What ‘Blade Runner 2’ Can Learn From Successful Sci-Fi Sequels

In case there was any doubt as to whether anything in this whole goddamn world was sacred, news that the long-mooted sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi touchpoint “Blade Runner” was actually moving ahead emerged last week to answer that with a resounding, “Yeah, no.” In the days since, we have gone back and forth — hope is trying valiantly to trump experience — in regards whether this can possibly amount to anything good.

First, we have the major boon that the directing reins have been handed to Denis Villeneuve, a truly original filmmaker whose last film, the eerie “Enemy,” indicates his comfort with ambiguity, while the rain-washed aesthetic of his previous thriller, “Prisoners,” and its tone of dread and fatalism are reminiscent of the original “Blade Runner” on a more surface level.  Moreover, we’ll mostly glad it’s anyone but Scott whose recent efforts — “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” “The Counselor,” “Robin Hood,” and “Body of Lies” — make it clear he’s been off the boil for quite some time, and we’re not alone in considering “Prometheus” a mess and a waste.

And so on to the “great news that gets a little less great the more you look at it” category: original “Blade Runner” screenwriter Hampton Fancher turned in the first draft for the sequel, so that’s gotta be a good thing, right? Hey, at least it’s not Damon Lindelof. Well, yes, as far as that goes. First time round, Fancher shared credit with David Webb Peoples, who’d go on to be Oscar-nominated for “Unforgiven,” and also wrote “12 Monkeys” for Terry Gilliam. This time out, Fancher will be co-credited as writer with Michael Green. And while he has been prolific on some decent shows like “Smallville” and “Heroes“, the most hurtful blow to our anticipation for Green’s input is that his only feature screenwriting credit to date is for the reviled “Green Lantern.” And the icing on this dubious cake? Green’s most recent credit is as a writer on the 2015 Oscars telecast, which we dubbed “the worst-written Oscar show in memory.” Yeouch. (But Scott clearly likes the guy, also tasking him with penning “Prometheus 2“).

Now for “news that seems good on the surface but then turns out to be kind of worrying.” We don’t know a lot about the plot Fancher and Green are cooking up, but the few tidbits we’ve managed to glean sound innocuous or well-intentioned enough, initially. Scott himself laid fears of a “Prometheus”-style prequel to rest saying “It’s a sequel – it’s what happens next,” which was confirmed in a press release recently which stated: “The story takes place several decades after the conclusion of the 1982 original.” And, of course, Harrison Ford has been confirmed,  with Scott saying “Harrison is very much part of this one, but really it’s about finding him; he comes in in the third act.” So all good, then, as the sequel looks set to feature the most iconic survivor of the first film, but is set in a time frame that can account for the actor’s current age without resorting to too much CG or makeup?

Well maybe, if this were any other film. But “Blade Runner,” as is argued in this rant from io9’s Rob Bricken, is not just any film in terms of its sequel-ability. At least a portion of its power lies in its ambiguity as typified by the enduring “is Deckard a replicant?” debate. While fans have argued about that for decades, it seems obvious to us that it was Scott’s intention (not necessarily that of the screenwriter, and certainly not that of Philip K Dick) to leave it ambiguous. (Read any comments list about this, though, and it’s hilarious how much people seem to want to believe that there is an untouchable truth out there one way or the other, as though Rick Deckard were a real entity).

But it seems unlikely that Deckard’s perfectly poised ambivalence between man and replicant can be preserved in a sequel. If Ford shows up and is playing the same character, only older, then Deckard is surely a human. If he is CG-ed to hell to look like is younger self, we’ll know he was a replicant. And since we should remember an early idea for “Blade Runner” was that there were two Tyrells, it’s possible he could be something else entirely, but definitively something. No matter what, by simply being a few decades into the future we will be given new information about a character who exerts such a pull on our imaginations precisely because none of us have enough information on him now. Knowing more can only make him less. Bricken further argues that this makes “Blade Runner 2” potentially one of the rare sequels that could really impact on your feelings toward the original.

Whether the bad outweighs the good it hardly matters: this thing is happening. Decent sci-fi sequels are not impossible, just rare. So in the spirit of looking (a tad desperately) for a silver lining, we’ve looked at a few things that have made good sci-fi sequels work in the past, and asked whether those learnings can be applied to “Blade Runner 2.”

Some of the best sci-fi sequels switch genres to some extent

Also known as the “Cameron effect,” the holy grail of this phenomenon was the first sequel to another Ridley Scott classic, “Alien.” In coming to the sequel seven years later, James Cameron audaciously jettisoned a fair bit of what made the first film so great, retaining characters and storyline, but changing the mood and the pace entirely. So the terrific “Aliens” becomes its own thing, an action/adventure/sci-fi sequel to a horror/sci-fi original. It’s no wonder that the new reboot of the “Alien” franchise, to be directed by Neill Blomkamp, is reportedly canning/ignoring everything that came after “Aliens.”

Similarly, Cameron’s “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” changed up the foreboding, downbeat vibe of his original and delivered a sprawling, adrenaline-soaked, complex chase movie instead, again moving into action/adventure territory from a more thrillerish, horror-inflected first film. For a non-Cameron example, there’s George Romero, who brought consumerist satire to “Dawn of the Dead” where “Night of the Living Dead” was straight-up (and now pretty creaky) horror.

Could/should “Blade Runner 2” do the same? It’s not impossible, but given quotes like “a uniquely potent and faithful sequel” from the press release, it seems unlikely “Blade Runner 2” will venture too far from the original’s territory. Villeneuve is a director whose work tends to mine a similar kind of psychological thriller/existential mystery vein to that the original “Blade Runner” worked in.