Blade Runner 2049 Joe And Joi
Dot Liljenquist
Blade Runner 2049 is a 2017 American epic neo-noir science fiction film directed by Denis Villeneuve from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, based on a story by Fancher.[10][11] A sequel to Blade Runner (1982), the film stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, with Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Dave Bautista, and Jared Leto in supporting roles. Ford and Edward James Olmos reprise their roles from the previous film as Rick Deckard and Gaff, respectively. Gosling plays K, a "blade runner" who uncovers a secret that threatens to destabilize society and the course of civilization.
Ideas for a Blade Runner sequel were first proposed in the 1990s, but licensing issues stalled their development. Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson obtained the film rights from Bud Yorkin. Ridley Scott stepped down as the film's initial director and worked as an executive producer, while Villeneuve was later appointed to direct. Blade Runner 2049 was financed through a partnership between Alcon Entertainment and Sony Pictures, as well as a Hungarian government-funded tax rebate. Warner Bros., who had distributed its predecessor, released the film on behalf of Alcon in North America, while Sony handled distribution in international markets. Principal photography took place mostly at two soundstages in Budapest over four months from July to November 2016.
In 2049, 30 years after the events of Blade Runner, bioengineered humans known as replicants are slaves. K (short for serial number, KD6-3.7), a Nexus-9 replicant, works for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a "blade runner", an officer who hunts and "retires" (kills) rogue replicants. After retiring replicant Sapper Morton, K finds a box buried under a tree at Morton's farm, containing the remains of a female replicant who died during a caesarean section, demonstrating that replicants can reproduce biologically, previously thought impossible. K's superior, Lt. Joshi, fears this knowledge could lead to war between humans and replicants and orders K to retire the replicant child.
K visits the Wallace Corporation, successor to the defunct Tyrell Corporation in the manufacture of replicants, where DNA archives identify the deceased female as Rachael, an experimental replicant. K learns of Rachael's romantic ties with former blade runner Rick Deckard. CEO Niander Wallace wants the secret to replicant reproduction to expand interstellar colonization. He sends his replicant enforcer, Luv, to follow K.
At Morton's farm, K finds 6.10.21 carved into the tree trunk and recognizes it from a childhood memory of a wooden toy horse. Because replicant memories are artificial, K's holographic A.I. girlfriend Joi believes this is evidence that K was born, not created. He discovers in LAPD records two children born on that date with identical DNA aside from the sex chromosome, but only the boy is listed as alive. K tracks the child to an orphanage but the records from that year are missing. K recognizes the orphanage from his memories and finds the toy horse where he remembers hiding it.
Replicant memory designer Dr. Ana Stelline confirms that his memory of the orphanage is not artificial, leading K to conclude he is Rachael's son. At LAPD headquarters K implies to Joshi that he has killed the replicant child. When he fails a baseline test he is marked as rogue. Joshi gives him 48 hours to pass the test, or he will be 'retired'. Joi hires replicant prostitute Mariette as a surrogate for Joi to have sex with K. Mariette is part of the replicant freedom movement and leaves a tracker on K. Analysis of the toy horse leads K to the ruins of Las Vegas. He finds Deckard, who tells him that he is the father of Rachael's child and scrambled the birth records to protect the child's identity; Deckard left the child in the custody of the replicant freedom movement.
Luv kills Joshi and tracks K to Las Vegas. She kidnaps Deckard, destroys Joi, and leaves K to die. Using Mariette's tracker, the replicant freedom movement rescues K. When their leader, Freysa, tells him that Rachael's child was a girl, K understands that he is not Rachael's child, deduces that Stelline is her daughter and that the toy horse memory is hers, one she implanted in replicants whose memories she designed. Fearing Deckard may give up Stelline or the freedom movement to Wallace, Freysa urges K to kill Deckard.
Luv takes Deckard to meet Wallace, who offers Deckard a duplicate Rachael in exchange for revealing what he knows. Deckard refuses, and Luv kills the duplicate. As Luv transports Deckard to be tortured, K intercedes and tries to rescue Deckard. He fights and drowns Luv but is mortally wounded. He stages Deckard's death to protect him from Wallace and the replicant freedom movement before taking Deckard to Stelline's office and handing him her toy horse. As K lies on the steps looking up at the falling snow, Deckard enters the building and meets his daughter for the first time.[a]
Archival footage, audio, and stills of Sean Young from the original film are used to represent both her original character of Rachael and a duplicate of the character created by Niander Wallace.[13] Young's likeness was digitally superimposed onto Loren Peta, who was coached by Young on how to recreate her performance from the first film. The voice of the replicant was created with the use of a sound-alike actress to Young.[14] Young was credited for her work.
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]
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]
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