I Dream of Ryan Gosling - an observation of Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049 is easily my favorite film of 2017.  (that I've seen, though I hardly think it can be beatin)   Let me say up front that I'm an adventure/sci-fi film nerd.   If you give me a superbly made adventure story and put it next to a really good drama (or insert own genre) I am going to gravitate toward the adventure story.  That being said my two favorite films of all time - Magnolia and The Aviator - are dramas.  I like all genres I just have a soft spot for the aforementioned types.  I should also acknowledge that I am in the beginnings of my film study classes, so a lot of these observations are motivated by what I've been learning.

This is very spoiler heavy so you have been warned:

Reading of Blade Runner

OPENINGS AND ENDINGS

Opening:
We open on an unidentified eye.
We are introduced to K.  He is reclined and sleeping in his car/ship.
We then move into a scene that devolves into a fight.
Up to this point the only knowledge we have is:
A. Previous knowledge brought in from Blade Runner, which starred an assumed human as a Blade Runner.
B. That Blade Runners hunt down replicants as provided by the opening text.

based on this previous knowledge we are left to assume that K is a human being.
The character he is meeting is a huge towering bulky figure named Sapper - an effectively cast Dave Bautista who comes with his own frame of reference as an actor, and former wrestler.  He's a brute.
K is Ryan Gosling.  Small.
They fight.

This is where we learn that K is a replicant.  Sapper attempts to stab him with a scalpel, K stops it easily.
Sapper attempts to smash him into a wall - quite a few times - until he breaks through it.  K is unphased, though he is knocked down.
Sapper straddles him, K knocks him off with a simple punch and overpowers him.
Sapper stabs brutally into K's arm, K barely flinches and non-chalantly knocks it away.

Based on those cues, we should know K is not human.  If you bring in prior knowledge from Blade Runner you know that in addition to Sapper's build replicants are extremely strong.  If you do not bring in prior knowledge, you may not know that, hence the casting of a much bigger actor for K to fight against.  At this point if you have prior knowledge your assumption is, he is a replicant, if you do not have prior knowledge, your assumption is he can't be a normal human.

We are not informed for sure that K is a replicant until Sapper's dialogue that says: "...killing your own kind."

Perfect example of show don't tell.

Sapper then goes on to tell K essentially that he is just a drone because "he's never seen a miracle."
K shoots Sapper unflinchingly, coldly.

Ending:
Another fight with a replicant, this one is Luv.   Luv is in a similar mindset to K at the start.  She is following her orders.  They  initially shoot each other, and deliver blows.   Luv is stronger than K.   She stabs him, similar to the way Sapper did - at least as it was shot.  This time he reacts to the stab with a noticeable jerk and seemingly loses the fight.

After Luv thinks she has won K comes back (similar to the way he overpowers what appears at first to be a losing fight with Sapper) and he chokes her (he punched Sapper in the throat, at first just once)  and then he drowns her (he punched Sapper a lot in the throat).  Luv dies by K's bare hands (opposite using a gun).

He saves Deckard.  He does not blindly follow orders like he did in the opening.

After bringing Deckard to his real child K lays back on the steps and dies.  (opposite of him reclining and being woken at the beginning)

We leave the film on the daughter. (does she belong to the eye?)

LUV:

show don't tell:
we don't know for sure she's a replicant until: she has to open the really heavy archive door.

Luv hates but worships Wallace:
hence her crying when he kills one of her kind.  her motivations seem to be just following orders, but Wallace holds the key to trying to figure out how to make her kind be able reproduce, so thus, her motivations are not just following orders.

Luv is also a unique antagonist:
We see the film through two perspectives K's and Luv's.   Both are replicants.
Luv helps K during a couple pieces of his journey: helps him go deeper into Wallace's archives, and saves him from the scavengers near the orphanage.  She is active in his quest.

Meaning of her name(these might be more of a reach):
Luv helps K.
Luv hinders K.
Luv kills joi.
Luv dies.
I haven't exactly read into these but Luv, like love, is a spectrum of things that may be in fact connected to that deeper meaning of the word.  In a poetic, "my heart will go on" sense.
Especially with names like Luv and Joi there is a deliberate reason for them existing in a narrative.
Maybe with her following of Wallace you could say......Luv is blind.

JOI:

The first time we meet Joi, she is a voice somewhere in the apartment.  First time viewer assumes she is in the other room, but in fact we are staring right at her for her entire introduction.  The camera lingers on the box her program exists in in a close up.

Joi drives K to do most of what he does.  Why?  Does she really love him, or is it just because she tells him all he wants to hear like her advertisement suggests?  Joi is speaking for the audience, we want K to be important in this narrative.  We are following him, we want all the pieces to be important for him.   In that way Joi isn't just manipulating K, she is manipulating us.

Is she more than her programming?  Maybe?  Does it matter?  She is more warm, and caring than any of the human characters we meet.   Joshi (Robin Wright) is a shell, she's uniformed, slicked back, stiff, uncaring, emotionless.   Wallace (Jared Leto) is basically part robot and talks mechanically and has no trouble killing his children.   It isn't hard to see K's connection to Joi.

Joi makes K important.  She helps drive the story, by making him a key piece of the puzzle for K and us.

Joi "dies."  It is true Joi as K knew won't exist in the same exact way, and that Joi is programmed to love him.  But the scene is heartbreaking.  The later scene when her giant nude advertisement speaks to him, he realizes both that she is a program, but that she was also his unique program.   Like all the other versions, but not.   This thought pattern might motivate his absolution to kill Luv who took away his Joi - apart from the fact that Luv is always in his way. (not exactly though as pointed out above)

JOSHI & WALLACE:
Humanity wants to protect itself & a human wants to play god at the expense of all other creation
(there's probably more here, but these are based off of first three viewings)

MEMORY CREATOR AND K - DECKARDS CHILDREN:

K's memory of the wood horse drive a big chunk of the plot.   We learn eventually that this was a real memory implant from the creator of memories who turns out to be Deckards real daughter.  We also know based on Mariette the prostitute (Mackenzie Davis) that this particular memory is not apparently unique to just K by the way that she picks it up and seemingly recognizes it.

K goes to the memory creator.
During this scene, especially toward the end of it K and the creator's reflections overlap one another.  We are given visual cues that they are one in the same.  (for K this is obviously not literal).  This overlapping of reflections also immediately mirrors the next scene involving Mariette and Joi overlapping eachother for K.

What is the point of the Mariette/Joi scene?   Joi wants to be "real" for K.  So basically the two women become one person.
Now, going back to the previous scene with memory creator, K is the fake one, she is real.   There overlapping reflections communicate K's reality that since he possesses her memories, he is in part, not wholly (like Joi) also the memory creator.

This reinforces the ending.
Up until the reveal by the underground that K is not the child he believes he is -  He hunts down Deckard, asks him questions as though Deckard is his father, he develops an emotional bond, and learns how Deckard could have abandoned him, etc. etc.  The point being Deckard to K, up until that point, is his father.  He has the memories, and now the emotional connection to prove it.

When the leader of the underground orders him to kill Deckard we know a few things.  First, we know K no longer follows orders.  We know K has no connection with the underground (except that he's a replicant too) and that he has formed an emotional bond to Deckard, who for all intents and purposes is his father.

At least for me, by the end when Deckard essentially asks K why he saved him I half expected K to say, "because you're my dad."  Now though, like Joi, the artificial child has to die.

THE BEES:

During the first viewing I had a hard time seeing the point of the bees.
Yes, on a surface level Deckard is farming them.  (image of a farm reinforces image of farms and Sapper at the beginning.)
But, what struck me was the way its shot.  The first image looks like a skyline image of a city, not unlike a New York.  Then K moves through it in a couple different shots that remind the viewer of aerial shots of Los Angeles earlier in the film or just in film in general.

Now:

What are most Bees?  Workers.
What are replicants built for? To be slave workers.
K towers over all the other workers.
In that moment:  he is the child - the best, next greatest, god.
But,
what towers over K: statues of women.
Which women: Joi and Memory Creator.  This infers what: the foreshadowing of giant advertisement naked Joi and that K is not the biggest - the best, next greatest, god.
Also,
What towers over everyone in the real city: Advertisements - fake and Artificial
What is K revealed to be: just another replicant - fake and artificial human.