Blade Runner 2049

How this film uses it

Roger Deakins gives each zone of 2049 its own colors. Los Angeles is a mix of cyans, teals and desaturated greens, the ruins of Las Vegas glow orange and red and Wallace's compound is lit in amber and gold. This color system is the film's map. You always know where you are and what that place means.

Where to see it

K's arrival in the ruins of Las Vegas. The film moves from rain-grey Los Angeles to an orange and red wasteland. The change in color tells you the moral tone has changed too.

How this film uses it

K's apartment is grey and bare. It reflects a being who is officially denied an inner life. Wallace's headquarters is as big as a cathedral, lit amber and filled with rippling reflections of water. It puts on display a god complex built on total control of how things look. The design shows you each character's mind before anyone speaks.

Where to see it

Wallace's inner sanctum. The amber-lit space and the rippling water reflections show you a man who has made himself the only creator in the universe.

How this film uses it

K investigates whether his implanted memory is real and whether he might be the replicant child of Deckard and Rachael. That search drives the emotion of the film. The arc ends without the confirmation he wanted. K acts decently even though he knows he is not special. The film says that choosing to be good matters more than being born special.

Where to see it

K's discovery that he is not the child. His search into his own identity fails to give him the answer he wanted. His arc ends somewhere harder and more meaningful than special status.

How this film uses it

At 163 minutes, Blade Runner 2049 makes you feel time the way its subject demands. It is set in a near-future world after ecological collapse, where time has stretched out. The pacing turns down the usual thriller momentum. It builds its questions slowly enough that you end up living inside them.

Where to see it

The long protein farm opening. K's arrival and the fight with Sapper move at a pace the film will keep throughout. From the first scene, the length is presented as something to live through.

How this film uses it

The world of 2049 grows out of the original film's 2019 with specific ecological detail. The sea walls, the protein farms and the failed ecosystems all follow from a believable path of climate change. This science fiction offers no escape from the present. It works out, like an investigation, where the present leads.

Where to see it

The orphanage ruins. Ecological collapse is shown as a specific, physical result. The world is built from details you can observe, and nobody stops to explain it.