Blade Runner 2049 Denis Villeneuve

Development

From the 1990s, licensing disputes over Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? had deterred the creation of sequels to the science fiction drama Blade Runner (1982).[15] Director Ridley Scott conceived two ultimately unrealized projects vaguely connected to the Blade Runner canon in the interim.[16][17] Scott's second project, a collaboration with his son Luke and younger brother Tony titled Purefold, had been imagined as an episodic webseries examining conceptions of empathy.[17]

Nearly three decades after the film's release, Alcon Entertainment co-founders Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson purchased the intellectual property from producer Bud Yorkin. The terms of Alcon's acquisition prohibited the remake of the original Blade Runner film, but entitled the company rights to syndication, franchising, and derivative media such as prequels and sequels.[18] No longer satisfied with the profits of their smaller-budget features, and with investor funding scarce, Kosove and Johnson sought to increase Alcon's output of blockbuster films: "If you don't have repetitive cash flow, which is a fancy way of saying being in the sequel business, you are going to be in trouble eventually."[19] Progress on a new Blade Runner feature soon accelerated when Kosove named Christopher Nolan one of his ideal choices to direct.[20] However, Nolan said he never planned to direct, despite being an admirer of the Blade Runner franchise.[21]

By August 2011, Alcon had announced Ridley Scott's signing as the film's director to the press.[22] The British filmmaker had long desired a sequel to expand upon the subject matter.[23] After securing Scott's services, the studio assigned Michael Green and a returning Hampton Fancher the responsibility for writing the script.[24][25] Alcon producers provided some insight into their vision but were unsure of how to approach the Blade Runner story,[26][27] hence they and the normally candid Scott were tight-lipped when questioned further about the sequel's artistic direction in interviews conducted during pre-production.[28][29][30] Ultimately, Scott resigned from his duties once his existing commitment to Alien: Covenant (2017) took precedence, and retained partial oversight as an executive producer.[23][31] He also made significant contributions to the screenplay, albeit in an uncredited role.[32]

Blade Runner 2049 was Alcon's second collaboration with director Denis Villeneuve, who they called for a meeting at a cafe in rural New Mexico to negotiate an offer. They had an existing professional relationship from Prisoners (2013).[33] Villeneuve credits Blade Runner for inspiring his passion for filmmaking,[23] but hesitated to accept the assignment at first as he feared tarnishing the franchise's legacy.[33] Nevertheless, he liked the screenplay and was assured by Fancher's investment in the project.[33][34] Villeneuve preserved elements of the original film by modernizing Blade Runner's retrofuturistic onscreen world, which he saw as imperative for an authentic story.[23]

A scene from Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One (2018) set in the Blade Runner universe was excluded from the film's finished cut. Spielberg had sought copyright approval during the filming of Blade Runner 2049, which Alcon producers refused as they feared the explicit reference would affect their commercial prospects, even though Ready Player One was released months later.[35]

Casting

Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling were Blade Runner 2049's first significant casting choices.[36][37] Gossip about Ford's participation had been circulating in the media since the project's conception, claims which the producers initially denied,[29][30] having only approached the actor for a part in 2014.[38] Alcon did not publicly announce their signing until the following year.[36] Ford had expressed interest in reprising his role in past interviews and was enthusiastic about the Blade Runner 2049 script.[38][39] The working conditions on set was another aspect of the production Ford was pleased with,[40] in contrast to the stressful shooting environment endured on Blade Runner.[23][41] Ford stated the thirty five-year passage of time, plus the synthesis of a new story with Deckard's already-established backstory, lent context necessary to playing his aged character.[41] The only other returning Blade Runner actor, Edward James Olmos, appears in a supporting part which pivots the main story.[42]

The screenwriters tailored K specifically for Gosling,[43] but it was the opportunity to work with Villeneuve and experienced cinematographer Roger Deakins, paired with his faith in the script, that convinced the actor to join Blade Runner 2049 in his first leading role in a blockbuster production.[44][45] Gosling had developed a reputation for his discriminating film choices; the prospect of working on big-budget franchise sets never enticed him,[45] yet he trusted the filmmakers' instincts, and the thematic complexity of the script further reassured his decision.[46] A longtime Blade Runner fan, the actor remarked that his first viewing experience of the film as a young teenager was profound: "It was one of the first films I had seen where it wasn't clear how I was supposed to feel when it was over. It really makes you question your idea of the hero and the villain, the idea of what it means to be human."[23] Blade Runner 2049 proved challenging for Gosling because of the production's scope.[47] Gosling also helped rewrite the dialog for the "baseline test" scene, which Villeneuve felt wasn't "aggressive" enough; Gosling suggested using a variation of the "dropping in"-technique developed by Shakespeare & Company.[48]

An actress of national renown in Spain who aspired to break into English-speaking roles, Ana de Armas auditioned several times before landing the film's female lead.[49] After shooting for her first Hollywood film Hands of Stone (2016), de Armas settled in Los Angeles in pursuit of a role that did not typecast her ethnicity. She underwent four months of rigorous speech training to master her English before auditioning. Once the studio commenced production of Blade Runner 2049, the actress said her fitness training provided the necessary mental space to prepare for the intense shooting schedule.[49]

Villeneuve considered David Bowie, one of the franchise's core influences, for the part of Niander Wallace until the musician died months prior to filming.[43] He and the producers subsequently looked at Jared Leto, fresh off filming Suicide Squad (2016), as they felt he exuded Bowie's rockstar sensibility.[43][50] Leto refrains from naming specific sources that shaped certain aspects of his character's persona; rather the actor cites real-life friends who work in tech as a general influence.[51] Notorious for his unorthodox preparation for roles, Leto continued his unusual practices in Blade Runner 2049 by wearing custom opaque contact lenses to work the set completely blind.[52] Villeneuve recalled his first day shooting with the actor: "He entered the room, and he could not see at all. He was walking with an assistant very slowly. It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe. It was so beautiful and powerful—I was moved to tears."[52]

A raft of mostly young actors comprise Blade Runner 2049's supporting cast; David Dastmalchian, Sylvia Hoeks, Carla Juri, Mackenzie Davis, and Barkhad Abdi were lesser-known stars with years of expertise in independent cinema.[53] Among the few exceptions are Dave Bautista, Hiam Abbass, and Lennie James, whose castings were revealed between April and July 2016;[54][55][56] and Robin Wright, assigned to one of three major female roles in Blade Runner 2049.[57] Wright's involvement had been rumored for weeks, but was not immediately confirmed by the filmmakers as her commitments to the Netflix series House of Cards momentarily stalled negotiations.[57]

Filming

The filmmakers embarked on location scouting in April 2016,[58] and principal photography of Blade Runner 2049 commenced that July, lasting four months until November.[59][60] They first toured London but found no soundstage available for the needs of the production. As a result, Deakins and Villeneuve flew to Hungary for location scouting partly due to Scott's familiarity with the country's network of facilities. They also toured Slovakia to source architectural ideas.[61] Blade Runner 2049's production crew were mostly Hungarian, with some American staff hired to supervise the set.[61] Inserts with Wright and Hoeks were the first scenes filmed on set.[62] Shooting took place mainly at Korda Studios and the Origo Studios backlot in suburban Budapest,[63] where the shoot qualified for a 25% tax rebate on in-state costs from the Hungarian government.[64]

The Alcon–Sony partnership allocated $180 million ($90 million each) for the budget, rebates notwithstanding.[19] Interior shots of the Budapest Stock Exchange's Liberty Square palace doubled for Las Vegas in casino-set scenes,[61][65] and abandoned Soviet industrial sites such as the abandoned Inota and Kelenföld power plants were important filming locations that emphasized Blade Runner 2049's dystopian ethos.[15][58] The Budapest palace was the film's largest set, occupying at least three floors of the building.[61] Filmmakers revised Deckard's capture by Luv into a simple conversational scene after Ford conveyed to Kosove and Johnson his disapproval of the dialogue.[62]

Pitfalls occasionally beset the production. The filmmakers frequently fell behind schedule, and an Origo Studios-employed subcontractor was killed by falling debris when dismantling one of the sets.[62][66] Gosling's obligation to fulfill a New York City press junket for La La Land (2016) exacerbated the unusual circumstances of the shoot; however, his scenes were able to be filmed in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.[62]

Cinematography

Blade Runner 2049 is the third Deakins–Villeneuve collaboration after Prisoners and Sicario (2015).[67] Together with production designer Dennis Gassner, the men brainstormed ideas for the film's visual palette as Villeneuve was editing his science fiction drama Arrival (2016).[61] The sequences were then storyboarded and left for Deakins and Villeneuve to execute.[61] The two were inspired by the architecture of several global cities to develop a hostile, imposing brutalist style for their fictionalized Los Angeles, among them the appearance of Beijing's cityscape in dense smog, the foothills of southern Spain, Bangladeshi shipyards, and certain mid-twentieth-century landmarks in London (such as the Barbican Estate and Trellick Tower).[68] For Las Vegas-set scenes, the filmmakers researched intense dust storms in the Sahara, Saudi Arabia and Sydney to replicate the sandy desert ruins Villeneuve sought.[68][69][70]

It became apparent to Deakins that Blade Runner 2049 would be one of his biggest undertakings because of the technical demands involved in realizing the onscreen universe.[68] Deakins exercises full artistic control of his shoots, and the extent of his oversight meant a single-camera setup for the set—the British cinematographer rejected a studio line producer's request for a nine unit-camera setup because he firmly believed said technique would yield sloppy camerawork.[71] Rather, he and Villeneuve reprised the practical approach of their previous collaborations to capture the Blade Runner 2049 scenes.[15][61] They shot the project in 1.55:1 aspect ratio from a single Arri Alexa XT Studio camera with Zeiss Master Prime lenses, assisted with an attached crane arm or a dolly.[61][72] The filmmakers conducted tests with an Alexa 65 camera but preferred the XT Studio's somewhat grainy image quality, and the choice of lenses corresponded to the scale and lighting specifications of the scenes. For example, close-up character scenes were captured in 32 mm lenses, but filmmakers captured sweeping cityscape shots with 14 mm and 16 mm lenses.[15] Occasionally, Arri Alexa Mini cameras were used to represent views from the spinners, the vehicles used in the film.[61]

When Gassner was first approached for Blade Runner 2049, he was called with a request from Villeneuve to observe the shape of passing street sweepers. The designer had known Scott since 1982, when they first collaborated for the Francis Ford Coppola-directed musical One From the Heart.[73] Redesigning the spinners then became one of his initial responsibilities. He and the filmmakers envisioned a harsh, angular design for the spinners, one intended to evoke the sense of technological innovation.[73] It was also up to Gassner to complete most of the Blade Runner 2049 sets so producers could exercise full artistic control of the shoot. Gassner described the process as especially difficult as design elements had to be distinct but lore-faithful, with everything executed under a tight shooting schedule.[73]

Costumes

Costume designer Renée April produced costumes featuring fake fur, painted cotton disguised as shearling, and breathing masks.[74] April initially researched the fashion styles of the 1960s and 1970s, but elected to research various decades for influence as well as both Eastern and Western culture. When discussing the film, she stated she did not consider it a fashionable one. "I made costumes for the dark, wet, polluted, miserable world that Denis [Villeneuve] created. I had to hold myself back and remove anything too avant-garde or outré because it did not help the story. There were no superhero suits because the world needed to be realistic, and the characters relatable."[75] When April discussed the film with Villeneuve about what direction she should take the costumes, Villeneuve told her "brutal", a similar description he gave to Gassner. "So I took it from there and made it tougher. Also, we did not want to do something science-fiction. We wanted to do it realistic. I did not want costumes with [lots of] zippers and plastic. So my job was to make the characters believable."[76]

Post-production

Warner Bros. announced in early October 2016 that the film would be titled Blade Runner 2049.[77] Editing commenced in December in Los Angeles, with the intention of having the film be rated R.[78] At the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, Villeneuve said the film would run for two hours and 32 minutes.[79] An early cut of the film was four hours long, and Villeneuve described this version as "quite strong", but also at times "too self-indulgent". He said he prefers the shorter final version, which is "more elegant", though Ridley Scott has voiced the opinion that it is still too long. Villeneuve said he will not show the four-hour cut to anyone.[80][81] As with Skyfall, cinematographer Roger Deakins created his own IMAX master of the film, rather than using the proprietary "DMR" process that IMAX usually uses with films not shot with IMAX cameras.[82]

Music

Rapper-producer El-P said he was asked to compose music for the first Blade Runner 2049 trailer, but his score was "rejected (or ignored)".[83] Jóhann Jóhannsson, who had worked with Villeneuve on Prisoners, Sicario and Arrival, was initially announced as composer for the film.[84] Villeneuve and Jóhannsson decided to end the collaboration, however, because Villeneuve thought the film "needed something different", and also that he "needed to go back to something closer to Vangelis's soundtrack" of the first film.[85] Composers Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch joined the project in July 2017.[86] In September, Jóhannsson's agent confirmed that he was no longer involved and was contractually forbidden from commenting.[87] The musical cue during the final scene, "Tears in the Rain", is a call-back to the "Tears in rain" scene from Blade Runner which saw the death of the film's central antagonist Roy Batty. The track is a reimagined version of the original Vangelis work.[12][88] Additionally, a segment from Sergei Prokofiev's musical composition "Peter and the Wolf" (Russian: Петя и волк) plays whenever the emanator is activated or deactivated.[89][90]