Blade Runner 2049 Is Bombing At The Box Office, But It's A Really Awesome Flick
How’s that for an anti-clickbait headline? You could stop reading right here and have my full thoughts! Anyway…
Welcome back to Rob’s Monday Morning Movie Review! As you know already, I’m talking about a movie I ENJOYED this week, which is refreshing! It’s much easier to be “funny” when I’m stomping on some schlocky shitfest like Flatliners, but I’d prefer to talk about something I liked more than something I hated ten times outta ten. Last week I implemented a rating system for my movie review, and I’ll tell ya right off the bat that I won’t be doing that again. Movies are so subjective, and it’s just so hard to say what makes an 8.7 better than an 8.6 in my opinion. Sometimes it depends on the day! So from now on, I’ll just give the recommendation/non recommendation, and you should be able to tell how much I liked whatever film I’m talking about from my review.
***There will be NO SPOILERS in this blog***
Blade Runner 2049 is of course the two thousand and forty ninth movie in the Blade Runner saga, and yes, you have to see the first 2048 movies to understand this one. It’s a very complex storyline. LOLjk. That’s just a fun little joke. We do those sometimes here.
Blade Runner 2049 is simply a sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 cult classic of the same name (minus the 2049) starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. When it was released in theaters, it was a HUGE box office disappointment. You’d think the combination of Ridley Scott (3 years off the release of Alien) and Harrison Ford (2 years off the release of Empire Strikes Back) would PRINT money no matter what, but it didn’t. It made a WEAK $6 million opening weekend, due in part to the promotional campaign, having to go toe-to-toe E.T., and having Scott be pretty vocal about his frustrations with the studio’s edits of the movie. In 1992, a Director’s Cut was released, eliminating Harrison Ford’s narration and the “Disney” ending of the movie, leaving things a bit more somber, and a bit more open ended, saving Blade Runner from obscurity and making it one of the most famous sci-fi films of all time. You do NOT have to see the original to see this movie, though.
Ryan Gosling stars as K, a new Blade Runner, who discovers “a long-buried secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who’s been missing for thirty years.”
That’s not the best description of the movie from IMDb if we’re being honest, and the promotional campaign was just as misleading, representing Harrison Ford as the co-star while he’s not in that much of the movie, but I digress. Here’s what’s important: The Blade Runner universe contains humans and replicants, which are artificially made humans created to obey. K is a replicant working for the LAPD, hunting down and killing older replicant models, until he finds something that launches the movie into a beautifully crafted and sloooooow paced detective film.
The original Blade Runner was very slow paced to let the themes of the film set in with the viewer, and this is the same way, nearing three hours in runtime (2hr43min). I believe it does it better than the OG one, though. They used the world Ridley Scott built to perfection, and as Mike and Jay from RedLetterMedia said in their review, took everything that worked about the original, and threw away everything that didn’t. I was so much more interested in K’s role than I was Rick Deckard’s, and that says A LOT because Harrison Ford is the greatest and my favorite actor of all time. K just has such an interesting story and character arc. His love interest is a hologram that reminded me a ton of Spike Jonze’s Her, and it wasn’t forced at all; something that’s an issue with so many sci-fi movies.
Jared Leto plays Niander Wallace, a replicant manufacturer, and I guess the antagonist of the movie! I say “I guess” because Sylvia Hoeks’s character Luv actually plays the role of main antagonist (and she’s GREAT), but that’s not how things were marketed. As a side note, I have no idea where people stand on Leto but I love him as an actor. He’s a weird fuck but always turns it on when the lights are bright. I even dug his interpretation of The Joker!
Harrison Ford of course revives his role as Rick Deckard, and appears in the final act of the movie as disheveled as ever. There’s something funny about all of his roles nowadays involving messy hair and a stained t-shirt. He’s awesome, though, and I love that this career resurgence where he’s reviving every old franchise he’s ever done also involves him putting tremendous effort into each role (like Han Solo in The Force Awakens). Hopefully Indiana Jones follows suit…but really they shouldn’t make that movie.
Now my favorite thing about this movie is it’s visuals. The cinematography is the best I’ve seen all year, the environment is gorgeous, the production design is flawless, I mean this movie is worth the two hours and forty three minutes even if you hated it, because look at this shit!
PORN!
Unfortunately it seems Blade Runner 2049 creating box office poetry with the 1982 release of the first film, because it BOMBED this weekend, bringing in a mere $31.5 million. It’s production budget was $200 million, and you can’t turn a fucking corner in NYC without seeing a massive poster with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford on it, so I’d assume marketing budget was AT LEAST the same. It really fucking sucks, too, because this movie takes so many cool risks for a “popcorn blockbuster” flick, and the massive amount of money that’ll be lost of this movie could deter others from trying to step out of the box.
So here’s the big question: Would I recommend you see Blade Runner 2049? YES, but you have to know going in that this is a slow moving detective movie. Don’t expect crazy action every few minutes, with explosions and gunshots and car chases. There’s pretty much none of that. Expect an amazing sci-fi film with awesome visuals, performances, and sound design.
Oh, and Mackenzie Davis (a HUUUGE crush of mine) plays a hooker and she’s hot as fuck. Price of admission right there.
