Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Genre: Science fiction, Neo-noir, Mystery, Drama
Synopsis: Set 30 years after the original film, Ryan Gosling stars as a young blade runner whose discovery of a long-buried secret sets in motion a series of events that have the potential to break the world.
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Genre: Science fiction, Neo-noir, Mystery, Drama
Synopsis: Set 30 years after the original film, Ryan Gosling stars as a young blade runner whose discovery of a long-buried secret sets in motion a series of events that have the potential to break the world.
The original Blade Runner (1982) is one of my favorite sci-fi films of all time so you can imagine my excitement when it was announced that a sequel was in the works. Nobody really seemed to be asking for a sequel to Blade Runner and this is perhaps an example of an ongoing trend in Hollywood of remaking or rebooting old franchises. I think the trend sheds light on a somewhat noticeable lack of creativity and original scripts being made lately but I decided to put those opinions behind me and enjoy the film at face value. I am happy to say that director Denis Villeneuve has crafted something special with Blade Runner 2049. The film stays true to the original's mesmerizing, cold, noirish atmosphere, eye-bulging visuals and slow, philosophical storytelling. Although Ridley Scott's original was a box-office bummer when it was first released in 1982, it has become a truly iconic cult classic. Rotten Tomatoes says it was “misunderstood when it first hit theatres” and I can imagine why – Blade Runner's vision of the future was so radical that it took several years (and a lot of re-edits) for its impact to sink in. Today it seems more relatable than ever – with every passing day, we seem to be edging closer to Scott's vision of a future containing global warming, automated cars, video phones and even sex robots. It's just a shame its unpleasantly retro gender politics seem to have made its way into 2017's Blade Runner 2049 as well.
Spoilers for Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049 and Her follow.
The main discourse of the Blade Runner franchise has always been “What does it mean to be human?” and could an artificial intelligence ever become truly sentient? In Blade Runner 2049, it is revealed that Rachael (Sean Young) and Deckard (Harrison Ford) conceived a child despite Rachael being a replicant. It is also revealed that Wallace (Jared Leto), the new head of the morally grey Tyrell corporation with a severe god complex, dreams of creating a new generation of replicants who can reproduce, therefore requiring no human females to produce offspring. This implies a future in which powerful men are able to erase the need for human women, with all their autonomy, with heteronomous replicants ready for reproduction – but this is, rather disappointingly, not mentioned in the film. “If the film is trying to make a point about how adaptable patriarchy is to technological advance, then the problem is that it just doesn't make it”, VICES' Charlotte Gush says. There are several opportunities to make a meaningful comment on these issues but each time they become moments in a man's narrative arc.
Joi (Ana de Armas), a new character in Blade Runner 2049, has been called “a sci-fi fanboys’ wet dream” and it's understandable. She is Agent K's (Ryan Gosling) holographic girlfriend, commodifying domesticity and love, but appears to him only on demand and his emotional needs dictate whether she is in “sexy girlfriend” or “demure housewife” mode. It is worth emphasizing that she is a product, advertised heavily throughout the city, made to be bought and owned. She is programmed to love K unconditionally and is marketed with the lines “Everything you want to hear. Everything you want to see”. Instead of implying the problematic nature of the relationship, the film humanizes Joi to the extent that it feels like it is trying to showcase a legitimate loving relationship. Spike Jonze's Her (2013) raised similar moral dilemmas but that film ended with the AI's leaving after expressing their desires to break the bond with their owners.
Other female characters are not given a whole lot to do. Joi can take care of all of K's needs except those that are physical, so Mackenzie Davis' Mariette is thrown into the mix. Her character appears promising at first but she is also a sex worker whose main purpose in the film is being Joi and K's sexual surrogate in an admittedly breathtaking, albeit weird sex scene. Her character does not end up having a notable identity beyond her use to K. Robin Wright's Joshi is an undeniably strong and badass boss but she ends up inviting herself over to K's apartment, drinking his alcohol and coming on to him. Later in the film, she is killed by Luv, performed terrifically by Sylvia Hoeks. Luv is one of the most interesting characters in the film but she is still in thrall to her male boss, Wallace, doing everything he wishes and never voicing a desire to do otherwise.
Critic Angelica Jade Bastién recently noted that oppression narratives have always been a staple of dystopian sci-fi films and the Blade Runner films are no exception. It's easy to conclude that the films are a commentary on classism, racism and sexism without really acknowledging the prevalence of any of these issues, overlooking the persecuted groups it mines for drama. Wouldn't it be more impactful to include women, LGBT+ people or people of color more prevalently rather than telling a metaphor for the real injustices that are going on today? Looking at the film through a racial lens exposes more problems. Gaff from the original Blade Runner appears in a short cameo, a lab tech has barely more than a handful of lines and two black-market dealers aid K on his mission. These are the only men of color with dialogue in the film. An unnamed sex worker is the only visible woman of color in the film so it is little surprise the film has met considerable criticism for its lack of diversity – in the end, this is "yet another story about oppression that centers white men".
It is worth noting that the film ends with a significant inversion of classic Hollywood tropes. K spends the majority of the movie thinking he is the lost son of Rachel and Deckard and the film pushes that further by giving the audience plenty of red herrings implying that he is the chosen one that will “break the world”. It turns out that his existence is not the key to the future but Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) is. K is able to die peacefully at the very end of the film, accepting his irrelevancy and knowing that he has reunited Deckard with his daughter. The scene is beautifully scored by Hans Zimmer with a callback to Vangelis's “Tears In Rain” from the original's soundtrack.
Denis Villeneuve has opened up about the film's treatment of women in an interview with Vanity Fair, saying “Cinema is a mirror on society. Blade Runner is not about tomorrow, it's about today. And I'm sorry, but the world is not kind to women […] The first Blade Runner was quite rough on the women, something about the film noir aesthetic”. While I can understand what he is trying to say, for the purpose of making this critique interesting I have to disagree with him on many points. The original Blade Runner being “quite rough on women” is a significant understatement. Deckard's and Rachael's “love scene” (see above) is an extremely jarring distraction from an otherwise amazing film as it borders on being assault. Rachael never looks comfortable or in love while Deckard forces himself on her and tells her to kiss her while smooth jazz plays in the background. The plot of the new Blade Runner 2049 hinges entirely on women, yet the critical female characters are not written with the same humanity as their male counterparts. It is worth noting that men produced, wrote and directed this film with the sole exception of producer Cynthia Sikes. It goes without saying that films would benefit greatly by employing more female writers but they are only half of the equation – men need to be held accountable for their writing and learn to write female characters competently. It's ultimately not the responsibility of women to fix this problem in isolation.