History Film / BladeRunner2049

''Blade Runner 2049'' is a 2017 neo-noir ScienceFiction film, and the sequel to 1982's ''Film/BladeRunner''. The film was directed by Creator/DenisVilleneuve, written by Hampton Fancher and Micheal Green and co-produced by Creator/RidleyScott (who also contributed to the script). The cast includes Creator/RyanGosling, Creator/JaredLeto, Creator/AnaDeArmas, Creator/HarrisonFord (reprising his role from the first film), Creator/SylviaHoeks, Creator/RobinWright, Carla Juri, [[Wrestling/{{Batista}} Dave Bautista]], Creator/DavidDastmalchian, Wood Harris, Barkhad Abdi, Creator/MackenzieDavis and Lennie James. Music/HansZimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch composed the soundtrack.

* EvilGloating: Luv does this before murdering [[spoiler: Joshi]], mocking her efforts at concealing the existence of the replicant child.

Its plot follows an LAPD Blade Runner known as Officer K (Gosling), who is tasked to eliminate pre-Nexus-9 Replicants. One day on a mission, K makes a discovery that leads him to a former Blade Runner, Rick Deckard (Ford), who has been missing for 30 years. While doing so, he unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. The ruthless Replicant manufacturer Niander Wallace (Leto), who bought out Tyrell Corporation and resumed its activities, is also deeply interested in this secret.

* BlackAndWhiteMorality

* BoobyTrap: Deckard installed trip wires in his home.

* ComingInHot: When the power of K's police car shuts down and he crash lands on the San Diego junk yard.

** Both film prominently feature an extreme close-up of a blue eye in the opening.

* DarkerAndEdgier: Whilst the original was already bleak, this movie is even more so. The environment is worse, the tensions between human and replicants have increased and there is a more tragic nature to K’s character.

** Joshi's first appears on K's video call, after he's been beaten half to hell by Sapper. Joshi's first line is, "You're wounded. I'm not paying for that!" This establishes that she sees K as a tool rather than a person.

** Joi first appears as a disembodied voice in K's apartment, preparing him a meal and changing form to accommodate his every fantasy like a simple pleasure model AI. When he activates her emanator and tells her she can go anywhere in the world, she simply chooses to [[RomanticRain stand outside in the rain with him]], giggling and letting the rain fall "on" her body with an expression of rapturous joy, before telling K that she loves him. And thus the audience gets it immediately: K loves her deeply, and she appears to love him too, even though we're constantly aware that she's just a "product."

* EyeOpen: The opening scene shows a close-up on K's right eye opening.

** [[spoiler:Lieutenant Joshi is attacked in her office by Luv, who crushes a glass in her hand and forces it into a fist. Despite this, Joshi barely flinches, and when Luv announces her intention to kill her, she calmly tell her to do what she has to do.]]

** When K is syncing her new emanator, Joi's customization settings briefly display. One of them lists her nationality as Cuban, the same as Ana de Armas.
* FreudWasRight: [[spoiler:Wallace's complete lack of interest in understanding how Deckard is capable of reproduction, despite outright stating he suspects Deckard might be a replicant, and statement that he is the father of the millions of current replicants, brings up disturbing implications of who he plans the biological father of the next generation replicants to be if he can make female ones who can reproduce.]]

** There’s also a hint that the water is so polluted, there’s some difficulty in completely decontaminating it, as K’s shower announces it uses “99.9% Detoxified Water” every time it’s turned on.
** K's shower lasts exactly one second, implying that even this “99.9% Detoxified Water” is also extremely scarce and expensive to use.

* GoodOldFisticuffs: Luv rather easily dismantles K in a kickboxing and knife-fight. Then [[spoiler:K comes back and simply asphyxiates her with raw strength]].

* GreatOffscreenWar: whatever it is that's going on on Kalantha, and presumably other offworld colonies.
* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: The Nexus 9 series is supposed to be completely obedient and utterly subservient to the humans. However, as the movie progresses it becomes clear that [[spoiler:many of them are in fact starting to think for themselves and forming a Resistance.]]

* OrcusOnHisThrone: Niander Wallace spends all of his time lounging in his headquarters, a huge, cavernous, mazelike building.

* SchizoTech: As a function of the series' ZeerustCanon, tech is both higher and lower tech than in the real world of 2017. Joi is essentially an Alexa with a roomscale 3D hologram projector and complex emotions. On the flip side, all the screens clearly use cathode ray tubes, and cell phones don't seem to exist.

* VillainousRescue: Luv saves K from a band of hostile scavengers who downed his car and about to kill him by directing drone missile strikes to wipe them out or chase them away.

* WhenSheSmiles: [[spoiler: K doesn't smile at all until the very end of the film, when he reunites Deckard with his daughter and lays down on the stairs, [[GoOutWithASmile dying from the mortal wound Luv gave him.]] ]]

* AlienLunch: Food is quite unappetizing now. Grubs are a major source of protein. When K makes dinner, it turns out to be an extremely unappetizing bowl of clear noodles and mysterious black balls. Joi places a holographic plate of steak, fries and veggies over it so K can fantasize about eating something tastier.

* FutureFoodIsArtificial: Humanity lives off of genetically engineered artificial food made in imitation of old dishes produced by the Wallace Corporation, since regular food is all but depleted at this point. One protein source is vat-grown grubs.

* TheUnreveal: The film has only one direct reference to the original film's mystery of whether Deckard is human or a Replicant, and it doesn't answer this question either way.

** In his first scene, Niander Wallace gives an ominous monologue to Luv in a hugely opulent, shadowy office, and releases one of his own Nexus-9 Replicants. He [[FauxAffablyEvil speaks gently to her and almost tenderly wipes the "birthing fluid" from her naked body]] [[KickTheDog before stabbing her and letting her bleed out on the floor]] just to make a point to Luv.

* ExtinctInTheFuture: The film indicates that ''every non-human species'' has gone extinct on Earth. Or at least, anything bigger than a few insects. The protagonist runs into a single stray dog in the desolate wilderness, but its owner isn't even sure if it's artificial or not.

** The giant naked ad campaign version of the Joi hologram, despite still being played by a gorgeous Creator/AnaDeArmas, has overtones of this, with its off-putting all-black eyes and echoing voice. Adding to this is that [[spoiler:she shows up shortly after K's version of Joi dies, and clumsily flirts with K. Her dialogue's peppered with hints that K's Joi was just a really lifelike program, and not actually in love with him, to depress both K and the audience.]]

* FuturisticPyramid: Eldon Tyrell's gigantic pyramid-shaped (or rather ziggurat-shaped) complex in Los Angeles remains standing as part of Niander Wallace's Earth headquarters, but is now shrouded in darkness...and is spectacularly dwarfed by [[EvilTowerOfOminousness newer and even more imposing wedge-shaped mega-extensions]].

* ShowDontTell: Done very effectively throughout. See EstablishingCharacterMoment and ConspicuousConsumption for more examples.

** This film has an interesting take on this trope. The original ''Film/BladeRunner'' is set in 2019, which in 1982 was thirty-seven years in the future. ''2049'' came out in 20''17'', just two years away from when the original movie is set. To get around this issue, the film is explicitly and deliberately set in an alternate future, though it isn't outright stated - for example, a holographic advertisement depicting giant ballerinas can be heard saying "CCCP", because in the world of ''2049'', TheGreatPoliticsMessUp never happened. Also, many of the companies that have infamously gone bust or massively restructured since the original film's release are still extant in ''2049'', as shown by an enormous Creator/{{Atari}} logo that K flies over.

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: Played with. The previous film was made before the USSR collapsed, and thus played this trope straight by showing a USSR still existing in the future. ''2049'', however, creates an AlternateHistory RetroUniverse that assumes the assumptions made in the first film were true and keeps the USSR around on purpose.

* 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.

** When K drowns [[spoiler: Luv ]], the camera focuses on her wide-open, [[DiesWideOpen staring eyes.]]

** [[spoiler: At the end of the movie, after rescuing Deckard from Luv and her men, Deckard tells K "You should kill me." K replies, [[ThatManIsDead "I did."]] ]]

** The the giant naked ad campaign version of the Joi hologram, despite still being played by a gorgeous and nude Creator/AnaDeArmas, has overtones of this. Its all-black eyes and echoing voice are off-putting. [[spoiler:She shows up shortly after K's version of Joi dies, and clumsily flirts with K. Her dialogue's peppered with hints that K's Joi was just a really lifelike program, and not actually in love with him, to depress both K and the audience]].

* NeckLift: When K (AKA Joe) attacks Luv inside the sinking spinner (FlyingCar), he grabs her by the neck and lifts her up in the air.
* NoodleIncident

** The overall plot itself [[spoiler: Replicants being able to conceive and have children]] is itself a bit of a shoutout to [[spoiler: ''Anime/{{Armitage III}}'' which is also a cyberpunk/post-cyberpunk story that involves Humanoid machines being able to conceive and have children.]] Even the major viewpoints and character motivations are referenced in detail [[spoiler: With the creator of Armitage and the Third-series androids doing so in order to boost the population of Mars, a colony world that lacked the ability to flourish due to population; nearly the exact statement made by Niander Wallace. Lieutenant Joshi's desire to eliminate the issue to stop a war is in the story as well]].

** When K meets [[spoiler:a replicant woman who helped birth the replicant child, she remarks on the child being a daughter, when K and the audience had both been led to believe that K was the child]].
** When [[spoiler:Freysa comforts him over the fact that he isn't the child, which further destroys K's hope as even his TragicDream isn't his own.]]
--->[[spoiler: [[ArmorPiercingQuestion You wished it was you?]] We all wished it was us.]]
** A lesser example is the giant pink hologram Joi telling K [[spoiler: "You look like a good Joe," the same pet name his copy gave to him, which throws the nature of her feelings for him and whether she was truly unique ''severely'' [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation into question]].]]

** Even though it's heavily implied [[spoiler:K died of injuries, the film deliberately cuts away from after he lies down on the stairs, leaving his ultimate fate ambiguous.]]
** [[spoiler:Niander Wallace, the film's unambiguous Big Bad disappears from the movie right before the climax.]]

** Rachael's name becomes a fascinating ''retroactive'' example. In the Bible, Rachael was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the progenitors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. In this movie, [[spoiler: she gave birth to a living child, the firstborn of a Replicant-Human [[InterspeciesRomance relationship]], who the Replicant resistance believes will be the progenitor of a new tribe of humanlike Replicants.]]

* CrapsackWorld: Life on Earth has gotten even worse in the 30 years since the first film. The oceans have risen and become completely toxic to the point that a giant sea wall had to be built to prevent the toxic waters from flooding Los Angeles while the climate has continued deteriorating to the point that it is ''snowing'' in southern California in July. In addition, vast sections of the city are left completely unlit, either due to the blackout or sheer degradation. Las Vegas was abandoned following a dirty bomb detonation during the chaos caused by the Black Out while San Diego has been reduced to a giant trash dump. There is no fresh food available with the populace surviving off artificial food produced by the Wallace Corporation, while the elite of society have abandoned Earth for the off-world colonies. And racial tensions between humans and Replicants are boiling to critical mass.

** There are literally no real, living plants seen anywhere. Farms are giant fields of plastic white greenhouses instead of natural green fields, and they farm artificial protein instead of food.

** [[NotSoDifferent The Replicants themselves]] express some of this towards [[ProjectedMan Joi]], as Mariette tells her (paraphrased) "she's not as real as she thinks she is".

* EvilCripple: The blind Niandar Wallace is the most villainous character of the film. The very first scene he appears in has him murder a replicant so fresh that she can't even speak.

''Blade Runner 2049'' is a 2017 neo-noir ScienceFiction film, and the sequel to 1982's ''Film/BladeRunner''. The film was directed by Creator/DenisVilleneuve, written by Hampton Fancher and co-produced by Creator/RidleyScott (who also contributed to the script). The cast includes Creator/RyanGosling, Creator/JaredLeto, Creator/AnaDeArmas, Creator/HarrisonFord (reprising his role from the first film), Creator/SylviaHoeks, Creator/RobinWright, Carla Juri, [[Wrestling/{{Batista}} Dave Bautista]], Creator/DavidDastmalchian, Wood Harris, Barkhad Abdi, Creator/MackenzieDavis and Lennie James. Music/HansZimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch composed the soundtrack.

* ActionFilmQuietDramaScene: Loads of them. Two good examples include K talking with Joshi in his apartment, and the "hologram love scene" between K, Joi, and Mariette.

* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: While it happens too quickly to properly notice in the main trailer, one of the featurettes clearly showed that [[spoiler: it is K who [[ThereWasADoor charges through the marble wall]] in pursuit of Deckard, thereby spoiling the reveal that he is a Replicant.]] [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] in that this particular reveal happens in the first few minutes of the movie, but the rest of the marketing campaign did a reasonably good job to hide it, which is why it sticks out.

* MaleMightFemaleFinesse: K and Luv are both Nexus-9 Replicants but differ in their fighting styles. K is heavier and primarily uses grappling, punching, or crushing blows, while Luv is more skilled and fights with [[KickChick acrobatic kicks]] and flashier kung-fu style moves (as well as her [[KnifeNut knives]].) This is highlighted in the final battle, where [[spoiler: Luv beats the shit out of him and stabs him several times but he eventually wins by holding her underwater, and [[RealityEnsues his superior physical strength and weight means she's unable to escape and eventually drowns.]] ]]

** The [[spoiler: final battle]] seems to homage ''Film/{{Drive}}'', which also features [[spoiler: Ryan Gosling's character attacking a car the film's antagonist is driving in, running it into the sea, and then killing the villain by ultimately drowning them when they climb out (though Luv puts up much more of a fight than Nino did).]]

** K's physical consummation of his love for Joi (an AI lover) via a human surrogate is similar to a key scene from the movie ''Film/{{Her}}''.

** K finds out his name is Joe. As in [[Literature/TheTrial Joseph K.]]

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Joi's name, when an acronym, is a much less wholesome relationship. Given the nature of the hologram, it is likely this pun is intentional.

* TitleByNumber: 2049 is the setting of this film; its predecessor took place in 2019.