One of the best science fiction movies of the last decade, Denis Villeneuve’s incredible Blade Runner 2049 laid the foundation for the fantastic director to continue down the path of excellent sci-fi filmmaking, culminating in his two Academy Award-nominated adaptations of Frank Herbert's seminal novel Dune. The film features some of the most stunning cinematography, fantastic music and sound design and patiently brilliant storytelling in recent cinema history, continuing to chronicle the evolution of robotic artificial intelligence and the implications that these life forms would have on a futuristic world.

One thing that stands above all in Blade Runner 2049 is the performances, pairing legendary actors like Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford and Robin Wright with relative newcomers like Ana de Armas, Mackenzie Davis and Sylvia Hoeks to create one of the most stacked casts in recent films. But arguably the stand-out performance in the film comes from wrestler turned actor Dave Bautista, who delivers a fantastic one-scene role that has cemented him as the best in the small category of actors who transitioned from the World Wrestling Entertainment to the big screen.

Professional wrestlers crossing over into acting in feature-length films is not a new phenomenon, with some of the highest-grossing actors of recent years starting their careers in the WWE. Though many of these wrestlers-turned-actors begin as fairly generic action stars, there is a more dominant emergence of series or hilarious performances coming from wrestlers.

A few of the most notable and best examples of professional wrestlers in big screen movies were "Rowdy" Roddy Piper's leading role in the fantastic John Carpenter film They Live and legendary French strongman André the Giant in the classic fantasy comedy The Princess Bride. But in recent years, some wrestlers have broken out beyond the bounds of a singular memorable performance and become some of the most successful actors of the last decade.

And after a shaky start in middling action fare like The Marine, John Cena has become one of the most interesting movie stars currently working, with television series like Peacemaker and movies like Trainwreck and Barbie highlighting his comedic chops.

The most interesting wrestler-to-actor story is absolutely Dave Bautista, whose work in film has been far more varied and interesting than many of his peers. Gaining significant recognition for playing Drax the Destroyer in the Guardians of the Galaxy films, Bautista immediately proved that he had the capacity to not only perform in highly choreographed action sequences but as a comedic actor as well.

But what makes Bautista's career so much more fascinating is that, mixed in with star vehicles like Stuber and My Spy, he is focused on exploring more dramatic and theatrical work with some of the biggest and best directors in the entertainment industry. Bautista's recent work with M. Night Shyamalan on the horror film Knock at the Cabin and voice-dubbing performance in Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece The Boy and the Heron prove that he is determined to curate relationships with talents from across filmmaking. And nowhere is that partnership more apparent than in his work with Denis Villeneuve, director of some of the best hard science-fiction in recent memory.

Bautista and Villeneuve's relationship began with an incredible one-scene performance in the beginning of Blade Runner 2049, where Bautista plays a replicant named Sapper Morton who has been hiding out on a protean farm for a few decades. When the replicant Blade Runner K, a cop played by Ryan Gosling whose job is to hunt down rouge replicants, finds Morton, the two have a conversation that sets the tone and themes for the entire film.

This scene is provocative not only because it sets up the rest of the film, leading K down a path in which he eventually breaks free of what he has been told to do in order to help a father connect with his long-lost daughter, but because the interplay between Bautista and Gosling is so electric. Bautista simmers with a low level of anger that is palpable before an explosive attempt to stop K shows that he is just as powerful as his hulking demeanor suggests.