Movie Review Bladerunner 2049

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2017 Spoiler alerts Had bad feelings about this from even hearing that it was being made at all but it is actually brilliant - beautiful to watch and with some stunning plot twists - though the pacing can be pedestrian it is much more violent than the first film, and has a lot of sex too. How did I miss all the 2047 sequels in between? Ha! Interesting questions are being raised as to whether this brilliant movie is sexist. The first Bladerunner movie depicted some highly sexualized depictions of women, for example Younger Deckard shoots a nightclub stripper in the back in a shop full of windows and mannequins. Rachel seems a more chaste, traditional noir heroine, clothed and enigmatic, unaware of her own origins or purpose. - message punk-not wearing much - promiscuous - 1940's-50's chic - more conservative and classy There are several key roles for women in the 2049 set film. 1/. Joshi, the hard but fair police commander who assigns K, she is playing a role traditionally played by male actors like Warren Oates, torn between doing things by the book and turning a blind eye to K doing his own thing, even though he is supposed to be totally subservient. She will ultimately die for her loyalty to her job at the hands of Luv –the one replicant unable to detach from the purpose she was created to perform The whole thing deals with a rising slave rebellion. It might as well be called The Rise Of The Planet Of The Replicants. 2/. Ana Steline, the girl in the bubble, making memories for the replicants, highly emotional, and ultimately, Deckard/Rachel’s daughter – her memory of the wooden horse seem exclusive to K, (Trojan horse imagery) leading him to think he might be Deckard’s son, but he is a decoy disappointed to find that his status is not as high as he had hoped and expected - and with other wooden horses seen on the tables, other replicants have also got the same memory. She has no life or freedom, but gives life and dreams to the replicants. 3/. Rachel – Sean Young’s character from the original, dead now but chillingly well recreated as before with a mix of the original actress and CGI superimposed over stand-in, just to be brutally gunned down before Deckard’s eyes by Luv. Her pregnancy is the catalyst to everything, a pregnant synthetic android robot, with Deckard set up to impregnate her from the beginning by Tyrell, (30 years ago) though him being human or a replicant is still ambiguous – he has become a messianic, near legendary figure among the replicant he once hunted, having had to tragically abandon his wife and daughter even before the birth for their safety and never seeing either since – Rachel was doomed to die in child-birth, after a pregnancy neither he or Deckard could have expected. The EMP blackout has helped cover their tracks. Rachel has been truly loved, and protected but ultimately doomed, with Niander Wallace (Leto’s Rasputin like figure) creepily keeping her skull for its association with her now Messianic status. 4/. Luv – The really scary fembot assassin of the movie – loyal to Wallace even though visibly shaken by his abuse of female replicants, she is cruel, heartless, detached, and ultimately in drowning her, K is effectively sacrificing love (luv) in his own life though he is giving hope of love to the largely broken, helpless Deckard. After his stalemated fight on meeting K, Deckard is pretty well reduced to victim in need of rescue. 5/. Joi – K’s holographic girlfriend, his idealized, but unattainable symbol of all hi longing may be where the film has its most exist elements. Joi is seen changing her hair-style and clothes, she is the dutiful housewife at one point presenting a fake lovely looking meal that she superimposes over the basic gruel K is actually eating. Everything about her I an illusion. Later she hires a prostitute who can make love to K with her (Joi) superimposed over her, so he can live a momentary fantasy that it is Joi he is with – the prostitute girl tells her jealously hiw empty she is - we see Joi is the sexualized figure in the holographic posters on the street, including the giant ballet dancer who walks down the roads between cars. Ultimately, in the pot black-out era, Joi’s potential to be replicated is limited. She ends up on a single futuristic flash drive that could be broken, losing her forever, and she is brutally willfully crushed by Luv – harsh choice, Joy or love, with K denied both in the end. It gets pretty bleak. We see that even the real woman half of his three in a bed love romp with Joi is a replicant when he is part of the underground group he meets – his sexism itself detaches him from knowing real love – he gets ‘Luv’ instead and all she brings is pain and death. His death on the steps feeling the melting snowflakes on his hand is on par with Batty’s death speech in the first movie. Sexist? Not necessarily. K has unfulfilled chauvinistic implanted or self generated fantasies but never really know love. Even Deckard’s weary broken hero figure seems to be getting only a glimpse of contact with the daughter, the fragile girl in a bubble. It all gets bleakly terribly existential. Deckard is hiding in the radioactive wastelands of Las Vegas, with no idea if his dog is real or fake. The radiation would surely have killed him (Deckard) had he been human, or maybe he shares Indiana Jones’s immunity to it after hi flight through a mushroom cloud in the Crystal skull film. Arthur Chappell