Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

An emptily contemplative film which appeals to meat-headed intellect. In no way a rightful successor to the original (although there was no need for this sequel to begin with) but a plodding exercise in banality. I expected this from Villenueve, someone who’s ego and pretence has been progressively bloated through the mindless praise lapped on the rest of his dour and tooth-gratingly preening filmography, a man who has wormed his way through the ranks of this recent surge in faux ‘artsy’ and utterly shallow way of filmmaking that has taken the film industry by storm. Of course it would be Gosling to take on a film of this ilk, as he seems to have become the poster-child for such frivolously bland drivel as this, fitting in nicely with the likes of last year’s La La Land and his work with Nicolas Winding Refn.

Each character in this film remains utterly redundant. K’s involvement (or Joe if you want to pat whoever conceived his character on the back for their incredibly smart and subtle way of calling themselves out on how useless and underdeveloped his character is) works as nothing more but a mere catalyst for the reveal of Harrison Ford’s Deckard (who is the only character with a semblance of importance in this garbage) who takes over nearly a third of the way through the movie to deliver all the exposition for the dire story that the first part of the movie uninterestingly and pointlessly drip-fed to us. The excuse that Joe’s character is purposefully underdeveloped because of him being an android is complete nonsense that doesn’t excuse shoddy script-writing. If there was to be any character of note it would be Jared Leto's, who spouts off some egregious pseudo-intellectual balderdash before disappearing, contributing nothing to the film but two equally as hilariously awful scenes as last year's Suicide Squad.

There is no faith in the audience anymore. We have become so accustomed to being spoon-fed every last detail that there is no room for interpretation. We are always satisfied with the answers after viewing something that we are never left wanting to re-watch and figure the answers out for ourselves, case in point being the overuse of the already on-the-nose motif of the wooden horse (the unicorn in the original being used just the right amount of times to avoid becoming pretentious) and the ending tying everything up in the blandest fashion imaginable.

There are no more moments of awe and wonderment in cinematography, we have become so desensitised to the already-expected ‘good-looking’ nature of nearly every film today that there is never a moment which stills with us; each shot just coagulates into one overall feeling of “that looked good”. Each time I view the original Blade Runner I am struck with the beauty of that opening shot of the pylons above the “smog-choked dystopia” of Los Angeles. That magic is absent here. The soundtrack to 2049, also, is a pale imitation of the original, not containing anywhere near the power of the score of Vangelis’s perfect marriage with the original film, just being a jarring backdrop that never ceases to remind us that it is Zimmer at the helm this time, chock-full of his trademark Inception style which he seems to be stuck in stasis with. The only noticeable peak in the films soundtrack being the inclusion of Frank Sinatra’s One For My Baby and the incredibly unsatisfying use of an off-kilter Tears in Rain, an obvious nostalgia card used by Villeneuve which fails miserably at evoking anywhere near the power of what its original use elicited.

This entire film is asinine dead space. I have never once been so baffled at a films incompetency whilst witnessing it receiving such warm reception. Naturally, this film will be forgotten, as this has nothing which separates itself from any of the usual generic big-budget sequels/reboots of today.