Pinocchio in Reverse:
an essay on Blade Runner 2049
K is anything but special. In fact, he’s part of a new line of Replicants that has presumably solved their one fatal flaw - free will. He has been designed to obey and submit in any and every context.
This is revealed in his first baseline test, which he passes flawlessly. He is the perfect LAPD drone that will fall in line.
When we first meet Lieutenant Joshi, we see her through a glass with rain cascading down to create a beautifully obscured window. She is discussing the importance of killing a potential Replicant that was created through natural childbirth, whose discovery would destroy the “wall” separating “us” (humans) and “them” (A.I.). As she is talking about a figurative wall, the camera views her through a literal one (ah ha!). We begin, not with her in the room but from the outside looking in.
As K progresses through his inexorable journey to “discover” that he may be this naturally born Replicant child that will bring disorder to the world’s ecosystem, he must suddenly reconcile the possibility of being the Messiah of Artificial Intelligence. When he goes back in for his baseline test, he is way off, understandably so from the recent bombshell of acquiring purpose, meaning… a soul.
K: I’ve never retired something that was born.
Lt. Joshi: What does that mean?
K: To be born… Means you have a soul, I guess.
Lt. Joshi: Are you saying no to me?
K: I wasn’t aware that was an option.
Lt. Joshi: Good.
[pause]
Lt. Joshi: You’ve done good without one.
K: What?
Lt. Joshi: A soul.
What does it mean for an obedient, expendable drone to suddenly awaken to the fact that your existence has real, cosmological weight? Is it like falling in love? The first time you try ice cream? Learning that the elements in our bodies were originally produced in stars? Whatever it is, it’s a big fucking deal. And the film takes its (yes, extremely slow) time to underline K’s awakening. It. Is. Not. To. Be. Rushed.
But of course, K soon makes a second discovery—he is, in fact, NOT the natural born Replicant and has actually been a soulless worker bee the entire time (But then, how was he so off his baseline when he’s supposedly part of a newer model that only obeys? Hmmm). His role in all this was actually to be a decoy and he was implanted with an erroneous memory of hiding the wooden horse (Trojan Horse, get it?).
Now here is where the film lifts off into transcendence. Not only does K experience soul-crushing devastation, the love of his life is stomped out by Miss Perfect Bangs. And this is where K really ascertains what it is to be human.
“Dying for the right cause. It’s the most human thing we can do.”
The beauty of Blade Runner 2049’s narrative is that it’s Pinocchio in reverse. Instead of a wooden boy becoming real, K is a real boy that becomes wooden. By letting go of sitting in the seat of the Chosen One, he achieves something that speaks much closer to the brightest and most authentic achievement of humanity: self-sacrifice.
K selflessly goes on a rescue mission to save Deckard and gives his life in doing so. In the ending scene, after K dies in the snow, bleeding out from his stomach (a nod to Christ on the cross with the spear in his side perhaps?), Deckard meets his daughter for only the second time after she was born.
And the final shot could not be more perfect or beautiful in punctuating the entire theme of this worthwhile and soulful journey: Deckard putting his hand on the wall, reaching through the divider to make a cataclysmic connection. No longer will there be a separation between Fathers and Daughters, Humans and Replicants, Us and Them. Now, the world can accept that whether we were created, abandoned, cherished, or forgotten, we are all lost souls looking, in a cold and vast universe, for our place of belonging and purpose.