‘Blade Runner’ sequel a siren song for director
New ‘Black Panther’ footage gets standing ovation
SAN DIEGO, July 23, (RTRS): Canadian director Denis Villeneuve had fended off numerous requests to direct big-budget sequels until he was approached to make a follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 neo-noir sci-fi film “Blade Runner.”
“I accepted to do ‘Blade Runner’ because it was meaningful,” Villeneuve, the director of last year’s cerebral alien sci-fi film “Arrival,” told Reuters.
“The resonance of the first movie in my life, the love I have for it, it’s worth it to take that risk,” he added.
“Blade Runner 2049,” in theaters on Oct. 6, will pick up 30 years after the events of the first movie, when human-like robots were hunted by police in a dystopian Los Angeles.
“We created a world that is an extension of the first movie, a projection of its future, where some laws and some rules will be in relationship with the first movie and not with today,” Villeneuve said.
The first film followed Harrison Ford as “blade runner” Rick Deckard, an expert on hunting the humanoid Replicant robots living on earth illegally, against a backdrop of a futuristic Los Angeles depicted as a hybrid of Eastern and Western cultural influences.
In a new trailer released this week, the sequel returns to a dystopian California after the ecosystem has broken down, where a Los Angeles police officer (Ryan Gosling) stumbles upon a secret that could jeopardize society and seeks out Deckard, who has been missing for 30 years.
Villeneuve, Ford and Gosling were joined by other cast members on Saturday at San Diego’s annual Comic-Con as they discussed the sequel and debuted new footage that showed a world where Replicants and humans live alongside each other, but not in harmony.
“The original film explored the ethics of the creation of the Replicants and their utility and we further developed those themes in this story,” Ford said.
Villeneuve told Reuters that he had worked with Ford to evolve the character of Deckard.
Melancholia
“There’s a melancholia that I like in the first movie that we kept alive in Deckard, and something taciturn, not someone who talks a lot, and a sadness to the character that is there and existential doubt,” the director said.
The sequel will stay close to the original film’s themes of identity and memory, Villeneuve added.
“I don’t think the movie will necessarily say interesting things about our future, apart from the fact we’re still there, but it’ll say things about today, for sure,” he said.
Who was happier to see new “Black Panther” footage at San Diego Comic-Con: The fans or the cast?
It was a close call as the audience in Hall H on Saturday leapt to its feet, while the star-studded ensemble grinned and joined together for a group hug. The moderator of Marvel’s panel on Saturday, Chris Hardwick, informed the crowd that the stars had just seen the fresh film footage for the first time as well. Basically, it was loud.
Director Ryan Coogler introduced the footage, which was for the Comic-Con crowd’s eyes only, following a brief Q&A with a long lineup of cast members, including Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis.
The scene opened in a high-end poker room. Boseman, Nyong’o, and Gurira’s characters whisper as Serkis arrives to negotiate a deal with Freeman.
“Don’t worry, they’re just here to gamble,” Serkis says of his cronies. Then to Freeman, “Did you bring the diamonds?”
Serkis, who has one prosthetic arm in the film, pulls something marked “fragile” out from the fly of his pants. One of the cronies hears Gurira’s character, Okoye, whisper too loud, and the action-packed portion of the scene begins.
Okoye pulverizes her attackers with a golden spear, and at one point tosses her wig in one man’s face. Serkis begins shooting at Boseman, while Nyong’o opens fire as well.