When the first “Blade Runner” movie appeared in 1982 it seemed to be an impossible proposition. Turning Philip K. Dick´s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” into a film with mass-market appeal wasn´t an easy workaround. Going from deeply philosophical musings on the essence of being human and the meaning of suffering, to an action story fuelled by environmental disasters, decaying cutting-edge technology and physical frailty wasn´t a small order. Director Ridley Scott went out on a limb and made a movie initially not considered all that great into an enduring legacy. Gone were the usual sci-fi of whooshing self-opening doors and people robotically moving about in similar uniforms, exchanged for a view of the future as a sprawling mess of the same combination of high-tech and low-life later perfected by writers like William Gibson.
There are several different cuts of this film and I´ve watched them repeatedly through the years. The divergent versions in some cases differ on small details, but there´s also cuts with significant changes in the ending. I´ll leave it to you to decide with one you like the best. However, as sci-fi movies go you won´t find anything significantly better than this.
That considered, a follow-up would from the beginning seem totally pointless and ultimately inferior. Why mess with something that´s almost perfect? Regardless of these reservations the new “Blade runner 2049” movie does push things forward. A considerably more bleak rendition of a world of further environmental decay and urban sprawl. The combination of that with a planet-wide traumatic loss of important information inducing a kind of collective amnesia sets the stage for barely controllable forces.
A superior society of genetically pure humans opposed to manufactured replicants serving as the new lower class, racial slurs and all. The still difficult question of what it means to be human. What is a memory? What is a personality? How can we determine the genuine from the manufactured, and does it even matter at all?
“Blade Runner 2049” is a movie with a starting point in a classic in it´s genre, while taking off on a tangent of it´s own. The storyline exhibiting enough excitment and novelty, while still respecting the confines of the original story. Inventive and suitably dark. I wonder how many will get the origami-reference of the scene portraying the meeting between Ryan Gosling´s replicant blade runner and the old age Gaff from the first movie. Not very important in itself, but still a great nod to the original material.
Here we have a movie with both an exciting and original story as well as visuals well beyond what can reasonably be expected. This type of film should be impossible to make, but it´s been done and I absolutely love it.
Ohman thinks... 