The world of Blade Runner 2049 is a glitzy, grimy nightmare, but it may soon be our own if we aren’t careful. Like many cyberpunk dystopias, the world of Blade Runner 2049 is a paradox. We have solved the problem of world hunger, but at the expense of our environment, which is ravaged by pollution and radiation. People live in thriving urban centers awash with neon lights, but packed together like sardines, existing in a state of overcrowded squalor. We have advanced technology to the point where human beings are indistinguishable from android replicants who have been produced to do our dirty work, but now they are yearning for something more than a life of slave labor.
Like all great sci-fi, Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 peer into the future to show us what could be, serving as an instructive text on how our current legislative and existential path might lead us to the brutal world it puts forth. But how likely are the worlds inspired by Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Is the world on a collision course with the future envisioned by Blade Runner 2049? To find out, I sat down with the stars of the film–Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Sylvia Hoeks, Ana de Armas, and Mackenzie Davis–and the director Denis Villeneuve about what lessons we can glean from their new sci-fi masterpiece, as well as their thoughts and worries about the state of the world in which we live.
Read our completely spoiler-free review of Blade Runner 2049!
Blade Runner 2049Â opens on October 6, 2017.
Image: Warner Bros./Alcon Entertainment
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