In the history of science fiction cinema, Masterpieces can be counted on the fingers of one hand and are such precisely because they are unique and unrepeatable. One might add, all imitations sometimes just add boredom. We are sorry to write it, but it could be the case with this week's film, as long-awaited as it is disappointing.
And the day came when it appeared Blade Runner. Since then, in the last quarter of the last century, science fiction cinema has never been the same again. It was the year 1982 and the famous line “I have seen things that you humans can't even imagine” remains a milestone among all-time cinematic quotes as does Vangelis' soundtrack that few other times we have listened to accompany the scrolling of the images so well. Before Ridley Scott's masterpiece, as he himself considers it, we allow ourselves only to remember by emotional and narrative force, Metropolis by Fritz Lang appeared in 1927. It is no coincidence that Scott always claimed to have drawn inspiration from this film, which many also consider the first great science fiction cinematic story. Everyone can add his preference, but few of the best films of this genre deserve the mention: 2001 A Space Odyssey, Alien e Il pianeta delle scimmie they are certainly in the lead of the classification. Scott's Blade Runner fits right into this group.
On the contrary, this sequel, signed by Denis Villeneuve., we highly doubt it can aspire to top a few weeks of box office survival. Almost everything was written about the first Blade Runner, starting with Philip K. Dick, the American writer from whom the screenplay is taken. The adjectives used then are still valid: surprising, tense, enthralling and more, but one could also add incomplete because not everything was clear at the end of the vision. The plot is simple: in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles robots, called replicants, are manufactured with human features destined to work on colonized planets. Some of them, endowed with an intellectual form, get out of control and are destined to be erased. This should be dealt with by the ex-cop Deckart (Harrison Ford in one of his best performances).
Blade Runner 2049 picks up the story where it left off in the previous film because the replicants are still around and someone has to continue the work left unfinished in the first part of the narrative. The ingredients of the sequel are all there: continuous references to the previous film in the stylization of the characters, in the settings (a less messy, but still dark and rainy Los Angeles) and, above all, in the re-proposition of the eternal struggle between the human and the his double, virtual and imaginary. The protagonist, Agent K (Ryan Gosling) he has the same expression throughout the film even though he is dealing with circumstances that would have deserved a different look. The other protagonists, apart from a summary appearance of Harrison Ford, just to give continuity to the previous film, they don't deserve the mention however brief and inconsistent their appearance on the screen. Just to give a reference: in the 82 film in the role of replicant there was a certain Rutger Hauer, while the part of Rachel (who reappears in a short sequence) was played by Sean Young.
The film runs slowly, without that great narrative breadth that was expected. Every now and then, a timid attempt is made to insert some cultured reference (a book by Nabokov framed twice) just to justify the continuity with what we have seen in the 82 film. In fact, it is really difficult to detach oneself from the illustrious previous one and therefore, in every moment of the vision, the thought runs to the film of over 35 years ago. There is no tension, there is no surprise, some shots seem to be leftovers from previous shots. From reading the technical sheet we know that, despite a very long gestation (in which Ridley Scott also took part) the working time was just a few months. Indeed, it shows.
We take the liberty of suggesting, at the cost of the ticket, to purchase a remastered copy of the original Blade Runner The final cut, released in 2007, which could put fans of the genre at peace.
