Blade Runner 2 shows us a beautiful, bleak future in new images
Over 30 years ago, Blade Runner set the standard for dystopian future sci-fi cinema with its hauntingly beautiful visuals, which depicted a smoggy, rainy future LA. Mixing the dazzle of neon lights and giant building-sized advertisements with the banality of seedy alleyways and peep-shows, it helped solidify our idea of the “dirty future” that would become the norm in such other classics as Alien and even Star Wars.
So it is a massive understatement, then, to say that the planned sequel, Blade Runner 2, has a lot to live up to. How do you stay consistent with the original, while still giving audiences (and sceptical fans) something new and original? Well, we now have an idea of the kind of visuals the film has in store, as some of the concept art has been shared with Entertainment Weekly (via GamesRadar).
Director Denis Villeneuve tells the magazine that the big vehicle on the left is a snow-destroying machine. He explains that the film is set in a future Los Angeles a few decades after the time of the original Blade Runner. “The climate has gone berserk,” he says. “The ocean, the rain, the snow is all toxic.”
In the second image, we see a scene that is new but clearly takes lots of inspiration from the original. Dark, smoggy city skies punctuated by urban sprawl and again, those big faces adorning entire building edifices. Villeneuve says he, like any other fan, was hooked by the original movie’s iconic opening.
“That note of music; seeing Los Angeles in 2019; that smog; that darkness. It’s really the movie that gave birth to my desire to become a director,” Villeneuve gushes. But in making his new sequel, Hampton Fancher, the screenwriter of the original film, apparently encouraged Villeneuve to also do his own thing.
Starring Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Mackenzie Davis, Ana de Armas and Harrison Ford, Blade Runner 2 is due to be released on October 6th, 2017. Rutger Hauer is not yet in the cast, but we are sending daily emails and hope to get a response soon – cross your fingers!