Released a couple of weeks ago to glowing reviews, Blade Runner 2049, the very belated sequel to the original 1982 Blade Runner, arrived with plenty of good reviews and buzz but delivered an underwhelming box office.

In fact, its safe to say the film is on its last legs in theaters though, perhaps like the original film, cult status beckons.  Still, one can’t help but wonder what went wrong.

Welp, I just now came from seeing the film and I have some ideas about that.

The first, and predominant one relates to the film’s runtime.

2 hours and 44 minutes.

You read that right.

That’s an awful long time to spend on any film and, if you’re going to ask audiences to stick around that long, you better make damn sure the film is worth that much time.

That, to me, proved to be problem number one.

I’ll cut to the chase and say that I felt the film was good.  Further, I have no problem recommending it, though I strongly suspect fans of the original film will find more to love than newbies.  Thing is, unlike long -but mesmerizing- films like Lawrence of Arabia or 2001: A Space Odyssey, I feel this is a film that would have benefited greatly from some skilled editing.

Nonetheless, the main story is easily the brightest element of the movie.  As much of a fan of the original Blade Runner as I am, I was skeptical what sort of story could merit a sequel to that movie, especially one that somehow logically brings Ryan Gosling’s character, a replicant Blade Runner (ie Replicant killer), to eventually cross paths with Harrison Ford’s Deckard.

The basic elements there work really well (I won’t go into Spoilers… at least not here), but the problem is that there are too many other things brought into the movie that could have either been pared down (ie skilled editing) or eliminated altogether.

Again, without getting into spoilers, Jared Leto shows up for a whopping 2 scenes but, frankly, they could have cut that down to one scene or, with some minor story modification, eliminated altogether.

Robin Wright, so damn effective in a small role in Wonder Woman, isn’t nearly as effective, or effectively written, this time around.  Her character could -and in this case probably should (see below)- been pared down to one scene or eliminated all together.

Then there’s Edward James Olmos, playing a character returning from the original film, who is also given a scene that plays out like fan service more than necessity to plot.

When we finally get to Harrison Ford’s Deckard, it feels like we could and should have gotten there sooner.  Even then, we’re given a fight between Ford and Gosling which feels like action presented just for the sake of giving us something exciting after too long not getting much of it.

Still, I can’t hate the film.  While the story could have been firmed up, like the original Blade Runner 2049 immerses us into a bleak future that feels organic and makes us care for its lead characters.  Ryan Gosling’s “K”, the Replicant Blade Runner, is quite good and his journey is emotional and, in the end, satisfying.  I recommend the film, though I lament the fact that it could and should have been even better than it was.

I know what you’re thinking:  How would you have made the film better, smart guy?

All right, here we go.

BEWARE SPOILERS

I would have begun the film exactly as it begins, with our “hero”, replicant Blade Runner “K” goes to a distant farm and confronts Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista).  Everything presented in this part of the movie is ok, but instead of ending the scene when they did, I would have continued and have K discover everything, including both the buried box AND the stuff written at the tree’s base, which of course affects him. (The stuff in the piano could be cut out)

Here’s where I would then diverge big time.

Have K contact his Lieutenant (played by Robin Wright) and tell her he’s found bones but she doesn’t care all that much.

“Did you get Sapper?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“That’s all that’s important.  Get back home.”

That’s right, the humans are content.  They feel replicants are under their thumbs to the point where they’ve allowed them to take care of themselves.  Why should they care about what one stray replicant hid in his farm?

K, however, knows something is up and when he returns to the big city he presents what he found to an also uninterested coroner.  The coroner doesn’t much care to examine these old bones when he’s overwhelmed with so many other crimes to deal with.

K winds up examining the material and discovers the bones belonged to a replicant and, even more startlingly, that the replicant died in child birth.  (He can reveal this to his audience via talking to his computer “girlfriend”)

Being a good cop, he tries to tell his superior but, again, they don’t care.  Here we can have the one “big” scene for Robin Wright.  She cuts him off before he gets to any of the juicy stuff about replicant child birth and says something to the effect of:  “The body belonged to a replicant? All right, go off, figure it out.”

Again, to so many humans, replicants are wind up toys and, what the hell, if this case gets him out of her hair, all the better.

So K begins his formal investigation and heads to Wallace industries and it is they who take an interest in his investigation -though they don’t act it- and wind up follow him along, though for most of the movie this is a secret kept from the audiences.

We don’t need to meet Wallace (Jaret Leto) at this point, instead have him be a ghostly figure who may even not exist for all the audience knows.  Also, keep the fact that our main antagonist, who we are introduced to at this point, is a replicant from the audiences as well as K.  For all we know, she’s another totally uninterested human who could give a shit about replicant problems.

When she steals the bones K (in my scenario) has found, we don’t need to show it was her.  Instead, have K realize at some point the stuff is gone and that he isn’t simply spinning his wheels.  The coroner could well be killed (or not, it doesn’t matter in my scenario) and K digs deeper, this time thinking he may have secrets of his own (ie, the memory stuff presented in the call back to Blade Runner’s oddball pseudo sequel, the Kurt Russell film Soldier.  Only the big time Blade Runner fans will pick up on the dumping grounds’ meaning!).

K meets with the memory specialist just like we’re presented and then moves his way toward finding Deckard.  After he does, they’re ambushed and it is there and then that the replicant identity of the antagonist is revealed.  To everyone’s surprise, she beats K up, something we think a demure, smallish woman like her should not have been able to do.

K barely escapes with his life but Deckard is captured.  He now knows Wallace is behind everything and we can then have his single scene where he reveals all -that he wants to have replicants be able to reproduce- and menaces Deckard with considerable torture.

But K hunts down the kidnappers, saving Deckard right in the nick of time and noting, as he does in the film, that Deckard, as far as the world is concerned, no longer exists.  We then have the ending as presented and fade out.

So that’s my scenario.

(And, by the way, note I removed entirely the replicant underground stuff.  Didn’t really need it, either)

Hope it makes some kind of sense! 😉