Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford Get Us Excited for Blade Runner 2049 in First Trailer
It’s the midst of December, and so the attention of the film world is focused on awards season, especially as the window of eligibility is coming to a rapid close. Movies like Fences, Martin Scorsese’s Silcence, and La La Land, starring Ryan Gosling, will have just beaten that deadline (all with release dates around Christmas), and could potentially make quite a splash at the box office. But, today, our attentions will be ever-slightly diverted (with one eye fixed on Ryan Gosling, of course), as the first teaser for Blade Runner 2049, a cinematic event 35 years in the making, has hit the web.
Clocking in at only 1:45, it’s an effective teaser, not giving away much plot detail at all—it introduces Gosling as the new lead, and, in a big reveal, Harrison Ford’s character from the 1982 visionary film. The aesthetic is very Mad Max: Fury Road (and, of course, also hews closely to the original Blade Runner film)—both in terms of the trailer’s dim yet warm colors, and because it, too, is the revival of a one-time dormant franchise. Plus, both films have exciting young actors, serving as proxy versions of the original stars: Tom Hardy headed Fury Road and it was a runaway hit with audiences and critics, pulling a number of Oscar wins and nominations last year.
Ford and Gosling may top this impressive cast, but it also includes Academy Award-winner and polarizing Joker helmer Jared Leto, House Of Cards MVP Robin Wright, A Guardian of the Galaxy in Dave Bautista, and Mackenzie Davis, who, among other fine work, just starred in the best episode of the new Black Mirror batch. Also returning is original screenwriter Hampton Fancher—who we had the luck to interview earlier this year—who helmed the script alongside writer Michael Green.
Ridley Scott, who, believe it or not, will turn 80 in 2017, won’t be back in the director’s seat for Blade Runner 2049. Instead he’ll be focusing on next summer’s Alien: Covenant; but no reason to worry, as a more-than-competant replacement has stepped into his shoes in Denis Villeneuve. Villeneuve has had a remarkable run of excellent films in the past few years, including mystery thriller Prisoners, drug war-centered Sicario, and culminating with this year’s extra terrestrial examination Arrival, which could earn him his first Academy Award nomination. Blade Runner 2049 looks to be in good hands with a director with as strong a recent resumé as Villenueve. The film hits theaters on October 6th, 2017.
Check out the first teaser for Blade Runner 2049 below: