‘It’s my job to put my hands everywhere’
Denis Villeneuve is all over Blade Runner 2049
“There’s a bit of every artist in their work.” It’s a line from Blade Runner 2049, but it also applies to the movie itself.
The original Blade Runner in 1982 was very much director Ridley Scott’s creati on. The s equel f r om Denis Villeneuve ( Arrival, Sicario), while clearly cut from the same cloth — both feature screenplay credits by Hampton Fancher — is also clearly the work of its director.
“It’s my j ob to put my hands everywhere,” Villeneuve says when asked if he had a hand in the script or design of the new film. “The first screenplay I read was written for Ridley Scott, who is a very different film- maker. I had to adjust the screenplay to make it my own.”
It ’s worth noting that whi l e Villeneuve has worked multiple times with the same cinematographer, composer, casting agent, designer and more, he has yet to work with the same writer twice. And, since his 2010 film Incendies, he has never had a screenwriting credit. His singular style is literally beyond words.
“I did my best to protect the integrity of the story that was written,” he says of Blade Runner 2049. But he also wanted to “integrate the project with my own sensibility. I tried to bring back that beautiful melan- cholia that I loved so much in the first movie.” ( Villeneuve is a fan of both the original Blade Runner and its 2007-released Final Cut.)
His work began with storyboards. “When I storyboard a movie it’s a way to rewrite, not the main story, but the nature of the scene. You are going with images instead of words.”
Rewrites may follow, and then it’s on to the shoot. Villeneuve has high praise for his star ( and fellow Canadian) Ryan Gosling, calling him “a strong storyteller; he was a real partner with me to develop the character and find a more elegant way to approach a scene.”
He discovered that early. On about the third day of filming, Gosling had a scene i n which a disembodied voice interrogates him about his work as a Blade Runner. The actor approached the director about a way to play it. “Ryan’s idea was better than my plan,” Villeneuve recalls. “It set the bar; it was our template for the rest of the movie. That was pure science-fiction.”
After shooting comes editing. Blade Runner 2049 is a whopping two hours and 43 minutes, but Villeneuve says he never felt pressure from the producers to make it any shorter.
“It was a long editing process,” he recalls. “But it’s also because I wanted to find the right pacing, the right length. This is the ultimate cut,” he concludes, slyly alluding to the first Blade Runner’s many versions.
The director will next turn his attention to Dune, a remake of the 1984 film that proved too much for both Scott and Spain’s Alejandro Jodorowsky, and which was a box- office failure in the version finally directed by David Lynch.
But first he says he’d like a little rest.
“It was quite a journey, two years in the making, full time,” he says. The marathon only grew more hectic when the original release date of Jan. 12, 2018, was moved to Oct. 6 of this year. “I had to work seven days a week, long hours,” he says. Then he adds: “I’m not complaining. I’m just tired.”
BRING BACK THAT BEAUTIFUL MELANCHOLIA I LOVED SO MUCH IN THE FIRST MOVIE.