Well, it’s happened. They made it. One of the most cherished science fiction films ever, noted especially for its wonderful ambiguity, is getting a sequel. If you can’t tell I’m not to enthused. I just see far too many ways that this could screw up something that was so good on its own. Ridley Scott has promised that the movie isn’t going to answer the big questions from the original, but Hollywood isn’t so much into making ambiguous films at the moment so I’m finding that hard to swallow.
The first trailer probably won’t help us one way or another in determining the answer to that, but it does at least let us know that director Denis Villeneuve will be making things look great once again. If there is any hope that Blade Runner 2049 holds a candle to the original it is because they picked up Villeneuve to direct. Arrival has shown that he knows how to handle a thinking-man’s sci-fi.
And yet, it still feels cheap. Maybe it’s because we live in a world of sequels and so any sequel feels cheap, but I just can’t get excited. The plot description doesn’t do much to help as it’s pretty milk toast.
Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.
Also, in a weird way, we’re no longer on a science fiction bent, but instead an alternate reality story. Since this is a sequel to a film set in 2019 and the world will clearly not be like the original Blade Runner in 2019 then that means this whole series takes place in some other timeline.
