I will be completely honest here and risk losing credibility – I have never been a big fan of Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic BLADE RUNNER. It just didn’t do all that much for me, and maybe I need to give it another shot, since I probably haven’t watched it since I was a teenager in the late ’90s. Maybe it would work better for me now. But since I’m not currently a fan, it doesn’t mean much to me that a sequel, this fall’s BLADE RUNNER 2049, has finally been made. I don’t really care about replicants or about blade runner Rick Deckard.
There are a few things about this sequel that do interest me, though. Like the promise that it will show one of the most prominent actors of my childhood, Harrison Ford, sharing the screen with one of my favorite actors of today, Ryan Gosling, in a sci-fi noir setting. Combine that with the fact that this visually stunning sci-fi noir style will be realized through the cinematography of the legendary Roger Deakins and okay, I’ll watch the movie.
The folks over at Empire were able to get their hands on a new image from BLADE RUNNER 2049, and this image offers a glimpse of most of the things that have convinced me I need to see this movie. We have Gosling and Ford in the midst of a staredown, Ford not looking very happy at all, and they’re standing in a set that has been beautifully, colorfully lit by Deakins and his crew. Yeah, I think I could enjoy a full movie composed of visuals like this.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve from a screenplay by ALIEN: COVENANT‘s Michael Green and original BLADE RUNNER co-writer Hampton Fancher, based on a story by Fancher and Scott, BLADE RUNNER 2049 has the following synopsis:
Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (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 (Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.
Gosling and Ford are joined in the cast by Ana de Armas, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Dave Bautista, David Dastmalchian, Lennie James, Sylvia Hoeks, Carla Juri, Hiam Abbass, Barkhad Abdi, and Edward James Olmos.
The long-awaited sequel will be in theatres as of October 6, 2017.