Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
I don’t think I have been more visually or sonically treated
in the past few years of watching movies. Between Roger Deakins’s Oscar-winning
cinematography that is transportive and elegant, Hans Zimmer’s electronically
graceful score, the sound direction, production design, and perfect (and I do
mean perfect) visual effects, there is so much to take in from each shot that I
almost could not comprehend everything that was happening.
And that is Blade Runner 2049’s undoing.
As perfect as Denis Villeneuve’s technical direction of the
film is, its structure and narrative are kind of a mess. I loved Ridley Scott’s
original film that discussed big-picture questions of humanity and reality
while also forcing me to use my brain to connect the pieces of his visual
storytelling amid the lack of plain and simple exposition – something that I
was annoyed with at first but came to enjoy the more I reflected upon it. What I
think happened with 2049 is that in trying to replicate that feel – the absence
of dialogue-heavy scenes, the deliberate pacing, the high emphasis on sights
and sounds – Villeneuve forgets to restrain himself. He saw a wide-open canvas
and determined that every single bit of it needed to be filled to the brim with
beauty when in reality the canvas needed to be cut smaller before it could be
properly painted. The visuals and narrative don’t connect as often as the
original film’s did, distracting me too often by the detail and immersion of
each scene instead of allowing me to focus on what was happening in each scene.
That’s not to say that I don’t think this film has a good
story. In fact, 2049’s plot has a lot of philosophical and even religious
(mostly Christian) undertones that help establish the film’s focus on the idea
of freedom. Ryan Gosling’s K, a replicant (bioengineered human) who hunts down
rogue older replicants that were designed with more freedom than the current
generation, is the primary wrestler with this theme. His character – and his
performance – seem to be crafted to show his conflict with his profession and,
even further, with his identity. The film’s plot is explained mostly through
implication and inference, something that worked well in the original Blade
Runner because the film had more going on per minute of runtime.
2049, however, is 45 minutes longer than its
predecessor. I don’t have a problem with its length; what I have a problem with
is its meandering nature. It takes so long for this film to get its main arc
fully in motion – not that it doesn’t start right away, but it feels stuck for
a good half hour after it does begin – that it almost lost me. Instead of
focusing more fully on K’s story, the film jumps around here and there,
establishing the subplots necessary to make the rest of the plot work. I don’t
think that these subplots and such didn’t need to be here; I just think that
they are organized very poorly. They distract from the main narrative too much
and, despite their necessity to the film, do not feel important enough in the
moment for me to pay as much attention to the details presented in them as I
should have. That left me slightly confused when they became relevant later on.
I don’t think Blade Runner 2049 is a boring film,
though; it does a lot in its technical aspects to ensure that much. It is, however,
under stuffed – a very slight flaw of its predecessor that becomes far more
amplified with the inflated runtime. I wish that it felt just a tad faster and made
the significance of some of its scenes just a bit clearer. If it had, I feel
this film would have been great; instead, it is a good but flawed and slightly insubstantial
sequel that can’t get its ducks in a straight enough row to back up its
astounding technical mastery.
My recommendation: See it for its visuals, but your
mileage may vary on the rest.
My grade: 73/100
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