With Ridley Scott currently doing the press rounds for last week’s Prometheus (Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron), many have asked him about the rumoured Blade Runner sequel in the works. In Collider’s interview with Scott, he described one scene already mapped out in his head. Listening to him, you get a sense of how his mind works, and what a great visual director he truly is…
Here’s the important bit…
There’ll be a vast farmland where there are no hedges or anything in sight, and it’s flat like the plains of—where’s the Great Plains in America? Kansas, where you can see for miles. And it’s dirt, but it’s being raked. On the horizon is a combine harvester which is futuristic with klieg lights, ‘cause it’s dawn. The harvester is as big as six houses. In the foreground is a small white clapboard hut with a porch as if it was from Grapes of Wrath. From the right comes a car, coming in about six feet off the ground being chased by a dog. And that’s the end of it, I’m not gonna tell you anything else.
Bleeding Cool thought this sounded a bit familiar, and eventually found the above echoed in a planned scene for the original Blade Runner (Harrison Ford). Here’s the animated storyboard for it…
Did this scene ever leave him? Scott is notorious for re-editing his films after their theatrical release, as my five different versions of Blade Runner attests. The notion of androids in a rural, almost Western setting sounds very promising. It would separate the sequel from the original’s tone, probably the right move after the similarities between Alien (Sigourney Weaver) and Prometheus.
Arguably, Prometheus has as much in common with Blade Runner as it does Alien, as Michael Fassbender’s android, David, is the soul of that film (oxymoron!). But will it share the 3D?
In an interview with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode on the BBC’s flagship film review radio programme, Kermode inquired whether Scott would shoot Blade Runner in 3D. Scott paused ever so briefly, went ‘…err…’, and then said ‘yes’. Kermode leaped on this like a face-hugger. He hates 3D.
Don’t we all.
Originally published June 6, 2012. Updated November 29, 2022.
