I could see that going either way. People might be more comfortable with say, K2SO from Rogue One or C3PO. They interact as if they are people but are clearly nonhuman. I could imagine a comfort in that gap. Even K has his little drone that he instructs like a team leader. Soldiers might feel better about leaving disposable replicants to expire on the battlefield, rather than running to save them, if they looked more like Baymax or Number 5 and less like Ryan Gosling. Certainly it would be easier to feel good about denying human rights to androids that don't look human. We're led to believe that Lieutenant Joshi is right that if the line between humans and replicants is blurred, society will fall apart... so why make replicants so similar to humans in the first place? It would be nice to have heard a group of characters debate Joshi's concern at a bar or something, but almost every scene in the movie is just two people talking.



The order of non-Joi related events is (SPOILERS!!):

1. K kills Sapper Morton and discovers the buried box.
2. Rachel's bones reveal her pregnancy. Joshi assigns K to find and kill the child.
3. Luv plays K the recording of Deckard and Rachel talking.
4. K sees the date on the tree and, researching DNA of children born that day, find the duplicate record of a boy and a girl.
5. K is shot down in San Diego and rescued by Luv's orbital missiles.
6. K visits the orphanage and finds the horse.
7. K visits Ana at the memory center.
8. K reports that he has finished his assassination assignment, but he flunked his leveling test.
8. K learns about the radiation trace and finds Deckard in Las Vegas.
9. Deckard is captured by Niander and tempted; K is left for dead and brought to the replicant army.
10. K kills Luv, rescues Deckard, and takes Deckard to Ana.

It's not clear what the race to Deckard/the child consisted of, since only K had clues. K found Deckard in Las Vegas because the radiation signal from the wooden horse was distinctive. K only knew about the horse because of Ana's memory implanted within him. Similarly, K's memory of the horse is the only path to look up children born on Ana's birthday. So unless others have that memory too, only K or Ana could lead anyone to Deckard through that route. Luv is the one who helped K to learn about Deckard from the memory sphere of the interrogation in the original BR movie. So it's possible that Niander was using K as a stalking horse to locate, get close to, and distract Deckard. This is exactly what happened, whether Niander orchestrated K's interest in Deckard or not.

It also seems like there would be easier trails to the replicant army than finding Deckard after 30 years, if he's even alive. If I were Niander, I would somehow (Trojan programming? bribery?) get the Blade Runners to bring each captured replicant by my office for a little chat. (Or get Luv to locate and bring some in. Evidently Luv can murder multiple staff in the police station with impunity, so why not?) Eventually, one of the captured replicants would lead to the replicant army. Evidently, the replicants are roaming the streets of LA as hookers as well, so there are some easy targets for Luv.


Time was running out for K since he was going to become a target for flunking his psych exam. (I guess flunking meant both that he would be fired and that he would be retired?) Niander has no deadline that we know of.

The main precaution K took was deleting Joi from his apartment. But whatever tech "Mystery Orbital Missile Person" (Luv) was using to track him in the first place was presumably still operational.



Did K fake Deckard's death? The black car would be found crashed in the bayou, with dead Luv inside, bullet holes in the interior (K shot on his approach), and no Deckard chained to the seat. "K rescued Deckard" seems like a reasonable guess. And even if Deckard's body was assumed to have been washed away, checking on K's recent movements would lead right to Ana just from the first time K went, let alone the second. (I bet they have security cams everywhere on that site, even though apparently people can just waltz right in the front door and get an audience with a medically fragile genius.)

I'm picking on BR2049; most movies don't stand up under this level of scrutiny. The original Blade Runner certainly doesn't (Exactly how many skin jobs are walking the streets, again? How are the Replicants both superhuman and super-short lifespan while being medically indistinguishable from humans except with the Voight-Kampf test?). It's just fun to think about a movie that encourages thinking.

Yeah, everybody's motivations are murky, and since a sequel seems unlikely, they will probably stay that way. Are we to understand that when Rachel died, Deckard thought it was best to hide his daughter in an orphanage/slave labor camp?  From which she was then rescued by some replicants who posed as adoptive parents but then abandoned her, saying that they were going off-world and that she was too sick to come along? That kind of serial abandonment would mess a kid up, but despite spending her whole adult life in one room, Ana is well-adjusted and has excellent emotional insights that allow her to craft beautiful memories.

And what are we to make of her memories being in K's head? We're told that doing that is forbidden. It seems more like she recognizes the memory as hers, rather than that she is the one who put the memory there. Obviously there's some mechanism for extracting real memories from laypeople, since Rachel had the spider memory and piano training belonging to Tyrell's niece. Who put Ana's memory in K, and why? Niander? The cops? The replicant resistance? It seems like someone is playing a long game with K as a pawn, which fits the chess theme of the original BR.

Speaking of which, I don't recall seeing chessboards in BR2049, but Gaff's nursing home has a Nine Mens' Morris board visible on a table. That's a pretty specific bit of set dressing that seems purposeful, but I haven't been able to think of a meaning.

I'm going to watch this tonight. I'm pretty excited based on the positive things I've heard about it.

I received my hard copy from Amazon already.

You lucky ducks. It's not released here in the UK until 5th February. So, another two weeks yet.

Wow, very impressed with this film. Everything about it, the cinematography, the acting, the music, the mood, all of it stays with you after seeing it. The dynamic between K and Joi was very good and emotional.

I even checked out the three mini-films that served as a bridge from the first film to this sequel: Blade Runner 2202: Blackout, Blade Runner 2036: Nexus Dawn and Blade Runner 2048: Nowhere to Run. They were interesting, the last two providing a little more insight into the characters of Wallace and Morton.

 

I finally got my DVD of Blade Runner 2049 last week and re-watched it last night. I think I enjoyed it even more the second time round. What a beautiful, moving film it is. Such a great piece of art.