For years, it seemed as though the future-shocked, neo-lit world of Blade Runner would never be replicated. Ridley Scott’s 1982 film may now be viewed as a crucial, even epochal vision of 21st-century dystopia, but upon its release, Blade Runner was a financial letdown, not to mention a movie that generated far-from-warm feelings from its creators: Harrison Ford was famously miserable throughout the wet, smoke-filled, delay-riddled shoot—as was Scott, who had to face off with not only anxious financiers, but also irritated crew members. The franchise’s termination date appeared to have been set before even opening weekend arrived, and Blade Runner seemed bound to exist solely as a one-and-done cult-object-slash-cautionary-tale for sci-fi savants and design lovers alike.

But Blade Runner is a movie about concealment—its plot finds Ford tracking down a loose crew of androids, or “replicants,” trying to pass as humans—and, perhaps fittingly, it took decades of posthumous VHS and pay-cable viewings in order for many of its secrets to surface. What may have seemed at first like a gorgeous, idea-overloaded, slightly poky cyber-noir soon became something far more expansive: An affecting cautionary tale about the fragility of humanity; a stark fable about corporate overreach; or a just-warm-enough love story in which human(?) desire overpowers scientifically mandated destiny. Everyone’s Blade Runner is different, and the best way to re-watch the movie is to pretend you’re seeing it for the first time with someone else’s eyes.

Which is why the just-released trailer for Blade Runner 2049 is all I need to see about this fall’s much-awaited, still-kinda-can’t-believe-this-is-happening sequel. Directed by Denis Villeneuve—whose Arrival made him the sky-walking new guru of grown-up sci-fi—and costarring Ford and Ryan Gosling, Blade Runner 2049 certainly includes a few aesthetic callbacks to Scott’s original vision: In the trailer we get a glimpse of the horizon-devouring Tyrell Corporation building; a shot of an airborne Spinner cruising below an oversized Atari logo; and, of course, Ford himself, looking a bit more grizzled as Deckard, but just as fiercely determined.

Yet such nods are all but expected in a series-reviving film like this; the real enticements in the trailer are the new characters and calamities that have been dreamed up by Villeneuve, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and screenwriters Michael Green and Hampton Fancher (the latter of whom cowrote the original). What to make, for example, of overtaxed android-creator Jared Leto, who’s clearly running some sort of replicant cannery (replicannery?) and seemingly out to get Gosling? Or of Gosling’s boss, played by Robin Wright, warning him of an impending human-replicant war? Or of that weird, gorgeous nightclub that looks as though it was imported straight from Graceland?

All those moments won’t be lost in time on the internet, where, for the next few months, every single frame of the Blade Runner 2049 trailer will be captured, cataloged, and scrutinized for plot points—all part of the standard-issue (and thoroughly joy-free) pursuit of pre-release pleasures that dominates the circa-2017 movie-blog business. I’ve trafficked in these kind of speculative spitballs myself—after all, on some days, I am the business—but in this case, I’d be much happier spending the build-up time in a virtual off-world, locked away so that I can’t learn anything more about what’s going to happen in 2049.

More than three decades after its release, the original Blade Runner still feels like one of the longest-running secrets going—a film that reveals more about your heroes, and yourself, every time those fireballs erupt and that Vangelis score flares up. Blade Runner 2049 promises the same kind of mysteries, and for once, I’d like to keep them buried for a bit. I may not be able to hide from my future for too long, of course—but then again, who does?



[WIRED]