So says Michelle Yeoh’s Olwen, one of the two leads of Prime Video’s upcoming series Blade Runner 2099. Picking up 50 years (obviously) after Blade Runner 2049, the dystopian future world that was first brought to the screen by Ridley Scott is in many ways the same in the show as it was in that 1982 film – vast cityscapes, flying cars, teeming masses, and big-as-hell shoulder pads.
But in other areas, things have changed significantly. Perhaps most notably, the Replicant underclass – androids designed by man as slave labor – have overtaken their human overseers after a war between the two races. Now it’s humankind that lives under the heel of the Replicants. And as Olwen says, it’s their time now…
In advance of Blade Runner 2099’s New York Comic Con panel on Saturday, we spoke to series creator Silka Luisa and production designer Paul Inglis about recreating the world first envisioned by Scott, and then Denis Villeneuve for Blade Runner 2049, and how channeling the Replicants versus humans dynamic – and the blurring of the line between the two groups that both films did so well – informed not only the design choices behind the new show, but also how the characters of Yeoh’s Olwen and Hunter Schafer’s Cora would take the latest chapter of Blade Runner to a new level.
The Blade Runner films (and the 1968 book on which the original film was based, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) have always played with the idea of identity, be it the age-old question of whether or not Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard is a Replicant, Ryan Gosling’s Agent K’s delusions of grandeur about being some kind of “chosen one,” or now, in 2099, Schafer’s Cora playing a human who is forced to pretend to be a Replicant Blade Runner… who, by the way, now hunt down rogue humans rather than Replicants. It seems to be getting harder than ever to tell the difference between human and Replicant.
“That's always been baked into the concept of the franchise – the idea that there could be something that looks just like us but is slightly other,” says Luisa. “And that is such an interesting, complicated character dynamic to explore. In our world, with the power dynamics flipped, it's also interesting to think, okay, what comes after us and do they have more right to be here than us at some point?”
There’s a moment in Episode 1 where a human says, “No one gets by me,” and a Replicant Blade Runner responds, “You’re human. Your whole world has already gone past you.” And indeed, that is the vibe of the show as things begin. Having lost the war between Replicants and humans at some point between the events of Blade Runner 2049 and this series, the humans now live in a world that not only did they ruin, but that the Replicants are trying to rebuild. Ecologically wrecked and polluted, Earth seems to have a shot once again at healing now that the Replicants can apply their terraforming skills from decades of off-world colony experience. A new life awaits you… on Earth!
This new status quo, which was seeded in Blade Runner 2049’s Replicant rebels, allows Luisa and her team to pay respect to what has come before in this universe but also chart new ground, as with the unlikely partnership between the Blade Runner Olwen and her new partner, Cora, who is essentially pulling a Matt Damon from The Departed. Forced to pretend to be a Replicant and a Blade Runner, she finds herself living a double life where she can trust virtually no one.
“It was important to be aware of and to respect the canon of the films in terms of historically what happens in them and the tentpole moments,” says Luisa. “The benefit of having this shift in status quo is that it's a new entry point for everyone, and that makes it accessible to new audiences and to fans because everyone is learning about this new world and the new dynamic and all the new characters.”
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/blade-runner-2099-what-happens-when-the-replicants-are-running-the-world
