Filling in the Gaps

Considering that Blade Runner 2049 was set 30 years after the events of Blade RunnerBlade Runner (and came out over 30 years after that film’s release), it made sense that viewers going into the sequel would need some catch up materials for the film. 30 years is a lot of story to skip over, and while I think the sequel film did a pretty good job getting viewers up to speed on the changes, that’s still a lot of time to skip over and ignore. Of course, in a time when home video special features were still regularly made and packaged with discs, those kinds of story gaps didn’t have to be ignored.

In the run up to the release of Blade Runner 2049, three short films were produced that helped fill in those story gaps. Focusing on three time periods, and three key moments, the shorts showed how the world evolved from one movie to the next, and gave fans snippets of story to latch onto. Having watched both of the main films, I felt it only right to go through and watch these shorts as well to get the complete story

Blade Runner Black Out 2022

Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and animated by CygamesPictures, Blade Runner Black Out 2022 takes place only a short time after the events of the first film. The flaws in the Nexus-6 replicants have forced the Tyrell Corp. to move ahead with a new breed of replicant, the Nexus-8. These were made for longer missions, with “natural” human lifespans, which made them ideal for jobs that required more than four years of life to fulfill. Unfortunately it also pissed off many of the humans living on Earth and abroad. A Human Supremacy movement started, with humans hunting down replicants on Earth and killing them.

One replicant, Iggy Cygnus (Jovan Jackson), finds another, Trixie (Luci Christian), as she’s being attacked by three humans. He saves her, killing the humans in the/ process, and takes her with him on a mission. Their job is to hit the hall of records where all of L.A.’s main servers are located. While they hit that, wiping out all the backups, a nuclear bomb flies over L.A., ready to detonate in the sky and cause a massive EMP. Together, this will plunge L.A. into darkness, giving humans a taste of a harder life as a kind of revenge from all replicant kind.

Because this is a short film we can’t really judge it the same way we would a long-form piece. Like with the Tron shorts, we have to operate more on if a piece tells a perfect segment of a story, if it gets its mood across well. Here I would say that Blade Runner Black Out 2022 does a pretty good job of it. It finds a way, with the initial rescue, to immediately get you interested in Iggy and Trixie, making you care about them and their missions despite them being, effectively, terrorists. They want to cause carnage and leave humans worse off than they were before, but that’s all because humans are hunting them, and you do want to see them get some kind of justice.

This short also fills in one missing gap from Blade Runner 2049: the blackout. We hear about it, seeing that records were wiped and only fragments of the time before are still maintained. Now we understand what happened: it wasn’t an ecological disaster but an all out attack. An attack, of course, led by replicant revolutionaries, who we later learn more about in Blade Runner 2049. It’s a key point of the story that was left dangling in the sequel, and while I don’t think you should have to watch a bunch of short films to be able to properly understand a film, I do like that at least part of this story was addressed here.

I don’t think this short alone totally redeems the replicant revolution storyline that was left hanging in Blade Runner 2049. But it does help it to feel at least somewhat more complete, and that’s not nothing, either. Plus the short is stylish, moody, and effective. It’s a solid piece of Blade Runner media that fans probably would enjoy.

2036: Nexus Dawn

Unlike the 2022 short, 2036: Nexus Dawn was filmed in live action, featuring Jared Leto in his role as Wallace Corp. CEO Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). In the film, Wallace has been granted a meeting with L.A. lawmakers to discuss the creation of a new line of Nexus replicants. After the attack and subsequent blackout of L.A. in 2022, all replicant production was completely forbidden. This forced Tyrell Corp. out of business, making them easy pickings for Wallace Corp. But with the Earth on the brink of collapse, humanity needs a savior. It needs replicants that can work for humanity, to help feed humanity, to bring the planet back from the bring.

Wallace, of course, wants replicants to be legal again since he makes them and wants to sell them. The lawmakers (played by Benedict Wong, Ned Dennehy, Ade Sapara, and Ania Marson) do not want to open this up for debate (even, which Wallace points out, as they have the debate), saying that replicants cannot be trusted. To make his point, Wallace reveals that the man standing with him (played by Set Sjöstrand) is a replicant. He then orders the man to kill himself, which he does. Replicants will do anything they are told, Wallace states. They will not run, they will not harm humanity. This is what he demands.

Where the anime short could have breadth to its storytelling due to a lack of production concerns or budget limitations, it’s pretty clear that 2036: Nexus Dawn couldn’t have the same consideration. This is a short, bottle episode film set in a single location with a lot of talking. This isn’t anywhere near as flashy as the anime short, or the sequel film, but it does effectively address the key plot point of how Wallace got the legal right to make more replicants.

With that said, it is pretty disposable. I would say it’s trying to answer a question few were really asking, and it does it a very limited, almost ham-handed way. Sure, one replicant was made so it could kill itself, but would that be every replicant? Would they all be just as easy to or;der around, to command? And if one went off the reservation, then what? The short doesn’t address that, instead handwaving away even simple considerations from Wallace’s argument. It does a very poor job of making this key plot point really work, much to the detriment of itself.

This feels like the kind of scene that could have been included somewhere in the larger film instead of as a bonus short or deleted scene elsewhere. Essential, though, it is not.

2048: Nowhere to Run

In 2048, one year before the events of the sequel, Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista) makes his way through the backstreets of L.A. He’s there to sell leeches that he farmed, genetic clones that can fetch a fair price on the black market. While working his way towards that deal he stops by to see Ella (Gaia Ottman) and her mother (Orion Ben). He gives Ella a book, The Power and the Glory, which he notes is one of his favorites.

He gets screwed on the deal for the leeches, but coming back out he sees a group of men trying to kidnap Ella and her mother. Sapper intercedes and, when provoked, immediately loses his shit. He beats the hell out of the men, killing at least one of them. When he comes to himself, he sees a crowd around him, afraid of him and shocked by what he’s done. Even Ella is afraid of him now, causing Sapper to run off, presumably to hide on his farm and hope the authorities don’t come for him (as we find him at the start of Blade Runner 2049).

This short is better than the 2036-set one. It has some character development, a bit of forward progress, and a touch of action. It doesn’t feel like a cast-off scene made for a film that was then abandoned… but that also doesn’t really make it good. While, sure, it does answer the question of why K is looking to bring Sapper in at the start of Blade Runner 2049, we also didn’t really need to know that detail. Sapper was a rogue replicant, and K hunts rogue replicants. Whatever happened to put K on that path really is inconsequential.

Sure, it’s not to see more of Dave Butistia, who is both a solid actor and good fighter, I would argue that this short is basically as disposable as 2036: Nexus Dawn. The story it tells doesn’t really need to be told as it doesn’t inform us of anything we couldn’t really figure out on our own. Sapper is a good guy that didn’t really deserve to die. Yes, we get that, but we already knew that watching the sequel. Beyond that, it’s just a bit of lore that you can take or leave.

Final Thoughts

As far as getting essential world building for the sequel film, only Blade Runner Black Out 2022 feels truly essential. The two live-action shorts, by comparison, are brief and ineffective. They tell bits of story that we didn’t really need instead of finding actual stories that we could care about. Why does K work as a blade runner for the police? How are the Joi A.I. programs created? What further happened with the replicant revolutionaries between 2022 and 2049? Those are plot points we need, but neither 2036 nor 2048 are concerned about them at all. I would have liked greater focus on world building across all three shorts, but we only got it for one.

In the end, then, only Blade Runner Black Out 2022 is one I’d recommend watching. It is an effective piece of Blade Runner media. The other two shorts, though, can be skipped entirely. You’re better off just watching the sequel instead.