Blade Runner 2049 (2017) is a refreshing action movie in the era of the Disney blockbuster empire. It pulls from the cult classic original Blade Runner (1982) to revitalize the art in action movies. 2049’s director Denis Villeneuve is among today’s best filmmakers and science fiction storytellers. His follow up to Ridley Scott’s original lives up to its legacy and succeeds on every level.
Every element of this movie is awesome and masterful: The production design. The acting. The cinematography. The sound design. The editing. And of course, the story.
Ryan Gosling takes a challenging “unhuman” role and makes it sympathetic. Like Harrison Ford in the original Blade Runner, he’s charismatic, but portrays a cold and hardened masculinity resulting from a dystopian noir cyberpunk world.
Blade Runner launched cyberpunk, the subgenre of sci-fi which portrays worlds and stories of technological and scientific advancement that are simultaneous with social decay. Blade Runner 2049 expands on the cyberpunk aesthetic and themes of the original while staying true to its origins.
Like its predecessor, 2049 is a detective story—gone wrong. On the job, officer K (Gosling) discovers a world-changing truth about the state of humans and replicants, synthetically created humans. He begins to question his authorities and his own existence following the discovery of a replicant skeleton who did what only humans were thought to be capable of: give birth.
Neither K nor the viewer gets an answer to the first movie’s question about Ford’s character Rick Deckard’s possible replicant identity, retaining its ambiguity. Los Angeles is still a dystopian city with an oppressive and congested atmosphere. Only, it’s snowier, and the distracting neon apparatuses, looming architecture and flying cars have all been made sleeker and more sophisticated to reflect the 30 years that have passed. In 2049, neon entertainment and news holograms are projected onto fog.
K’s survival often depends on his quickness with a gun and his cold cruelty. Luckily for him, he was designed to strictly obey orders. Gosling is expressionless for much of the movie. Many early scenes indicate discomfort, stress or tension through slight facial contortions and tightenings.
Various socioeconomic demographics and geographies of 2049 are presented in K’s work, taking him throughout the city and its outskirts. The world is bigger than the original’s.
Of the most visually striking and atmospheric parts is the remnant of Las Vegas where a dirty bomb went off. K slowly walks through a deserted land choked with orange gas. Out of the gas appear large erotic statues. It’s eerie and haunting, one of many visuals that linger in your mind as it tries to parse through the images and understand them.
2049 is thought provoking, immersive and warrants more than one viewing.
G.R. Nanda 
This is very well thought out. I appreciate your take on the subject.
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