Acting Against Type in Blade Runner 2049

The thought occurred to me recently that a lot of the characters in Blade Runner 2049 act strongly against their profession while simultaneously maintaining that profession. Or, they act or are in circumstances that contradict their character in the previous movie.

I don’t know how much merit there is in these observations. I suppose in every story, every character tends towards acting against expectations; conflict and obstacles placed in a character’s path are the catalyst for thinking or acting different. At least, in good stories where meaningful character development occurs.

K

The protagonist. I give him a pass on because protagonists are supposed to end up in a different state of being at the end compared to their starting point in the first act. That’s simply the nature of storytelling, so his character’s change doesn’t technically apply much to what I’m getting at. On the other hand, he could be considered the ultimate in acting out of type, as he is an artificial human straining towards becoming genuinely human, though it would be impossible for him to attain such a state of being. This straining culminated in one of the most human of acts: self-sacrifice for someone else. In a way, K’s character becomes a model for the rest of the characters’ proclivities of acting outside of their expected borders.

I want to point out that there is some significance, though I don’t know what it is, to the opening scene, where he is traveling on autopilot to “retire” Sapper Morton. He’s asleep at the wheel. There’s no reason for him to be asleep. He’s not incompetent, rebellious, or lazy. Maybe it’s simply a symbol of his awakening that will happen throughout the movie.

Sapper Morton

A replicant and former soldier, now protein-slug farmer. A soldier becoming a farmer isn’t unrealistic, but they are rather opposing professions. The real acting against his type is that he exhibits nearly zero tactical awareness. A guy literally made to fight battles, who would know someone would eventually in authority would come capture or kill him, didn’t prepare at all for the event. In a normal movie, Sapper would’ve had multiple escape routes in place, caches of weapons easily accessible in an emergency, maybe some traps or deadman’s switches, and there’d be an extended shootout and chase scene. Even when he sees K’s car arrive, he doesn’t seem to react with any urgency. He’s even hospitable to K when he comes into the residential area of his farm. Sapper only starts to fight at the very last second, with a small medical knife and his kitchen’s wall.

Joi

K’s virtual live-in girlfriend. This one is tough, because no matter how she acts, she’s acting according to her programming. It’s impossible for her not to, much like K’s existential dilemma of trying to attain humanity. She does somehow become as human as she can when she (presumably) hired Mariette to come to his apartment. Joi was being used by the Wallace Corporation to track K, but that’s not anything she had an active part in that we know of. I am suspicious as to why Joi never said anything to K after Mariette planted the tracker before she left in the morning. Joi must have seen Mariette do that, yet she didn’t mention anything to K about it. I think Joi was in collusion with Mariette to have K tracked so Freysa’s group could locate him, despite Joi acting kind of cold to Mariette the morning after. Maybe Joi thought he would be better off as a revolutionary.

Lieutenant Joshi

K’s by-the-book commander. She’s competent, if a bit severe and borderline corrupt, but she also drinks on the job. She came off as pretty heartless because she ordered K to retire Deckard and Rachel’s (adult) child, a presumably innocent person, even though it was to head off widespread social unrest. She does appear to have a personal interest in K, because she seems to defer towards keeping him safe at the risk of breaking proper LEO procedure, even when replicants aren’t viewed kindly by the presumably real-human officers (“F*ck off, skinjob!”). The one incident where she really acted against type was the one where she visited K in his apartment and asked him rather personal questions—the kind of questions people of same rank might ask each other if they were buddies on the force, but definitely not superior officers. This situation might be socially permissible since he’s a replicant, but it feels like it would raise eyebrows if it were more widely known.

I note here that “Joshi” is “Joi,” but with an “sh” in the middle. There has to be some parallels between the two characters, but I don’t know exactly what they are.

Niander Wallace

A CEO who is all mysticism and vision, but very little demonstrated business sense. Yes, the vision is important for a leader, but there has to be boots on the ground action, which we didn’t really get to see him perform. His job is manufacturing replicants, but the ones he created in the movie he has killed. One of them was in an accompanying film short, and he had commanded the replicant to commit suicide. Another one was a woman freshly “born,” but he could tell that she couldn’t conceive children, so he killed her. The other was the Jessica copy, who got rejected by Deckard, and Luv actually killed (Wallace presumably was fine with it).

I’m not sure exactly why Ridley Scott made Wallace blind but able to see with the help of his little insect drones. Narratively, it makes little sense other than to show that the kind of technology to help blind people see exists in that universe.

Luv

Wallace’s assistant. In many scenes she acts like a usual administrative-type of person, taking care of practical things while Wallace handles his CEO duties. Contradicting that is her violent behavior. I would call her psychopathic, but she’s a replicant following commands, so I don’t think that diagnosis applies. She kills a few LEOs directly, a few of them were NPCs, kills (via drone) a bunch of those junkyard guys who attacked K, tries to kill K and Deckard. Granted, she’s acting in type as a replicant but not as a personal assistant. Secretaries don’t commonly have superior physical strength and tactical conflict engagement know-how.

Gaff

Deckard’s commander from the first movie. He convinced Deckard to work for him and chase down Roy Batty and his crew, but in 2029, he’s retired and merely being interviewed by K about Deckard. Not a lot here, but his role in 2049 is much different than the original film.

Mariette

Like Gaff, there’s not a lot here to go on. I don’t think the fact that she’s an undercover revolutionary qualifies as acting out of type, because if a revolutionary is in the public eye, double agency is a part of their daily life. So maybe it qualifies, but it’s common in storytelling. There might be something in the fact that she was “overlayed” by Joi during the scene in K’s apartment: her appearance was subservient to Joi’s appearance, and a prostitute’s appearance is most of her job.

Anna Stelline

The memory creator, working for Wallace. An eternal shut-in due to a weak immune system. You might think with her life situation, she would act like Gollum but she’s the most personable character in the movie. There’s not much else to say because the dichotomy is very upfront. The fact that she illegally recreated a real memory (of her own) for use in a replicant (K) isn’t acting out of type enough for me to qualify it. People do illegal or unethical things all the time in stories.

Jessica

Aside from the ill-fated clone Wallace offered to Deckard, Jessica doesn’t appear in 2049 except as a pile of bones. She acted very out of type beforehand because she was a replicant who conceived a child. Another obvious point.

Deckard

The protagonist from the first movie, yet in 2049 he is mostly strung along the chain of events after K finds him in Las Vegas, and acts minimally. He is more like a Macguffin vehicle for K to complete his arc.