Do Androids Dream of Bad Sequels?
Remember when Francis Ford Coppola followed his brilliant Godfather I & II films with Godfather III? That sinking sense in the pit of your stomach ten minutes into the film that this was a dog? And afterward, when you left the theater, "What were they thinking?!" That's how I feel after seeing Blade Runner 2049. A Blade Runner groupie, I patiently and eagerly waited 35 years for Hollywood to get its act together to make a sequel. Well, it finally did. And this moviegoer is profoundly disappointed.
Let's start with the plot. Here's the official synopsis from the producers:
"Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years."
OK. You have my attention. Let's flesh it out. So, I went to, where else? Wikipedia. 658 words of plot description left me muddle-headed. I get more thrills reading the literature enclosed in a bottle of toe fungus medication. And here lies the center of gravity for my critique: Blade Runner's plot is so convoluted, weighed down with meandering side tributaries and manufactured profundity that it left me scratching my head throughout. What? Rachel the Replicant had a C-section delivering Deckard's baby, the evidence of which Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) wants to destroy but Tyrell Corp's successor CEO moon-corneaed Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) wants to grab? Meanwhile, K (Ryan Gosling) is having an existential crisis figuring out his identity based on a toy he thought he found and lost as a "kid"...
Slogging through two-and-three-quarters hours of this plot swamp was, for me, a real struggle. I started nodding off, despite the dark roast I smuggled in from Panera's.
Another deal breaker for me was the lack of back story for the characters. Ryan Gosling's replicant Officer K is an expressionless blank slate. OK. So he's an elaborate machine. But so was Roy Batty in the original film, brilliantly played with nuanced pathos and at least some character development by Rutger Hauer. Gosling is a fine actor, but his character has all the depth of Donald Trump on a good day. And that goes for pretty much all the others. What drives Lt. Joshi? Marriette (Mackenzie Davis) clearly reprises Pris, but comes off as little more than an ordinary street walker compared to Daryl Hannah's tortured partner in crime with Batty. Wallace's relentless hit-girl, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) is little more than a cartoonish latter-day Rosa Klebb. Even Harrison Ford's senescent Deckard confuses. He starts out as a shoot-first-ask-questions-later recluse and ends up a Johnny-come-lately loving dad. Joi, K's holographic virtual girlfriend, is the most developed character, played with empathy by succulent Ana de Armas.
Blade Runner lacks the poetry of the first film. The dialogue is as void as the story. Expect no memorable lines as "I have seen things you people wouldn't believe..." It lacks story cohesion not to mention a core. While impressive, the 21st century digital special effects lack the texture and development of the 1982 original. The Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch musical score, replete with thunderous bass drum blasts, is, however, oddly unmemorable in contrast with Vangelis's hauntingly futuristic musical signature that burrows into the auditory cortex and never leaves.
2049 serves to underscore just how brilliant Ridley Scott's 1982 masterpiece is, with its clean Sam Spade-meets-Darth Vader plot line, interesting characters, still impressive digital effects, catchy musical score and soul-searching questions about life eternal and potential.
I realize I am an outlier. Blade Runner 2049 gets a highly respectable 88 percent critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. It makes me question whether I, myself, am a replicant. But there are a handful of other like-minded detractors among the professional critics. So, I'm not alone. And art, of course, is in the eye of the beholder (with or without full moon contacts).
See Blade Runner 2049 and judge for yourself. But, as for me, when director Denis Villeneuve comes out with a sequel-sequel, as he promises - find me off-world.