If the idea of a Blade Runner sequel by not-Ridley Scott rightfully deserved skepticism, the announcement that it’d be directed by Arrival‘s Denis Villeneuve probably at least tempered the skepticism about whether it’d be able to capture the tone of gorgeous foreboding accomplished in the original. From the just released first full trailer, that’s maintained, and of course updated with 2017 visual effects, Robin Wright, and Ryan Gosling.
Late last year, we’d seen a teaser for Blade Runner 2049 showing a stark desert terrain with some somehow dystopian-looking sculptures, through which a certain Gosling traverses to get to a certain (gasp!) role-reprising Harrison Ford (as Rick Deckard). Both Gosling, Ford, and the attractive desert hellscape are back in this new trailer, as are portraits of the neon urban wasteland we got to know in the first film, as well as a variety of new characters, one of whom is played by Jared Leto and a pair of fun contact lenses:
As Entertainment Weekly reports, in a Q & A this morning with Villeneuve, Gosling, and Ford, Gosling said of the original film:
It was one of the first films I’d seen that it wasn’t clear how I was supposed to feel. It made me question what it meant to be a human being and my ability to recognize the hero from the villain. It was one of the first films where I wondered what happened after it was over.
And alas, isn’t one of the fundamental points of Blade Runner to make you question the ways humans prize ideas of what’s “original” or “real” over expertly produced copies, updates and continuations? With that in mind, here’s this damn pretty trailer (which, in exactly the way trailers should, reveals very little of the plot, but quite a lot about the general feeling of the film) for Blade Runner‘s sequel:
Blade Runner 2049 is out on October 6.