OVP: Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Film: Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Oscar History: 5 nominations/2 wins (Best Cinematography*, Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The world did not need a sequel to Blade Runner, but it got one anyway.  That was the thought that kept running through my head about a "film classic" that I didn't really love when I finally saw it, but has so greatly influenced the way we look at the movies since (seriously-name another movie that has more influenced set design in Sci-Fi in the years since, I dare you), that it deserved some respect.  The reason for this I'll get to in a second (but if you're a fan of the original film, you'll know what I'm talking about right away), and why I largely avoided the movie itself when it came out (also the length-I have places to be, people).  But a sequel happened regardless, and as it seems certain to land 2-3 Oscar nominations so I figured it was time I head to a dollar theater to give it a shot.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place thirty years after the original, with the world still a ghost town of its former self (hey, Trump's America-we could be in Blade Runner territory by 2019 at this rate, minus the belief in science), and with replicants now living amongst the human population, largely as slaves.  One of these replicants K (Gosling) is charged with taking out replicants that have gone rogue.  At one of his missions, he discovers the bones of a female replicant who died while trying to give birth, proving that replicants aren't sterile.  This of course ends up being Rachael (Sean Young) from the original film, who has had a child with Rick Deckard (Ford), still on the run and living in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas.  The film results in a series of chases where K and Deckard, sometimes on the same side, sometimes on opposing, try and outrun Niander Wallace's (Jared Leto) henchmen (for lack of a better word), particularly the evil and sadistic Luv (Hoeks).  The film ends with K dying on the stairs, while Deckard gets to meet his daughter for the first time.

The movie is, well, kind of sloppy.  The first Blade Runner largely functioned well because there was a question hanging over the picture over whether or not Deckard was actually a replicant and didn't know it or not.  That question is essential to the film's core, and in particular its ambiguous ending.  By bringing back a (physically older, sorry Harrison) Deckard, we see that of course he wasn't a replicant, taking away one of the great mysteries of Science-Fiction.  That alone should have precluded this movie from being made.  By bringing him back, you get a more traditional sequel, but one that is reliant upon spooky-and-strange as its ambience, when pretty much everything is straight-forward.  There is no mystery, no ambiguity hanging over the film's ending and the characters that are enigmatic (particularly Niander and Luv) are too bland to care about.  Hoeks is trying her best as Luv, but never approaches, say, the intrigue of Pris from the original, which she's obviously borrowing from in this performance.  And Leto being asked to play a part this prone to scenery-chewing (it's clearly the Rutger Hauer stand-in), was a casting director foul that literally anyone could have seen coming; Leto overacts, over-emotes, and quite frankly is just terrible in this performance, continuing a post-Dallas Buyers Club streak of him being creepy off-screen and on.

The film's only lending card is the gargantuan and stylish special effects, which here it delivers.  The movie never sacrifices the motif of the original film, and works within its confines, so we don't get wall-to-wall dull CGI.  I loved the giant head motif, and the whitened tree in particular.  Roger Deakins' cinematography is sometimes spectacularly showy, to the point where you feel like you're being forced to watch shots so impressive the movie's plot gets washed out by the visuals, but complaining about someone being too good at their job feels a bit glib even for me, and this is another in a recent pantheon of marvelously-lensed movies from the man in desperate search of an Oscar.  I am not someone who gives a free pass to movies looking great as a bandaid over great plot (I'm more likely to forgive in the opposite direction), but I have to admit I'm not going to complain about its inevitable trio of Oscar nominations (and possibly wins) when they happen in the visual categories.  Otherwise, though, this is a dull affair that tainted a Sci-Fi classic's finale.