Blade Runner 2049

A sequel set thirty years after the first film. K is a policeman and is himself manufactured. His job is to find and retire older model artificial people. He finds a box at a farm. There is a skeleton in it, and the examination turns up something: this woman gave birth. That artificial people cannot have children is the rule the whole order rests on. His superior orders the record destroyed. From there the film is a search. An orphanage, an archive, a maker of memories, a city of scrap and an abandoned casino. At the same time others are looking for the same child. What the narrative is interested in is not robots but memory: K has a memory he believes is real, and all the weight of the film is about whose it is. The Joi line is the second subject. She is purchased software, and the film never answers whether she really feels; an advertising hoarding at the end reminds you of that mercilessly. The decision at the end is not a victory. K gains nothing for himself, which runs against the habit of the genre. The cinematographer is Roger Deakins and he won his first Academy Award for it, on his fourteenth nomination. The Las Vegas section takes place entirely inside an orange dust. The music is by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch, who took over after the first composer left. Three short films telling what came before were made separately and released ahead of it. The production did not meet expectations at the box office. Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright and Jared Leto are in the cast. Denis Villeneuve directed. Who it is for: anyone who liked the first film and has patience for slow science fiction. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; it runs two hours forty and has almost no action.