My Issue with Blade Runner 2049

                Okay, so I know that the movie is still about a year away, but there is an issue that has yet to be addressed about the new Blade Runner sequel.

For those of you who don’t know, Blade Runner is a 1982 Ridley Scott movie starring Harrison Ford. The movie is about a type of robot, called a replicant, that looks like a human and is used to preform labor on off world colonies. Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner, which is a detective who is specifically trained to spot these robots. He gets called in because a small group of replicants have broken away from one of those off world colonies and come to earth for unknown reasons. As Deckard begins his search for the escaped replicants, we learn more about them and the rules that govern their existence. Chief among them is that they are only allowed to live a certain number of years before they expire, which is why, as Deckard learns, they have returned to earth. They don’t want to expire and are seeking the head of the company that created them in hopes that he can extend their lifespan.

 

Harrison Ford as Deckard and Sean Young as Rachel

Another character that Deckard meets is Rachel, a Tyrell employee who swears up and down that she is a human, but Tyrell says is a replicant herself. This is proved when Deckard recalls memories of hers that she had supposedly never told anyone, but in actuality belong to the nieces of Tyrell’s CEO. They were programmed into her to make her more convincing as a human.

I understand this is a lot of explanation, but bear with me.

Throughout the movie, Deckard keeps having the same dream about a unicorn. A fellow officer, played by Edward James Olmos, has a calling card of leaving origami figures wherever he goes. At the end of the movie, it is revealed that he has left an origami unicorn in Deckard’s apartment where Rachel has been living with Deckard. Now it is heavily implied that Deckard himself is a replicant. The movie ends on a note of uncertainty for both him and Rachel.

 Edward James Olmos as Eduardo Gaff

The question of Deckard being a replicant has long been an issue of debate among fans of the movie. Ridley Scott himself threw his two cents in and said that Deckard is in fact a replicant. Which brings us to the issue of the upcoming Blade Runner 2049. First off, it is coming more than 30 years after the original. I’ve always had a problem with sequels that come 20+ years after the original. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, Star Wars being among them. Of course, being that it is a science fiction movie, that does mean that the effects will be updated, which was always kind of distracting about the original. A movie with 30 yr old special effects is not gonna hold up that well, but the original also had a distinct visual style that kind of helps.

The second issue I have pertains to the issue of Deckard being a replicant. The smart way to go about this movie is to make it without Harrison Ford, or any mention of his character or of the events that transpired in the original film. The world of Blade Runner is big enough that you can make a separate story without interfering. The reason why I didn’t want Harrison Ford to be in the sequel is because now the mystery of the ending is ruined. It would be like Leo Dicaprio being in a sequel to Inception because it would clearly answer whether the top stopped spinning. Unlike Inception however, the mystery of Deckard isn’t clearly stated, it’s more hinted at. Deckard never asks “What am I?” he just gets a look. And now this subtle question is going to get a not so subtle answer, and that is going to piss a number of people off. Because again, replicants are only allowed to have the lifespan of 3 years, and if you look at Ford, there has clearly been a longer span of time than that. And it was addressed in the original movie that there are ways to increase lifespan, but they all have problems so the replicant wouldn’t get much of an expansion anyway. So Deckard has to be human, which completely contradicts what everyone has been saying.

Thirdly, the issue with a Blade Runner sequel is that the movie itself wasn’t a huge hit. It was a box office bomb and panned by critics, but in the years since its release, the movie has gotten quite the cult following and has gone from being a flop to hailed as a sci-fi masterpiece. With that said, I imagine a lot of people who watched the trailer to be asking a lot of questions. I mean, yeah Ryan Gosling and Jared Leto are in it, but what other reason will they have for going to see it? I guess depending on who you ask, that’s all the reason they will need.

 To its credit, the sequel does at least have the same visual style as the original

Now, before anybody wants to label me a fanboy that is just hating on something new, I’d like to make the following disclaimer: I’ve learned to approach such things with a less than completely shut off mind, while I do currently have issues with it so far, that’s not to say they won’t find a way around it. If the movie gets good enough reviews and other fans are saying they like it, then I will be more than happy to purchase a ticket. I’m just extremely nervous about it at this current time.