With the 11th pick in the 2018 TDOS Cabin by the Lake Movie Draft, I select...
Blade Runner 2049 (2017):
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Dir. of Photography: Roger Deakins
Writer(s): Hampton Fancher, Michael Green
Score: Hans Zimmer, Benjamin Wallfisch
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Harrison Ford
Genre(s): Science fiction, dystopic fiction, cyberpunk, neo-noir
Runtime: 2 hours, 44 minutes
IMDb Entry:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856101/?ref_=nv_sr_1
So...
@hrdboild beat me to
Blade Runner. This was legitimately a bummer for me, though I do not begrudge him his selection. Truthfully, I expected many other films to get picked before
Blade Runner, but I am certainly not the only one for whom it is an important film, and it absolutely deserves to be a top-10 selection. I'm actually quite moved by the reality that there are so many fellow blade runners in this thread! I've met so few in my life away from the internet. That said, I'm taking the chance that some of the other significant films on my list will likewise get snatched up so that I can use this opportunity to begin my draft as I had intended. My love of film flows outward from
Blade Runner, and selecting
Blade Runner 2049 allows me to write about how personal and meaningful the original film is to me through the context of its sequel, a masterwork in its own right.
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When I was growing up, it would be fair to say that my father was a bit irresponsible with my eyes and ears. My mother had to work a lot of Saturdays, and dad would use that time to play all kinds of music and movies for me, including those my mom probably would have preferred that I not be exposed to at such a young age. It was almost like my dad just couldn't wait another five or ten years to introduce me to his favorite cultural touchstones. Looking back, I understand that he was trying to share a part of himself with me. It wasn't until after I graduated from college that my father and I developed a really strong relationship. But back then, he could communicate with me through Kings basketball, through music, through movies.
Now, when it came to rated-R features, he couldn't do much to shield me from inappropriate language, but if there was a particularly violent sequence or overly sexual content in a movie that we were watching together, he would tell me to close my eyes, and he would fast forward through the scene. In other words, I didn't grow up on Saturday morning cartoons like many of my childhood friends. I grew up on [partially sanitized versions of] movies like
Alien,
The Terminator,
Predator,
Die Hard,
Lethal Weapon, and
Beverly Hills Cop. Occasionally pops would let me pick the movie I wanted to watch. Those were some of my favorite childhood moments, because they were moments of great discovery for me. I started to develop a taste for film, and a sense of what I liked, and it wasn’t just kiddie fare. It made me feel like an adult. I would rifle through my father's substantial collection of VHS tapes (and Betamax... my dad held onto them well into the 90's) until I found a film title or cover image or tag line that struck me.
One morning, I'm scanning through shelf after shelf of movies, and I see the words "Blade Runner" on the spine of a VHS tape. I pulled it out and saw Harrison Ford was on the cover. I instantly recognized him as Indiana Jones and Han Solo, and I was delighted. I loved those movies, as most little boys do. I popped it in the VCR and, even though it's an R-rated film, my dad didn't really fast forward through too much of it. I was maybe ten years old at the time? And I was surely confounded by what I saw.
Blade Runner is bizarre and hypnotic and dystopic and existential and experimental and quite unlike any other science fiction film before it, as well as a great many that followed it (even many of those it would go on to influence). It's also not the kind of movie that a child is readily able to digest. I
really didn't like it! It was unsettling, and Harrison Ford was almost unrecognizable to me. He wasn't the hero I knew from his more famous and more family-friendly action movies.
Much to my shame, I wouldn't revisit
Blade Runner again until I was a sophomore in college, at age 20, after the "Final Cut" version of the film was re-released to theaters in 2007 (without the clunky, dry, humorless voiceover, and with the original theatrical ending mercifully excised). It was playing at the El Rey in Chico, CA, and I went to see it on a whim with a friend of mine. Perhaps it’s for the best that I stayed away from
Blade Runner until my early-20's, though. Upon a second viewing, at a time when an individual is much more open to the unfamiliar, the film just clicked for me. It all fell into place perfectly. The visual language. The production design. The adherence to its aesthetic. The extraordinary use of lighting. The slow, deliberate pacing. The themes it was exploring. The strange magnificence of its score. In fact, I can recall selecting Vangelis'
Blade Runner film score with one of my picks for KF.com's Desert Island Music Draft back in 2013. In the five years since then, neither the film nor its score has dislodged itself from my brain. They're with me for life.
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Now to discuss
Blade Runner 2049, my actual pick for the first round!
When it was announced in 2011 that Ridley Scott was developing a sequel to
Blade Runner, his 1982 cult classic and my favorite film ever, I was deeply skeptical. It is not a movie that lends itself to franchising. It’s “Final Cut” version ends on the perfect note of ambiguity, and though it may leave the viewer wanting more, that open-endedness is, in part, what gives the film its lasting power. Beyond that, Ridley Scott is long past his peak as a director. He’s not incapable of making good films on this side of the new millennium, but the bold genius of
Alien and
Blade Runner are long behind him.
Prometheus was a middling attempt to return to the world of
Alien, and while
The Martian was an enjoyable story of wit and survival, it was lightweight when compared to Scott’s best work.
In 2015, it was announced that Ridley Scott was handing off the
Blade Runner sequel to director Denis Villeneuve. The film would be titled
Blade Runner 2049, Scott would remain on as an executive producer, and original
Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher would be returning to pen the script, along with
Logan screenwriter Michael Green. Ryan Gosling was set to star as the film's protagonist. Harrison Ford was set to return as Rick Deckard. And, perhaps most importantly, Roger Deakins was set to lens the movie. My skepticism turned to cautious optimism. That level of talent behind and in front of the camera could not be denied. Villeneuve is perhaps my favorite filmmaker of the last decade, and Deakins--a master of light if ever there was one--has shot some of the most striking films in history.
On October 6, 2017, this
Blade Runner devotee was in the theater for its sequel, nervous and elated in equal measure. My eyes were awed by what I saw. In short, I thought it was f***ing marvelous. I really did. The use of practical sets and practical effects, and the careful application of digital effects, made the world feel so tangible, so alive. Aesthetically, it brought a gorgeous, towering, almost brutalist take to the world of
Blade Runner. I was stunned that production designer Dennis Gassner had managed to straddle the near-impossible line between honoring the first film's tremendously influential aesthetic and plausibly expanding on it in a new and equally powerful way. It might be the single most impressive and holistic visual achievement on screen since the first
Blade Runner. It's score manages to find that same balance, bringing its own punishing, brutalist take on Vangelis' original ambient compositions.
There were flaws in the film, of course. I have no intention of spoiling
2049 for those who haven't seen it, but suffice it to say that it’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination. Then again, neither is the first
Blade Runner, if I'm being honest, and that remains the single most important film of all time to me. As an audience member, I've found I do not require that a film achieves perfection in order for it to resonate deeply with me. More often than not, it’s the messy, imperfect ones that I love the most. I would go on to see
2049 in theaters another four times. It was
that powerful of an experience for me, and I regret that more people didn't see it in theaters. It
demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible, equipped with the best bone-rattling speakers that money can buy.
Part of me wants
Blade Runner 2049 to find a larger audience, because I believe it’s a film that deserves one. But I also would not mind if it never did find a larger audience. Not everybody needs to like everything. Online culture has become such a toxic wasteland where people regularly confuse personal taste with righteousness. I will argue that
Blade Runner is a masterpiece, and I will argue for its belated sequel to be considered so, as well. In some ways, I felt like
2049 belonged to me, like it was hand-crafted specifically for my sensibility. That is a deeply silly and narcissistic pose to strike, of course, but every time I watch it, I can't shake the feeling that this one is
mine. As important as
Blade Runner is to me, I'm only 31 years old. I don't belong to the generation that first encountered it in theaters, that had their worlds changed at the moment of its release.
Funny enough, perhaps the greatest inheritance that
Blade Runner 2049 carries from the first film is its failure at the box office. It's destined for cult status, just like its predecessor. I certainly don’t require critical reception or box office receipts to vindicate my love for these movies, and I'm grateful that somebody thought it was a good idea to give Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins $180 million to craft a cerebral sci-fi film that few people would bother to see. How amazing that
2049 got made at all, and with the kind of budget that allowed it to be composed so grandly and sumptuously on the screen?
I was so thrilled that
2049 exceeded whatever expectations I might have had for a sequel to my favorite film of all time. But nor do I believe they should try this again. It's a minor miracle that it worked so well, and that it's such a visually and thematically powerful film. I am quite satisfied with
2049 being a strange outlier in the landscape of contemporary Hollywood sequels, successful on artistic terms, but unsuccessful commercially. It seems much better that than the reverse, in my opinion. The original
Blade Runner is evidence enough of that.
Not everybody has this experience with art, but for me,
Blade Runner was like a key that unlocked a door to a new way of understanding both the world around me and my place in it. Though it was originally released in 1982, it could still reach audience members who were as receptive to its wavelength as I was in 2007, and again ten years later, when it’s sequel arrived in theaters. It's not a stretch to say the "me" that walked out of the theater in both 2007 and 2017 was not the same person as the "me" that walked in. Melodramatic as that may sound, I truly believe in the transportive power of art.
Blade Runner helped me understand that filmmaking, as a medium, was about more than narrative, and about more than entertainment. It helped me understand that music could be intensely visual, as well as formless. It helped me understand that patience is essential to any act of interpretation. It taught me to slow down.
At age 10, I encountered
Blade Runner for the first time. It confounded me. At age 20, I encountered
Blade Runner for the second time. It changed my world. At age 30, I encountered its sequel,
Blade Runner 2049. It clarified the way I approach that world. Each decade of my life has begun with
Blade Runner's influence at its heart. I consider both
Blade Runner and
Blade Runner 2049 to be science fiction tone poems, and they’ve even managed to help me understand better how I wanted to approach my own creative impulses as a writer of poetry. I didn't know it back in 2007, but I
needed Blade Runner, and it’s sequel has proven to be a salve for my soul in the same way, against all odds, in a Hollywood environment where the mad dash to capitalize on nostalgia results in a lot of ill-considered, unnecessary, and artistically bankrupt films.
Blade Runner 2049 is a stunning achievement, and it’s absolutely worth 2 hours and 44 minutes' worth of your time.
PM sent to
@Sluggah.
