Blade Runner 2049. Entertaining, but not deep.

I saw Blade Runner 2049 this Saturday, and I enjoyed it. It’s a long movie, so prepare yourself beforehand: go to the loo before the movie starts. The effects of the film are fantastic, and the story thrilling. However, I must admit that the original remains a masterpiece for me. Blade Runner 2049 entertains, but it doesn’t make you think as deep as Blade Runner did.

The cast is impressive, the pace of the movie thrilling, and the details mesmerizing. Old faces and new faces create a dystopia that will thrill you, but, as I said, won’t make you think much. This film is good, don’t get me wrong. But, I must admit that I expected from more from it.

[SPOILERS: this post contains massive spoilers of the film. Don’t keep up reading from this point onwards if you haven’t seen the movie yet.]

We’re in 2049 where a new wave of Replicants do jobs that humans don’t want to perform. Thanks to new mogul (the Joker), replicants obey and even work as “blade runner.” We follow the investigation of K, named Joe afterward by his AI girlfriend, a blade runner who works for the LAPD. He retires rogue older models. When he finds a rogue model on a farm (Drax), he finds out that a replicant gave birth, something previously thought impossible.

K’s boss (Princess Buttercup) wants to erase all trace, and that includes killing the “baby” (someone who might be thirty at the moment). However, the Wallace Corporation wants this new replicant to produce new versions. It turns out that the child is the love result of Rick Deckard and replicant Rachael’s. While Wallace intends to expand his operations off-world and play evil-God, Lieutenant Joshi (Buttercup) wants it dead, so no one knows anything.

While K investigates, he finds out about two babies: a female and a male who were in an orphanage. Strangely enough, his memories match those of the orphanage. He finds there the horse of his memories, making him believe that he might be Deckard’s and Rachael’s kid. His AI girlfriend also thinks so and convinces him to investigate further and bring her with him.

Joe, aka K, puts his girlfriend in what looks like a very advanced pen drive and keeps up with his investigation. While he makes believe to his boss that he took care of the issue, he ends up finding Deckard. And they fight before they decide to take a whiskey together.

Wallace’s minion, a spooky female replicant, ends up finding Joe and killing his AI girlfriend, but after killing his boss and stealing the bones, he had unearthed under a tree, and that belong to Rachael. She then kidnaps Deckard in the hopes of finding where the baby is. Later we learn that Joe is just a replicant, who has in his hands the future. Instead of killing Deckard, as a final human action, he rescues him and brings him to meet his daughter.

We can find clues all over the movie about the kid being a girl and not a guy. You can be deceived. This is the entertaining part of the film. Perhaps, the depth relies on Joe’s relationship with his AI girlfriend and his human actions.

Joe loves his AI girlfriend for real. He also saves Deckard despite all logic of getting rid of him to protect his daughter. And, as a final human touch, he brings them together so that they can meet each other. Wallace might be human, but he has no humanity in himself at all. And Joe, despite being a replicant, has more humanity than the humans appearing in the movie.

Yes, the movie is entertaining, but it didn’t keep me thinking as Blade Runner did. Because of the length of the film, I expected at least some more questioning in humanity. Perhaps, we must find those in the opposition of replicants and humans. It’s evident in the film that replicants “human” better than we do.

What did you think of the movie?