I’ve never been a big Blade Runner fan. I think the last time I saw it was when the
Director’s Cut came out. I didn’t think
that was necessarily an improvement.
(Did we really need that unicorn bullshit?) Heck, I never even bothered with the “Final”
version. Still, I went in with high
hopes for this belated sequel, mostly because I’m slowly becoming a Ryan Gosling
fan (thanks to The Nice Guys).
I was a little miffed that Ridley Scott wasn’t at the
helm. Not really because he directed the
original, but because I loved his bonkers Alien: Covenant (which was mostly ignored by critics
and the moviegoing public). Instead, we
got Denis Villeneuve. He did his best to
take what Scott did right and add his own voice to it, although the results are
decidedly mixed.
One thing I can say for the movie is that it echoes Blade
Runner well enough. Like its
predecessor, it’s an elegant film filled with beautiful visuals. It’s also a superficial and empty exercise in
style. All the gorgeous cinematography
in the world can’t hide the fact there isn't much of a story here. The plot is
overly simple and is stretched out to a nearly three-hour running time. I can’t honestly imagine why they waited
thirty-five years to tell this particular story as it is thin at best.
The central mystery isn’t that hard to figure out
either. (SPOILERS from here on
out.) I mean they wouldn’t make Ryan Gosling
Deckard’s son because that would be too easy, right? So that only leaves one other age-appropriate
person in the cast. I’m not even sure I understood
what the big deal was over her either. I
mean the woman’s very existence is supposed to “break the world”, but since she
spends all of her time in a germ-free environment like John Travolta in The Boy
in the Plastic Bubble, she doesn’t seem like she poses much of a threat to
anyone. I mean she could easily catch a
cold and die if she ever came close to another person, so she seems like she’d
be easy to eliminate.
The subplot with Gosling’s girlfriend (Ana de Armas) is
likewise overly obvious. His lady friend
is nothing more than a hologram version of an Alexa device, which I guess is
supposed to be some sort of social commentary on our everyday reliance on
computers, but it was all done much better in Her. Oh, and you can pretty much guess his
girlfriend’s fate from the get-go too.
The finale is also a bit of a letdown. I dug Gosling’s fight with the replicant
badass (Sylvia Hoeks), until I realized that’s pretty much the end of the movie. She’s not terrible or anything, but she’s
definitely lacking the presence of Rutger Hauer. Likewise, Jared Leto’s villainous character
was well-acted, yet not very menacing. Also,
it sucked that there was no big showdown between Leto and Ford and/or Gosling
either. Bummer.
The performances are fine.
I liked Gosling a lot and Dave Bautista is so good you’ll wish he had
more than one goddamn scene. (Seriously,
if anyone could’ve taken the main baddie role, it should’ve been him.) Ford does a decent job too, even if he seems
to be playing… well… Harrison Ford instead of Rick Deckard.
Still, it’s all nice to look at. Roger A. Deakins’ cinematography is stellar. Visually, there are several sequences that are
arresting. However, like the original,
it's an ultimately hollow (not to mention a tad boring) experience.
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