History Film / BladeRunner2049

* VirtualSidekick: Joi is a GirlFriday type of sidekick to K who remains in his house to comfort him and give him a "girlfriend experience" that often includes advice and affection. However, when she persuades him to take her with him on his mission to find his true identity, he has to put her into a device that makes her vulnerable to being killed, so while she appears to be human but isn't, she is also vulnerable like a human woman to any damage coming to her interface. [[spoiler:Which results in Luv crushing her and ultimately killing her. But at least K knows that Joi outgrew her programming, right? Wrong. It's heavily implied that Joi's apparent appearance of developing beyond her capacity was part of her capacity all along to give K what he really wanted: to feel special.]]

* FinalSpeech: [[spoiler: Very clearly and deliberately averted. Unlike Roy, K's final words to Deckard simply consists of two short sentences. As K lies dying and a remastered version of Vangelis's Tears in Rain begins to play, K's end is a [[InternalHomage homage]] to Roy's end, but is a MomentOfSilence instead of another dramatic final speech.]]

* InternalHomage: [[spoiler: K dies in the rain following a final act of kindness, just like Roy Batty did in the first film.]]

* OrangeBlueContrast: There are many scenes with a harsh yellow and orange hue, including Las Vegas, the Wallace Corporation headquarters, and Dr. Badger's lab. Other scenes, such as various night scenes around the city, have a softer grey and blue hue. Both hues can be seen in the FinalBattle as well as quite blatantly in the [[https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/pri_50481883.jpg?w=748&h=1152&crop=1 theatrical poster]].

* FanDisservice: The naked female Replicant that Wallace activates and brings out of her bag. The entire time, the Replicant is covered in a slimy substance and is trying to get used to her surroundings and body like a newborn child. After musing about her inability to reproduce, Wallace promptly stabs her in the lower abdomen, letting her bleed to death.
** Also the giant naked Joi hologram that appears and speaks to K. Its all-black eyes and echoing voice are off-putting.

Those that hunt them down still go by the name...]]\\
\\
[[AC:[[red:BLADE RUNNER]]]]

Those that hunt them down still go by the name...]]

[[red:BLADE RUNNER]]

->'''Deckard:''' I had your job once... I was good at it.\\
'''K:''' Things were simpler then.

* AlternateHistory: The film pretty much states that its universe's 2010s were way more advanced than ours', and long gone brands such as Atari or regimes such as [[TheGreatPoliticsMessUp the Soviet Union]] are still around.

-->[[ArmorPiercingQuestion [[spoiler: You wished it was you? We all wished it was us.]] ]]

** On a thematic level, the movie is ambiguous as to whether or not Joi is a sentient being. She is a [[ProjectedMan holographic woman]] controlled by an A.I. Contrasting the replicants, who are portrayed as unambiguously "human", whether or not Joi fits the definition of "human" is played with throughout the movie. She appears intelligent, emotional, and sentient. Like the replicants, she is an artificial object apparently infused with humanity, and her behavior is definitely much more human-like compared to the hologram recordings of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. [[spoiler:However, as the building-sized naked Joi hologram shows, the intelligence, emotions, and sapient behavior might be all be a manufactured illusion, and her love for K might just be a part of the program.]]

* FireWaterJuxtaposition: Compare K's implanted memory of himself as a child hiding the toy wooden horse in the furnace with [[spoiler: his RedemptionInTheRain fight against Luv in the climax to save Deckard's life at the cost of his own.]]

** [[spoiler: Freysa, the leader of the Replicant rebellion, is also missing her right eye, which she hides behind sunglasses.]]

* ExactWords: Ana confirms that K's memory of the wooden horse is real, saying, "It happened." [[spoiler:It just didn't happen to ''him.'']]

* WaifFu: Luv's combat style employs a lot of acrobatics and power blows, often exceeding what she should be capable of, even as a Replicant. [[spoiler: K still manages to overpower her in the end, simply by not giving her any room to perform her regular routine]].

* {{Qipao}}: One of Joi's outfits, a romantic AI, is a colorful cheongsam--the world of Blade Runner was already established as a multicultural hodgepodge with certain Asian influences.

** Trees are so rare that a toy horse the size of your hand carved out of real wood is considered a sign of wealth.

* TheHeroDies: [[spoiler:K ends the film laying down on snow covered steps still heavily bleeding from earlier injuries. The film ends as the camera pans out with him lying motionless on the stairs, looking up into the sky.]]

** To the first movie. Roy Batty attacked Deckard after he killed the female replicant Pris, but then saved Deckard's life before expiring under a pouring rain. [[spoiler:K kills the female replicant Luv to save Deckard's life, and later expires under a gentle snowfall.]] Both death scenes have the "Tears in Rain" score as accompaniment.

* MegaCity: The LA in 2049 is just as an big of example of a cyberpunk megacity as the original film, if not even more extreme. When K flies back from Sapper Morton's farm to LAPD, we see miles upon miles of tightly-packed city blocks (to the point where roads are no longer visible), surrounding a downtown of humongous skyscraper blocks.

** Ridley Scott always said that a sequel to Blade Runner 2 would open on a dead tree, strung up with tons of electronics. This film does that, but with less electronics.

* TheyWouldCutYouUp: Deckard and Rachel had a baby after they escaped at the end of ''Film/BladeRunner''. This was supposed to be impossible, since Rachel was a replicant (genetically enhanced human "robot"), which can't have children. Deckard tells Officer K (AKA Joe) that he hid the child because he knew that it would be dissected in order to find out how it was conceived.

* UnnecessarilyLargeInterior: One of the signs of Wallace's wealth is not only how his corporate headquarters dwarfs the old Tyrell Corporation HQ that sits in it's shadow but how spartan and empty it is, with giant rooms staffed by a single employee (or replicant) and walls covered in ludicrously expensive real wood paneling.

* {{Callback}}: [[spoiler: K dies in the rain following a final act of kindness, just like Roy Batty did in the first film.]]
** The Voight-Kampff test has been shortened, and the interviewer is now in another room entirely.

* OpeningScroll: Before the film starts proper there is an opening screen of text [[DictionaryOpening explaining the term "Replicant"]] and providing background information as a courtesy to viewers who didn't see the short films in the lead up to ''2049'', as well as serving as a CallBack to the opening text from the original film.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blade_runner_2049_poster.jpg]]

* WrongGenreSavvy: [[spoiler: No, K. You were ''not'' HiredToHuntYourself, you were just one of many Replicants who each believed that they were the ChosenOne.]]