The long-awaited followup to Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 tale of killer androids and the detective who hunts them, has begun to gather steam as it nears its October 6th release date. Adapting the works of legendary science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick have always had mixed results, with the original Blade Runner being the undisputed zenith of success. (Dick himself was famously pleased with the raw footage of the film that was screened for him shortly before his death.) Can lightning really strike twice in the form of a completely original sequel?
The new trailer certainly looks loaded with all the mystery that made the original so gripping. We see the new protagonist played by Ryan Gosling looking progressively beaten up as events escalate. Then there is Jared Leto as a disturbing cyborg who has seemingly taken over for the late Eldon Tyrell (played by Joe Turkell in Blade Runner) as the creator of the almost-human Replicants. There is even a glimpse of The Walking Dead star Lennie James in some kind of post-apocalyptic refugee camp that confirms this mechanized world of the future is truly not as advanced as it seems. But the greatest clues are raised by Deckard himself (Harrison Ford) who insists that in the years following the end of Blade Runner he was being hunted. But by whom? With all the antagonists from the original film dead, who or what could scare the hardened android killer into a life of hiding? Blade Runner 2049 promises to deliver tons of action in the process of answering that question. And with Leto’s character waxing poetic about civilizations built by slaves it seems that the questions of existence and freedom that haunted the first tale have their hooks set firmly in this set of events as well.
Of course the biggest questions of the Blade Runner universe certainly won’t be answered just yet – namely whether Deckard himself is truly human and what his ultimate fate will be. Tyrell claimed that a Replicant cannot be given more life, but if this trailer is any indication, Blade Runner 2049 isn’t going to be about slowing down.
