Fans had to wait more than 30 years, but the sequel to 1982's Blade Runner is finally here,
and it's stunning.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Blade Runner 2049 pulls all the sleek visuals from the
original and wraps them around a new storyline set 30 years after the original, following
new blade runner Officer K, played by Ryan Gosling, who's tasked with rounding up the
remaining early-generation replicants.
But it's harder to hunt replicants than it is to hunt Easter eggs, so we took the easy
job and found everything you might've missed in Blade Runner 2049.
Pale Fire
Every time K comes out of a stressful situation, he has to perform a "Post-Trauma Baseline
Test."
It's basically a mashup of poetry and gibberish, with K repeating words like "cell" and "interlinked"
in response to various prompts.
It all seems like nonsense, but the movie left a subtle Easter egg to help fans decode
what was going on there — sort of.
As it turns out, all those lines were pulled from Vladimir Nabakov's novel Pale Fire.
Specifically, this refrain:
"Cells interlinked within cells interlinked/Within one stem.
And dreadfully distinct/Against the dark, a tall white fountain played."
As for what that all means, it's still anyone's guess, but Nabakov's Pale Fire also happened
to be the book Joi picked up in K's apartment.
Enjoy Coca-Cola
The Los Angeles we see in the first Blade Runner is awash in the neon glow of corporate
advertisements playing hundreds of feet high on the sides of skyscrapers.
How else would you corner that elusive flying car demographic?
But one of the most prominent ads in the first film is a display for Coca-Cola.
Ridley Scott explained that the reason he used the Coke advertisement was that "even
in a dystopian world, Coca-Cola is everlasting."
Well, fast forward 30 even dystopian-er years, and apparently Coca-Cola really is everlasting.
Even in a world where the only tree is dead and where people eat grubs to survive, our
old friends are still pumping out sky-high treatises to "Enjoy Coca-Cola."
By the same token, 2049 also had quick Atari and Pan Am advertisements, if you caught them.
Unfortunately, Pan Am went defunct in 1991 and Atari was acquired by Hasbro in 1998,
so they're definitely not around in 2049.
At least they get to live on through the power of imagination!
Right?
Maybe?
Sony's hologram
Speaking of product placement, who would have a better reason to advertise their name than
the international distributor of the whole shebang?
When K finally tracks down Deckard in Las Vegas, he plugs a coin into a jukebox and
brings a hologram of Frank Sinatra to life.
And the name right there on the front of the machine?
Sony.
Of course.
Hey, if Peugeot can make flying cars in this universe, why can't Sony make holograms?
Vintage inspiration
Blade Runner 2049's art direction is phenomenal from start to finish.
From bleak, rainy L.A. to the trash heaps of San Diego to the red-tinged Las Vegas smog,
2049 is perfectly designed to hammer home all that the apocalyptic ruin.
And that's just the outside.
Inside the casino where Deckard lives, the set design is even more lavish.
But it didn't all come from thin air.
In the room where K first encounters Deckard, there's a grand piano.
In at least a few shots, you can even see the name on it: C. Bechstein.
That's cool, kind of.
If you're into pianos.
But as one Reddit user noticed, the imagery almost perfectly lines up with a 1920's era
Bechstein poster.
Everything from the coloring to the ornate chandelier hanging over the piano seems to
be inspired by that image.
If you noticed that, now's the time to go tell your dad that music history major finally
paid off.
Original origami
You may remember Gaff as the pointy-mustached blade runner who's always showing up to ruin
Deckard's day in the first film.
Fans were happy to see that Gaff made a quick appearance in Blade Runner 2049 when K was
trying to track down information about Deckard.
With all of 20 seconds of screen time, his cameo in 2049 doesn't serve to advance the
plot a whole lot, but it does offer up an opportunity for an on-the-nose Easter egg.
Just before K leaves, Gaff lays one of his signature origami figurines on the table.
That sure looks like a sheep, no?
Sort of like the name of the Philip K. Dick novel that inspired Blade Runner in the first
place.
Of course, this little moment also begs the question: If there aren't any trees left,
where the heck is Gaff getting all this paper?
WAS that an engineer?
In 2012, fans scouring the Prometheus DVD came across a telling Easter egg — a letter
dictated by Peter Weyland of the Alien universe that supposedly references Eldon Tyrell of
the Blade Runner universe.
The letter never mentions Tyrell by name, but in it, Weyland calls the man in question
his "mentor" and says that he's "like a God on top of a pyramid overlooking a city of
angels."
It goes on to say that this guy's robotics project "literally blew up in the old man's
face."
Of course, in Blade Runner, the Tyrell Corporation was housed in a pyramid-shaped building in
Los Angeles — a "city of angels" — and Tyrell's rogue replicant, Roy Batty, crushed
his skull.
So while Weyland may need to tone down his use of the word "literally," the references
are all there.
Then, back in May 2017, fans watching the first trailer for Blade Runner 2049 noticed
a figure that looks a lot like an engineer from Prometheus, launching speculation that
the Tyrell Corporation — sorry, the Wallace Corporation — is somehow involved with the
engineers.
Is it all true after all?
Unfortunately, the movie gives no hint whatsoever, but considering the lengths Ridley Scott is
apparently willing to go to connect these universes without ever confirming it, it's
still reasonable to consider this theory open to discussion.
If nothing else...it's a pretty cool Easter Egg, right?
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