Likewise, the echoes of Vangelis' iconic soundtrack is blended together with Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch's take to create something that feels artificial and yet completely of its own world. The use of colour in each scene is so carefully crafted and selected with taste and respect that you can't fault Villeneuve for a second.” The same goes for Gosling and Ford, who both give some of their best performances in a long time. Particularly, Ford has never been more active in a role than he is here – and reminds his fans of what a talent he is when he wants to be. The supporting cast, including newbie Sylvia Hoeks as A.I. lover Luv, all do well in their roles – but the problem is that the story doesn’t use them completely or at all.

Lloyd mentioned, “It's hard to discuss the story in Blade Runner 2049 without giving away some hugely important reveals, and the film is best experienced when you come at it completely without foreknowledge. However, there's certain threads in the story that either point towards a different outcome written that wasn't excised from the shooting script, or for another film to come after this one. Either way, it's a flaw in something that is by design perfect in every way. Maybe too perfect.” There are so many parts of “Blade Runner 2049” that fit too flawlessly and too well within the formation of the original, and originality is something that the first one had in ways that this doesn’t. Then again, maybe it’s not supposed to be original. Maybe it’s supposed to be a sequel – and on that note, it works. It compliments the original, but only in the way that something that it was superfluous.

Lloyd credited, “Simply put, Blade Runner 2049 is an exquisitely made, beautifully realised film. There are so many moments and scenes in this film that'll rank as some of the most gorgeous you're ever likely to see. However, it won't inspire people in the way that the original did because it is, in itself, an elegant facsimile of what came before.” Like the replicants in the film, “Blade Runner 2049” is just here with the ability and knowing that it exists.

It can’t be anything other than what it is – a sequel to something that didn’t need a sequel.

I know that the story may be better told than the first, but I don’t think it’s better than the first one. However, I still think it’s good, but the pacing of it felt like it could have been trimmed. Maybe if they had shortened certain parts, because I know Ridley Scott films can be long and boring, so if he could just work on those scenes, then it would be great. Still, you can watch this movie in the theaters, don’t worry. This is still a movie that you can go and see, but make sure it is at a time when you don’t care when it ends, unlike when I saw it tonight and wanted the ending to just hurry up since I wanted to get home.

Thank you for joining in on today’s review, stay tuned tomorrow when I continue “Friday the 13^th-a-thon” in “Halloween Month.”