blade runner (2049)
Genetic technology was the focus of both movies, and indeed they cover the moral, religious and greed aspects of creating genetic slaves in depth. What surprised me specifically was the lack of imagination into just how obtrusive non-genetic technology could become. It felt more like 1982 with genetic replicants, then a whole new world in 2019 or 2049 for that matter.
In modern 2019, Deckard would have had a much easier job if the location of the replicants he was hunting was tracked automatically - after all, if they have genetic superpowers, surely you’d want to keep tabs on that? It felt like the idea of pervasive location tracking was not considered whatsoever, probably because from the context of 1982, that was just not a part of daily life; you go outside and you inherently had some privacy, nobody but you knows where you are or where you are going in the moment.
I fault the original Blade Runner less as this required a stronger sense of futurist imagination. Blade Runner 2049 has less excuse. Officer K was able to get away with pretty much anything with his own personal vehicle, or even the police vehicle, no location tracked, no questions asked. One could make the argument that this is merely consistent with the original Blade, and if that were case, I would probably agree. However, this consistency is thrown out the window when the only entity smart enough to realise that K’s location was trackable all along, was Luv, Wallace’s chief replicant, when using “Madam’s” computer towards the end of the movie. Strange thing to drop in “Oh, by the way, we do know where he is at all times, we just trust him”. Considering the premise of the Blade Runner universe, the focus on the mistrust between humans and replicants, it seems very unlikely that any world with sufficiently advanced technology would end up this way. I guess, after all, this truly is science fiction.