Will ‘Blade Runner 2’ Be Another Of Harrison Ford’s ‘Well-Intentioned But Depressingly Mediocre Sequels’?
Blade Runner is set to hit the big screen again in a Blade Runner sequel, 36 years after the original film aired. Gizmodo reports that Blade Runner 2 will be released on January 12, 2018, and will be directed by Denis Villeneuve.
Hollywood Reporter notes that the release of the film will coincide with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. One other film has been slated for release during the holiday weekend: Sherlock Gnomes, an animated film by Paramount Animations.
Apparently, the idea for a Blade Runner sequel came from Ridley Scott, who worked with Hampton Fancher, who co-wrote the original film.
Digital Spy reports that Ridley Scott gave one vital clue about the opening scene of the Blade Runner sequel in an interview in late 2015. During the interview, Scott said that the very first scene of the Blade Runner sequel will take viewers back to “the original starting block of the original film” and as such will take place in a factory farm. He also mentioned that the opening scene will feature the character of Rick Deckard and a 350-pound man, although the significance of the 350-pound man is as yet unknown.
Blade Runner 2 hits US cinemas on Jan 12, 2018… https://t.co/vmxK61yVdE pic.twitter.com/OrTFmqV6dJ
— Empire Magazine (@empiremagazine) February 19, 2016
Starring in the Blade Runner sequel will be Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford. Yes, Harrison Ford is reprising yet another of his classic film roles from his glory days of more than three decades ago.
In fact, Inverse writes about the pantheon of forgotten sequels, and wonders where Blade Runner 2 will fit in the spectrum. Going through what it refers to as “some of the most mediocre follow-ups to some of the best movies in cinema history,” Inverse notes that Harrison Ford appears to be running through a list of his most iconic roles from three decades ago and reprising them one after another. After all, he has already reprised Han Solo and Indiana Jones, and now his Blade Runner character, Rick Deckard, is next on the list.
Inverse makes the point that sequels and remakes tend to be either ridiculously good or unforgivably bad, citing Sylvester Stallone’s Creed as an example of a ridiculously good sequel, and then giving a list of its top five “well-intentioned but depressingly mediocre sequels.”
Included in the less is Blues Brothers 2000, which it calls “an embarrassment that does everything the first movie does, but somehow gets it so, so wrong.” Jaws 2 also made the list, and it was noted that Steven Spielberg flat out refused to make the sequel, calling it a “cheap carny trick” in 1975 at the San Francisco Film Festival. IMDB reports that Jeannot Szwarc, a French American television and film director took over the role when Steven Spielberg refused to even discuss it.
Other sequels that bombed included Exorcist II: The Heretic, 2010: The Year We Make Contact and French Connection II, and the question still remains whether Blade Runner 2 will one day join the list of unnecessary sequels that ended up being little more than an embarrassment for the original classic, or whether, like Creed, the Blade Runner sequel will end up being a legitimate standalone film.
One person who might be happy to hear of the upcoming release of the Blade Runner sequel is Daryl Hannah, who played the character of Pris in the original Blade Runner movie. Pris was known as a “basic pleasure model” and served as the girlfriend of Roy Batty during the movie.
Digital Spy reports that Daryl Hannah recently celebrated her character’s “inception date” as told in the original Blade Runner movie. When the day came around this year, Daryl Hannah posted on Twitter to wish her former Blade Runner character happy birthday “valentations.”
birthday valentations pic.twitter.com/2ldQOIArfZ
— Daryl Hannah (@dhlovelife) February 14, 2016
Production of the Blade Runner sequel is set to begin in July, 2016.
[Photo by David Buchan/Getty Images]
