For What it's Worth

At over two hours, Villeneuve paces the film effectively, smartly holding back and ever ratcheting it up — a feat the director didn’t quite master in his last sci-fi outing Arrival (2016). As you should expect, the action takes place in 2049. Los Angeles is a lot more crowded but still a dark, rain-slicked Gotham with shocks of neon blooming above the drab cityscape. Opening info tells us the Earth’s been beset by overcrowding and famine. There’s nothing green anywhere anymore, so protein farms where mealworm larvae are harvested to feed the masses Soylent Green-esque pap in ramen bowls have popped up. Not to mention there’s the great “Blackout of 2022” where scads of data files and historical records were lost. Gone the way of Lehman Brothers is the old Tyrell Corporation. The manufacturer of “replicants” (biorobotic androids for those unfamiliar with the earlier film or the Phillip K. Dick novel it was based on), are made by Wallace Industries who make the new line “skin jobs” more obedient, yet still physiologically superior to humans, and all imbued with manufactured personal memories, even though they are self aware they are implants — which seems somewhat illogical and superfluous given the implant process is an arduous one. Continue reading →