ABSTRACT
Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 succeeds as a highly entertaining and deeply thought-provoking film on its own terms. But as a sequel, our appreciation of the film is enhanced by noticing some of the ways in which it remains faithful to and subtly references philosophical themes that distinguished its famous predecessor, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The action in the original Blade Runner takes place in a decaying, polluted, densely populated Los Angeles in November 2019. Replicants were used off-world as slave labour in the hazardous exploration and colonisation of other planets. In Dick’s Electric Sheep, Rick Deckard is a freelance bounty hunter hired by the San Francisco Police Department to retire rogue androids. When his real sheep dies of tetanus, he replaces it with an artificial one realistic enough to fool his neighbours. Joi is an interactive artificial intelligence system outfitted with a holographic avatar. Apparently, Joi can learn and evolve in response to novel experiences.
