blade runner 2049

“Humanity cannot survive. Replicants are the future of the species, but I can only make so many,” so states Jared Leto’s Neander Wallace, the apparent heavy of the upcoming ‘Blade Runner 2049’.  The newest international trailer gives the most extended look at the long-in-the-works sequel to Ridley Scott‘s visionary 1982 classic.

The scene opens with a quiet night at home with Ryan Gosling’s Agent K, the official “Blade Runner” of this tale, and his girlfriend, who… just based on this brief clip is clearly a replicant.  But K soon finds himself in over his head, as his boss, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) assigns him to investigate Wallace, who turns out to be quite powerful.  (It was earlier revealed that Wallace supplies most of the genetically modified food for this population.)  Joshi cautions, “He’s got every gun in the city. I’ve got you.”

K soon comes to the conclusion that Wallace isn’t so much interested in rebuilding the population as possibly reducing it.  “He’s constructing an army,” he concludes.

K realizes he has one place to turn, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford).

You can check it out below:

 

Director Denis Villaneuve brings a beautiful, stylized look to this futuristic dystopia.  What’s a little disappointing is that this is clearly an artistic vision, the heavy use of desert-like sepia tones don’t jibe with Scott’s dark, noirish original film, which was slashed with eye-popping neon.  But it’s Villaneuve’s prerogative to update ‘Blade Runner’ in his vision and there are certainly some images that recall the first film.

Gosling discussed his relationship with the original, saying:

“Blade Runner was one of the first films that I saw that I didn’t know how to feel when it was over.  The line between heroes and villains was so blurred. It’s not a hero’s journey in any way. When I was a kid, that was the storyline I had seen. Thematically, there’s just so much there — it was rich, it was melancholy, it was romantic. It’s so special. So many other things have stolen ideas from it, but they could never steal its soul. I felt lucky to enter that world.”

‘Blade Runner 2049’ also stars Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, Edward James Olmos and Mackenzie Davis.  It arrives on October 6, 2017.