Blade RunneR 2049’s Box office
Should the publicity have publicised a little more?
While shooting Blade Runner 2049, Jared Leto wore sight-limiting contacts to get under the skin of the blind Niander Wallace. Sadly, American audiences were less willing to follow the journey of Ryan Gosling’s K partially plot-blind. Despite deservedly rapturous reviews, Denis Villeneuve’s sumptuous, searching sequel replicated its predecessor’s box-office burp, begging a question: did the publicity not light the way enough for newcomers to follow?
True, the 1982 original grew cult legs after its box-office miss. But 2049’s returns ($223m worldwide, to date, on a $150m budget, premarketing) suggest not everyone has spent decades debating Deckard’s identity. 2049 reaches beyond that issue, but its publicity left potential viewers with little to hang on. Gosling and Harrison Ford, though charming, certainly didn’t give interviewers much.
So, K’s nature was a repli-can’t-tellanyone secret, as was his discovery.
Though the latter plot point should have remained secret, audiences perhaps needed something to draw them in, beyond a La La Land-ish ivory-tickling tease for Gos-watchers and some eye-ravishing worldbuilding. Without much story to hand, newcomers’ memory implants surely remained unsparked by back-referencing trailer lines such as, “Things were simpler then.” Most ticket sales went to men over 25, who might always have seen it anyway.
The ameliorating take-away from the secrecy is that 2049 remained pure for fans in a climate where lots of trailers tease every act in a film. As Villeneuve said, “People want to know too many things before.” And revealing trailers aren’t always bankers: Alien: Covenant under-performed, despite hatching its non-plot and prime shocks pre-release.
For wider non-initiates, perhaps 2049 would always have been a tricky sell. Long films don’t always flop, so size alone can’t be to blame. But the combination of time commitment and ambient dust around the plot with a dark vision, deep mythologies, divided opinions on the female roles, and a doleful Gos perhaps didn’t help its break-out chances.
However you cut it, that box-office miss saddens because studios don’t often risk sci-fi visions this thrillingly far-reaching. In short? Don’t expect to find out what happened to Deck’s dog in a hurry now.
‘it remained pure in a climate where trailers tease every act’