The newest Blade Runner 2049 trailer is out and the visuals are worth getting excited for. I promise we aren’t pivoting to a fan site for Ridley Scott adjacent projects, but good set design deserves as much love as we can throw at it. It’s not that I’m anti-CGI, but practical effects can still launch a movie from good to great. It’s why we still care about the first Blade Runner today.
I won’t dig into the new storyline pieces, I’m just thrilled to see solid visual callbacks to the 1982 original that feel cohesive and familiar enough to come through in a tight edit. Vaulted pyramidic buildings and crumbling edifices are dotted throughout, with enough clean futuristic interiors to keep novelty and surprise up. We’ll definitely get grit and apocalyptic tech and downtown lights and flying cars, along with gutted hopeless buildings to match our grizzled old friend Deckard and the future in general.
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
Production designer Dennis Gassner has some deeply atmospheric credits under his belt (Skyfall and Waterworld among them) and the dedication to world building really pops once you tune out the cops and gaze at the environments.
Plenty has already been said about director Denis Villeneuve (of Arrival and Sicario fame) and cinematographer Roger Deakins (Hail, Caesar!, Sicario, and dozens of other incredibly shot classics). So let’s just marinate in some stills of the enormous practical effects that “overwhelmed” Ryan Gosling while filming, fantasize about their fabrication shop, and mark our calendars for October.
Source: core77