For our annual summer countdown, we are looking at our favorite 25 movies that were not huge hits during their initial release, but mean a lot to us. Check out last year’s Summer of Stars countdown or the year before when we did blockbusters! Find the rest of the Flop and Fizzle series here!

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

I’ve had a complicated relationship with the 1982 Blade Runner over the years. I remember renting the VHS as a kid, excited to watch science fiction starring household favorite Harrison Ford. Maybe not surprisingly, 10 year old Ryan was bored to tears (in the rain). I revisited it once or twice more over the intervening years, but mostly valued it for its aesthetics and performances because I was approaching it with the wrong lens. It is a science fiction film and has a lot of genre concepts in it, but formally it is such a noir that I had no hope of understanding it, having never seen a noir before. Only in the last few years have I developed the vocabulary to truly understand Ridley Scott’s filmically. Two other factors have led to my personal re-appraisal of Blade Runner. The existence of Blade Runner 2049 and its approach to continuing the world of the original helped a lot. And so did more recent conversations with very smart friends relating to bodily autonomy, which helped me appreciate it more thematically.

When I first saw this sequel, it felt like a key to help me unlock some things that had remained elusive for me in the original. Blade Runner 2049 felt more accessible than the 1982 movie because it brought focus to the Deckard (Harrison Ford)/Rachel (Sean Young) relationship in the first entry. That thread was something I had trouble reconciling with the main story of Deckard’s hunt for Roy (Rutger Hauer), in part because of not understanding noir. Because 2049 centers that aspect of the original, it actually helped me parse more of what is important in the 1982 movie. As my understanding of noir has deepened, this is less of a feature for me personally, but I still bring it up when asked about this series. While it certainly has some echoes within it, I’m not sure 2049 even has enough stylistic or thematic elements to be considered a (neo-) noir. That may or may not be mark against it, but I think it does illustrate how many contemporary neo-noirs borrow elements from the style but not much of the narrative approach (save for David Lynch, who pushes the uncertainty and mental state of the noir further than almost anyone), rendering things that are much more conventional.

Revisiting 2049 for this project, I was struck by how much time Joi (Ana de Armas) is given, basically emerging as the second lead of the film. Sometimes it feels she is present to give K (Ryan Gosling) someone to talk to, but as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that she is an attempt to further the questions about the implications of Replicants raised in the original film. Can a virtual person have personhood? The line between autonomy and sentience further blurred by seeing the differences in K’s Joi and the advertisements for Joi. There's a lot suggested but not really explored by the movie, such as the question: Is K paying for “the girlfriend experience?” Is Joi sentient and actually falling for him, or is this just very good programming? And is there even a difference to her? Much of this is unclear, even as Joi recruits Mariette (Mackenzie Davis) to be a sort of sex therapist, allowing Joi and K to experience physical intimacy as best they can.

To Joi’s corporate owner, the Wallace Corporation–itself a Replicant of the Tyrell Corporation, which it has fully replaced–the upsides of a virtual girl are many. For one, if a Joi needs an update, there’s no need to track down a body, it can presumably all be done remotely (fictional universes that predate the existence of Wi-Fi have become very charming to me as of late). But the biggest impact is in her function. Even with colonization in the rest of the solar system, how big is the market for physical labor when Replicants have been around for decades and can work harder, faster, and longer than humans? Instead, Joi replaces the emotional labor of humans (or Replicants). In this world, it is yet another means of corporate control. By having people literally falling in love with one of their products, the Wallace Corporation is better able to control things on Earth. Through subtle or direct manipulation, Joi gives Wallace access to manipulate emotions. But there is an even darker element to Joi’s existence. In some ways, she is the ultimate representation of this universe’s commodification of women. Can you even have bodily autonomy without a body?

This ties into Blade Runner 2049’s most fascinating throughline and central mystery. If Replicants can make little baby Replicants, what does it mean? I don’t mean in a technological sense, I’m fine chalking it up to “life, uhh, finds a way.” But it violates the control imposed by Wallace (and their predecessor, Tyrell). If your products can reproduce on their own, it changes the way you have to oppress them (just read up on slave auctions in America to see what will likely happen to Replicant children if they are allowed to exist without this control. Or more directly said: controlling bodies is a means of controlling the populace. Wallace does this in a manipulative sense with Joi (any Replicant or human in love with a Joi will not make new AIs…probably), but it does it with Replicants by directly controlling the means of (re)production. Whether the existence of Deckard and Rachel’s child is a miracle or only the first case of Replicant sexual reproduction doesn’t matter, because it threatens the status quo.

In light of Dobbs and the deluge of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, 2049 feels even closer to reality than it did just a few years ago. The state and corporate actors are actively seeking to eradicate bodily autonomy, especially for women and minority groups. Whether under the banner of “protect the kids” or “Christian values,” there is as much capitalist interest in this control as there is from those citing moral panic. Science fiction can offer powerful allegories, but so much of the genre’s impact is lessened by being demoted to “merely genre fiction.” And of course, if the world heeded these messages, maybe we wouldn’t have needed this legasequel.