Quick Links Does Denis Villeneuve Have Mixed Feelings on 'Blade Runner 2049'? 'Blade Runner 2049' Is One of Villeneuve's Best Films 'Blade Runner 2049' Made Us Villeneuve Fans for Life
Few directors in the modern era have had as meteoric a rise as Denis Villeneuve. After spending the early 2010s as a cult favorite and critical darling with Incendies, Prisoners, and Sicario, he truly put himself on the map with 2016's Arrival. That film, widely considered one of the best of the decade, earned him his first Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Picture, and since then, he's become the go-to guy for thought-provoking, epic science fiction blockbusters.
His star has only grown since then, with his first two Dune installments drawing mass audiences for source material once thought unadaptable (even if he was snubbed for Best Director again). Yet Villeneuve's biggest project at the time, Blade Runner 2049, was also his biggest box office bomb, losing at least $80 million for Alcon Entertainment. Even Villeneuve himself, while never outright disowning the film, has expressed feelings that he was never able to fully escape the shadow of the original, one of the greatest sci-fi works of all time. But he couldn't be more wrong about this.
Your Rating close 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Rate Now 0/10 Blade Runner 2049 R Sci-Fi Action Drama Mystery Release Date October 6, 2017 Runtime 163 Minutes Director Denis Villeneuve Writers Michael Green, Hampton Fancher Franchise(s) Blade Runner Cast Ryan Gosling Harrison Ford Jared Leto Ana De Armas
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In March 2024, as Dune: Part Two hit theaters, Denis Villeneuve reflected on Blade Runner 2049 in a Hollywood Reporter interview: "Blade Runner is one of my favorite films, and it's absolutely a masterpiece. Ridley Scott is one of my favorite filmmakers, and even though he had given his blessing, it was very important for me to hear it and see it in his eyes that he was OK with me doing the movie at the time. But I was constantly thinking about the original film as I was making Blade Runner 2049. It was impossible not to."
Indeed, Villeneuve's film was widely acclaimed for successfully capturing the spirit of Ridley Scott's masterpiece. But while Villeneuve never expressed regret, he also admitted it was by far the biggest challenge of his career: "I don't think I will ever approach someone else's universe again. I still wake up sometimes at night, saying, 'Why did I do that?'"
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Despite how much of a labor of love the project was for Villeneuve, it was clear that his final film was too avant-garde to be a mainstream hit. Additionally, Villeneuve had no say in the film's marketing, which deliberately opted for secrecy, out of fear of plot leaks, while he had always wanted their promotional campaign to be more open.
When the final film flopped at the box office, Villeneuve was quick to insist that he had no intentions of making another sequel. "Let's just say it would not be a good idea for me to make a movie like that twice," he told The Telegraph. "When you're working on a film you're in a bubble, and it was only when I came out that I realised we had made a monster."
'Blade Runner 2049' Is One of Villeneuve's Best Films Close
All of this said we remain steadfast in our belief that Blade Runner 2049 is one of Denis Villeneuve's crowning achievements. To begin with, it was long considered a fool's errand to even try and capture the dreamlike, hallucinatory aesthetic Ridley Scott had masterfully captured in the original. Even Scott himself had tried and failed to recapture the magic of Alien with the intensely divisive Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Yet against all odds, Villeneuve made an honest-to-God Blade Runner film that flawlessly lived up to Scott's vision and worked for the same reasons as the first.
But Blade Runner 2049 is more than just homage; as beholden to the original as Villeneuve openly expressed feeling, he was just as successful in implementing his own personal voice. Much like Prisoners and Sicario, it evokes a sense of claustrophobia and impending doom, with characters almost instinctively driven to find an expression of their humanity or lack thereof. It perfectly blends Scott's thematic obsessions with Villeneueve's.
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Yet Blade Runner 2049 works especially like gangbusters as a sequel, and an expansion on Scott's original ideas. The film's protagonist, Agent K (Ryan Gosling), becomes involved with a case that leads him to believe that he's the child of a now-deceased replicant, even though the occurrence of a replicant giving birth is thought impossible.
While the original film explored what it means to have a soul, Villeneuve uses this plot to expand the focus on how the circumstances of one's birth shape one's identity and humanity (and to subvert "chosen one" narratives, a thread shared in his Dune films). Additionally, K develops a relationship with an artificial intelligence, Joi (Ana de Armas), and as she starts to develop romantic feelings with the figure who literally owns her, the franchise's conceit on the nature of humanity gets a few new fascinating wrinkles.
'Blade Runner 2049' Made Us Villeneuve Fans for Life Close
All of this is to say Blade Runner 2049 is easily one of Denis Villeneuve's best works, and while he claims he could never escape the original's shadow, we couldn't disagree more. If anything, this was the film that convinced us he was a filmmaker capable of delivering the goods even on what sounded like a fool's errand, a feat he later replicated with Dune.
Frankly, since the original Blade Runner polarized audiences and flopped at the box office, before being vindicated by history, it's a weirdly poetic parallel that Villeneuve experienced the same thing. And we suspect time will be just as kind to 2049. Blade Runner 2049 is available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, and Google Play.