One of the opening shots of Blade Runner 2049. Both the opening and closing scenes of the film show K in solitude, surrounded by a misty pale blue-green swirl (here in fog, as he approaches Sapper Morton's hideout).
A tender moment between Joi and K. The quieter moments in the film tend to follow a muted gray-blue-green color palette.
An LA street at night. The gigantic legs of a holographic ballerina dances serenely through the chaos of a dimly-lit street.
K's last scene. He lays down, wounded and exhausted, as snow drifts like ash around him. K, a replicant, was ready to give up his life for the most human of experiences: just inside, Deckard is meeting his daughter for the first time. This scene is both a parallel and an antithesis to K coming through the fog at Sapper Morton's hideout in the beginning of the film.
The scenes dressed in golden orange and yellow tones are mostly associated with the amoral or corrupt elements of the film, such as the nefarious Wallace Corporation. After K discovers evidence of replicant reproduction, he heads to the Wallace Corporation headquarters to investigate.
In this scene, K is escorted by Niander Wallace's replicant Luv through the Corporation's headquarters as she discusses how Wallace saved the human race from extinction using replicants.
In LA's Chinatown district, replicant prostitutes huddle together under umbrellas. Mariette, a replicant prostitute who is also a member of the Replicant Freedom Movement, is sent by Luv to find out what K knows after he kills Sapper.
The ruins of what was once Las Vegas. Vast, broken female sculptures loom over K as he makes his way to Deckard's hiding place that, along with the dark orange coloring, lending a sense of foreboding and apprehension to the scene.
Bright neon pinks and purples against inky blacks and blues are the classic science-fiction/cyberpunk color palette. The film reserves these colors for scenes where the ordinary from our world is juxtaposed against the dystopia of K’s world, serving as a way to ground the audience in the fiction they are consuming. This is one of several scenes in the film where the audience can see hazy neon advertisements for products from our time.
Shown here is an advertisement for Joi as a romantic AI companion. Throughout the film there is a running commentary on feminism and reproductive rights. The heart of the film is about controlling (female) replicant reproduction, and most females in this world are either replicants, sex objects, or victims.
One of the most iconic scenes in the film. This is a sexually explicit advertisement for Joi, with "everything you want to see and hear". The Joi hologram tells K that he looks lonely, while her entirely black eyes bore deep into K's (and the audience's) soul.
The first meeting between Deckard and K takes place in an abandoned Las Vegas theatre. A fight ensures while holograms featuring Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and other figures from the past malfunction, giving the whole scene a supremely jarring effect amongst the hazy neon lights.
Blade Runner 2049 is the thirty-year long-awaited sequel to 1982’s Blade Runner. The film focuses on K, an LAPD replicant (human-like android) police officer whose job is to hunt down and retire (kill) disobedient or illegal replicants. K lives in a dingy apartment with his VR girlfriend, Joi, with whom he is in love with, though both recognize the futility and irony in the fact they are both fabricated objects. In the beginning of the film, K discovers evidence that proves replicants can reproduce, something that was previously thought to be impossible. K embarks on a mission to discover who the replicant was, and is charged with “retiring” the child that was produced as a result of the replicant-human union. The Wallace Corporation, the creators and sellers of replicants, want to discover the secret to replicant reproduction in order to to expand their colonization efforts. This leads K to meet Richard Deckard, a retired blade runner and the protagonist of the original Blade Runner. Deckard confirms that he is the father of the replicant-human child, and left the child in the care of the replicant freedom movement to protect her. The film ends with K rescuing Deckard from the Wallace Corporation, faking Deckard’s death to protect him, and taking him to meet his daughter for the first time.
The film itself is vast, staggering, almost overwhelming to the point of disorientation. The viewer drowns in dusty neon colors and dark corners, tasting the grit and the oil as K hunts through narrow winding streets in the pouring rain and goes on dangerous aerial journeys to forgotten places. At the heart of the film, K struggles with his own identity and role in this not-too-distant dystopian future: is he human, or is he robot? The narrative walks a fine line between wonder and tragedy, miracle and melancholy. The viewer stands in awe of replicant reproduction - life finds a way, to quote another great science fiction film - but shivers in fear at the consequences. The score, created by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer, only adds to the feeling of incredible vastness and tragedy with long, slow, synth-like tones that vacillate between guttural machinery and alien soundscapes. The overall effect plays out as a drama of Shakespearean proportions, if Shakespeare had been dropping acid and directing cyberpunk science fiction in 2017.
Key words: futuristic, cyberpunk, dystopia, neo-noir, mystery
Thesis: This film is a science-fiction mystery about an LAPD officer trying to uncover secrets from the past in order to stop a war between humans and replicants.
Splitting of letters creates a robotic foreign "coded" language
Background patterns bring a strange, biological dream-like sequence. Sans serif and monospace letterforms contrast sharply with the organic background.
Mirrored background reflects the human/replicant dichotomy (and forms strange, almost human-like images in the background)
"growth" on structured, inorganic words reflects the conflict between biology and technology
typographic explorations
Th swirling background creates a strange, organic dream-like sequence. Sans serif and monospace letterforms contrast sharply with the organic background, introducing the technology vs. biology aspect of the film.
The grid grows and stretches across the frame, following the text
Mirrored background reflects the human/replicant dichotomy (and forms strange, almost human-like images in the background)
Organic "structures" will begin to appear on the text
As the sequence progresses further, the organic structures will overtake the grid system (symbolizing the triumph of biology over technology), until eventually the grid does not exist at all (this will be evident in the last sequences of the film title)