The Electric Dream Continues

Bladerunner 2049 is set 30 years after the original events of the 1982 film.  I admit that  before I started watching it my expectations  were that this was going to be another iconic movie + zero thought  = cha-ching reboot that Hollywood has been shoving down our throats.  I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong.

Not only is Bladerunner 2049 visually stunning, but it’s not a recycled nostalgia fan trip. Watching this movie you not only get a sense that time has passed (which is usually done by slapping some dilapidated building across a landscape), but they show a society undergoing real revolutionary change, resulting in a fractured people that are stuck on a dying world trying to live any life they can.

This level of depth was achieved by director Denis Villeneuve, understanding the original source material that inspired the Bladerunner movie, Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.  Not only that, he guaranteed this movie’s success by checking his ego at the soundstage door.  Some directors are obsessed with trying to suppress and make the existing iconic movie their own and they fail to understand it.

I love that Villeneuve focuses on enriching the Bladerunner universe so both movies can stand and support each other and continue to expand on the questions that make Bladerunner so groundbreaking.

Accolades aside, it’s not all good news for the Bladerunner universe.  As the final hour of the film approaches, the story seems to lose steam and focus.   The questions and conflicts that hooked and griped you since the beginning take a back seat and you’re stuck watching characters tie up loose ends and make decisions for the sole propose of wrapping it up.

I felt I needed more out of that last hour.  The dialogue needed more substance, the final confrontation was anticlimactic, and the ending seemed quieter and less impactful then what I was anticipating.  But, maybe that was on purpose.  Maybe the fight for change, for those that dream of electric sheep, begins with a snowy day and a claim realization.  Only time and multiple viewing will tell.