Movie Series Review - Blade Runner

I've seen a lot of sci-fi films. Many of them have given us an idea as to what our future could look like while others go beyond the sense of disbelief. Ready Player One was one of those films as it gave us a realistic look into what our future could become. But before that phenomenon, there was a simple dystopian film which starred Harrison Ford fresh from Star Wars as well as the beginning of what would become the Indiana Jones franchise. I am of course talking about Blade Runner which is another one of those cult hits and seeing as the sequel came out recently, I thought to check them both out. So let's see what Ford was up to in this so called dystopian future:

Blade Runner

This may worry you as the first film is set in 2019 which isn't too far away, but given what's been shown in this film, don't expect it to be what happens in reality when it comes. In Los Angeles, a group of synthetic humans known as replicants, have been bio engineered by a powerful company known as the Tyrell Corporation to work in off-world colonies. But when a group of them escape back to Earth, a burnt out cop named Rick Deckard (played by Ford) reluctantly goes to hunt them down and "retire" them (the film's word for killing). What then follows is a series of events where the replicants believe they are really human and Deckard must decide their fates while also dealing with his employer. So for a film that was released in 1982 in which the future was left to the imagination, its aged pretty well and although its highly unlikely that many of the stuff seen in the film will meet our reality in the near future, its good to know that we can always imagine what our futures could look like. Its like they say, the future can change for better or worse. Its as sci-fi as its going to get and has some very good acting where necessary. But it does have a slow pace which can be a hit and miss for most people (I'm personally in the middle on this one). It's probably less human than your typical sci-fi film where most of the cast are non-humans, but that's OK. Not a perfect sci-fi film by any means, but it has a fanbase and was a very influential film that helped shape the sci-fi genre in a way and it has a bit of neo-noir in there too which is always good in my books. So yeah, a great film, but not a perfect one. 9/10

2049

So while the first film relied largely on the imagination of what the future can hold, 2049 which is set 30 years later adopts the technological advances seen in both the original film and in reality, while disregarding things like flat panel screens and what went down with the Soviet Union and the Pan Am. So its now 2049 as the film tells us and replicants have now become slaves. We meet one replicant named K (played by the very talented Ryan Gosling) who acts as a blade runner and hunts down and retries rouge replicants. Following the retirement of Sapper Morton (played by Drax himself, Dave Bautista) at a protein farm, K finds some evidence that could instigate a war between replicants and humans and does whatever he can to prevent such things from happening. The thing that strikes me about this film is how futuristic it looks. In almost every tower building, there is a 3D screen advertising something and there are flying cars too. Is this a future we can look forward too? Probably not but this film is just beautiful with its visuals. Its just pretty dang spectacular and is another one of those sequels that manages to be even better than the first while also remaining faithful to it too. Everything about this film is great and I hope we get more as the years go by. 9/10

The Blade Runner franchise is one of those sci-fi franchises that makes us wonder what the future can hold while giving us a story that could very well be what we'll have to face in the time that it is set. Both films have great visuals, good acting (even from the non-humans too) and good stories even if the pacing is slow or not fast enough. 9/10