Blade Runner 2054 - The Joyless Edition

 

I should start by saying that there is a definitive version of Blade Runner 2049 and that is the one shown in cinemas. There is nothing wrong with it and it remains one of my favourites, despite any of the plot holes, problems or deviance from expectation. The soundtrack alone is enough to keep it in my top film list. The only problem I have is that it is a very long movie, two hours and forty three minutes. That's a long time.

I should also say that the role of Joi, played so well by Ana de Armas, was a great character and captured a lot of good ideas and interesting scenes. There is nothing wrong with her performance or the narrative flow of her character.

I say these things first, because I have essentially had to re-edit the film to remove any shot or sound of Joi as a character entirely. What follows contains many spoilers for the film.

Blade Runner 2054: The Joyless Edition Edits

I managed to get the film down to a respectable two hours and seventeen minutes, with a number of changes - other than the removal of replicant K's virtual girlfriend, but the removal of Joi was the biggest difference. If you could remove any part without effecting the narrative, then it would be Joi. She only really appears and interacts directly with K and doesn't impact the progress of K through his search. She acts as a kind of conscience, in that she ends up being a Jimminy Cricket to his Pinocchio, but any time you invoke the Pinocchio reference when dealing with artificial life (intelligent or physical), then you have taken the easiest and laziest path to back up your story.

Here are the changes:

  1. The title changes to 2054, because of the 35 year gap between films, rather than the 30 year gap. Pretty obvious change and if I am splitting hairs about this then I may as well get that little difference in.
  2. The film opens on a close up of an eye, reminiscent of the 1982 film's opening shot. For some reason the new film does the same thing and then shows us K in the Spinner, sleeping. Was it his eye we were just looking at? If so, wake the fuck up K. You just opened your eyes and then showed us the landscape you were observing - don't suddenly go back to sleep and then wake up again.
  3. The first time we see Joi is after K's baseline test. He's just been given his bonus and cleared. In the film we then get to see K at home and how he maintains a kind of faux normality with his virtual girlfriend and that he has bought her a present to allow her to project anywhere. All gone. Now K returns home to an empty flat, drinks two glasses on his own and immediately gets called out again.
  4. K goes down to the archives looking for information on the bones in Sapper's box. He meets Luv who shows him the pre-blackout recordings. At one point Joi's emanator chimes and he seems a little embarrassed. Now this little section is skipped. No Joi, no chime.
  5. After the archive, K goes to see Gaff who is in some kind of home. What does he learn? Nothing. So this whole section has gone. We don't need to be reminded that there was a previous film again. Edward James Olmos is still making movies and TV, so I don't know why Gaff is relegated to the old folks home, but still. I could cut it out, so I did.
  6. Now we see Wallace and hear how much he wants to have his replicant's make babies. I can see why you might feel this was important but I deleted the whole scene. This leaves the idea of Wallace floating more ominously until the end and obscures Luv's relationship with him until much later.
  7. K relaxing at a bar and approached by the rebel prostitutes. There is a chime from Joi here that suggests she woke up and listened in, to which Mariette replies "What's the matter, don't like real girls?" This works fine without the chime.
  8. K investigates the DNA from the baby sock and finds the two DNA data points, the boy and the girl. At this point Joi appears and does the whispering thing. He is already talking to the computer through this scene, so removing Joi was quite easy. Now he just comes to his own conclusions and mentions the orphanage.
  9. K travels to the orphanage and is shot down. A little clever editing and he goes there alone. Because of the lightning strike, Joi cuts out. She is missing from the rest of the scene, so the edit was straightforward.
  10. After the orphanage, where he finds the real wooden horse from what we know to be his memories, K returns home to his flat and talks about it with Joi. Again, Joi acts as his subconscious and in many ways is just an exformation machine. I cut this out and had K go direct to the memory master. It makes a nice contrast cut.
  11. After K is arrested, checked, failed out and dismissed he returns to Joi who has hired Mariette. Now he just goes home and is followed in by Mariette. This totally changes the characterisations and really shows why it is called not just the Joi-less edition, but the Joyless Edition. She just turns up, says 'let's go' and then they wake up after the night. It becomes a meaningless tangle that further shows how K struggles to remain anything like a human. It was an important scene for the character arcs, but also contained a main plot point of Mariette planting the tracker. In the real version this scene struck me as being a little contrived but the Joyless version is no less so, no more so. Perhaps a little too blunt in the transition. In both versions K just goes straight back into working the case. Joi does appear here as an advertisement because it needed a cut-away to show time night passing.
  12. K continues the case and asks his Somali friend about the wooden horse. There was a shot of Joi lurking around, which now had to go.
  13. K goes to Las Vegas. Joi is there but K quickly turns her off. Very easy to cut.
  14. After meeting Deckard, K is lounging around. Joi appears very fleetingly. Another easy cut.
  15. In the fight with Luv, after trying to save Deckard, K is knocked down. There is a section where Luv squashes Joi and, we can feel sad for K. Now, Luv just knocks him out and he wakes up as everyone leaves. I hope that dog is OK.
  16. Interestingly Joi is not removed from the scene where K stalks the streets, sad and dejected. The scene is needed to show K's mood but now he looks around and sees a fake illusion chatting to him. It makes him feel worse, he thinks about the cause of the other replicants and he checks his gun.

Everything else plays out as in the real version - just a lot sooner.

I also considered editing to get rid of Deckard, but that was a little too much trimming to make sense. I also considered editing out all of the main characters and just having a beautiful soundtrack with shots of the futuristic cyber punk city. I may still do that.