A lot has happened in the 30 years since Harrison Ford ran off with a hot robot in the original Blade Runner movie. The year is 2049, sea levels are rising at an alarming rate, and every Whole Foods in Los Angeles has been replaced by vending machines selling genetically modified food grown by Jared Leto, who may or may not have looked directly at the great solar eclipse of 2024.
The latest trailer for Blade Runner 2049 places this apocalyptic industrial prophecy atop some truly spectacular cinematography. Leto plays the nefarious Neander Wallace, a scientist responsible for reviving the Tyrell Corporation, a Replicant (android) manufacturing company that went bankrupt when making Replicants was outlawed in 2023. “Humanity cannot survive,” Wallace says as one of his perfected robots drops out of a genetically engineered placenta. “Replicants are the future of the species, but I can only make so many.” According to the Blade Runner website, the government’s ban on manufacturing new Replicants was repealed in 2036.
The new footage also features lots of Ryan Gosling as Officer K — the new LAPD blade runner who finds Ford holed up in a mansion and asks him to help solve “a case.” This case appears to be the movie’s central mystery, but probably has something to do with robots destroying what’s left of the former City of Flowers and Sunshine. At least surviving Angelenos have flying cars and plenty of cool neon signs.