The Human Dilemma in Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049: The Significance of the Insignificant

The Plot:

Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve, is a sci-fi film released in 2017 as a sequel to Blade Runner. The movie follows K, a replicant, who works in the police department as a detective. The main plot of the film is centered around finding a replicant who was born from two previous replicants a feat that hadn't been done before. K was trapped in the middle of this conflict as replicants gained hope that this Messianic Replicant would help them rise up and be free from enslavement, but the corporation that produced replicants hoped to capture the Messiah in order to advance their technology and make more efficient slaves. Soon, K had bought into the idea that he might be the "Chosen One". K has memories that fall in line with what he was uncovering in his investigation. Ultimately it is revealed that K is just another regular replicant. He decides to fight to reunite the Father of the special replicant to his child. The movie ends by revealing that the Replicant everyone was searching for had been trapped inside a sanitary room from her childhood do to an autoimmune disease. She worked creating memories for a company that implanted them into other replicants. After this revelation the movie jumps back to K who slowly bleeds out on the steps of the room. Snow begins to fall and everything comes to a close. As Timothy Shanahan said in his interview with a philosophical journal, “By the end of the film, when he's (K) laying on his back on the steps and the snow's falling on his body, I think the audience is supposed to get the sense that he's at peace, that he feels he's made the right choices, and that he has accomplished something with his life.”

The Message:

The message in Blade Runner 2049 is a simple one: Be ok with being yourself. Now let's unpack that. Essentially the long fought battle and entire plot that K is engulfed in leads to one realization, K was never special. After convincing himself that he is not just a replicant K faces reality. That's exactly what he was. William Shakespeare once wrote, "Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable". The reason K was able to so quickly believe he was special is because its something most people crave. We want to be someone greater than who we actually are. This mutual desire allows us to relate more to K's character. Marina Rain says, "Individuals who identify with a particular character come to share that character’s point of view, goals, emotions, and knowledge.”

The Take-Away

What does this mean for us? At the end of the day what do we do with this knowledge. We apply this information to our lives. K managed to pass away peacefully because he understood it was not necessary to be someone special to accomplish something. Even though we don't see the affects of what we are doing the best thing we can do is strive forward and find value in our lives. In a world as advanced as ours its simply impractical to believe that we will become someone special. So we must accept being who we are and just that.

References

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