Blade Runner 2049 is a visually stunning masterpiece. It’s an epic sci-fi adventure, and an exceptional follow up to its 25 year-old predecessor. However, as many have pointed out, it’s long. Very long. In fact, Blade Runner 2049 is nearly three hours long.
As it turns out, one (if not the most) important person in the Blade Runner universe agrees. Ridley Scott, director of the first Blade Runner film, spoke recently with Vulture and offered his honest thoughts about the film. “I have to be careful what I say. I have to be careful what I say,” he says. “It was f***ing way too long. F*** me! And most of that script’s mine.“
It should be noted that Scott isn’t credited as a writer on the film. He’s an executive producer, but claims he contributed a great deal to the writing process on Blade Runner 2049. “I sit with writers for an inordinate amount of time and I will not take credit, because it means I’ve got to sit there with a tape recorder while we talk,” he explains. “I can’t do that to a good writer. But I have to, because to prove I’m part of the actual process, I have to then have an endless amount [of proof], and I can’t be bothered.“
To further elaborate, the director says he’s responsible for the creation of Joi (Ana de Armas), the holographic girlfriend of K (Ryan Gosling), and the very backbone of the plot.
“The big idea comes from Blade Runner. Tyrell is a trillionaire, maybe 5 to 10 percent of his business is AI. Like God, he has created perfect beings that, for all intents and purposes, there is no telling the difference from humans. Then he says, ‘You know what? I’m going to create an AI. I’ll have a male and female, they will not know that they’re both AIs, I’ll have them meet each other, they will fall in love, they will consummate, and they will have a child.’ That’s the first film,” Scott says. “The second film is, what happens to the baby? You’ve got to have the baby, you can’t have the mother, so the mother has to inexplicably die four months after she breastfeeds. The bones are found in the box at the foot of the tree–that’s all me.“
Unfortunately, in the end, even Scott’s contributions couldn’t make the movie the financial success it deserved to be. While being met with critical acclaim, the 2049 sequel performed below expectations at the box office, taking in $91.5 million in the United States and Canada. Worldwide, Blade Runner 2049 grossed $258.2 million.
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