In Blade Runner 2049, color and visual style are used to warn about the future of environmental issues surrounding technology. The film takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, where the effect of climate change has destroyed the majority of habitable places on Earth. The film uses color and visual effects as a way to warn viewers about the very real climate threat to humanity today.
An important example of color complementing the movie's message occurs when Viewers are brought Inside a forest operating in Dr. Ana Stelline’s memory-making machine. It's the only moment in the movie where we experience a sense of natural illumination and can see nature cover up the entire screen. The brightness is quickly taken away as “K” enters and we are brought to reality. The room turns from green into a gray bubble capsule limiting a revealing simulation. The green colors of leaves and the calm bug we see, represent the world we have today, still full of nature and gorgeous plant life . The gray gloomy bubble can represent the world in the future if we keep disregarding climate change. We will be subject to a full life without our world's natural gifts. Though this only takes place for about five seconds, its impact on the film is meaningful as a tool to stun the audience, straying away from the film's natural color palette. The potential damage technology can do to natural life is fighting, if we currently don’t start taking care of it. We recognize that no natural green environment in the film world can survive given climate change based and implications, and the scene reminds us of that
Later, “K” is isolated in a LS and an uncomfortable shade of the color orange. This orange fog surrounds the frame and saturates the back of it. The color stands as a visual reminder of what society has become.
What once was Las Vegas has turned into rubble of discarded material and poor air quality . By isolating the officer, the orange is the focus of the scene, creating a sense of uneasiness. The shade of orange is uncomfortably ugly and hard to look at as the movie tries to highlight the effects of unchecked technology. The orange is an accurate representation of the potential downfall of a city like Las Vegas, a desert locked into what can be described as a climate hell.
This is further reinforced as he walks around huge, damaged, lewd statues that were once the highlight of Vegas. They are now broken and gray, signifying that the world we know in reality, full of fun and partying in Las Vegas and peaceful butterflies, could be lost and turned into a gross orange rubble pit if the world doesn’t proceed carefully with technology as in the movie
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