Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So many old genre classics are remade, rebooted and rebranded these days that it’s rare for them to compare, or even exceed the qualities of their predecessors. For the most part, they rehash the story elements and sprinkle it with references and jokes for the fans to gawk at and feel good about themselves for recognizing. Jurassic World and the most recent Star Wars movies come to mind. Only a few dare to be their own movies. Blade Runner 2049 is an incredible sequel, drawing on the original’s strengths and giving it what it always lacked. A powerful story. The protagonist is Officer KD6-3·7 or “K” (Ryan gosling), a replicant Blade Runner whose job it is to hunt down and “retire” renegade replicants. He’s part of a new model series with unlimited life spans (something the Nexus 6 models of the original movie wanted), but far less free will. K even mentions that he’s never retired one of his own kind, because they do not run. While doing a routine retiring, he stumbles across something buried. It turns out to be the remains of a replicant. One who had given birth. The revelation is thought to be catastrophic to the world’s current order and K’s superior (Robin Wright) tells him to eliminate all traces of this, including the child. And so begins the mystery. The story is engrossing and has a few surprising twists and turns. It also seamlessly weaves into the narrative the themes of humanity and what it means to be human, arguably more successfully than the original. Ryan Gosling has a real talent for playing understated characters who express more with their eyes than words, and his performance as an android carries the movie, whether it’s his interactions with the world at large, or his strange romance with his beautiful virtual girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas). She adds a lot to their scenes as their relationship plays out. The rest of the cast is notable, with Jared Leto as the blind head of the Wallace Corporation, his psychotic assistant Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), and even Harrison Ford gives a surprisingly emotional performance, reprising his role as Deckard, the original Blade Runner. As with the previous film, the visuals are a dominating force. With the booming yet dreamlike score by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer, it manages to reproduce that wondrous atmosphere of this strange, ugly, beautiful future. Director Denis Villeneuve (fresh from Arrival) was an inspired choice to pick up the reins and tell more stories in this setting. With Roger Deacons’ cinematography, there’s a grandness to the scale, the massive buildings, the varied and spacious locals. We see more of LA in this movie, and even go as far as to explore the wastes beyond. San Diego, for instance, is now a city of garbage, having essentially been transformed into LA’s landfill. Here people scrounge around like post-apocalyptic bandits and have orphanages/work factories. While the original movie was drowning in rain, here we have fallout. Clouds of dust and radiation blur the backdrops and make everything a world of ghosts. It’s eerie and deathly, but statues form weird shapes in the mist. Villeneuve takes his time telling this story, and it moves slow. This is why the story and characters add so much to the experience. The mystery is genuinely intriguing, building from themes and ideas the original posed 30 years ago. There are bits of fan service here and there (like Atari and Pan Am still being around), but all of it is just part of the backdrop. You can watch this movie without having seen the original and still be affected by it. It didn’t try to top what the original did, still impressively with miniatures and sets, but recreate and move on. We see more than just the downtown streets of LA, here we explore in a way that wasn’t possible then. Blade Runner 2049 is one of the most successful sequels in years, especially for dusting off a movie from so long ago. It joins the ranks of Mad Max: Fury Road with revived titles that not only stand apart, but match their originals.