We went to see the sequel to Bladerunner over the weekend. Bladerunner itself is one of my favourite films. We watched it last week in preparation, and once again I was blown away by how beautiful, how intelligent, and how whole hearted it is. It has complete conviction in itself which is one of my favourite attributes in films.
The new Bladerunner was very very good, though it fell far short of perfection. It had really fantastic, interesting ideas about memory, about what it means to be a person, what it means to be in thrall to another. It has some beautiful images. I loved the farmlands it opened with, and flying over the city’s dark rooftops with flashes of light shining through narrow streets. It reminded me of walking through Hong Kong streets.
I was less taken by some of the other set design: the generic 21st century office space, the inside of the Wallace Corporation (marred particularly by the fact that the Phuket resort I stayed in over the summer had the same water-and-concrete-and-atmospheric-lighting aesthetic).
I thought some of the sound design was really good. I loved the fractured nature of it, the cracked, overwhelming groaning, the broken crooners in Las Vegas.
I really disliked some science fiction cliches: the feral rubbish collectors and the orphanage, the Terminator villainess, and the crazy but completely pointless villain. I thought Harrison Ford should have been left out instead of reprising yet another ‘grump, 30 years later’ role and undoubtedly raking it in. I loved the memory maker in her bubble and thought the actress was superb. I hated the rebellion and thought they were boring, pointless, meaningless and setting up a sequel. I was unsure about the born vs made dichotomy, and will have to think further on it. There was too much action and the film was an hour too long. I am told there was a lot of gratuitous female nudity, but the print in a Malaysian cinema is always thoroughly censored so I didn’t see any of it. I was reminded, also, about Hollywood Racefail. Two fantastic actors, Barkhad Abdi and Wood Harris, wasted on bit roles when either of them could have played a lead. Not as egregious as Lupita Nyong’o in The Force Awakens, but still pretty poor.
It’ll be in my top ten of the year.