Saw it yesterday, and thought it was fantastic!
It’s totally a slow burn just like the first movie, and I LOVED the breathing room that Villeneuve gave it to be that, and didn’t worry about having it be pacey.
The best example I have is when K/Joe goes to the orphanage in the wastelands, and it’s pretty much the example of his memory with the horse carving…so he decides to walk over to the old boiler and see if the horse is there. That scene SO easily could have been about 30 seconds long, with a few repeat shots of K finding the old hiding place…but it’s not. Villeneuve purposely settled into playing the scene out even slower than it had played as a memory, to give K (and us) the time to ruminate and accept what he was about to find and what that might mean. There are lots of sequences in the film that follow this slow, deliberate breathing room style. In fact, it’s almost a Japanese affectation, something that you see a LOT of in Takeshi Kitano, and sometimes Miike films. The lingering, and deliberate length of a scene that ALMOST goes on too long before the cut.
I agree that at parts the score was overwhelming…to the point I put my fingers into my ears (I saw it in Dolby Atmos…which probably didn’t help) in a few scenes…but overall I think it helped the sort of chaotic nature of some of the backdrops, and Zimmer and Walflisch do an INCREDIBLE job of aping and expanding on the original Vangelis score.
The atmosphere in this film is fucking AMAZING. I mean not just shot and lighting choices, but little things, like showing K’s car flying over LA and all you can see are the tops of very tall buildings, and thin wedges of what are streets…where you can KIND of see the fluorescent ads. You get a real sense of “Things have gotten MORE dystopian in the last 30 years”. Things have worsened. The things that have gotten better-ish…like the production of synthetic food, actually feed the bad things (Wallace Corp) to succeed more.
I was actually of the mind before I saw this that Leto might be playing a replicant whose body is the container for a re-planted Eldon Tyrell….it seemed like an obvious thing that a man like Tyrell might have seen his end coming and ported his consciousness ahead of time to be placed in another body….but I’m really glad that turned out to not be the case for a few reasons. 1. I think Tyrell Not seeing Batty and his own death coming makes that end to him stay as a poetic thing. 2. I think this allows the original BLADE RUNNER film to stay largely untouched by the events of the sequel (a feat I was unsure it was capable of) and 3. This meant that we could see that Tyrell was not an anomaly…that men like him (and Niander Wallace) are more populous than we might think…men who would take advantage of a situation for their own supposed “godhood” over artificial life.
All credit goes to Hampton Fancher, the man who scripted the original and did the work here as well, for simultaneously crafting a sequel that leaves the original intact…while pushing elements of that original into new areas and making it be AS compelling as that original. I think the ONLY film that even comes close to this successful a “long sequel” would be MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and BR: 2049 is arguably better. Some of the smaller (but no less important) beats in the B-plot, like K & Joi are soaring points of achievement for a script to nail to hard. I mean, I actively cared a LOT about Joi and K’s relationship when Luv crushed the emitter. I cared SO hard in fact that I totally forgot about Ana (Deckard & Rachel’s child) briefly while watching and wondered if the child (who at that point had pretty much been revealed as Ana) might resemble the original model of Joi to give K “something” in the end.
Speaking of Ana Stelline. Wow. That reveal was PERFECTION. And what I loved about it was that it was not some bombastic revelation. It was an inexorable one. We begin with her in what is probably THE most lovely, and quiet scene in the entire film. This young woman, in a building that seemingly disconnected from the dystopian strife of LA proper and the BR world, while snow gently drifts outside, in her pristine white room (little cot and accoutrements in the corner)…crafting memories. I mean, it was this amazing breathing moment even for K. And all credit to Fancher and Villeneuve, I had no idea who she really was in that scene…because at that point you are still focused on K being the possible/probable kid. I mean, they tweak you a bit because you know the memory that was planted in K is real…but you don’t know it’s hers yet. It’s also GENIUS where the resistance (one eye replicant lady’s movement…) or whatever they are called, hid her. DIRECTLY under the police and Niander Wallace’s nose, as the main memory designer for replicants, with a story about her being immune-compromised and needing to live in a bubble. I mean, how perfect is that? Niander believes her to just be an exceptionally gifted woman who supplies his “angels” with memories to complete their personalities…and she’s behind a pane of glass that he can’t penetrate to prove her wrong or test her…nor does he have much reason to even SUSPECT her. Out of all the places that the child could be hidden, this was a perfect coverup…where even Ana herself hasn’t a clue about her origins or how special she really is to the cause.
I also love that they leave Deckard's “is he a replicant or isn’t he?” question unanswered. The ambiguity is one of the greatest parts of the original film…and here it adds another layer to the proceedings because either Ana is the child of two replicants (miracle), or the child of the coupling between a replicant and a human (also miracle). If I dig into that it means that Eldon Tyrell was brilliant enough to create a species of artificial life that could procreate on the same level as we do….OR he created a being so perfectly an artificial copy of us that it was ABLE to take human and replicant DNA and intermingle them. Both things are astonishing. It also makes Niander’s personality even more stark from Tyrell. Both are evil...but Wallace is a poor man's copy )or rich man's copy as it were) of the original genius, and his sadism and god complex are showing even more starkly...to the point where he speaks in bible verses and refers to his creations as "angels".
The ending was lovely. K’s death (if that’s what happens) was a great callback to Batty’s death. Tears in the rain indeed. I mean while K spends a chunk of the film believing that HE is the Deckard-Rachel miracle child…he’s actively going on a quest (similar to Batty) to find his father and ask him questions. You can actually FEEL the father son vibe between the two during their confrontation in Vegas (it IS supposed to be Vegas right?), and when K finally gets to ask his questions, the anger he displays is very much in line with “I’m your abandoned child!” type emotions. That it ends with the revelation that he’s NOT the replicant miracle child…completely juxtaposes it with the ending of the original. BLADE RUNNER ends with the death of the child who violently sought his father’s house to ask for more life that he was originally denied. BLADE RUNNER 2049 ends with the child-seeker character finding a father, just not his, and is able to reunite that father with their child and fulfill something that’s been driving him for days. Life as opposed to death. Roy Batty ended his existence tired, broken, and angry….K ends his happy to not only know that his kind can procreate, but that a parent and child have been reunited by him…something you can tell pulls at him because his implanted memories are of being abandoned in an orphanage.
And the acting here was amazing across the board, actors I know: Gosling, Ford, Wright, Leto, Bautista…and especially the ones I didn’t: Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Carla Juri, Hiam Abass. Just phenomenal standout performances one and all.
If you can’t tell, I more than adored this movie.
This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 16 October 2017 - 01:59 PM
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
"Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone." ~Ursula Vernon
D'rek 
worrywort, on 14 September 2012 - 08:07 PM, said:
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