Blade Runner 2

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Now that Ridley Scott is wrapping up Prometheus, it's been announced that Scott has signed on to creating a new installment of Blade Runner.

I’m not getting a clear sense at this point whether Scott intends to do a sequel or a prequel to the 1982 film that was loosely based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Also unclear is whether they start fresh or reach out to Harrison Ford, who starred that took place in dystopian Los Angeles in 2019, in which organic superhuman robots called replicants escaped and are hiding somewhere on earth.

Oh, Ridley Scott being ambiguous about his timeline again... :)

[Trajan]

No, please say this isn't true. Why are they making a sequel to Blade Runner. The movie is so great because it relies so heavily on ambiguity. A sequel would ruin that. Corporate Hollywood is corrupting Ridley Scott.

[backseatjesus]

I personally think Blade Runner was only interesting visually. Story wise, it made me snore.

[gatotsu911]

It could - emphasis, could - work if they decide to tell a different story with a different cast of characters set in the same fascinating world. That said, I will remain in Skepticism Mode for the time being. Blade Runner was, on some level, a product of its time - I'm not convinced trying to resuscitate it in the 2010s would be to its benefit.

Of course, if anyone wants to talk about making a new paranoid dystopian noir sci-fi film for our age, I'm all ears.

[Seele00TextOnly]

...

[Xard]

I don't want sequel to Blade Runner, Blade Runner is perfect as it is ;__;

[gatotsu911]

I hope to goodness that he doesn't over indulge in CG, or at least if he does use it for damn near everything that it's of Avatar quality or something.

This. While I think CG could work well if used in moderation, one of the things that struck me when I watched the film for the first time in years several months ago was how organic the decaying city looked, and I was thinking about how you'd likely never get that effect in a Hollywood movie today. No studio would spend that much money on set design when they could put it into CGI instead.

[BrikHaus]

It could - emphasis, could - work if they decide to tell a different story with a different cast of characters set in the same fascinating world.

This was my first thought, too.

[drinian]

It could - emphasis, could - work if they decide to tell a different story with a different cast of characters set in the same fascinating world.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Soldier_%28film%29

[EvangelionFan]

I'd rather they adapt another Philip K. Dick novel... like The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

I'm hoping Harrison Ford isn't in this film either. That story concluded and, if another film is to be done, should incorporate a different story inside that crazy world.

No studio would spend that much money on set design when they could put it into CGI instead.

Sets are designed whether they're built physically or virtually. The trick is to get the computer to recognize the organic nature of the set designs, which is much harder to do in a virtual world than it would be to build it physically. Ideally, much of the cities would still be done through physical miniatures, since all of that geometry is just quicker to photo-realistically render them physically than spending months building it and rendering each frame digitally. (Like how LOTR still used miniatures to render their gritty and organic looking buildings and cities.

The vehicles can be done with a mixture of physical models and CGI models. Much of the wide skyline backgrounds will probably be a matte-painting.

[gatotsu911]

Sets are designed whether they're built physically or virtually. The trick is to get the computer to recognize the organic nature of the set designs, which is much harder to do in a virtual world than it would be to build it physically. Ideally, much of the cities would still be done through physical miniatures, since all of that geometry is just quicker to photo-realistically render them physically than spending months building it and rendering each frame digitally.

Oh, you know what I mean. My point is that good physical setpieces, costumes, etc. exude an organic quality that CG has thus far by and large proven incapable of fully recreating.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Oh, you know what I mean. My point is that good physical setpieces, costumes, etc. exude an organic quality that CG has thus far by and large proven incapable of fully recreating.

I agree. Especially not with the bedget or time restraints placed on any production, and especially if you need organic sci-fi production design on such a massive scale as seen in Blade Runner. CGI always worked best in photo-realism when interpreting elements within special effects, like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, where only 20 minutes worth of the dinosaur footage was CGI, or Gollum in RotK, where a double-sized physical model was scanned in order to obtain all of the geometry needed for the character. (The result was a computer needing to take 8 hours in order to render exactly one frame of Gollum. That's 8 hours to render every 1/24 second of footage.) Entire environments are too vast to be interpreted in a virtual three-dimensional environment. (Even a lot of CGI effects resort to matte-paintings and two-dimensional stills for distant backgrounds and things like that for this very reason, which works to varying degrees depending on the sources used to create them.)

[Guyver Spawn]

I hear that this project could be a movie set in the Blade Runner universe and not a direct sequel. I remember they made a non canon sequel 13 years ago that was directed by Paul WS Anderson (AVP, Resident Evil, the first MK movie).

[THE Hal E. Burton 9000]

I remember they made a non canon sequel 13 years ago that was directed by Paul WS Anderson (AVP, Resident Evil, the first MK movie).

sí, Señor Spawn, and easily the best movie Anderson has ever made IMO

anyway, hopefully David Peoples will be involved, maybe even that wily Hampton Fancher too, God knows Ridley Scott needs great writing these days

and if Douglas Trumbull is involved in the special effects, DAMN, I guarantee I will be there for the midnight showing, hell, I may to try to make it to the world premiere

there was so much stuff that was left out from the original novel that could be a story by itself

I still have mixed feelings about this purportedly happening though, drudging up the old stuff is still at least questionable as I have said thousands of times before and worse

what's the story now on that Alien prequel, hmm? is Scott not involved with that anymore? or perhaps is he CRAZY enough and have enough weight to throw around in Hollywood to try and combine the two?

think about it, the Xenomorphs pop up on those vaunted "Off-World Colonies" and a band of replicants and humans have to fight for survival, and unlike AvP, it will be the crossover that works this time, IT WOULD DECIMATE ALL

but wasn't there a story a few years ago about both Ridley Scott and Tony Scott wanting to make a series of short films that would be a prequel to BR?

regardless, if this happens, it needs to be a new story, as much as I would love to see Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer on screen together again (and where the hell has Sean Young been in the last 20 years?), a remake or sequel seems so wrong even if they go the retcon route

and if that were to happen, the estate of Philip K. Dick should snuff it out post-haste