Blade Runner 2049 Film Analysis

Blade runner 2049 review and sequels in Hollywood
A cathartic monologue pairs well with an unrelenting downpour, while nothing beats a genial powdering of snow for finally hanging loose and making peace with the bullet hole in your gut.1Both work as resolution, just shades apart. When a Londoner wants to project pathos onto a cityscape he adds rains, a Montréalais adds snow. Blade runner 2049 revisits the city of Ridley Scott 's 1982 Original, just paints it with a different palate. The Los Angeles 2049 is indeed a colder place. Sterile rather than putrid; with nothing left to rot this world can merely crumble and rust. The grey corporate ziggurats don’t so much loom as lie dormant, only through the cracks do we see a residual neon glow,

Sequel fatigue is a popular condition, for years now the highest grossing films have been either sequels or franchises, and the elitist spits out the word Hollywood as a metonymy for all that is wrong with the artless entertainment industry.
They have point: Hollywood is an industry and the bloated gatekeepers are fiducially bound not artistically. Their primary concern is what sells, and that makes them rather conservative, banking on things that resemble things that sold before, hence the glut of sequels and franchises, but also more insidiously the torrent of passable “safe” films: demographic pandering by the numbers, relying on formula and cliché. These films can still be well crafted like Marvel3 instalment Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, or they can be The Fate of the Furious , the Big Sick or Home Again, Despicable me 3 or Boss Baby. Half of these are decent films, but they are all safe investments, engineered with varying levels of craft to cater to a demographic and market share, and no one will be talking about them a year from

Blacklist has resulted in a number of gems like Arrival and Manchester by the Sea, but they are still few and far between and there are plenty of duds amongst the Blacklist alumni. Independence Day did not rob some wholly novel masterpiece of a spot; if anything it just pushed back some equally formulaic drizzle like geostorm back a year.
Lack of original stories has never been the harbinger of cultural stagnation, and bemoaning it is a lazy and petulant diagnosis. Culture endures through the regurgitative process called tradition, as art weathers fashion and popular demand. Discerning? You’re damn right. But I’m no snob; because I know Blade Runner 2049 can still be made.

1Spoiler warning
2Passing baseline test involves parroting on command seemingly random words without emoting to prove you’re not becoming human, random words to that string together to lines from Nabokov’s Pale Fire.
3I have faith that there is something worthy in really exploring the world of Superheroes, that’s why despite a somewhat clunky execution I’m still rooting for DC films, at least they are trying. Though Logan shines out and bears out my larger point about sequels (sometimes sixth time is the charm), but I don’t think it’s indicative of any serious change in the marvel