Blade Runner 2049: On Consciousness Anonymous 10th Grade

A stoic man recalls an old memory. He’s a child running through an abandoned factory looking to hide a something before it is stolen by the gang of unruly, marauding kids that is chasing him. Eventually, when he’s an adult, he finds it hidden exactly where he had left it. It’s a wooden horse – extremely rare in his wood-starved world. A world with humans who aren’t actually human.

In what is a thematic continuation to Ridley Scott’s 1981 Blade Runner, Dennis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (set 40 years after the first film and released in 2017) again explores what it means to be human and the culture of replicant slavery . Ultimately, the main focus of the film is Ryan Gosling’s K, a man who is going through an identity crisis. At the start of the film, K visits an older replicant named Sapper Morton with the intent to “retire” him. While at Morton’s farm, K discovers a box containing the remains of a female replicant who died during a C-section, suggesting that she had given birth – something that was thought to be impossible for replicants. After he returns to his station, his boss orders him to kill the child as she fears that it could create a tremendous amount of instability in the world. K returns to Morton’s farm and...