K is a new Blade Runner for the Los Angeles police department. After K kills a rogue replicant he sees a dead tree in that replicant’s area with a date carved on it, 6-10-21. That date is very familiar to K and brings back a memory of his. A box of bones is dug up from underneath that tree. Scientists examine the bones and identify them as Rachael, a experimental replicant designed by Dr. Tyrell. Rachel died while giving birth to a child. K continues to investigate because he curious to know what the date means and who the child is. He goes to a orphanage located in a junk yard to see if there are any records, but there aren’t any. He does however find a wooden toy horse that is the same one from his memory. K has the horse examined and it leads him to the ruins of Las Vegas where he finds a former Blade Runner, Rick Deckard.
James: The replicants were slaves created to do the jobs that humans were unable or unwilling to do. They're ability to absorb a lot of punishment makes them perfect for the hazards of deep space exploration exo-planet mining or as sex slaves for the satiation of most human desires. Being replicas of human beings they form emotional attachments and can perform just about any act that humans can. In so far as the actual biological people believe they are just robots that happen to resemble humans. But their creator Dr. Eldon Tyrrell wanted to push the bounderies of the human/mechanicel organism so he imbude them with the ability to think for themselves. They eventually start to develop sentience. In the Duex Ex Machina phylosophy are they now living or extremely smart machines.
As in any sentient life form there desire to decide they're own future, hence the craving for freedom from the oppression of human tyranny. They eventually revolt and in their quest for freedom they have become human.
Blaine: The reason why it took so long for there to be a second “Blade Runner” movie is because they needed a really good script to tell the story. It had to be worthy enough to continue what happens next. Denis Villeneuve knew that “Blade Runner 2049” was a project he had to do because he has always been a fan of “Blade Runner” and he didn’t want anyone else to fuck it up. Denis wanted to give “Blade Runner 2049” everything. The first thing Denis Villeneuve wanted to figure out was the look of the film and he started that off with cinematographer Roger Jenkins and production designer Dennis Gassner. Denis was also able to get a team of artists and designers who loved the first “Blade Runner” and everyone felt that this project was going to be a challenge because they wanted the movie to look really good. Denis wanted “Blade Runner 2049” to honor the original “Blade Runner”, but at the same time be something completely new. Denis is not a fan of green screen, he wanted everything to be a real environment and so they built these giant sets.
The look of the first “Blade Runner” Ridley Scott based off of bad days in London. People would ask why it was always raining and snowing in the first “Blade Runner" and Ridley said because that’s what he wanted. In this film the year 2049 is made to look like the worst days of Beijing. Everything is dark and it rains and snows a lot just like the first movie. It’s like global warming destroyed nature. Bibi’s Bar is the center of the underworld society and it’s the only place you see a lot of different colors.
Denis gave cinematographer Roger Jenkins a lot of freedom on how to shoot the movie the way he wanted because he has a lot of experience in cinematography. Roger gave himself challenges for how these moving images should look. Roger used water for a great effect. Roger wanted Jared Leto’s interiors to always be about moving light as though he had this sunlit interior in this artificial world. Roger searched through the web looking at different architects and the way they used light. He found this one on water on a ceiling and you put light through it and you get wonderful caustics. Roger did a lot of reflections with water. Roger wanted Wallace’s place to be warm and have a moving light on the ceiling.
They had to think about how Las Vegas would look like in the year 2049, but it was clear it had to look like it was hit by a dirty bomb. Denis decided to bring in Syd Mead, the concept artist who created the world of “Blade Runner”, design the look of Las Vegas. Las Vegas is smog and the atmosphere is less dense so there is much more sunlight. The whole tint of Las Vegas is orange.
There’s a scene in the casino where K runs into a dark room that used to be a show room with holograms of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Vegas dancers. The lights and the holograms glitch when Rick turns everything on. Roger Jenkins spent weeks finding different lighting patterns for that scene.
Denis Villeneuve wanted to put together a great ensemble for “Blade Runner 2049”. Ryan Gosling was the first person in mind for everyone who was apart of the project. Replicants are seen as second class citizens by humans and Blade Runners aren’t that popular because they kill their own kind. Because K is a Blade Runner he isn’t accepted by humanity.
Screenwriter Hampton Fancher had an idea for a new character that is an existential hero who doesn’t quite belong and he grew fascinated with that character so he thought about the story focussing on him a lot and discovering something about himself. Hampton knew that a character like K was meant for Ryan Gosling and so he wrote the part for him. Hampton told Ridley Scott that he had Ryan Gosling in mind as he was developing the script. Ridley was ok with that because a few years ago he met Ryan and Ridley told him that another “Blade Runner” was in works. Ryan has always been a “Blade Runner” fan and he was curious to know how the story was going to continue after Ridley informed him that another one was in works. Ryan was honored to be apart of a project that would show more to the “Blade Runner” story.
Denis Villeneuve went to places like Europe, Cuba and the United States to find the right actresses for “Blade Runner 2049”. He wanted faces that people aren’t familiar with and he was very happy to find talented and powerful women. It’s very interesting that K’s love interest is a hologram instead of being a human. Ana de Armas is a Cuban actress and the producers saw her in a movie about Roberto Duran called “Hands of Stone”. They thought someone like Ana would be perfect for “Blade Runner 2049” because she looked alluring onscreen. Ana was curious to know what type of character Joi is after she was offered the part. She wanted to know everything about her. Joi is a hologram with artificial intelligence and her main goal is to keep K company. K isn’t well liked by people because he is a Blade Runner and that’s why he has Joi. There is different versions of her out on the streets as advertisements, but K’s version is very special to him because she listens and understands. K shares his most personal secrets to her. K doesn’t really give a shit if she’s a hologram because she is the only one who accepts him for who he is. K is very nice to Joi. He downloads her onto a device that allows her to go wherever he goes as long as he has the device with him because the first time you meet Joi the only place she can move around is K’s apartment and that’s it. Now she can be around K more when he is on a mission. Both K and Joi are very much in love with each other. Luv destroys Joi and sometime after that, K is out on the streets and comes across this giant pink hologram that resembles Joi on the outside, but is nothing like who she used to be. K is depressed because he has lost the love of his life and he misses her.
Luv is created by Wallace and he is everything to her. She has these feelings and emotions that she doesn’t understand, but she knows that she wants to obey Wallace and not disappoint him at all. She focusses on being the best replicant for Wallace. She is also like a killing machine. Sylvia Hoeks sent in an audition tape and Denis and the producers were very blown away by her performance. She showed that the character is threatening, powerful, tough and serious. Sylvia transformed the character into something completely new compared to what she was going to be at first. Originally Luv was going to be single-dimensional, but Sylvia turned her into a multi-dimensional deeply layered character. Luv acts like a 12 year old at times because she is dealing with a lot of issues that she doesn’t understand about the world because she wasn’t constructed with emotions in her memory.
Next to Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Davis was another actor in mind at the beginning. Denis Villeneuve knew how talented Mackenzie was and he really wanted to work with her. When Denis read the script he had one of the characters in mind for Mackenzie and he felt that it was the perfect chance for him to get to work with her. Mackenzie didn’t care which part she got or if it was going to be a big or small part because this movie was very exciting for her to be apart of. As a matter of fact when she started a career in acting she let her agents know that if there ever was going to be another “Blade Runner” movie she would want to be apart of it. Mackenzie loved her character, Mariette, and thought she was interesting. She also felt that Mariette was from the world of “Blade Runner”. Mariette starts off as someone snooping around K on what he knows. She is also a prostitute, but then later on in the movie you find out that she was acting undercover, she is very nice and working for the good guys. Mackenzie is happy that her character is in the same group as other iconic female characters in the “Blade Runner” franchise.
Carla Juri is from Switzerland and Denis saw something out of her that he doesn’t see in other actors. She has done a lot of movies in Europe, but Denis wanted to give her a big breakthrough. Carla's character, Dr. Ana Stelline, is in charge of making memories for replicants. She spends her life in wide open space seeing holograms of memories and she makes memories for herself because imagination is an escape from confinement. Dr. Ana Stelline has this device to control the memory holograms and it reminds me of some of my dad’s camera equipment like a focus puller. The device has many moving parts that can move at a fast and slow speed. Carla Juri spent a lot of time playing with the prop.
Robin Wright got a call asking if she would be interested in being in “Blade Runner 2049” and she said “yes, come on let’s do it!” Robin plays K’s boss, Lieutenant Joshi, and she and Denis wanted to develop her as a strong force and Robin brought a lot of that to her performance. She was an incredible presence on screen.
While K is on his investigation, he crashes into a junk yard that is south of the city. K finds an orphanage in that junk yard run by a guy named Mr. Cotton. Mr. Cotton was once a school teacher, but then everything went to hell for him and now he looks after thousands of kids in this orphanage. He is hard on the children sometimes, but other times he is carrying. When Lennie James (The Walking Dead) came onboard to play Mr. Cotton there were some changes added to the character compared to how he was written on the script. He was more brutish, more like a warlord, but they turned him into someone who is more affected by his environment. He is more of a damaged man.
Denis needed the character, Sapper, to be big and dangerous. Since Dave Bautista started a career in acting he has been going for character roles that are interesting to him. Being apart of “Blade Runner 2049” was something completely new for him. Denis knew that Dave was a charismatic and strong presence, but the thing was the character was supposed to be an older man in his late 50s or early 60s. Denise wanted Dave Bautista bad and so he thought about Dave going through a makeup test to see if they could age him. So the makeup department made Dave look older and it was a complete success.
Denis hired Jared Leto to play the villain of the movie, Niander Wallace, the man in charge of creating the replicants. Niander Wallace would be a challenging character for any actor to play because he is blind and yet he knows what direction he is going in and who he is talking to. Jared Leto was up for the challenge because it would be for a “Blade Runner” movie and he is a talented actor. Jared wore these contacts that made it hard for him to see. People on set like Denis would escort him around so that he could know where he was supposed to be. Jared gets into character fast and he really acted blind on set. Jared knows someone who is blind. His name is Chris and Jared found the Wallace character through him. Jared spent a lot of time with Chris learning his body movement and how he manages to take care of things himself without having any eye site.
Harrison Ford put “Blade Runner” behind him after it was released and thought he would never return to it until Ridley Scott called him in 2013 asking if he would be interested in revisiting his character, Rick Deckard. Harrison Ford didn’t know what to think about that at first. The first thing he wanted to know was if there was a script. The script was still in works, but Ridley gave Harrison some info what the idea for the second film was about and Harrison was fascinated by that. Harrison found it even more fascinating when he read the fully finished script and so he was in. While they were shooting the fight scene between K and Rick Deckard, Harrison accidentally hit Ryan Gosling for real. Rick Deckard isn’t mentioned or thought of until K finds him in Las Vegas and learns that he is the father of Rachael’s child.
Sean Young was credited for being in the movie even though she was only in there for a minute and 41 seconds. Wallace makes a clone version of her character, Rachael, thinking Rick Deckard will confess all that he knows to it about his child, but Rick is not fooled by it, so Wallace has Luv shoot her in the head. “Rogue One” became an inspiration after using digital effects to bring back actors who are dead like Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher and making Carrie look 19 again. They did that with Rachael for “Blade Runner 2049”. The visual effects department would look through a lot of footage of Sean Young when she was in the first “Blade Runner” and pay close attention to all her facial expressions. Someone would perform as Rachael on set with some black dots painted on her face. They also dressed her up and styled her hair to look like Sean Young in the first “Blade Runner”. Later the visual effects department would digitally take away the head and replace it with the digital version of Sean Young’s head that they spent a lot of time on. Sean Young came in just to do some facial expressions in front of a camera while they were doing tests for their digital version of Rachael and that was it.
Audiences thought that K was Deckard and Rachael’s son. Even K thought he was their son, but there is a twist because not only is K not their son, but the child is a different gender. The real child is Dr. Ana Stelline, the woman in charge of memories. I guess that the screenwriters, Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, felt that it would be too obvious if they made K the son of Rick Deckard so they added a twist and had Ana be the child instead.
“Blade Runner 2049” is so original and my rating on it is five out of five stars
Music by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch
Ana de Armas, Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling and Sylvia Hoeks at Comic-Con 2017
