Have you ever seen Ed Wood’s “Plan 9 from Outer Space"?
It is undoubtedly one of the worst movies ever made, but you
know that before seeing so much as a single frame because it is known for
having been cheap beyond description, almost a kid’s effort at making a movie.
It has a bit of a cult following because it is so laughably
bad. We all have a bit of a soft spot for something like that, with no
redeeming qualities beyond its absurdity. But you cannot achieve such status if
you have big pretensions, something “Blade Runner 2949” has in greater
abundance than anything else. It literally drags truckloads of pretensions
through scene after tedious scene.
Well, my best first go at a description for “Blade Runner
2049” is as a remake of “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” a remake with an obscenely
large budget and vast pretensions. It is undoubtedly one of the worst films I
have ever seen. It has literally no redeeming quality, not even its absurdity.
It has no real story to tell, terrible writing, and
virtually all of the actors offer abysmal performances. The star, Ryan Gosling,
walks through his role with two expressions, grim and grimmer. Even the cameo
near the end with Harrison Ford is a performance you will only want to forget.
Ryan Gosling reminds me a bit of comedian Chevy Chase in his
general appearance with eyes uncomfortably close together, something that the
constant beard stubble on his face in this role serves to distract us from. This
is not my idea of good casting, and that judgment holds for pretty much the
entire company. This guy isn’t funny or even pleasantly light, ever, as
Harrison Ford, the star of the original “Blade Runner” could very much be. He
is relentlessly dull.
He’s grim and boring and you couldn’t care less what happens
to him. The impression is not helped by some truly dumb lines not worth opening
his mouth for. But the lines he delivers are no worse than those given other
major characters. The language is so dumb, sometimes it reminds me of one of
those old, early Toho monster movies that were dubbed in with English lines
like, “Don’t be a wet noodle!”
He lives in a world that has the same dark look of the
original Blade Runner, but the effort to create an ugly environment here has
been put into hyperdrive, and you can only ask yourself why anyone would want
to live there for even a day. Mass suicide – whether by humans or replicants - I
should think would be this world’s greatest risk, not the activities of various
malefactors or no-longer desired models of replicants.
Gosling drives around in a flying car that reminds me of a
concept from a cheap 1940s movie serial. It flies, but it still has doors, it
still has a windshield (and, yes, complete with windshield wipers for the rain),
it still has seat belts, and, amazingly enough now at the dawn of the
self-drive era, it still has a driver driving. This is a perfect example,
typical of many in the film, of imagined gizmos or special effects without any
imagination. Glitz without content, and really without interest for the viewer.
And they spent plenty on some of these gizmos trying to
amaze us – the film’s budget having been the best part of 200 million dollars -
but none of it does, it is all so completely lacking in imagination. There are
many scenes with gimmicky special effects that have no meaning, none
whatsoever, nor is there even a hint of trying to explain them – as with the
golden ripply-looking walls of a company or a tall cement tree complete with
guy wires.
It’s all tedious. There isn’t even a worthy villain in the
whole long effort, as the original “Blade Runner” had in the fine Rutger Hauer,
one of that film’s real high points. We understood his motives, and he played
his almost-tragic role wonderfully. Here we have intense, shrieky women in
weird, ugly clothes and make-up, trying to kill people for reasons we can’t be quite
clear about.
This is a truly terrible film, and I cannot understand some
critics’ references I read as to its quality, references which aroused my
interest. Some said it needed editing, but editing wouldn’t help this, except
through the sheer fact of there being less of it to sit through. The film did
not do well at the box office, but I have never considered that a standard of
measurement, some of the better films in history having achieved that same
distinction.
But this is not another “It's a Wonderful Life,” which did not
do well at the box office despite the huge affection in which it is held today,
it is more like Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate.” Just appallingly bad
