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9 October 2017updated 10 Oct 2017 8:39am

Blade Runner 2049 is an uneasy feminist parable about controlling the means of reproduction

Its villain, Niander Wallace, is consumed by rage that women can do something he cannot.

By Helen Lewis

Some films taste sweet and then go sour in the mouth as you walk away from the cinema. With others, the flavour develops like a single malt, and they reveal more of themselves to you with time. I’m still not sure which category describes Blade Runner 2049.

Undoubtedly, it looks incredible, expanding the original film’s noirish vision of a rain-soaked future city by showing us the blasted countryside around it, too. We start with a vision of a dustbowl outside Los Angeles, where the earth is now barren. Later, a bodega owner marvels at an object made of real wood, and suggests it could be sold for a fortune. Another character wishes that she could see a tree. 

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