Review of Blade Runner 2049 (2017) by Ethan B — 15 Oct 2017

Bladerunner 2049 is the sequel to the 1982 cult-classic Bladerunner. In the film Officer K (Ryan Gosling), a new blade runner for the Los Angeles Police Department, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos.

There are some minor spoilers ahead, if you want to go into this without knowing anything (which I recommend) come back after and read. If you don't care read on.

The first thing I want to talk about is how beautiful this film is, there is one scene in particular that I loved when Officer K is walking through this abandoned city and its all orange from the sand, its breathtaking. There are many other scenes which I thought were amazing, its almost like every frame is a piece of art that you could find framed at an art gallery, I will leave some examples below this review just to show you how amazing it looks. Ryan Gosling is amazing in the film, there are plenty of scenes where the camera is directly on him with nothing else going on in the scene just his face behind a black / white background and these scenes are some of the most powerful in the movie. One example of this is when he finds the date written on the tree and just by his facial expression you can tell this has some significance to him. Jared Leto and Harrison Ford both had smaller roles in the film than the trailer would suggest with Leto only having two scenes all together. Leto plays this weird evil character that I never really understood his purpose in the movie as I kind of zoned out whilst he was talking. I don't think much would have changed if he was not in the film as all he did was talk and let the people who work for him do all the important stuff. I like how they didn't specifically give away if Deckard was a replicant or not as this could have damaged the first movie a lot, however one thing I did read that interested me was how Officer K asks him if the dog is real and he says ask the dog, the dog can't answer just like Deckard himself can't answer that question. Many people complained about the length of this film but I thought that it was better being this length as they could fit so much more detail into the film, there are moments in the film that legitimately make you go "Oh Shit" and I feel like they would not have been as powerful if the film was shorter. It also allowed for those many long lingering shots of cities which is very important if you are making a bladerunner sequel. I love how they have advanced the technology so its not what we would expect to see in the future but what the people in the original film's 2017 would expect to see in the future. One thing I did not like about this film was the score, its sound really metallic and it hurts your ears to listen to but I feel like as uncomfortable as it was to listen to it worked well within the movie. It made everything feel much more futuristic.

Overall I really enjoyed this film and so far it is tied with Baby Driver as my favourite film of 2017.

I give Bladerunner 2049 5 stars out of 5.