Blade Runner 2: What Can We Expect?
Blade Runner 2, the belated, intriguing follow-up to Ridley Scott’s SF masterpiece has been confirmed for January 12th, 2018.
Sicario's Denis Villeneuve is the man directing, working from a script by Alien: Covenant's Michael Green and original Runner co-writer Hampton Fancher – with Ridley Scott serving as executive producer.
The film will see the return of Harrison Ford alongside Ryan Gosling in an undisclosed role.
So far, the plot is being kept under wraps but we’ve opened our Voight-Kampt machine, and, please, Come in. Sit down. Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention as we look for clues to what lies ahead.
Is he or isn’t he?
The origami elephant in the room is undoubtedly the true nature of Deckard: is he human or is a dancer? No wait, is he a replicant? It’s a huge part of Blade Runner’s legacy and understandably, journalists are keen to ask director Denis Villeneuve what his approach will be.
“The thing I must say is that I love mystery. I love shadows. I love doubts. I would just want to say to the fans that we will take care of that mystery. I will take care of it.”
The quote seems to suggest that we won’t get a definitive, firm answer; extending that sense of ambiguity and mystery – although that doesn’t mean that he won’t allude to answer. We hope that loose sense of logic – of a world beyond the characters in front of us – is retained.
All of which is in direct contradiction to a statement made by original director Ridley Scott in 2007 where he told the New York Times:
“Yes, he’s a replicant. He was always a replicant.”
So much for mystery…
The Opening Shot
Blade Runner has a pretty spectacular opening – the smog filled, neon drenched cityscape, a vast sea of beautifully crafted decay spreading as far as the eye can see. However, it wasn’t always that way.
Years ago, Ridley Scott teased the original opening – complete with storyboards featuring a Deckard modelled on Dustin Hoffman, the original choice for Deckard – where he has an encounter with ‘The Man’ on the flatlands of the ‘factory farm’.
Explaining his vision, Scott told the audience at a discussion on filmmaking at the AFI Festival last year, just how he intends to open Blade Runner 2 with something very similar.
“We decided to start the film off with the original starting block of the original film. We always loved the idea of a dystopian universe, and we start off at what I describe as a ‘factory farm’ – what would be a flat land with farming. Wyoming.
“Flat, not rolling – you can see for 20 miles. No fences, just plowed, dry dirt. Turn around and you see a massive tree, just dead, but the tree is being supported and kept alive by wires that are holding the tree up. It’s a bit like Grapes of Wrath, there’s dust, and the tree is still standing. By that tree is a traditional, Grapes of Wrath-type white cottage with a porch. Behind it at a distance of two miles, in the twilight, is this massive combine harvester that’s fertilizing this ground. You’ve got 16 Klieg lights on the front, and this combine is four times the size of this cottage.
“And now a spinner [a flying car] comes flying in, creating dust. Of course, traditionally chased by a dog that barks, the doors open, a guy gets out and there you’ve got Rick Deckard. He walks in the cottage, opens the door, sits down, smells stew, sits down and waits for the guy to pull up to the house to arrive. The guy’s seen him, so the guy pulls the combine behind the cottage and it towers three stories above it, and the man climbs down from a ladder – a big man. He steps onto the balcony and he goes to Harrison’s side. The cottage actually [creaks]; this guy’s got to be 350 pounds. I’m not going to say anything else – you’ll have to go see the movie.”
You can see why Scott has such a keen eye for detail.
The original script – as featured in the essential Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner by Michael Salmon – sees Deckard introduce himself, and then shoot ‘The Man’. The Blade Runner then removes the dead guys jaw, revealing that it was a replicant he killed.
Now, judging the fact the Scott has described the man’s weight, we’re guessing that between Deckard bursting in and the shot being fired, we’re going to get an action scene – perhaps something akin to the Roy Batty fight in Sebastian’s apartment.
That is, if it’s Deckard at all – if you remember, Deckard isn’t the handiest when it comes to tackling replicants (hence the shocking one-shot kill of the original draft), here’s hoping he isn’t made into a hero purely because of who is playing him and what he’s done in the intervening years – it could very well be the new boy, Ryan Gosling going toe to toe with synthetic life.
Future Echoes
Perhaps the biggest wish on our list is that we get a film that genuinely looks to the future from the present day – in much the same way the original had big ideas about our place in the world to come, we want a movie that isn’t afraid to tackle the sins of today in it’s futurescape.
Of course, Blade Runner also got a hell of a lot wrong too, and that should be embraced too. The infamous ‘curse of Blade Runner’ which saw many of the companies featured in prominent product placement either go bust or fall on hard times, shouldn’t be ignored either – let’s have lots of brands take that curse on!
Also, technology has moved on, filmmaking has fully embraced an entirely new way of creating special effects in the intervening years but, let’s not lose the charm of the original – as Star Wars: The Force Awakens showed, there’s a right way to balance the new with the old – let’s retain some of those beautiful models and rotting sets of the original. Let’s have input from original conceptual artist Syd Mead and practical effects from Douglas Trumbell.
And while we’re calling on old friends, let’s get composer Vangelis back too!
Right The First Time
Between studio interference and Scott’s own tinkering, there are currently five official versions of Blade Runner. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get it right first time – here’s hoping its perfect straight out of the box.