I mean, it looks great…

I hope you like hot takes, because this one is zooming out of my head and onto your screen like a flaming fastball. On my quarantine quest to catch up with all the movies that I really should have already seen but haven’t, I hit the play button on Ridley Scott’s 1982 Sci-Fi classic Blade Runner.

Expectations set unsuitably high, Blade Runner is… just ok. I’d dare to go as far as saying it’s an overrated film.

But I do need to address a couple of things straight out of the gate. This is a beautifully grim movie. The aesthetic is exceptional. Ridley Scott creates a lived-in universe and it helps to add weight to the messages of the movie.

Los Angeles of 2019 is dirty, dark and oppressive. Rick Deckard [Harrison Ford] is a jaded former cop – a former Blade Runner – brought back into the game by a new batch of four Replicants that he has to eliminate. This reality isn’t a pleasant one, as highlighted by Deckard’s dilemma. His main motivation for picking up the badge again is simply to avoid being the little guy in this dangerous world.

And that’s the other area where this movie excels – it has a poignant message. How different are humans and Replicants? The robots have a predetermined life span of four years to prevent them from developing empathetic abilities, but the humans are living in such an oppressive world, how empathetic can they really be?

But a movie needs to be more than a strong message. It needs to be entertaining. It needs to regularly challenge, thrill or surprise the audience. Blade Runner doesn’t really tick any of these boxes. A lack of action and slow pacing isn’t necessarily a problem in isolation but the film has to reward the viewer with narrative intrigue.

Take Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale, for instance. The 2018 thriller is one of my favourite movies, and yet it has one of the slowest first acts you’re ever likely to see, as four strangers meet in a hotel lobby and are assigned to separate rooms. It’s a long, drawn out sequence. The movie opens at a snails pace as a result, but the scene sets up mysteries to be solved in style later on. It’s intriguing and the slow pacing simply elevates tension.

Blade Runner didn’t have to race through the narrative at 100mph, but it at least needed to be intriguing. The plot isn’t particularly interesting at face value. Deckard is brought back into service to kill four robots. He proceeds to eliminate three, while his life is saved in a final act of heroism by the fourth one, whose life-span is simply at an end as he dies after delivering a monologue in the rain. The only layer beyond that is a somewhat uncomfortable relationship between Deckard and Rachael – a newer Replicant.

That’s it. That’s the film. There are no plot twists or powerful revelations.

Debates as to whether Deckard is in fact a Replicant himself have been spawned in the years since. The confusion among fans, and indeed the brains behind the movie, regarding Deckard’s humanity is a direct result of a plot that is light on actual content.

Ambiguity and debate regarding the true intentions of a plot inspires great conversations. Joker is a recent case study. Was Arthur Fleck even the Joker at all? Was the entire movie a delusion playing out only in his head? Joker is a modern day Blade Runner in this specific sense.

The difference between the two is that Joker‘s plot was filled with twists and revelations. Arthur Fleck’s life was spiralling and we could see his motivations building. Deckard isn’t as layered as Fleck and his decisions don’t feel as earned.

I wanted to love Blade Runner. There are elements here that will no doubt inspire a re-watch in the not too distant future. Perhaps I’ve missed something and a repeat viewing will inspire a change in perspective.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Westworld, a TV series which delivers a very similar message in a far more interesting manner.

Both have great aesthetics. Both have powerful messages. One has an engrossing plot, the other simply doesn’t.