
Okay,
so I know that the movie is still about a year away, but there is an issue that
has yet to be addressed about the new Blade
Runner sequel.
For those of you who don’t know, Blade Runner is a 1982 Ridley Scott movie starring Harrison Ford.
The movie is about a type of robot, called a replicant, that looks like a human
and is used to preform labor on off world colonies. Harrison Ford plays Rick
Deckard, a Blade Runner, which is a detective who is specifically trained to
spot these robots. He gets called in because a small group of replicants have
broken away from one of those off world colonies and come to earth for unknown
reasons. As Deckard begins his search for the escaped replicants, we learn more
about them and the rules that govern their existence. Chief among them is that
they are only allowed to live a certain number of years before they expire,
which is why, as Deckard learns, they have returned to earth. They don’t want
to expire and are seeking the head of the company that created them in hopes
that he can extend their lifespan.

Harrison Ford as Deckard and Sean Young as Rachel
Another character that Deckard meets is Rachel, a Tyrell
employee who swears up and down that she is a human, but Tyrell says is a
replicant herself. This is proved when Deckard recalls memories of hers that
she had supposedly never told anyone, but in actuality belong to the nieces of
Tyrell’s CEO. They were programmed into her to make her more convincing as a
human.
I understand this is a lot of explanation, but bear with me.
Throughout the movie, Deckard keeps having the same dream
about a unicorn. A fellow officer, played by Edward James Olmos, has a calling
card of leaving origami figures wherever he goes. At the end of the movie, it
is revealed that he has left an origami unicorn in Deckard’s apartment where
Rachel has been living with Deckard. Now it is heavily implied that Deckard
himself is a replicant. The movie ends on a note of uncertainty for both him
and Rachel.

The question of Deckard being a replicant has long been an
issue of debate among fans of the movie. Ridley Scott himself threw his two
cents in and said that Deckard is in fact a replicant. Which brings us to the
issue of the upcoming Blade Runner 2049.
First off, it is coming more than 30 years after the original. I’ve always had
a problem with sequels that come 20+ years after the original. Of course there
are always exceptions to the rule, Star
Wars being among them. Of course, being that it is a science fiction movie,
that does mean that the effects will be updated, which was always kind of
distracting about the original. A movie with 30 yr old special effects is not
gonna hold up that well, but the original also had a distinct visual style that
kind of helps.

The second issue I have pertains to the issue of Deckard
being a replicant. The smart way to go about this movie is to make it without
Harrison Ford, or any mention of his character or of the events that transpired
in the original film. The world of Blade
Runner is big enough that you can make a separate story without
interfering. The reason why I didn’t want Harrison Ford to be in the sequel is
because now the mystery of the ending is ruined. It would be like Leo Dicaprio
being in a sequel to Inception
because it would clearly answer whether the top stopped spinning. Unlike Inception however, the mystery of
Deckard isn’t clearly stated, it’s more hinted at. Deckard never asks “What am
I?” he just gets a look. And now this subtle question is going to get a not so
subtle answer, and that is going to piss a number of people off. Because again,
replicants are only allowed to have the lifespan of 3 years, and if you look at
Ford, there has clearly been a longer span of time than that. And it was
addressed in the original movie that there are ways to increase lifespan, but
they all have problems so the replicant wouldn’t get much of an expansion
anyway. So Deckard has to be human, which completely contradicts what everyone
has been saying.
Thirdly, the issue with a Blade Runner sequel is that the movie itself wasn’t a huge hit. It
was a box office bomb and panned by critics, but in the years since its
release, the movie has gotten quite the cult following and has gone from being
a flop to hailed as a sci-fi masterpiece. With that said, I imagine a lot of
people who watched the trailer to be asking a lot of questions. I mean, yeah
Ryan Gosling and Jared Leto are in it, but what other reason will they have for
going to see it? I guess depending on who you ask, that’s all the reason they
will need.

Now, before anybody wants to label me a fanboy that is just
hating on something new, I’d like to make the following disclaimer: I’ve
learned to approach such things with a less than completely shut off mind,
while I do currently have issues with it so far, that’s not to say they won’t
find a way around it. If the movie gets good enough reviews and other fans are
saying they like it, then I will be more than happy to purchase a ticket. I’m
just extremely nervous about it at this current time.