Blade Runner 2049 (Film Review)

2017 Columbia Pictures
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve; Written by: Hampton Fancher and Michael Green 
Starring: Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford; MPAA Rating: R
Nicsperiment Score: 9/10

It's easy to forget that, upon release, the original Blade Runner was a flop. Critics didn't understand it, and public reaction and box office was middling. It's also easy to forget that Blade Runner's later reappraisal was a critical one, and not one by the film-going public, most of whom have never seen it.
It is little wonder then, that despite critics being on the ball this time, 2017's Blade Runner 2049 didn't fill Columbia Pictures coffers with cash. The original is a slow meditation on mortality and humanity set in a dystopian future Earth. This 35-years later sequel is also a slow meditation (with different subjects of thought), set on the same dystopian Earth. Anyone who expected this film to make Marvel-amounts of cash is out of their mind. However, it's also easy to forget, given the breathless and vapid current state of film reporting, that box office doesn't always reflect a film's actual quality. Blade Runner 2049 is great.
Ryan Gosling stars as a new Blade Runner, someone who hunts down rogue androids, or "replicants." That's the same profession Harrison Ford occupied in the first film, but Gosling is a new type of Blade Runner, a replicant who cannot rebel. Not so spoilery alert: Gosling goes rebel here fairly early on, after discovering some rather disturbing clues in an otherwise textbook replicant roundup. Gosling fills this role quite naturally, as he's always had a sad puppy resting face, and this particular character is certainly sad, considering every aspect of his life is artificial. Gosling eventually meets Ford's reprisal of Ford's now older original character, and by eventually, I mean 2/3 of the way into the film, though 1/3 here is nearly a full hour. Ford, in my opinion, has really grown as an actor in these latter years. The way he shouts "Ben" at his wayward son in The Force Awakens raises the hair on my arms. It may have helped that Ford has a real-life son named Ben. Whatever he drew upon in that moment, he channels with equal emotion here, as a man who has given up everything to keep a loved one safe. Ford and Gosling's legendary 2017 movie promotional tour chemistry reflects their great chemistry on film.
Director, Denis Villeneuve, rains visual splendor upon the audience in every one of Blade Runner 2049's frames. He doesn't ape the original's director, Ridley Scott, yet his hazy, starkly lit landscapes, with the aid of legendary cinematographer, Roger Deakins, do great honor to the gorgeous imagery of the first film. I've struggled with the glacial pace of some of Villeneuve's previous films, but in Blade Runner 2049's highly detailed world, with so much to take in, it's an asset. Michael Fancher and Michael Green's screenplay also gives Villeneuve just enough action beats to break up his glacial approach, and each is spectacular, though generally brief. Fancher co-wrote the original film, as well (with inspiration from Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), this time exploring themes relating to the ability to reproduce, as well as artificiality versus reality. Indeed, from this viewing it appears future watches will reveal even further depths, just as they did for the original.
Also paying homage while forging a new path: Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch's monolithic synthesized score, which takes its cue from Vangelis' celebrated soundtrack for the original, yet stratosphericly experiments with more modern tones.
There's one thing the original has on this newcomer, though. In the 1982 film, Darryl Hannah played a renegade replicant, who had been created to be a sex worker, a reflection on the way mankind has subjugated women. That film was able to give Hannah's character agency, while not exploiting her. This 2017 film also has an undercurrent theme on the mistreatment of women...however, a copious amount of nudity, all female, leads me to believe that perhaps Scott had a better handle on the issue back then, than Villeneuve does now.