As someone who’s seen Blade Runner over a 100 times, who has given talks on the film, and has given private screenings for friends in which I (a) add trivia and commentary and (b) occasionally recite lines from memory at their request, I’m disappointed I didn’t get asked to participate in this speculative plotting for Blade Runner 2. So here goes my take:
Don’t make the film.
Yes, that’s right. I said it. While I love visiting the Blade Runner universe, and it’s my favorite film of all time, the film itself is a product of 80s cyberpunk verve and retro noir pessimism with a little apocalypse thrown in for fun. In Blade Runner they don’t have flat screen TVs and it’s four years in our future. The world in Blade Runner is a polluted, corrupt, disintegrating mess, and all the wealthy have jumped ship for (supposedly) happier pastures off world. Likely, they’re just destroying another planet.
And all this is disgusting. I don’t mean the film itself, but the world humanity has brought about. A lot of science fiction serves as a warning: “Look, if you’re not careful, this may come about.” For decades the Blade Runner Hades landscape (the opening scene of smog-choked, smoldering Los Angeles) and the neon-lit, rainy, overcrowded streets, have been the default vision of the future. The landscape was specifically named after the Greek version of hell. It’s only now, after some 35 years, (with a few bright exceptions) that visions of the future have turned at last away from the dystopian darkness envisioned in films like Blade Runner into optimistic visions of the future. Do we really need to head back into darkness again?
Blade Runner 2 shouldn’t be made because (a) the film doesn’t need to be improved upon or expanded because it’s a complete and perfect object and (b) what the world needs now is not more dystopian, bleak visions of the future, but positive, bright, optimistic ones. Instead of destroying people’s spirit by positing a bleak future for humankind, let’s lift people up, inspire, and encourage them to greater things.
It’s a movie that doesn’t need to and probably shouldn’t be made.
April 15, 2015 at 10:26 am
Great review. But you know you’ll see it if they make it. I’ll go with you.
April 15, 2015 at 10:28 am
Of course I’ll see it. And, yes, let’s go together!
April 15, 2015 at 10:33 am
I think a remake would work under certain circumstances. In my story The Black Feminist Guide to Science Fiction Film Editing (Asimov’s, year’s best) I suggested redoing it (tongue in cheek) as a manifesto of female power in which Rachel fights to save her replicant sisters from homicidal police. Consider: the film mentions Pris is a “pleasure model” (sex slave) but doesn’t comment on the immorality of that. She is also a child only a few years old. My motto: female replicants are people too.
April 15, 2015 at 10:42 am
Sandra, the film could go in so many ways, and that’s one. Those issues are certainly problematic. (My take is that they are all slaves, men and women, and the immorality of their slavery, sexual and physical, is part of the film’s theme.) But the issue is if Blade Runner is the vehicle to tell that story? Is its 80s vision of the future the same vision we would create today to tell that story? I don’t think it would be, or should be.
April 15, 2015 at 5:54 pm
I don’t think they are all slaves – Tyrell, for instance. And only the female characters are enslaved by sexuality. Deckard literally pierces all three replicant women because he can and wants to. I’m interested to see what they do with the movie but as usual will disregard it if it doesn’t fit into my head cannon.
April 16, 2015 at 8:48 pm
I meant that all the replicants are slaves. Interesting about the piercing of the women. I hadn’t considered that. But Zhora was actually part of a kick-murder squad. Essentially a mercenary, so I don’t see how she’s enslaved by her sexuality. But she does choose to hide as a sex worker, which is interesting, whereas Pris chooses to live on the streets. Something I hadn’t considered before, thanks!
And I am also now seeking out your story! 🙂