The short review: I liked it. Good Science Fiction. And I'm still thinking about it, which is a good thing.
Continuing. Thematic elements.
Rain. As with the 1982 Blade Runner, there is the imagery of rain, suppressing those under its weight, blearing the glass as if blurring the lines between humanity and replicants. Always rain. Always washing and never becoming clean, for the water itself is tainted. I always liked its romanticism, and the concept of water is heavily presented here.
Another preserved facet of Blade Runner is what I think of as the Reality of Things. The 2049 movie nods toward the digital age in which we almost live, where everything exists only on servers or computers, and makes the suggestion that such an age was almost wiped out. Therefore, like the original film, objects take on palpable, painful meaning. Things create Memory. Things are Memory. Perhaps as a commentary, when things (data, possessions, people) exist only digitally, can they be said to exist? (See William Gibson, I suppose.)
A favorite of mine is the meshing of music and atmospheric sound. The world of Blade Runner was immersive, its score not meant to accompany or swell with emotion, but surround, in symbiotic rhythm to earthly noise. Listen to the original when you rewatch it. The sound is personal, emanating from the world and the characters. In Blade Runner 2049, I think they've done equally well, in a more massive, lost-soul sense. The film is tremendously loud in parts, not during action scenes but in passing. Los Angeles bellows an lonely emptiness, like the bones of the megacity groaning and scraping and creaking under its own weight. The sound is like the unconscious movement of gods, so large that one marvels that the tiny people underneath do not perish.
Moving on to Theme in general.
The best science fiction is a lens through which we consider our current world, and this movie does some of that. Walls between people. The desire for control and passive slavery. Replicants must undergo a Post-Trauma Baseline Test, which may mirror a governmental desire to monitor and control the actions of others. The words of Officer K's baseline partially consist of quotations from the novel/poem “Pale Fire” by Nabokov, perhaps because of its metafictional idea: imagined authors commented upon by imagined academics.
One focus of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was the ownership of hyperreal artifice: fake animals nearly indiscernible from the live animals that no longer exist. This reflected a human need for some form of preservation, of possession as status. Too, the 1982 Blade Runner focused on humans; replicants were a strange, threatening question. Blade Runner 2049 keeps that prejudice (replicants are hatefully called skinjobs by some), but focuses on the replicants themselves and their version of the Struggle of the Oppressed, though I hope it is not meant as a parallel to our racial history, for that kind of subtle horror might be too much for the story to take on.
Also threaded through the plot are the oft-considered Sci-Fi concepts of what constitutes humanity. The virtuous actions of some of the replicants suggest a triumph of Nurture over Nature in one's programming. However, the strong bias of “being born” over “being created” conflicts with that premise. In the first film replicants chased one thing we have: lifespans. In this one they chase another: perpetuation. There is some heavy Biblical child-is-born and regaining-of-Eden symbolism.
The story does not attempt to address other current societal problems, at least when viewed through a Feminist or Post-Colonial critical lens. A compelling element of Blade Runner's Los Angeles (despite almost all the main characters being white) was a suggestion of diversity--at least when you got down to street level. You could practically smell the White Dragon noodle bar, see the video advertisements of geishas popping birth control pills, hear the myriad of languages as one walked through incessant downpour. The lofty heights of the wealthy and powerful were inundated with dust and looming quiet, as if its inbred structure was struggling not to decay.
In 2049, we get snippets of human culture: a brief scene of an automated street mall, neon lighting up thin glimpses of streets hidden in the canyons between megastructures. The primary culture printed on walls and present on the sneers of apartment block residents has moved from Chinese and Japanese to Russian.
There are different peoples, but people of color incline toward negative archetype: a cowardly overseer of laboring children (named Mister Cotton no less), a clever hustler in a street stall named Doc Badger, and “Doxie #3.”
Women receive somewhat more comprehensive consideration, despite the continued presence of sexual objectification. Robin Wright's coldly honorable LAPD Lieutenant Joshi is rewarding, as is the vulnerable sensitivity of Carla Juri's Dr. Ana Stelline. Sylvia Hoeks is wonderfully crisp and vicious, showing the cracks in her emotional reserve. K's virtual girlfriend Joi is loyal and loving, lending her character poignancy despite being an arguably sexist view of a servant of a servant. Mackenzie Davis, in an eerie and probably intentional resemblance to Pris, plays Mariette (and how can we not see a resemblance to the word marionette) with a smart, observant calm, though still in the problematic form of a doxie. Hiam Abbass plays the replicant leader Freysa in a familiar kind of mysterious, keep-the-faith rebel nobility.
The first movie had flying cars but didn't dwell on them. Deckard and the replicants tramped through the rain on the ground, and when Deckard did rise above the streets inside a vehicle, used that moment for introspection. In 2049, we are often in something flying, soaring above the rain-battered buildings, devastated trashscapes, and massive, impenetrable walls. This creates a distance from humanity, perhaps intentionally. I appreciated that the film took time for long shots: to let characters sort through their emotions and epiphanies.
I feel the conflict stems from internal character struggle rather than the battles of protagonists vs. antagonists, which is good. Rutger Hauer's damaged but hopeful Miltonian antihero Roy Batty was characterized by his desperate search. He was never in control, always doomed, but his unpredictability was terrifying. I am not sure Niander Wallace can favorably compare, because the role of archvillain/savior is clouded. Jared Leto does well, but while the character seems meant to have the brilliance of Eldon Tyrell with a stronger vision, he is saddled with almost-but-not-really-deep trippy poetry and an unsurprising casual cruelty (and can I help but keep thinking of Viggo Mortensen's Lucifer in The Prophecy?).
I will leave the commentary regarding Ford/Deckard and Gosling/K to others, but I liked them fine. They are grim and resolute and let their emotions bubble nicely, and they drink whiskey.
