Blade Run­ner 2049

Pri­or to the UK press screen­ing of Blade Run­ner 2049, a gen­tle­man came before the excit­ed audi­ence to intone a mes­sage alleged­ly from the pen of the film’s direc­tor, Denis Vil­leneuve. It was short and sweet, request­ing that those writ­ing about the film refrain from spoil­ing it for oth­ers by reveal­ing key plot points. It makes sense to offer a col­le­giate nudge and a wink in order to make sure the overzeal­ous types out there don’t start tweet-thread­ing the twists, or explainer­is­ing cru­cial sequences. His inten­tion, clear­ly, was to pre­serve the mag­ic for the masses.

The prob­lem here arose after the film had screened. What Vil­leneuve had pre­sumed in his light­ly pas­sive-aggres­sive memo is that there would be mate­r­i­al in his film that view­ers would pos­sess a nat­ur­al urge to spoil. And yet, to these eyes, there was noth­ing. This film is lit­tle more than a bauble: shiny, hol­low and shat­ters under the slight­est pres­sure. Maybe it’ll be good news for the spoil­er­pho­bic among us, but there is lit­tle in the film that is actu­al­ly worth spoil­ing – at least not with­out reams of fid­dly con­text and turgid backstory.

One major twist stands front and cen­tre of the main poster art­work, but beyond that… Blade Run­ner 2049 has no major rev­e­la­tions and noth­ing pro­found to say. Very lit­tle hap­pens over its bloat­ed run­time. Char­ac­ters don’t evolve. Dra­ma is com­pact­ed to moments rather than par­celled out across a broad sweep. What the film pre­sup­pos­es is that audi­ences will be able to extend an instinc­tive com­pas­sion to its ensem­ble of dead-eyed Repli­cants, and thus the val­ue of their human­i­ty would be implic­it. But that’s not the case: this is a film where mor­tal­i­ty has become lit­tle more than a cos­met­ic action. Vil­leneuve does lit­tle to ampli­fy the rel­e­vance of death’s cause and effect. And what oth­er rea­son is there to want to watch a movie?

At its cen­tre is Ryan Gosling, an actor who has built a cot­tage indus­try out of play­ing char­ac­ters who sport an entire­ly blank expres­sion. Some may even ques­tions whether this even counts as act­ing. Yet Hol­ly­wood has a unquench­able thirst for these stock badass­es who sup­press their feel­ings, and so Gosling has found him­self quids in. He plays ​‘K’, the lone wolf Blade Run­ner with a yen for giant col­lars (iron­i­cal­ly mask­ing a face which betrays no emo­tion) whose sole task in life is to ​“retire” old­er mod­el Repli­cants who have scat­tered them­selves across the globe.

His per­for­mance could be described as con­sti­pat­ed – with a four day back-up. He strains and he quakes, press­ing rivulets of fresh blood from the many wounds he has col­lect­ed on his trav­els. Despite ran­dom­ly dis­cov­er­ing the site of a ​“mir­a­cle”, and being tasked with bur­row­ing down the rab­bit hole by his slick-haired supe­ri­or (Robin Wright), he does lit­tle to con­vince of his own impor­tance to the sto­ry. This choice to bypass sen­ti­ment works with­in the film’s grandiose, hyper-alien­at­ing land­scape, but does lit­tle to engage you in the com­plex dilem­mas with which he sup­pos­ed­ly wrangles.

The film is very much cut from the same pulp cyber­punk leatherette as Rid­ley Scott’s over­rat­ed orig­i­nal, as it traces a char­ac­ter work­ing through an extreme­ly banal lin­ear inves­ti­ga­tion towards an inevitable end point. It’s a process that requires very lit­tle in terms of moral deduc­tion, and it’s not a mys­tery that’s cul­ti­vat­ed by keep­ing select nuggets of infor­ma­tion con­cealed – a tac­tic which made Villeneuve’s pre­vi­ous, Arrival, work for a good while.

No, the sto­ry com­pris­es of K going to a place, learn­ing a thing, and then going to anoth­er place. Repeat to fade. There are even a num­ber of moments where K returns to a place and, just by look­ing real­ly hard, hard­er than every­one else, dis­cov­ers some­thing new. How or why he makes these con­nec­tions is hand­i­ly swept to the side (maybe for a director’s cut?). Per­haps it’s just terse sto­ry­telling with all the faff removed for sake of lev­i­ty? The real­i­ty of it, you watch this hulk­ing movie, and with most scenes the feel­ing is: do we real­ly need to be see­ing this? Why is he here again? Where are we? What’s happening?

There is a rea­son to watch – on a big screen if pos­si­ble – and that’s large­ly down to fine work by reg­u­lar Vil­leneuve col­lab­o­ra­tor Roger Deakins, whose cold­ly expres­sive cin­e­matog­ra­phy brings a sense of crum­bling grandeur to future Earth. There are numer­ous shots where the cam­era pulls back to reveal the bru­tal sprawl of a Los Ange­les which resem­bles a giant cir­cuit board. And if you real­ly dig atmos­pher­ic shots of vapour, fog and smoke, then this is absolute­ly the film for you. (Blade Run­ner 2049 is basi­cal­ly Pris­on­ers with fly­ing cars).

The pro­duc­tion design plays on the clash between pris­tine min­i­mal­ism and post-indus­tri­al decay, often encap­su­lat­ing the two aes­thet­ics with­in the same frame. The for­mer comes to the fore in the com­pa­ny of Jared Leto’s sin­is­ter biotech tycoon, Wal­lace, whose pseu­do-philo­soph­i­cal bab­blings recall The Archi­tect in the Matrix sequels mixed with the cre­ative direc­tor of a ​’90s ad agency. He lives in what looks like a cou­ples spa, replete with calm­ing water features.

So it’s slow, state­ly, looks pret­ty, but sore­ly lacks for dra­ma. At this point, let’s call it a clean 50/50 split. But what tips it towards the neg­a­tive is its clutch of dubi­ous­ly ren­dered female char­ac­ters. Women in Blade Run­ner 2049 are one of three things: evil, pros­ti­tutes or naked. There’s even a moment where K takes his fly­ing car to a mys­te­ri­ous desert loca­tion that’s dashed with mono­lith­ic sculp­tures. Upon clos­er inspec­tion, they are nude women with over­sized breasts. This isn’t some Freudi­an metaphor of mater­nal long­ing or an image which holds a deep rel­e­vance. It is, apro­pos of noth­ing, an image of guilt-free tit­il­la­tion for the road.

The cen­tral female char­ac­ter is K’s holo­gra­mat­ic sex com­pan­ion named Joi (Ana de Armas) who frol­ics around his cell-like apart­ment in a spark­ly cock­tail dress while he looks on in self-lac­er­at­ing dis­gust. The major­i­ty of female char­ac­ters are need­less­ly sex­u­alised and serve no pur­pose to the plot oth­er than to make the male char­ac­ters feel sad. The film offers an unre­con­struct­ed male-cen­tric vision of the future which neglects to explore why calls for gen­der equal­i­ty either weren’t answered, or nev­er hap­pened in the first place. It’s very care­ful to plant dif­fer­ent lan­guages and alpha­bets across the var­i­ous signs seen on walls and build­ings, infer­ring that the world has devel­oped into a rich cul­tur­al melt­ing pot. And yet, women just all like see-through PVC fetish­wear and that’s that.

Maybe you’ll watch this film and see some greater aspi­ra­tion, or a bewitch­ing exis­ten­tial dis­course which taps into your own view of human­i­ty, pro­cre­ation, the dan­gers of over­pop­u­la­tion, slave-mas­ter rela­tions, father-son rela­tions, or some­thing else entire­ly. It’s clear that Vil­leneuve has been bing­ing on the films of Andrei Tarkovsky pri­or to mak­ing Blade Run­ner 2049, as this apes his delib­er­ate, ​“tran­scen­den­tal” style while neglect­ing the idea that these gor­geous images have to push towards a com­mon cause to jus­ti­fy their exis­tence. It’s a film full of sound and fury, but it sig­ni­fies noth­ing. Do your­self a favour and keep those expec­ta­tions tem­pered, and then some. To expect the sec­ond com­ing would be the biggest spoil­er of all.