Undeserved flack

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2017)

This is a good movie. Is it as good as the original? That depends. It depends if you think the original was all that, and a bag of chips. I think Blade Runner was extremely overrated. Now, that doesn't its not a great movie, but I just don't agree with the idea that it was a watershed moment in cinematic history.
This movie carries the premise of the original, while modernizing it for a new generation. It does so without being a hack copy, and it avoids retconning the original to the point of being unrecognizable to those of us who saw it opening weekend, 1982.
That is an accomplishment, by anyone's reckoning.
The music is near the same, and thankfully not as overpowering as in the original, and the acting is noteworthy for one main reason. While the original depicts the rogue replicants as having a near manic personality, hidden from society only by the darkness they dwell in, we see in this outing that the replicants have a veneer of docile tranquility stretched thin over a pit of angst and darkness. One senses that they are in a sort of purgatory, somewhere between the Joi AI interface and humans. That there is a real despair the replicants all feel, but can't even admit to feeling. Officer K's own boss exudes a institutionalized bigotry against the replicants that I doubt her character would even acknowledge she possessed.
I may get a lot of flack about not bowing to Scott's original as the seminal Sci Fi movie of the 20th Century, but I do like this entry into the canon. Gosling's performance is excellent as a man who isn't sure about, not only what he is, but why he is as well. It's done with the feel of a person truly walking on eggshells, but not sure where they lie.
Enjoy the deep seated, self-induced paranoia. You may just look in the mirror, to see if YOU have a serial number in YOUR eye.