The Blade Runner sequel has a prequel. This kind of makes it sound like we’re travelling back in time, but since the forthcoming Blade Runner is set in 2049, it actually still involves us fastforwarding to 2036, which is only 19 years away — the same distance in the future as 1998 is in the past.
Let’s quickly recap what we know about the original film (the Harrison Ford one) and the new one (the Ryan Gosling one) so we can properly unpick the prequel (the Jared Leto one).
Set in 2019 The OG Harrison Ford film was made in 1982 and directed by Ridley Scott — Harrison plays an ex cop called Rick Deckard, who works as a Blade Runner — his job is to track and kill rogue ‘replicants,’ robots that look exactly like humans. Suffice to say it’s a tough job. This is complicated further when Deckard falls in love with one, and (SPOILER) the couple flee the city and the movie ends. Lots of other stuff happens too but we have limited word space and you should probably see the movie unless you already have.
The Ryan Gosling film is set in 2049 and directed by Denis Villeneuve, and from the trailers we’ve seen so far we know that: Ryan is playing a blade runner called Officer K. He is still really hot. He is tracking down Deckard/Ford. When he finds him, he discovers some big important news that “could start a war,” — this is probably what the film is about. Jared Leto also stars in the film as a pretty creepy looking guy who is now in charge of making all the replicants. He is, from the looks of it, the ‘bad guy’.
In the prequel set in 2036, directed by Luke Scott (son of Ridley) we see Jared Leto bargaining with some important people trying to make them allow him to keep creating replicants and lift the prohibition on them. The important people make it pretty clear that they don’t want any replicants anywhere, but since Jared Leto’s character’s company — Wallace Corp. — solved the global food shortage, he has some pretty good bargaining chips. He also has some pretty intimidating replicants.
If you’re a bit confused as to how everything fits together, don’t worry, so are we. Thankfully we’ll have some more prequel putty to fill the gaps soon — in the clip, Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve says this is one of three short films depicting key events between 2019 and 2049. One down, two to go, and only a few more weeks until we can see the final film itself.