Call It 2049

Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies. 35 years old and the imagery is just as breathtaking as the first time I saw it.

The noodle shop. When Deckard finds the scale in the tub. The market. Rain falling, lights reflected on wet, dark pavement. Sebastian coming home to marching friends. Priss in leaps and bounds. The vat grower. The tortured depth of Roy's eyes...

No, that's not in order. Yes, there's much more. These images come into my mind, still. All the time.

Blade Runner was part of the beginning of my love affair with sci-fi. Up until then, I was all about fantasy; kings and queens and guillotines, and the same god damn plot each time. Sci-fi opened up the possibility of dreaming what could be. For real...

It wasn't until many years after watching Blade Runner that I discovered the true genius of Philip K. Dick, to inspire imagination. His stories were turned into more movies and TV than any other sci-fi author, but always through the twist of someone else's mind. (How else do you turn 210 pages into a feature length movie?!)

I have a lot of issues with 2049. There's bad tech; dumb-ass cars that fly that look like cars. Overuse of holograms. Dystopian setting. Inexplicable water reflections. Constant nonsensical references to the original movie (especially the piano).

But what really pisses me off is how androids are portrayed as robots, and in this regard 2049 is not alone. There's a whole spat of recent movies where actors deliver stoney-faced, unemotional characters.

The whole point of Blade Runner is that Androids are alive. They are organic. They may seem developmentally stunted compared to humans that are physically similar, but that's an aspect of their relative immaturity. Roy is only 3 years old. He wants to live, with every fiber of his hard-coded soon-to-be end-of-life expectancy. He would never lay down in the snow and just die. He fights for his life till the bitter end. His life, as distinct from the cloned, vat grown body it occupies.

Blade Runner is filled with hope. Hope they get away. Hope love finds a way. Hope life can overcome imposed limitations.

All of that gets destroyed in 2049. I'm not calling it Blade Runner.