Classic Opening
Blade Runner 2049 opens with white subtitles, with the keywords Replicant and Blade Runner highlighted in red.
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This is followed by a high-altitude view and a close-up of the eye, elements highly consistent with Blade Runner's opening 35 years ago.
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Another work by the previous film's director, Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant, also opens with a shot of the android David's eyes, suggesting a connection between Blade Runner and Alien.
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Original Opening
This is the opening envisioned initially by Ridley Scott for Blade Runner:
Deckard arrives at a small house on a farm. The house is empty except for a boiling soup pot, and he sits and waits quietly. The farm owner returns home and notices Deckard's presence but ignores him. After looking at the soup, the owner asks Deckard some questions, and Deckard introduces himself before killing him. Deckard then violently removes the owner's jaw, confirming that he is a replicant.
The opening of Blade Runner 2049 is almost identical to this, with the difference being that K has an essential conversation before killing the replicant, and he takes the replicant's eye as proof.
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Replicant
The protagonist K in 2049, like Deckard in the previous film, is a Blade Runner, but the film reveals K's other identity as a Nexus-9 replicant at the beginning. Here's a brief introduction to the various models of replicants:
-Nexus 1-5: Products of the Tyrell Corporation, with little information available.
-Nexus-6: The replicants that Deckard hunts in Blade Runner are all Nexus-6 models, and they only have a four-year lifespan.
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-Nexus-7: The female lead Rachel in Blade Runner may be the prototype of the Nexus-7 model, with more accurate human-like organs, making her closer to a human (even Rachel herself believed she was human). If Deckard is also a replicant, he is likely to be a Nexus-7. The sequence number on the bones of Rachel found by K starts with N7, indicating that Rachel's model is Nexus-7.
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-Nexus-8: Replicant products produced by the Tyrell Corporation before the blackout. Dave Bautista's character, Sapper Morton, is one of them, and Freysa, the leader of the rebellion, may also be a Nexus-8 replicant. This model has a natural lifespan similar to humans, and their appearance ages over time. To distinguish them from humans, the eyes of the 8 model are implanted with numbers that are easy for humans to recognize.
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-Nexus-9: The new replicant developed by the Wallace Corporation, almost perfect and obedient to all human commands (even if it means harming themselves). The only known replicants of this model are K and the ruthless female secretary Luv.
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Skinner/Skinjob
In the movie, replicants are derogatorily referred to as Skinner or Skinjob, meaning that replicants are like monsters wearing human skin. In Blade Runner, the term Skinjob was first used by Deckard's boss, Bryant.
Engineer
Among the replicant models that K walked past during his visit to the Wallace Corporation, in addition to the Nexus-8 replicant modeled after Dave Bautista, there also appears to be the Engineer from the Alien series.
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This may just be a coincidence, but after all, both Prometheus and Blade Runner are works produced by the director of this film, Ridley Scott, so it is normal to have similar elements.
In fact, the link between Blade Runner and the Alien world began with Prometheus. When the Prometheus DVD was released in 2012, some netizens discovered a letter written by Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce's character) in the disc, implying a connection between Weyland and Eldon Tyrell, the father of replicants in Blade Runner.
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The letter mentioned a deceased elder who was Weyland's mentor and competitor, and he stood atop a pyramid like a god, looking down on a city of angels. In Blade Runner, Tyrell lived in a pyramid, and Los Angeles, where the pyramid is located, is known as the City of Angels. In addition, both the previous film and this film use the term angels to refer to replicants.
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The Great Blackout
2049 mentions a great blackout that once occurred in the world, which caused all memory storage to be damaged. The cause of this blackout is explained in detail in the prequel short film Blade Runner: Black Out 2022:
After the Nexus-8 replicants were introduced, they were seen as a threat by humans and soon sparked a large-scale "human supremacy" rebellion. Angry mobs began hunting down replicants, and their method of identifying them was through the data in the replicant registration database.
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To erase the data of these replicants, a few Nexus-8 replicants who had escaped from off-world colonies launched a rebellion and destroyed electronic data in most parts of the United States by creating an electromagnetic pulse. This way, they could live in the world like humans. This dark disaster gave birth to a ban on replicant production, and the Tyrell Corporation declared bankruptcy.
In the mid-2020s, industrialist Niander Wallace acquired the remaining Tyrell Corporation and developed a new generation of Nexus-9 replicants, convincing the authorities to lift the ban on replicant production. However, the old Nexus-8 replicants had to live through being hunted down again.
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K and Joe
The protagonist K, played by Ryan Gosling, pays tribute to the original novel author Philip K. Dick. The film does not explain why Joi calls the client (Officer K) Joe, but there are three possible explanations:
- The father of the novel author Philip K. Dick was named Joseph (short for Joe). In addition, Dick's works also have characters named Joe, such as the protagonist Joe Chip in Ubik and Joe Cinnadella in The Man in the High Castle.
- Josef K is the name of the protagonist in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. The novel tells the story of the protagonist, who was arrested for unknown reasons after being awakened one morning and was caught in a difficult lawsuit. Since K was created, we can understand that he has been involuntarily caught in trouble.
- In the Bible's Genesis, Joseph is one of Rachel's sons, who was innocently sold into slavery and eventually became an important figure in Israel. This explanation also fits K's (self-perceived) identity and mission.
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Joi
JOI is a type of film originally known as Jerk Off Instruction, usually featuring a female performer in front of the camera, acting as a virtual girlfriend. Moreover, the promotional slogan of Joi in the movie is Everything you want to hear, just like the content of JOI. So you should understand why the future female virtual companion is called Joi.
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In addition, the start-up music of Joi comes from the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev's work Peter and the Wolf, which is a symphonic fairy tale with narration, implying that Joi is like a fairy tale to K and does not really exist.
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Pale Fire
After completing a mission, Agent K needs to undergo a Post-Trauma Baseline Test. This test involves reciting a series of sentences and repeating certain words to determine if the agent is operating normally (not affected by human emotions).
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Although K's test words may seem random, they are actually quotes from the novel Pale Fire by Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov:
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
When K and Joi have dinner together, Joi picks up a book called Pale Fire. The words K recites during the test come from a passage in which a dying poet describes his experience. Later, he reads about a woman's near-death experience in a newspaper and finds that their experiences are eerily similar. The poet seeks out the woman only to discover that she doesn't have those memories. It turns out to be a misunderstanding caused by a printing error, but the woman is still fascinated by the poet's description of the experience. K's memories of a wooden horse reflect this connection between reality and fiction.
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Mysterious detective Gaff
Gaff appears in the film and informs K that Deckard has retired. Like in the previous movie, he is seen doing some inexplicable origami, this time folding a sheep, which reminds us of the electronic sheep in Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? At the beginning of the book, Deckard owns an electronic sheep.
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Gaff still speaks in his signature Cityspeak dialect when he talks. Cityspeak is the language used by citizens of Los Angeles in the film, combining Spanish, Japanese, German, Hungarian, Chinese, and French, reflecting the cultural diversity of Los Angeles in the future. In reality, Cityspeak was created by actor Edward James Olmos when researching his role.
In fact, Gaff's character does not appear in the original novel, but in K.W. Jeter's sequel Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human, Gaff was added based on the movie, but he did not retire like in this film and instead sacrificed himself on a mission.
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Coca-Cola
35 years ago, in a scene from Blade Runner, the Coca-Cola logo appeared prominently on a giant billboard in the city skyscraper, leaving a deep impression.
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Director Ridley Scott explained that Coca-Cola is still eternal even in a dystopian country. Sure enough, this beverage brand still shines in 2049.
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In reality, Coca-Cola is still a world-renowned brand, but some other brands that appeared in the previous film did not have such good luck. For example, Pan Am declared bankruptcy in 1991, and the former gaming industry leader Atari caused a market collapse in 1983 due to frequent poor-quality products. Today, the company has changed hands several times, and the name no longer exists. Nevertheless, these brands all appear in the future world depicted in the film.
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Colonial Ship
This may be another Easter egg related to Alien. Joi looks up at the sky from K's flying car and sees a mother ship reflected on the glass, which looks very similar to the Sulaco colonial ship from the 1979 movie Alien. This may not be a coincidence, as the designer of Sulaco, Syd Mead, also participated in the visual design of both Blade Runner films.
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Scarce Resources
A market vendor sees K's wooden horse and says that K must have made a fortune because it is made of real wood, which indicates that trees have become very scarce in 2049. If you pay close attention to the scenes inside the Wallace Corporation, you will notice that it is entirely made of wood, which shows the endless wealth of Wallace.
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Unicorn
After waking up at K's place, Mariette noticed the wooden horse at the bedside. At this moment, the shadow of the horse was projected on the desktop, forming a unicorn. The unicorn appeared in Deckard's memory in the director's cut of Blade Runner. In the final scene of the film, Deckard picks up the origami unicorn thoughtfully, implying that Deckard is actually a replicant.
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Desert
In the opening scene of Blade Runner, a replicant undergoes a VK test and is asked to imagine walking alone in the desert.
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Later, when Rachel was tested, she was asked about the scenario of "a wasp crawling on her arm." These images reappear in 2049. Before finding Deckard, K walked through a barren desert and found a bee crawling in his hand. Unlike Rachel's reaction to "killing it," K lets the bee crawl on his hand, implying the "relationship" between K and Rachel.
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In addition, the visual inspiration for the orange-red desert comes from a sandstorm that occurred in eastern Australia in 2009.
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Piano
Before meeting Deckard, K saw a piano and played a note, reminiscent of the scene where Deckard played the piano in the previous movie. It is also where Deckard's mind flashes the image of the unicorn (added content in the director's cut).
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Treasure Island
Deckard's first words to K are, "You mightn't happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? Would you, boy?" This line is from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island. In a deleted scene from Blade Runner, Deckard visits his injured colleague Holden in the hospital, and Holden is seen reading Treasure Island.
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Whiskey
Deckard drinks whiskey many times throughout Blade Runner. He maintains this habit in the sequel, and even gives a sip to his dog.
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Deckard's Dog
K asks Deckard if his dog is real, and the original novel also discusses the theme of real vs. fake animals.
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The book mentions that most animals have become extinct due to environmental degradation, making the care of animals a moral symbol. People who can not afford real animals (like Deckard) can only have synthetic pets as a substitute, so asking someone if their animal is real or fake is considered impolite. In the original novel, Deckard risks hunting down replicants to earn enough money to buy a real sheep.
Therefore, in the movie, when the market vendor sees the wooden horse that K brings, he asks K if he wants to buy a real horse (Deckard also once wanted to own a horse in the original novel), indicating that animals are still rare commodities in 2049.
Wooden Animals
Dekker apparently loves animals, and there are many wooden carvings of animals on the bar table. A Reddit user noticed that the wooden animals seen in 2049 actually spell out Rachel's name:
Rhinoceros, Antelope, Cat, Horse, Antelope, Elephant, Lion.
Rachel
Replicant Rachel appears as a surprise in the climax of 2049, and it can be inferred that Wallace used Luv's stolen bones to recreate a replicant of Rachel. Of course, 57-year-old Sean Young no longer looks as youthful as before, and it's said that the special effects company took a full year to reproduce Rachel's appearance years ago.
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The director also deliberately reduced Rachel's screen time so the visual effects team had enough time to render the CG.
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Sean Young did not directly participate in the film's performance but was invited to the set to personally instruct the stunt actors on Rachel's behavior. The scene where Rachel appears in the film was secretly filmed with only a few personnel involved, and Sean Young was also asked to deny to the public media that she did not participate in the film's production.
When Deckard exposes Wallace, he mentions that Rachel's eyes are green. Many netizens have said that Rachel's eyes were not green in the original movie and that Deckard was just making an excuse to refuse Wallace. In fact, Rachel's eyes in the movie mostly look dark brown, but during Deckard's VK test for Rachel, the device indeed showed that Rachel's iris was green.
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Tears in Rain
At the end of the film, K lies down peacefully in the snow, and the background music plays the theme song from the previous movie, Tears in Rain. In Blade Runner, replicant Roy mentions that memories will fade away over time, just like tears in the rain.
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