‘Blade Runner 2049’ is Great for People Who Don’t Like ‘Blade Runner’

Blade Runner is divisive as fuck. If you’re out on the original, 2049 will likely be a pleasant surprise.

Yesterday, Vanity Fair released a first-look at director Denis Villeneuve’s highly-anticipated Dune adaptation. The image prominently features the film’s star and our favorite a-list cutie Timothée Chalamet, which is great. It’s also a good excuse to recommend Villeneuve’s previous sci-fi masterpiece, Blade Runner 2049. 

The original Blade Runner is a modern sci-fi classic, and arguably one of the most visually influential films ever made (re: Cyberpunk). A lot of people love it (I’m one of them) but a lot of people hate it too (Nic, for example, is one of several friends I have who land firmly in the “fuck Blade Runner” camp). 

^me thinking about all the “Blade Runner sucks” takes

I’ve pretty much given up on trying to convince skeptics that Blade Runner is a fucking tremendous goddamn movie (even though it is), half because it frustrates me too much and half because I genuinely get where they’re coming from. It’s a little slow and what one might consider obnoxiously meditative. Its dialogue can come off as clunky, unnecessarily cryptic, perhaps even sloppy. 

And the fact that there are like five cuts floating around can also be alienating. So much of it just kind of feels “off.” 

So even though I firmly believe that all of this is a function of the film’s beautifully esoteric, dreamlike vibe, I get why the sum of Blade Runner’s parts can be off-putting, even eye-roll-inducing to some. 

That’s why, these days, I tend to refer the haters to Blade Runner 2049, a sequel that almost seems consciously designed to “fix” the things that vex people about the original while still serving as a satisfying follow-up. 

Blade Runner 2049 came out in November 2017, when the “legacy-quel” had reached its peak. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (which also featured Harrison Ford reviving one of his most beloved characters from the 80s) kicked things off in 2015, and the divisive Last Jedi wouldn’t be out for another month. Jurassic World had been a hit, so had Mad Max: Fury Road, and even Danny Boyle had taken a stab at revisiting his own generation-defining modern classic with the vastly underrated T2 Trainspotting. It’s unfortunate that Blade Runner 2049 was kind of a box office failure. With the exception of Mad Max, it’s pretty much the best of the mid-2010s old-IP-revisited boom. 

2049 not only magnifies and elaborates on the original film’s most enduring thematic explorations, but does so with an intricate, moving story and an exceptionally involved cast (Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, and Ford in one of his most engaged late-career roles, to name a few). 

Then there’s Villenueve, one of our greatest directors working today, applying all the perpetual intensity and Kubrickian grandeur of his previous films to create something that feels seamlessly connected to the source material while etching out a visual and thematic identity of its own. Writing for Birth.Movies.Death., Priscilla Page called Blade Runner 2049 a “poem” and a “neo-noir about the mystery of the self, empathy, connection, how we define what’s real, whether it matters at all.” 

What’s exciting about that is how Villeneuve managed to pull it all off without succumbing to the weight of cultural reverence that surrounds the first film, which I’m sure was even harder than it sounds.

So if you think Blade Runner is an overrated piece of pretty garbage, Blade Runner 2049 might be the sci-fi epic for you.

...Also, you’re wrong about Blade Runner. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

You can rent Blade Runner 2049 or watch it for free with ads on Amazon.