better than the original!

Rating: 8/10 (6 October 2017)

What on earth is a blade runner? Well who's asking? And why? You see, there are several ways to answer that question. The most obvious answer is "Blade Runner" is a movie – a classic 1982 science fiction thriller directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and Sean Young. In this film's dystopian future, a blade runner is a cop who hunts down and "retires" (kills) synthetic human "replicants" who have escaped back to earth from the "out-worlds" where they served human colonists as slave labor. The story is an adaptation of the 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by legendary sci-fi author Philip K. Dick. But the phrase "blade runner" isn't even in the book!
In fact, it was a phrase put in the original screenplay by "Blade Runner" co-writer Hampton Fancher – and enthusiastically embraced by Scott. But the phrase didn't originate with Fancher. He picked it up from the title "Blade Runner (A Movie)" by William S. Boroughs which was a treatment (and early version of a possible screenplay, hence the name) based on the 1974 novel "The Blade Runner" by Alan E. Nourse. That book creates a dystopian future in which the law requires that people who seek medical treatment get sterilized so their illnesses and/or tendencies to injury don't get transmitted to future generations. In the story, an underground medical community functions with the help of smugglers called blade runners who supply outlaw doctors with supplies ranging from medications to scalpels.
Of course, the focus of this review is the 2017 sci-fi thriller "Blade Runner 2049" (R, 2:43). In an excellent article on theverge.com, writer Adi Robertson sums up the whole blade runner history this way: "So 'Blade Runner 2049' is the sequel to a movie based on a book but named after a completely unrelated film treatment of yet another book, which was itself published as a third book with the subtitle 'A Movie'. In case that's not confusing enough, the latest reissue of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' is also titled 'Blade Runner'. And we won't even get into the three Blade Runner sequel books by K.W. Jeter." Obviously, when deciding whether to see this film, we all hope that its plot is less convoluted than the real-life story that brought us Movie Fans to this point – and that the 2017 film will satisfy fans of the 1982 original – as well as those who have never seen it or don't remember much of it.
30 years after the events of the first film, newer, more human (but more obedient) replicants have been integrated into society, while the older models are still hunted down and retired by blade runners. 2049 Los Angeles is every bit as dark, dreary and damp as it was in 2019, just more technologically advanced, especially when it comes to the pervasive outdoor advertising (think huge electronic billboards which can be anywhere and have images that move and interact with prospective clients). One of the blade runners is simply known as K (Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling). K doesn't especially enjoy retiring replicants, but he loyally and competently serves his supervisor, Lieutenant Joshi (Golden Globe winner Robin Wright). Also, he has no friends and his roommate is a hologram named Joi (Ana de Armas).
When K is sent to retire a newly-discovered rogue replicant named Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), K makes a curious discovery at Sapper's farm. K alerts Joshi who sends a dig team to the property. All this results in a startling revelation that Joshi tells K "breaks the world." Joshi is desperate to destroy any trace of what they have found. Niander Wallace (Oscar winner Jared Leto) is a replicant manufacturer with a serious god complex who is also very interested in the discovery in question. He sends his ruthless replicant assistant, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), after anything and anyone linked to the discovery, leading K to go looking for answers himself. Along the way, he seeks help from replicant memory maker Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) and eventually finds long-retired blade runner Rick Deckard (Oscar nominee Harrison Ford – who isn't the only member of the original cast to show up.) And then I stop, so as to avoid spoilers.
"Blade Runner 2049" is actually superior to the first "Blade Runner". While Ridley Scott and company deserve credit for terrific creativity in bringing the original book to cinematic life (and creating a sci- fi classic), I didn't find the 1982 version to be especially compelling or well-acted. I have no such complaints about the sequel. The screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green honors its predecessor and takes the drama to a higher level. It also lays out a series of intriguing twists and surprising reveals from very early in the film and continuing until the very end – while asking some of the same questions eluded to in the first film – and taking them even further. There's just more at stake in the sequel – for the human race – and definitely for the individual characters (which are played superbly by all involved). Director Denis Villeneuve takes full advantage of the advances in cinematic technologies since 1982 and gives us visuals which are alternately (and in various combinations) raw, vibrant, haunting, erotic and just plain impressive. Both the original and the sequel are slowly paced and have minor plot holes, but 2017's version is much more entertaining. "A-"