Blade Runner 2049

If further proof were required of the need for Ridley Scott to step away from directing more entries in Ridley Scott-instigated franchises, the Denis Villeneuve-helmed Blade Runner 2049 is it. I mean Scott's Prometheus should have provided sufficient evidence for this argument but that didn't stop his Alien Covenant happening, and look at us now: adrift in a once-beloved series of films which is now 67% vomit.

Anyway I'm not here to shit on the Alien franchise or Ridley Scott. God knows Blade Runner 2049 reeks of him in all the best ways and few of the worst, enhancing and expanding upon the mud-thick mood and atmosphere he conjured up in Blade Runner 2019 (why Warner Home Video haven't renamed it that and re-released every available cut of it is a marketing mystery). Villeneuve's epic, almost comically grandiose vision reaches into every nook and cranny of the sequel but it couldn't exist without everything Scott - alongside cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, production designer Lawrence G Paull and "visual futurist" (sure) Syd Mead - achieved in the original.

The original Blade Runner. You've probably never heard of it.

While the Hovis-peddling Geordie came up with the idea for 2049 then graciously took a back seat, the 1982 vintage's splendidly-monikered writer Hampton Fancher is back after 35 years in semi-wilderness, and he's turned out a much more satisfying script this time despite being aided by Michael Green, whose past triumphs include, uh, Green Lantern and - yep - Alien Covenant. Example: the original Blade Runner is often criticised for Deckard's (Harrison Ford) rubbish detective skills (to be fair he isn't actually a detective, he just has a magic box that can see round corners in photographs), but the sequel features a thoroughly thought-out trail of breadcrumbs for new replicant-retirer K (Ryan Gosling) to follow, and it's a mystery you'll be unpacking for hours post-viewing.

Officer K's odyssey carries him through a panoply of cosmically stunning-looking interiors and exteriors, envisaged by Villeneuve and executed by Roger Deakins and Dennis Gassner (replacing Cronenweth and Paull respectively) with alternately nightmarish and divine genius. The Neo-Tokyo look of Ridley Scott's 2019 version of LA has been amplified and compounded into an oceanic sprawl of densely-packed tower blocks that just about allow room for the crass neon advertising (Pan Am are doing surprisingly well in 2049) and little else, while calmer spaces offer an incongruous serenity offset only by the bristly, unpredictable characters who inhabit them. Meanwhile the score - an imposing, unsettling combination of Vangelis' original themes fused with Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer's thundering chords - leaves you in no doubt that this is a colossal, earth-shattering journey we're on.

Except... it isn't. I've spent this long wanging on about how technically wondrous Blade Runner 2049 is (and forgive me, I haven't even mentioned Renée April's eyeball-strokingly fit costume design) mainly because I don't want to give away any of the plot, but also because what there is of that plot is kind of, well... low-key. Not so much as the original, but given how big Villeneuve goes with everything else here, the core mystery feels microscopic in comparison. Bigger consequences are threatened in the event that Officer K fails to successfully run his blades, but never to a point where you really, really need him to win. It's a bit like having a Bond film where the villain's plan is, say, to restrict access to clean water: clearly undesirable, but not particularly cinematic.

"Please don't make this about Bond"

And so we're left with those themes of artificial intelligence, identity and slavery that coldly mooch about in the original Blade Runner without ever threatening to stir the emotions, and which do much the same here. The existential angst Officer K endures is welcome, given that it was mainly left to Rutger Hauer's pretentious prick replicant to pontificate on the (in)human condition in 1982, but Gosling - as much as I love him - has trouble expressing that angst; the one scene in which he displays anything other than cool detachment hovers a little too close to unintentionally amusing. Sure, he's essentially a stoic noir gumshoe archetype, used to keeping his head down and his mouth shut for reasons I won't go into, but K goes through some serious headfuckery that requires a little more than the trademark blank stare Gosling favours here. At some point Villeneuve should have reminded him that this wasn't a Nicolas Winding Refn film.

In place of genuine emotion, there is at least genuine entertainment, not least from the appearance of one H. Ford, whose cheese-based first line is dangerously daft to the ears of the non-literary-minded among us (hi). Ford pulls off his return to a much-loved role as successfully here as he did in The Force Awakens, and Deckard's first meeting with Officer K is a literal and visual bruiser. But further joy is to be found in the performances of Robin Wright (as K's boss), whose face and hair I could gawp at for hours; Ana de Armas (as K's hologrammatic housewife Joi), who comes closest to evoking sympathy for what is basically an app; and Sylvia Hoek's high-kicking henchbitch Luv. Jared Leto is fine but ineffectual and talks in clichéd ponderous villainese, and Dave Bautista is fucking massive.

Henchbitches gonna hench

Plot holes are inevitable in something so ambitious, and these minor irritations undermine the project's overwhelming pomp to remind you that it was made by humans after all, despite the bafflingly reverential raves you may have read. And needless to say, at 163 minutes it's in dire need of a haircut here and there. If Blade Runner 2049 fails at all it's because where it should be emotionally devastating it's only mildly thought-provoking, but then it is a sequel to Blade Runner: hardly cinema's most overwhelmingly sentimental experience. 2049 is still essential for fans of the original and nigh-unmissable for the rest of us, and whatever its flaws, it's crucial to remember just how bad it could have been. Ridley Scott could have directed it.

The Incredible Suit's 30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge #3: Blade Runner

Required reading:
30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge #1: The Shining
30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge #2: A Clockwork Orange

Got all that? Good.

Bizarrely-monikered viewer (is there any other kind?) Lowrezolushun suggested we put Blade Runner through The Incredible Suit's version of the Voight-Kampff test and see if it's a replicant or not. Ridley Scott seems as good a subject as any to subject to the intense scrutiny of the 30MFFC; as a director obsessed with stunning futuristic visuals, he must surely have envisaged that one day some prattling berk would come along and apply some arbitrary nonsense rules to the works of art over which he sweated blood for vast swathes of his life.

Before we start, at the last count there were 825 different versions of Blade Runner out there. The version I'm using is 'The Final Cut', as pictured above. So no squabbling.

And so without further ado, let's get arty.

0:30:00 Here's Rick "Black And" Deckard having a good yawn in a lift. Moody, yes. Interesting, no. Tragically, one second later, he whips round and draws his gun in an award-winning pose perfectly framed to please The Incredible Suit's eye. The rules are a cruel mistress, Scotty!

1:00:00 In a fight with Leon, the replicant whose face was designed by the Cruel Joke Department of the Tyrell Corporation, Rick is thrown against the windscreen of a car. This is probably the least remarkable shot in the whole sequence. Not looking good, is it?

1:30:00 Here's a staircase. A moodily lit staircase, to be fair, but a staircase nevertheless.

Result:

At last. I was beginning to think I was wasting my time with this feature, and although I obviously am, at least Blade Runner demonstrates that even the artiest and fartiest films struggle to meet the strict criteria of The Incredible Suit's 30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge.

So Kubrick's crown remains untouched. Who else will step up to try and take it? Leave your suggestions in the comments below and we'll see if death or glory or a silly picture of a man in a dunce hat awaits your choice.

To comment on this post, click here

Trouser-Browning Terror

Glorified Hovis salesman Ridley Scott is apparently preparing a prequel to his masterpiece, Alien. As you know, Alien is a completely perfect film, which clamped itself to the face of moviedom, shoved a tentacle down its throat and left a little something in its belly, which burst forth from the very ribcage of cinema in the shape of Aliens, another completely perfect film.

Aliens then went on to do a big sloppy poo on the lounge carpet, which appeared to be called Alien Cubed, and that poo had a little worm living in it which became Alien Resurrection, but we do not speak of such things here at The Incredible Suit.

Having put you off your lunch, let me get on with this prequel nonsense. Much as I love Alien, Ridley Scott is one of those directors – like Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese – whose films I blindly look forward to and hope will be fantastic, despite knowing full well that they frequently turn out to be a bit cack. Blade Runner? Not bad, but hardly the second coming it’s made out to be. Gladiator? Overrated. Hannibal? I’d rather eat my own brains.

So I’m afraid I can’t get excited about an Alien prequel. If it absolutely must be made (it mustn’t) then I suppose Scott’s the man to do it (or James Cameron), but I can’t see how it’ll work. Alien and Aliens succeed because we identify with the humans and share their trouser-browning terror at the prospect of an unsolicited trepanning at the hands of a vicious space beastie. But for a prequel to work it would have to show how the Aliens got involved with the ‘Space Jockey’, the fossilized, horribly violated creature we see near the beginning of Alien in the derelict spacecraft. Personally I’d rather not know; I can make up my own backstory for him. Maybe he was an intergalactic pizza delivery boy who turned up at the Aliens’ house 45 minutes late with the wrong topping and forgot the garlic bread, in which case he got everything he deserved.

My point is, the story would require the complete absence of humans to remain plausible, and the only successful movies not to feature any actual, genuine, living, breathing people are the High School Musical films.

There are dozens more obstacles in the way of this project, so if Ridders pulls it off it’ll be a minor miracle. In which case I’ll be only too happy to blog about it and say, “I told you it would be brilliant”, and that’ll be the poster quote you’ll see at bus stops and train stations the world over.

The Incredible Suit's Top 5 Ridley Scott films:
1. Alien
2. Blade Runner
3. Thelma & Louise
4. Er…
5. Hmm.

Of course what I really want to know is: What’s your greatest Ridley Scott film, like, ever? I know, let’s do a poll! Which reminds me, The Breakfast Club was your favourite John Hughes film. You’re wrong. Weird Science is tiptops.

To comment on this post, click here