DISSECTING DISASTER- BLADE RUNNER 2049- HOW INTENSITY DEFINES A MOVIE

Calling Blade Runner 2049 a failure would be just wrong to be honest. It was a smash hit to be honest. It received great scores on Rotten Tomatoes, critics liked it as much as the audience, everyone and I mean EVERYONE praised it. Unfortunately, disaster exists in various forms. What this movie is is a COLLOSAL COMMERCIAL FAILURE! It had a budget of 185 million dollars and made back only 260.5 million. That’s not even a 100 million dollars worth of profit. So, what made this movie flop? What made a movie that impressed me, of all people, flop so horrendously? That’s the topic for today and in this month’s issue of “Dissecting Disaster”, I will be diving into what made Blade Runner 2049 a commercial disaster.

THE RUNTIME

Blade runner 2049 has a daring runtime of 2 hours of 44 minutes. That’s a lot of time to maintain your audience’s attention. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Uh, but Cosmic, Avengers Endgame had the runtime of 3 hours and 2 minutes. Audiences loved it. Critics loved it. Pretentious filmbros like you loved it (well partially. Yeah im just teasing another blog here). It’s the highest grossing film of all time (inflation unadjusted)! What makes Blade Runner’s runtime an issue?” well dear reader, to you I say……shut up never interrupt me again. Movies like Endgame have a daring runtime too but most of the scenes are intense, plot driven, a race against time, an adrenaline inducing cinematic experience. What does THIS movie do? Nothing. It honestly does nothing. Most of the film is walking around and appreciating the beauty of the well crafted world which is very beautiful and definitely had me invested, but it would never keep casual audiences at the edge of their seats. The dialogue exchange has uncomfortably long pauses which act as an excuse for the actors to use their facial expressions and let it do the talking but to the general audience it just feels odd. For most of the movie we are just walking around, having calm and level headed conversations and then our main character dies a bit too peacefully. (uh, spoiler alert I guess). Overall, this movie lacks the adrenaline pumping scenes that makes these long movies work leading to people not wanting to watch it over and over again.

SUBPLOTS

The subplots are…….actually pretty much genius. We have a subplot of a man trying to have a romantic relationship with a hologram and THE MAN SHOWS LESSER EMOTIONS THAN THE MACHINE. That’s poetic. That’s smart. But why doesn’t it work? Because it has a very unsatisfactory ending. Not to mention, the other subplots and their endings are SO SUBTLE that people often see them as meaningless scenes. Take the scene with the captain and our protagonist for example. On first glance, it looks like a normal scene right? It feels like the captain just wants to finish a bottle of alcohol and go home but what if I told you that if the cinematography was a little better, the sexual tension in the scene would’ve been much more apparent. Other subplots face a similar fate, they don’t impact the story in a game-changing way. This is where being smart leads to a movie’s downfall. Where subtleness feels worse, forced and boring as compared to expository scenes. This is what makes a film boring instead of engaging.

WORLD BUILDING

I know I know. How is perfecting world building a bad thing? Well, it really isn’t. However, the issue of this movie lies in the fact that the world building overshadows the actual plot, the story, the heart, the characters. A prime example of world building executed to perfection whilst maintaining the story as the primary feature is David Fincher’s “Se7en”. The world building is focused on heavily, from the constant gloomy atmosphere to people who cheat their buyers, civilians who don’t care if the police is catching a murderer and attack them if the chase affects their lives, and so on. But it never could replace the story and seize the driver’s seat all for itself. Blade Runner 2049 did that and that’s one of the reasons why its visually stunning but not engaging in the slightest.

INTENSITY

There aren’t many intense scenes in this movie, if it wasn’t abundantly clear by now. However, the movie does push the actors to their limits relying on their facial expressions. Though it is a great concept on paper it really doesn’t work here because, considering the runtime, the movie feels more and more drawn out. Without the aid of intense scenes ,like the entire third act of Avengers:Endgame, this movie just falls flat as it starts acting more like a lullaby than an actually interesting story. The subtle emotions may be appealing to people like me and also very obedient to the characters, it just doesn’t appeal to the general audience who are asked to transition from movies like THIS

To this.

THE ENDING

Ah the ending. The climactic moments of a film. A culmination of the emotional rollercoaster that this cinematic experience has been. I guess this already tells how Blade Runner 2049 ended. It ended with the calmest death scene known to mankind to serve one of the most anti-climactic purposes that I’ve ever witnessed. The ending is sort of good I’m being too harsh here but it beats the purpose of a death scene while trying to be too smart. A death scene is supposed to jerk a tear out of you as this character that you embarked on a 3 hour journey with breathes his last and slowly passes away calmly in a rather chaotic world. This death scene could work. It could really really work if the entirety of the movie wasn’t so subtle and calm in the first place. Let’s take Endgame for example once again, Tony Stark’s death isn’t beautiful just because of the legacy that he leaves behind, its beautiful because his death is one of the calmest scene in a very chaotic and intense movie. There’s no conflict, no shouting, no screams of agony, just a simple death with somber music, some tear jerking expressions and a few lines of dialogue. I bet you that this death scene wouldn’t have evoked so many emotions if the movie was calm and composed just like this particular scene. If Blade Runner 2049 was a chaotic movie then this death scene would’ve been so beautiful and soothing but it fails yet again. Now, lets see the purpose that the death fulfills. Ben Kenobi died for Luke Skywalker, Tony Stark died to save the universe, Harvey Dent died to make Batman question his need in Gotham and Uncle Ben died to remind Peter of how with great power comes great responsibility. Point is, the death of an important character always serves a larger than life purpose. Blade Runner 2049 succeeds in doing so and rather beautifully, so why am I criticizing it? Its because the purpose behind the death makes it abundantly clear that the people who made this movie love the original (like myself) but in doing so they forget that there are people who didn’t bother remembering the original in the first place. This makes this death a love letter to the fans of the original who understand how this ties into the original but it doesn’t provide a basis for the general audience. Now I know what you’re thinking. “Obi Wan died to protect Luke but no one knew either of these characters so why did they care for the purpose behind his death?” its simple. Exposition. The movie builds to Obi Wan’s demise, it builds to him becoming a force ghost and guiding Luke. If this movie had built up to the death of our protagonist then his death would carry much more weight. A New Hope doesn’t leave any loose ends, Blade Runner 2049 does.

CONCLUSION

Overall, is Blade Runner 2049 a good movie? Absolutely. Its visually stunning, has an intricate plot and is a brilliantly crafted movie. But is it engaging? Is it worth watching with your friends for the thrill of it? Is it worth the ridiculously expensive bucket of popcorn? Can it capture my ATTENTION and not restrict itself to mere CURIOSITY? Absolutely not. If you love movies, if you watch them to study them and understand them then Blade Runner 2049 is one of the best pieces of modern cinema that’ll help you in doing so. But if you watch movies for fun and just to have a good time, then Blade Runner 2049 is NOT the movie for you. But seriously go watch it anyways it may actually ignite a spark of interest in cinema and I’m all here for it. Let me know your thoughts on the movie in the comment section and make sure to leave what disaster you want me to cover next, because boy oh boy I love being nitpicky. I’ll see you guys next month with another issue of, DISSECTING DISASTER (yeah I don’t think this will catch on. Suggest a name too while you’re at it.)