Blade Runner 2049

Welcome to Satanists on Cinema. We are your hosts Satanist Cameron John and Reverend Campbell. Satanists on Cinema is a film review and commentary series that replicates itself in the hopes that it can then reproduce with itself, creating future generations of Satanists on Cinema to provide mediocre at best rambling reviews and completely off topic commentaries. Welcome to our on-the-run review of Blade Runner 2049.

Discussion

Log Line: Young Blade Runner K’s discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former Blade Runner Rick Deckard, who’s been missing for thirty years.
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay: Hampton Fancher, Michael Green
Story: Hampton Fancher
Characters from the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick
Executive Produced by Ridley Scott
Music by Benjamin Wallfisch & Hans Zimmer
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Released: October 6, 2017
Budget: $150–185 million
Box office: $260.5 million
Principal photography took place mostly at two soundstages in Budapest over a four-month period
received five nominations at the 90th Academy Awards, winning Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. It also received eight nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards, including Best Director, and won Best Cinematography and Best Special Visual Effects.
Social Commentary:
- Reviewing the film for Vice, Charlotte Gush was critical of its portrayal of women, whom she said were “either prostitutes, holographic housewives” or victims dying brutal deaths. While acknowledging that “misogyny was part of the dystopia” in Scott’s 1982 original, she stated that the sequel was “eye-gougingly sexist”.
- Writing for The Guardian, Anna Smith expressed similar concerns, stating that “sexualised images of women dominate the stunning futuristic cityscapes” and questioned whether the film catered heavily to heterosexual men.
- Rachael Kaines of Moviepilot countered that “the gender politics in Blade Runner 2049 are intentional”: “The movie is about secondary citizens. Replicants. Orphans. Women. Slaves. Just by depicting these secondary citizens in subjugation doesn’t mean that it is supportive of these depictions – they are a condemnation.”
- Helen Lewis of the New Statesman suggested that the film is “an uneasy feminist parable about controlling the means of reproduction” and that “its villain, Niander Wallace, is consumed by rage that women can do something he cannot”
- In an interview with Vanity Fair, Denis Villeneuve responded that he is very sensitive about his portrayal of women: “Blade Runner is not about tomorrow; it’s about today. And I’m sorry, but the world is not kind on women.”