Deckard? A villain?
You do remember that Tyrell and Gaff were characters, right?
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That and Roy Batty killed an innocent man.
Wasn\'t it implied that Roy killed or left the genetic eye-designer to die in the freezer, too?
Roy, at least in the beginning of the film, is a clear villain.
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Roy Batty was a runaway slave with a built in emotional instability and death clock, wanted dead by the police, who exclusively kills the people who make the slaves. His not a good guy, but by the end his perspective is pretty clear. Tyrell's an amoral business man who sees the replicants as fake human robots, but he admires them a lot. Who knows about Gaff? He doesn't do anything except (maybe) tip Deckard off at the end. Meanwhile, Deckard was based on "nose measuring Nazis". He's a callous rapist who only gains empathy for the people he's manhunting after they turn the tables and spare his life. He's not a bad guy, but he isn't meant to be good either.
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\"who exclusively kills the people who make the slaves\"
Except he also kills Sebastian, who never did anything but help him and understood him better than any other human because of his medical condition. Whether Deckard was based on \"Nazis\" or not, he\'s still better than Batty overall, and his being \"callous\" toward them is well-deserved.
Sebastian was a sweet little guy who we are meant to feel sorry for, but he's involved as a fairly high level figure in terms of building the slave labour (to the point he has chess games with the CEO). They didn't just pick on him because he was an easy mark, they're systematically killing anyone involved in replicant production.
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I would say they\'re wrong to do so. Tyrell deserved what he got, but I don\'t think Sebastian did, given that we don\'t know a whole lot about his role in the company beyond the fact that he does genetics, which could mean a lot of things; the fact that they manipulated him just makes it worse. So I don\'t have any sympathy for the Replicants we see, nor do I think Deckard was wrong to hunt them.
You know, for someone who really gets up on his high horse every time any piece of media ever suggests that killing is always a morally-unjustifiable action when alternatives are readily available, you sure do suddenly seem really unhappy with a bunch of characters I don\'t like much either doing it in a comparable situation.
I did like Blade Runner 2049 overall, but my big bugbear is always gonna be the fact that, even as someone who capped out in sophomore year high school biology and turned down the chance to do AP Bio in favor of AP Physics, the science was really bad, just because I wasn\'t stupid and thought about it since it\'s a mystery movie and you\'re supposed to think about it.
I agree that the big emotions mostly carry it though, even if those emotions aren\'t always happy ones.
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Appealing on a Primal Level, Less so on an Intellectual One
Blade Runner is as perfect an example of Seinfeld Is Unfunny as anything I can think of. It was Seinfeld Is Unfunny long before Seinfeld had chance to be unfunny. It is a movie so spoiled by its many imitators, any sequel is going to have a massive uphill battle trying to hash anything new out of so many now familiar cyberpunk tropes, let alone impress the movie's fans (you think Star Wars and Star Trek fans are hard to impress? Pfff).
And as much as it tries, it still sometimes looks a bit too familiar. We are shown a world of city blocks and giant holographic women, much like those in the Ghost in the Shell movie that came out this year. Fortunately, it has a lot more going for it, with orange dustbowls, foggy districts, golden halls and crashing waves; it is a movie that takes visual cues from the original, but has more than enough to be a true sequel with its own vision and identity. Blade Runner 2049 is a visual feast where every moment is lingered upon, and every image is meant to be soaked in. On top of that is some amazing music, combining the synth of the original with lots of primal, mechanical noises that trigger some primitive instinct in my brain. Even the special effects are pretty special; one of the characters is a semi-opaque hologram who literally blends through things and people, culminating in one of the most unconventional looking threesomes I have ever seen in a movie.
So technically it's a marvel and worth seeing on that basis alone. Story-wise, it makes some good decisions, but also some bad ones. Without going into any spoilers, our protagonist has a fascinating perspective that carries us through the movie. Opposing him is a pair of unfortunately two dimensional villains that never really work. In the original, there isn't really any actual villains (Deckard is the closest thing we get to one), and that's part of what made that such a human and appealing story. This time around we have a straight up megalomaniac and his moustache twirling dragon. Jared Leto is thankfully understated and much less awful than he is in Suicide Squad, but he's still a waste of a character and not an entirely convincing one here.
If the original was a story about a human becoming humane (whatever the evidence, Blade Runner doesn't work with Deckard as a replicant), 2049 is a movie about love, intimacy, sexual impotence and childbirth. There is more than enough to 2049 to give its finale the emotional clout and make it worth the investment, but people will notice the limitations of this rather conventional and occasionally under-developed story.