Note: Per the requests of Warner Bros. and Denis Villeneuve, this review will not discuss the majority of the basic set-up of Blade Runner 2049.
First things first: it seems important to acknowledge that for me, and likely many of those reading this, Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 science-fiction neo-noir is one of the crowning cinematic accomplishments of the latter half of the 20th century. This point is more salient than for the average sequel, given the relatively mammoth amount of time between the original and the sequel, the rightfully towering status of the first movie, and the debt, narratively and topographically, that this successor owes to its forerunner.
And to their credit, Denis Villeneuve and his collaborators only rarely feint towards slavish imitation of the original; certain scenes come off as echoes and evocations rather than simple copies – for example, a postmortem scan of bones corresponding to the photograph analysis in the original. Even though star Harrison Ford (albeit in a significantly less central role), scribe Hampton Fancher (subject of the magnificent documentary Escapes, which is a more enjoyable and insightful experience all things considered) and director Ridley Scott (in an executive producer role) all return, the contributions from all involved feel fairly fresh and distinctly modern.
Continue reading “Blade Runner 2049 (2017, Denis Villeneuve)”
Seattle Screen Scene 