HOLLYWOOD – November 18, 2015 – (Gephardt Daily) ─ Ridley Scott breaks his silence about the long-awaited sequel to his 1982 cult-classic film “Blade Runner.”
According to Slash Film, the director, who is producing the follow-up, detailed the new opening scene during an appearance at the AFI festival in Los Angeles. He said that the scene was originally imagined for the first movie, more than three decades ago.
The original is set in a dusky, dystopian Los Angeles which never sees the sunlight, but Ridley Scott has revealed will open on a remote farm in the Wyoming countryside, in a landscape which appears to have been ravaged by environmental catastrophe.
“We decided to start the film off with the original starting block of the original film,” said Scott. We always loved the idea of a dystopian universe, and we start off at what I describe as a ‘factory farm’ – what would be a flat land with farming. Wyoming. Flat, not rolling – you can see for 20 miles. No fences, just plowed, dry dirt.
The director added, “Turn around and you see a massive tree, just dead, but the tree is being supported and kept alive by wires that are holding the tree up. It’s a bit like ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ There’s dust, and the tree is still standing. By that tree is a traditional, Grapes of Wrath-type white cottage with a porch. Behind it at a distance of two miles, in the twilight, is this massive combine harvester that’s fertilizing this ground. You’ve got 16 Klieg lights on the front, and this combine is four times the size of this cottage. And now a spinner [a flying car] comes flying in, creating dust. Of course, traditionally chased by a dog that barks.
“The doors open, a guy gets out and there you’ve got Rick Deckard. He walks in to the cottage, opens the door, smells stew, sits down and waits for the guy to pull up to the house to arrive. The guy’s seen him, so the guy pulls the combine behind the cottage and it towers three stories above it, and the man climbs down from a ladder – a big man. He steps onto the balcony and he goes to Harrison [Ford]’s side. The cottage actually [creaks]; this guy’s got to be 350 pounds. I’m not going to say anything else – you’ll have to go see the movie.”
Deckard fights the 350-pound man, then rips off his jaw to reveal that the interloper is a replicant, or android.
