With all the big awards news of late, it is hard to forget that there were some movies that came out this year that everyone assumed were going to be massive hits with critics, and while not necessarily panned, did not turn out to be as beloved as their creators had hoped. At the top of many lists of course would be ‘Blade Runner: 2049,’ the sequel to Ridley Scott’s legendary 1980’s cult favorite ‘Blade Runner,’ directed by critical favorite Denis Villeneuve. Villeneuve turned in a 163 minute whopper of a film that, while gorgeous, felt exceptionally long to all but the most devout followers of the franchise. And it hurt the film in the end as it did not do well domestically at the box-office, though it made some of its money back overseas.
While speaking recently to Digital Spy, Ridley Scott spoke about ‘Blade Runner: 2049,’ and the potential for another ‘Blade Runner’ sequel despite the middling box-office returns. Scott replied with:
“I hope so…I think there is another story. I’ve got another one ready to evolve and be developed, so there is certainly one to be done for sure.”
To be fair, the story in ‘2049’ was not the weak point, though it could have been condensed to about an hour and 45 minutes instead of the sprawling epic it became. My bigger problem with Ridley Scott’s comments here is that the man of late seems to be obsessed with sequels and prequels to his own work when once he was an original thinker who brought us films like ‘Alien,’ ‘Blade Runner,’ Black Hawk Down,’ ‘Gladiator,’ ‘The Martian,’ and ‘Thelma and Louise,’ to name a few. To see him sit here and churn out all these ‘Alien’ sequels, and now start to do the same thing with ‘Blade Runner,’ it just makes me kind of sad. Especially when he is getting such diminishing returns as ‘Blade Runner: 2049’ was not the success he had hoped, neither were ‘Prometheus’ or ‘Alien: Covenant.’
At a certain point, you just want to ask the man to step away and work on something new before he completely runs these beloved franchises into the ground. Sure, you could make the argument that at least these are his franchises and if he doesn’t do it, the studios would probably end up making sequels and driving them into the ground anyway, but at least Scott would not be the one responsible. But hey, that is just my opinion. Feel free to share in the comments section below your own thoughts if you think Scott should keep going with all of his sequels.
