It has updated its dystopian future to reflect our current fears and dreads about the future. It pulls at the same threads and hits the same plot points, but does it so differently that it never feels like the same movie (for better or for worse). Blade Runner 2049 is in essence a movie that is the same and yet strikingly different from its predecessor. But, much like the original film, all is not what it seems and K is brought into a mystery that once again prompts the audience to evaluate the meaning of life, human souls, and love. That’s where we find K (Ryan Gosling), a newer model replicant designed to hunt down his own kind. The remainder of the old replicants, Nexus 8s mostly, are tracked down and killed by Blade Runners. This is followed by industrialists filling the void, and Niander Wallace takes over Tyrell and creates replicant models that obey humans. After the whole Nexus 6 fiasco and a series of further bloody uprisings, replicants, bioenginered humans forced into slave labor on the outer planets, are declared illegal and the Tyrell corporation goes bankrupt. If the title didn’t make it abundantly clear, Blade Runner 2049 takes place 30 years after the original film. Oh, he also made a pretty good Blade Runner movie. He managed to pull the actor out of his old-timer malaise and pushed him into delivering the kind of performance we use to expect from Ford. He got Harrison Ford to stop playing all his characters as Harrison Ford, something no one has done since around the time of Clear and Present Danger. With this act Villeneuve has firmly established himself as one of the greatest modern day directors simply by doing what no other modern day director has been able to do. He has delivered unto us something we haven’t seen for years. He has pulled off a feat that most directors won’t even take a stab at.

Does Hollywood dream of electric reboots?ĭenis Villeneuve has done the impossible.

Blade runner 2049 review