The Paradigm Shift Problem in Science Fiction Movies: How Will Blade Runner 2049 Solve It?

A paradigm shift is a plot twist that changes the setting and therefore the whole meaning of what the characters are doing. Science fiction suffers uniquely from this because it's unique in having paradigm shifts (the rare action movie notwithstanding.) In Alien, we find that the crew is not dealing just with a face-crab, but with a predator that bursts from people's stomachs. In V, it's that the friendly human-like aliens are literal cold-blooded reptiles. In the Matrix, it's that we're all in a simulation. In Star Wars it's that Darth Vader is Luke's father - a bit more like a traditional plot twist, but still profound.

When a movie depends on the paradigm shifts for its money shot, what do you do to keep the fires burning? You could either make an entirely different reveal in the next movie - and that's hard. You can just keep having things bursting out of people's stomachs (boring!) or just have, I don't know, the personification of the Matrix reveal you know, a little bit more (so lame!) Or, you could add a whole NEW paradigm shift. That's difficult and dangerous. Not only are good paradigm shifts are hard to come by, but introduce a new one, and suddenly you've changed the whole tone, and it no longer seems like a movie from that franchise. This is hardly ever done, although Highlander 2 does come to mind, and it was so bad that Highlander 3 ignored it as essentially un-canonical.

Of course audiences are getting smarter, and harder to please, as we see the man behind the curtain, because we're saturated in media and we've become a bit too savvy and aware of how plot structures work and we roll our eyes at call-backs (Sarah Connor telling Kyle Reese "come with me if you want to live", WOW! I can't believe that it's reversed now!) The innovation here is the J.J. Abrams trick of making the characters aware of their past and having them consciously do the call-backs - Kylo Ren looking at Vader's helmet - and possibly even having the reversed Vader-Luke interaction, and having the bad son succeed in killing the good father.

I'm nervous about Blade Runner 2049 running into the same problem, but there's a difference, and here I'm afraid the title of the post is a little misleading. Blade Runner kind of doesn't have to solve the paradigm shift problem. Blade Runner doesn't rely on "Is Deckard a replicant?!?" for its punch to the same degree that the franchises above do. Its success is in the overall tone set by the first movie, so Villeneuve isn't as trapped into focusing on the paradigm shift as the core of the story. The Fifth Element was probably the movie that was at its debut most compared to Blade Runner, and the film-making is such that, if it has a sequel, it also won't be forced to make such difficult no-win writing decisions. The new short that takes place in 2048 is obviousy a Blade Runner film, by the sound just as much as the famous vision. My main complaint is that it seems that nothing much in that world seems to have changed in 30 years. But we will see!