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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.
Go ahead. I write fanfics, too.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
Without a Phillip K. Dick story to bastardize, this script could go into turbo-shitty land really fast.
I don't understand...are they fighting in an arena? Are they fishing for sequels? I'm confused. Unless Taco didn't have the 20 seconds to double check the headline for a typo.
import system.cool.Sig;
Please take a lesson from Highlander: there can be only one.
Let me tell you about my mother.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Since Scott has a track record of putting out decent science fiction cinema, could we PLEASE get him to do some Heinlein? Or, if that's not "percussive" enough, some Niven-Pournelle? A shortened version of A Mote in God's Eye should have enough bang-bang to keep the kiddies happy, and cool aliens that turn from "advanced peaceful society" to "Freakish monster hoards" by the end.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
SPOILER ALERT: Leonardo diCaprio (sp?) IS Soma.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
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.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
Bah, don't worry. I'm sure Keanu will do a fine job as Decker.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
We've already tried it - ethyl, methane, sulfinate as an alkalating agent and potent script treatment; it created a plothole so lethal the script was dead before it even left the table.
Calm down, everybody. There's no evidence that George Lucas will be involved.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2:_The_Edge_of_Human
They say this like it's a positive recommendation or something. It's not.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
To disperse some wisdom.
You see, grasshopper, story is like tea leaves. When you have good tea leaves, you will have good tea. You take tea leaves, you take hot water, and you have good tea. You have wonderful tea. You savour tea, and you like tea so much that you think, you want more tea. So you take the leaves out of the water and save them, then you bring hot water again and you pour it over the tea leaves. But alas, no good tea. It tastes stale and bland. The flavor all gone.
If you want another cup of tea, you have to find new tea leaves. Using the old one will only give you bland, tasteless and generally worthless tea.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...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").
Not sure if you need to do this to get it, but if you get the "Blade Runner Five-disk Ultimate Collector's Edition" (yes, that's really what it's called, and yes, I have it), it includes the original US theatrical release, with the voice-over.
I was never sure about the voice-over, myself. I saw that version first, in theatres, back in the day, and I thought the voice-over was annoying, a bit too "Magnum P.I.", clubbing me with context. When I saw the "director's cut" later on, I liked it better, but of course, I had already seen the first one, so I knew the context. It's easy to imagine that if you see the "director's cut" first, it'd be pretty confusing.
I do think there needs to be less voice-over, particularly towards the end. By that time, the context is established, and the awesome visuals really do work better on their own.
IMHO, obviously.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
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.
Shia LaBeouf as Rick Deckard
Mylie Cyrus as Rachael
Steve Carrell as Roy Batty
Michael Myers as Bryant
Shot by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Soundtrack by The Jonas Brothers.
This guy is doing Neuromancer.
Wow, I disliked that book. Maybe some modern treatment in a film will improve the story. The interminable gay sex ought to be interesting, at least.
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"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Nightmare on Elm Street
Karate Kid
Candyman
GI Joe
Pink Panther
Street Fighter (not that there was much of a franchise to begin with)
Tron (this project has waffled between reboot and sequel, but is now being called Tr2n)
Terminator Salvation (technically a sequel, but one that isn't recognizing T3 as canon, and recast everyone to start a new franchise)
Land of the Lost
Fame
The Stepfather
Astro Boy
Sherlock Holmes
Hellraiser
Superman
Catwoman (a failed reboot, but a reboot none the less)
Sadly, I'm probably forgetting more reboots.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
And that's why business sucks. Everything: including science, law, medicine, art, politics, education, takes a back seat to money-making.
Except, of course, for super disco breakin'.
Bow-ties are cool.
Ain't nothing wrong with doing a sequel. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" was the third movie in a trilogy, and was by far the best. It often takes several passes through a creative landscape before all the elements find their place and the whole thing jells.
Sequels don't have to have the same characters or plot. It can be enough to just take the basic idea and feel of the first movie, and run with it in a new direction.
For example, I'd love to see someone explore the idea of replication much deeper. What if Replicants weren't time-limited, but made perpetual instead? What if memory could be captured and re-implanted in one generation of Replicant after another, so that consciousness would span several lifetimes/bodies? What if anyone could make a copy of themselves, on demand? Say you want to try what it feels like to jump out of an airplane -- without a parachute. Do you make a replica, and then toss yourself?
A sequel doesn't have to be bad....
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
and an older model than Rachel. So, IIRC, he shouldn't have survived much beyond his job taking out Roy and his crew.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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.
Yep, a Heinlein movie would be great! They should make Stranger in a Strange Land. The orgies would be epic!
In a world alien to man...
"We've lost contact with the Envoy!"
The child of human explorers...
(voice distorted by radio)"Repeat, we have found a survivor!"
Is an alien.
"Damnit, man, you don't understand! He - is - a - Martian!"
(cue wild drum beat, footage of Mike jumping around on Martian rocks like an ape through the trees - hovercars diving through clouds - Jill punching out a guard in Bethesda)
Douglas: That young man's claim to Mars will be MINE!
Jubal: THAT YOUNG MAN IS UNDER MY PROTECTION!
(beat... black screen, fade in)
Berquist: You're coming with me...
(beat... black screen, fade in)
Mike (snarling): I... GROK... WRONGNESS!
Stranger In A Strange Land... Rated R.
Bow-ties are cool.
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
Depends on how many million I made off that movie.
Uwe? is that you?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
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
What would it take to make a good (or even great) Blade Runner sequel?
The original became a cult hit mainly because (a) it had an interesting, well textured setting (b) it projected a very clear style or mood that fit well with (c) an interesting moral question about what makes one "human" that is ultimately left up to the viewer, (d) while including enough action directly related to the question to keep it interesting on first viewing.
I think a good sequel would need to (a) replicate and build on the setting (b) choose a DIFFERENT question, or perhaps deeper examination of the original moral question to examine; and (c) fit the style/mood to that examination - and of course (d) driving it all with some cool action scenes.
Forget the off-world colonies - it's far more interesting to look at how alien Earth would have become, to our eyes. The original looked at an organic mix of decaying remnants of today's cities threaded and overshadowed by ultra-tech future stuff, and invaded by "foreigners" (apparently many natives having moved on to the off-world colonies?) OK, what is happening elsewhere? We saw a city apparently sapped by climate turned hot and wet - global warming has run amuk.
How's that affecting the rest of the country/world? Drought-ruined farm lands? Chicago by an empty Great Lakes basin (water mostly diverted to the new agricultural band across Canada, just a few big pipelines running to the city), surrounded by dusty desert, maybe growing food in towers? Ice age in Europe? London flooded? Expanding seas flooded the Mediterranean and turned lots of cities into Venice equivalents (and sunk Venice itself)? But now a dam is built across the Straits of Gibraltar - generating power as water is let in to replace evaporation, but not letting the sea fall to it's old levels? Has there been a mini-nuke-war in the middle east or maybe Pakistan-India? Those sorts of things would be interesting to look at. (And the nuke war assumption, shown in a few quick scenes, might serve as a warning to today's bickering countries with nukes or ambitions.) Instead of sitting in one city, the sequel should get out and around the world.
What interesting moral question might be examined? How about a serious re-examination of Hollywood's constant droning "it's good to age and die" formula? Perhaps the hero is struggling to put together enough money to replace his failing synth-organs, even as he moves through the richest and poorest levels of society? How about effectively immortal wealthy parents who keep their kids "young and innocent" - a 43 year old kid that looks 7 leading a secret life while playing a role to keep the parents happily self-deceived? Hmm - that edges on "What is adulthood? What is perversion? Is it more perverse to "force" someone to be a child forever, or for that "child" to behave as the adult they mentally are? [It doesn't have to turn the movie into child-porn - create a scenario in which a "straight-adult" hero is tempted but resists out of old-fashioned moral scruples he's not sure really apply any more - controversial enough.]
Maybe have the hero be someone arriving back from the off-world colonies, so we see this strange new world through his eyes - the tech is mostly not strange to him, but the culture would appear involuted and perverted, coming from a more straight-forward off-world culture where kids grow up fast because they're needed.