Why Duncan Jones' Mute Fails in a Post-Blade Runner World

Duncan Jones’ 2009 film Moon heralded the arrival of fresh and exciting voice in the science fiction genre. The film was smart, thought-provoking, and paid homage to its cinematic forefathers (most notably 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris) without being too derivative. Jones would make a follow up film that hurdled over the sophomore slump like an espresso-fueled cheetah two years later with Source Code, a fresh take on the notion of being stuck in a time loop (think Groundhog’s Day, but way sadder).

Jones was two for two in the hearts of critics and genre fans alike, but five years later, the filmmaker’s batting average would take a pretty steep dive with Warcraft, the film adaption of the massively popular video game series from Blizzard Entertainment. The movie was met with lackluster reviews and less-than-stellar box office returns in North America. (The film did very well overseas and broke box office records all over the globe, however.)

INTERVIEW: Duncan Jones Speaks Out About His Netflix Sci-Fi Film, Mute

While there were plenty of redeemable aspects of Warcraft (we’ve never seen an orc throw a horse at someone before, so there’s that), fans of Jones were pleased as punch when he announced his return to the science fiction genre with his passion project Mute, a film that was being presented as being a companion piece to his freshman film, Moon. After years of teasing production updates on social media, Mute has finally arrived to Netflix and it’s… well… not great.

Here’s the Thing…

If Jones’ first two films are any indication, he is a director who loves to take classic science fiction tropes and retell them in interesting ways with an extremely talented small cast. Just because everything under the sun has been done, doesn’t mean you can’t do it well and make it entertaining. With Mute, Jones decided to tackle the neo-noir, cyberpunk aesthetic that films like Blade Runner and the novels of William Gibson honed to perfection. But in doing so, he was unable to find the structural balance of the story that made both Moon and Source Code work so well. That is to say, Mute simultaneously became beholden to its premise, while disregarding the tropes of the genre it wanted to play in.

Mute tries to be a noir detective film, but it doesn’t care about the hallmarks of the genre. Typically in noir, the story closely follows the protagonist. This is why several noir/hard boiled crime novels are written in the first person narrative. There isn’t a moment we aren’t with the detective or in their head. We, as readers, are discovering things along with our hero. When they get new information, we get new information.

Understandably, noir films don’t always adhere to this guideline. Film is a visual medium and sometimes it’s hard to convey internal struggles or the emotional weight certain characters may bare on the protagonist without a little divergence from the detective’s trail. A prime example of this would be the little asides Blade Runner took to focus on some of the Nexus-6 replicants without Deckard holding the audience’s hands.

But the asides in Blade Runner (and its stellar sequel Blade Runner 2049) were brief and gave a little more levity to some of the characters who our hero saw as villains. Mute decides to take some similar digressions with the protagonists, but instead of small glimpses into their motivations, they add up to an entire B plot that does little to develop the larger narrative and ultimately takes the wind out of our hero’s sails, thus leaving the audience wondering why we should give a hoot about the big mystery of the film in the first place.

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Look, Alexander Skarsgård is a charismatic actor with incredible range, but he isn’t given much to work with as the mute Amish bartender, Leo. While it may seem like a novel idea to make the protagonist of your film completely speechless, it just simply does not translate to film without some window dressing. There is a way to make this work and it comes in the form of a hardboiled trope that can either make or break a film noir: voiceover narration.

The central mystery of Mute is the disappearance of Leo’s girlfriend, which means that the focus of the film should be his investigation. With Leo being completely voiceless, we should have to rely on supporting characters to supply information and convey how our hero is starting to connect the dots. Sadly, we don’t get any of this. Instead, we get a few strange encounters with random villainous characters, some strange dreams, and a reveal that comes much too early. As hokey as it sounds, a classic film noir voiceover may have saved Mute’s dreary pacing and storytelling.

Style Over Substance

One of the biggest criticisms of Mute is that it seems like a Blade Runner knock off, which it isn’t -- at least, not where it counts. Blade Runner should be seen as a template for aesthetics, but not for narratives. While the story of the 1982 film is pretty simplistic (it was only after the Director’s Cut of the film that the ambiguous ending gained any real traction), it showed a world that audiences had never seen before. Many films, television shows, and video games have since tried to replicate it with varying degrees of success. The ones that work usually focus on the characters and not their surroundings. Here’s a fun game: take a drink every time a drone food delivery is referenced.

Mute feels like a product of an extremely talented director who was never instructed to kill his darlings. With an interesting premise, a strong leading man, and enough visual flare, all the pieces were there to make Mute a truly interesting film that plays within a boundaries of a tired film genre. But sadly, Mute cannot the whole to live up to the sum of its parts. It’s a sloppy sketch of a potentially good film, muddled by being too derivative and populated by unlikable characters.

But despite this misstep, we are still excited to see what Duncan Jones up his sleeve. The ambition of his cinematic vision is always strong and his sense of place within his films is undeniable. The failings of Mute should not deter anyone from seeking out original stories in science fiction films, even if they don’t live up to your expectations.

Mute is now available for streaming on Netflix.