BladeRunner: 2049

BladeRunner: 2049

Do androids dream of electric sheeps? It is a novel written by Philipp K. Dick in 1968, and yes, the name of the android in the movie is “K.”. So, do you still wonder about the relation between the movie and the book? You are right, BladeRunner: 2049 is a sequel to the movie made in 1982, BladeRunner directed by Ridley Scott, which was based on the novel “Do androids dream of electric sheeps?”.

The original movie was in a near future after the 2019 nuclear war. In that movie, the duty of our cop Rick Deckart (Harrison Ford) was to distinguish the androids from the humans. Again we have a cop (K.) whose duty is to find the illegal androids and to terminate them. Like many of the sequels, there are many similarities between both of the movies. Afterall, if you have a good formula, why not use it? Indeed, this is what I don’t like about sequels, they use the successful formula and forget to create a new story. We should also remind that the initial movie was a great success in becoming a cult science-fiction movie. But id did not have the same success for its performance in the theatres.

There are some serious differences from the original BladeRunner. First of all, BladeRunner:2049 has much more psychological explanations. The original movie had more action thanks to Ridley Scott. In the new version the characters have more time for thinking. But the plot goes very similar to the previous one.

Relation to the book?

Another important difference is that in this one, we are faced with a Pinocchio. The main character of our movie, police K., has a deep desire of feeling like a real human. You feel like he is searching for his magical fairy. If you look at the movie from this window, then you may say that Jared Leto is Gepetto. You can even find a whale where Pinocchio manages to run away from it. Furthermore, it is not only officer K., who wants to become like a human, but all the androids have this hope. They want to have similar rights to humans, because they believe and want to prove that they are similar to humans. Although this is different from the  idea of the original book, it is interesting. But, it is not emphasized strongly.

In the original book, the question was not that whether the androids can have similar properties with humans or not, rather it was even if they have very same properties with humans, does it make them conscious entities. Do we have the right to shoot them if they are conscious entities? I see the new movie as simplifying this question to a level where the androids can also have same properties with humans, and so they are conscious entities, we should not shoot them. While it is simplifying the problem, it shows as if it is more sophisticated by introducing more psychological motivations with respect to the first movie.

I think there will be even further sequels to this movie if the performance in theatres is successful. This movie is not as influential as the first one, but probably it is more successful in terms of numbers. Probably we will see further in the next movie related to the independence movements of the androids, and probably they will live in peace with humans by missing the main point of the original book.