Blade Runner 2049 Review: Sequel to Sci-Fi Landmark - Better than the first one !!
Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford and director Denis Villeneuve turn this follow-up into a bold, "visual feast" that more than lives up to the original
A young blade runner's discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard, who's been missing for thirty years.
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writers: Hampton Fancher (screenplay by), Michael Green (screenplay by)
Stars: Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas
This is the sequel to the 1982 sci-fi classic, directed by Ridley Scott and based on Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, starring Harrison Ford as a “blade runner”, a futureworld cop whose job is to track down and kill disobedient almost-human androids known as replicants. The 2017 follow-up simply couldn’t be any more of a triumph: a stunning enlargement and improvement.
Blade Runner 2049 is co-scripted by the original screenwriter, Hampton Fancher, and riffs on the first film. There are poignant theme-variations on memory and crying in the rain and a cityscape full of signs in different languages (Russian, Japanese, Hindi, Korean), ghostly VR advertising avatars and flashing corporate logos, playfully including the obsolete PanAm.
A young blade runner's discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard, who's been missing for thirty years.
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writers: Hampton Fancher (screenplay by), Michael Green (screenplay by)
Stars: Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas
This is the sequel to the 1982 sci-fi classic, directed by Ridley Scott and based on Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, starring Harrison Ford as a “blade runner”, a futureworld cop whose job is to track down and kill disobedient almost-human androids known as replicants. The 2017 follow-up simply couldn’t be any more of a triumph: a stunning enlargement and improvement.
Its mind-boggling, cortex-wobbling, craniofacial-splintering images are there to trigger awe or even a kind of ecstatic despair at the idea of a post-human future, and what it means to imagine the wreck of our current form of homo sapiens. Evolution has not finished yet, any more than it was finished 100,000 years ago. As so often in literature and cinema, we are reminded that science fiction is there to tackle big ideas, and makes realist genres look flimsy and parochial. This film delivers pure hallucinatory craziness that leaves you hyperventilating.
Blade Runner 2049 is co-scripted by the original screenwriter, Hampton Fancher, and riffs on the first film. There are poignant theme-variations on memory and crying in the rain and a cityscape full of signs in different languages (Russian, Japanese, Hindi, Korean), ghostly VR advertising avatars and flashing corporate logos, playfully including the obsolete PanAm.
The production design by Dennis Gasner and cinematography by Roger Deakins are both delectable, and the largely electronic musical score by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer provides a kind of aural neon: gaunt, harsh, angular, like the noise of machinery. It’s an incredible lucid dream. Weirdly, I had forgotten about one of the little-discussed pleasures of the big screen: the simple effect of dialogue, echoing in a movie theatre. This film’s scale is extraordinary. It places the acid tab of cinema-pleasure on your tongue.
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
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