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Please No, Not a Blade Runner Sequel
bowman9991 submitted a story that ought to make even the most stone-hearted amongst you cry. He says "Travis Wright, one of the writers behind Eagle Eye, has been working on a sequel to Ridley Scott's Sci-Fi classic Blade Runner. Script proposals have explored the nature of the off-world colonies, what happens to the Tyrell Corporation in the wake of its founder's death, and what would become of Rachel. Travis said he intends to write a script 'with or without anyone's blessings.' Director Ridley Scott appears interested in a sequel too. At Comic-Con in 2007 Ridley said, 'If you have any scripts, you know where to send them.' It's doubtful he'll have time anytime soon though. He's already stated his next two science fiction films will be an adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New Word with Leonardo DiCaprio and an adaptation of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War."
How about you devote all the energy, time, and effort that you would have put into doing yet another ill-advised sequel or remake into writing something ORIGINAL? Who knows, you may actually produce the next Memento, Reservoir Dogs, or Slumdog Millionaire. At the very least, you'll be able to sleep at night. Do you really want to die being best known as the "asshole who wrote that god-awful sequel to Blade Runner"?
And, on a related note, if you're a filmmaker and have ever thought to yourself "Hey, I bet a remake of 'It's a Wonderful Life' starring Ice Cube and some sassy kids would be great!" please, dear God, stay out of Hollywood.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Without a Phillip K. Dick story to bastardize, this script could go into turbo-shitty land really fast.
Please take a lesson from Highlander: there can be only one.
I don't get the whole "this sequel is terrible, it shouldn't have been made!" thing. You don't have to watch it. The fact it's been made doesn't affect the original in any way whatsoever. Chill out.
Besides, there's an outside chance it could be really good. The Bladerunner idea is a great starting point.
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I guess we can thank GW for starting the forever war.
But seriously, I hope they don't fuck it up. One of my favorites!
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Please No, Net a Blade Runner Sequel
Who cares at this point, really?
Disclaimers: I'm not an economist, I love Philip K. Dick & I could care less for Blade Runner the movie.
I see it as there being finite number of movies Hollywood has the money to make each year. I'd rather see a Blade Runner Sequel than the fourth or fifth Austin Powers movie (can you believe that Myers is on contract to make two more?) so why not? I mean, like the article says, the novel is out there, it's not like if they transform that story into a movie or make their own script it's going to affect my perception of the original Blade Runner or Philip K. Dick novel. What the article fails to mention is there are actually four Blade Runner novels ( Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996), Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000)). Go ahead, turn them all into movies, you know the fans will reward you for it with piles of cash. It's better than Legally Blonde: Supreme Court Captain!
I think there have been other movies based on this novel--what of Spielberg's AI? Was that not a butchered version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? also? I don't see this as quite cut and dried as CmdrTaco ("don't-ruin-perfect?"--I would hardly call any of this material perfect). I mean, I bitch and moan about movies like Snakes on a Plane & The Transporter 8 as I read great novels by great sci-fi writers like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (which, although controversial, I opine would make a fine movie)--why not use these great stories that are already out there to allow good directors to create (potentially) great films?
I like to watch original movies from Warner Independent Pictures and Fox Searchlight Pictures but the public and I seem to disagree about where the money in Hollywood should be spent so why do I care that they rehash old crap and dilute brand names when that's how the market rewards them? Can you be critical of them making money? Is that not why they're in that business? Whore yourselves out for all I care, I'm not going to watch it unless there's a Rifftrax for it.
And let's not forget that there are good examples of this actually working out there like The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, The Lord of the Rings, even Batman Begins & The Dark Knight grossly overshadow Batman Forever & Batman & Robin.
So I ask you, why do you care? You aren't forced to see the movie and if you do, it's going to give you something you love and cherish the most: something to bitch vindictively about.
My work here is dung.
Sequel or prequel won't matter. What you are looking for in a sci-fi movie doesn't exist. That's the big difference between true science fiction and what hollywood calls science fiction. You will never see true science fiction on the big screen because the average, movie going, lobotomized, audience member wouldn't understand what they were watching.
...that *could* actually make a great movie, but more importantly would get more people to read the book (which is my introductory Sci-Fi text I kept waving a fantasy types who dismiss Sci-Fi as "not their thing").
The movie Soldier is an amazing movie. Not that it is perfect, by any means, but Kurt Russel has about 12 spoken lines, but carries the whole movie by body language and facial expressions.
I am a closet Kurt Russel fan, and wish, in a better world, he got better parts. His acting is cartoonish because he gets cartoonish parts.
Similarly, I was joking with my son a few weeks ago about the movie "Tropic Thunder" and Robert Downey Jr. It is a awesome that Robert Downey has such a screwed up personal life, it means his talent and ability are relegated to "fun" movies like "Iron Man" and "Tropic Thunder" as opposed to boring movies like "Chocolat," "Cider House Rules," or "The Ice Storm." :-)
I have given up hope to see any worthwhile SF movie, in this century. After the 70's, they have been progressively dumbed down. One of my favourite SF movies was "The Andromeda strain", from 1970 (IIRC, won't bother checking with IMDB). It was good, hard-ish SF without unnecessary drama and NO brainfarts. Then they decided to remake it as a two-part mini series last year, and obviously, they HAD TO dumb it down. Because we all know that people today are dumber than they were 30+ years ago... right? I don't hope to see such underrated gems as was "Logan's run", "Demon seed", "2001: A space odyssey" etc.
I blame the "Star Wars" saga for this. Oh, I can hear a rumble, as if a billion slashdotters rose up in horror (I have some karma to burn), but that's what I believe: "Star Wars" had little to do with SF - it should be called a costume western - and it didn't make your neurons work. But it was grand, it had interesting special effects. In brief, it was entertaining without taxing your brain. Just like any James Bond movie does. And the producers of Star Wars made gobs of money, and so, that became the blueprint for future SF movies - make them dumb and entertaining.
So today we only have pseudo-SF movies, like "Minority Report", "Battlestar Galactica" and so forth (boy, am I going to be modded down today!) but whenever someone tries to make a movie even slightly intellectually challenging, like "A.I." he/she gets vilified and suffers dismal box-office failure.
So, fuck the movie industry and fuck the dumb audience. I have no hope for a good SF movie anymore. I'll stick to books - Stephen Baxter and others are still churning good, brain-stimulating hard-SF worth my time.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
NOT a wretched sequel to the "Blade Runner" abortion of Philip K. Dick's best book.
The Hollywoodization of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" excised all but one concept in the book: the protagonist hunts androids (oh no! let's call them "replicants"!). A depopulated Earth devastated by radiation... nah, let's make it OVERpopulated! Psychopathic androids with a parallel police department... nah, let's make the android leader a witness for antiwar sentiment! Mercer... Mercer? WTF, we can't make sense out of a Dickian "fake fake" Messiah! Write that suckah outa tha script!
And of course, Deckard CAN'T be married... he has to fly off into the sunset with the (android) girl!
Terminator II was 100 times better than Terminator I, but Terminator III was 100 times worse.
What does this mean? It's all about the script, not the material.
"I only speak the truth"
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I keep hearing how a studio won't sign off on a movie that involves so many young actors, involves kids killing kids, involves arguably no adult leads, and in many ways is unfilmable. Try getting little kids to do the Battle School stunts.
However, the solution is so simple. Hire Robert Zemekis, who has done dark, mature material (see Beowulf) and family material (see Back to the Future, Polar Express, Roger Rabitt). He could find the right tone.
Even better, he is a special effects genius who has been perfecting mo-cap. In many scenes in watching Beowulf I forgot it was animated because it look so realistic, which was a big jump from Polar Express, and I imagine he will only get better with the technique.
With mo-cap, he can use older, better actors to play all the kid parts, but animate them to be age appropriate for the roles, do the Battle School stunts properly, etc. Also animated violence on kids is different from filmed violence on kids.
Not to mention the Fantasy Game sequences, the buggers, the space battles, etc.
This movie is crying out for mo-cap and animation.
Instead I read that Orson Scott Card rewrote the script to focus on Mazer Rackham as an adult lead, which is fucking stupid.
Card and Zemeckis need to do mo-cap Ender's Game, yesterday.
It would be Harry Potter meets Star Wars and do 400 mil domestic. Count on it.
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The first question that comes to mind, is what would the film be about? I know they're thinking of storylines about Tyrell Corp, etc, but what would the story ultimately be trying to communicate? Blade Runner is kind of a landmark film (and novel) because it examines what makes us human, and it looks at transhumanism from the perspective of the self-aware "androids". What more can you say on the subject without reiterating what was covered in the first film, is the question they should be asking themselves, not "gee, what would Tyrell Corp do if Tyrell was killed?" Exploring those other areas may be interesting, but more from the perspective of a backdrop of a larger story that you're trying to tell. Oh well, the world is (sometimes) fucked and we're in it. Nuff said.
How about "Protector". There's a story with teeth... Please No more bad remakes \ sequels..
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
What if memory could be captured and re-implanted in one generation of Replicant after another, so that consciousness would span several lifetimes/bodies?
Have you read the Frank Herbert Dune books? Bene Tleilaxu and the axlotl tanks; Gholas with preserved memories. It's used as a plot device through the "God Emperor of Dune", and really comes together as you're supposing in "Dune: Chapterhouse". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Tleilax