Just this past Fall, Titan Comics took fans of the Blade Runner movie franchise into their past and future with the comic book series Blade Runner 2019(review here at borg). Both the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and prequel to Blade Runner 2049, the series introduced a new Blade Runner, a female engineered cyborg named Ash. Beginning next week readers will find Ash ten years later in the pages of Blade Runner 2029. With the ghosts of the Tyrell corporation always in the shadows, Ashina has a new mission, a personal one, and she decides to seek a lost target from her past.
Check out our sneak preview of artwork from Issue #1 of Blade Runner 2029, courtesy of Titan Comics:
It’s the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and prequel to Blade Runner 2049, giving fans of either or both a look into the world created by Philip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?Blade Runnerstories continue as Titan Comics looks to the parallel Earth future in Blade Runner 2019. The first nine issues introduced us to ex-Blade Runner Ash and Cleo, daughter of business magnate Alexander Selwyn. It’s now 2026. On returning to Los Angeles, Ash sleuthed out the location of Selwyn, but Selwyn knows Ash is after him, and has created a new Blade Runner. Of course the ghosts of Tyrell are always in the shadows.
It’s what Blade Runner fans have been waiting for, and if your appetite was whetted by the movie Blade Runner 2049, then you’re going to want to check our the next era of Blade Runnerstories as Titan Comics goes back to a parallel Earth future in Blade Runner 2019. The future is now. It’s been worth the wait, as the new story looks and feels like we’re back inside Philip K. Dick’s original vision in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In the neo-noir city of Los Angeles, 2019, Ash, a veteran Blade Runner, is working the kidnapping of a billionaire’s wife and child. Is the CEO of the new Canaan Corporation any better than those behind the Tyrell Corporation? Written by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Michael Green(Logan, Blade Runner 2049), with co-writer Mike Johnson(Supergirl, Star Trek), get ready for Blade Runner to experience the treatment we’ve seen in recent years for franchises like Firefly, Planet of the Apes, and Alien, as another new world of science fiction storytelling opens up. Green and Johnson have written a perfect first chapter.
This very first original, in-canon story set in the Blade Runner universe is illustrated by Andres Guinaldo(Justice League Dark, Captain America) with brilliant color work by Marco Lesko. You’re going to see something surprising in Guinaldo’s artwork–not only is this the world of Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, and Syd Mead′s neo-noir future, readers will see influences from cyberpunk and tech-noir classics like John Carpenter′s Escape from New York, Luc Besson′s The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Neill Blomkamp′s Elysium,James Cameron′s The Terminator and Aliens, Robert Rodriguez′s Alita: Battle Angel, and the other futureworlds adapted to film from Philip K. Dick′s stories. It all probably comes down to the versatility, breadth, and influence of concept artist Syd Mead, but the creators do give due credit to Dick, Scott, Hampton Fancher, David Peoples, Michael Deeley–and Mead–for the look and feel of their new story.
The first issue arrives next Wednesday, and you can pick from four cover options, from Stanley “Artgerm” Lau, Andreas Guinaldo, John Royle, and an original concept piece by Syd Mead.
Check out our sneak preview of the first issue of Blade Runner 2019, courtesy of Titan Comics, plus a new trailer for the series released just today:
Credit for the success of Blade Runner 2049 as a worthy sequel to 1982’s Blade Runner is a shared prize for director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Sicario), the writers, including screenwriter Michael Green (Logan, Alien: Covenant), source material creator Philip K. Dick, and original Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher (The Mighty Quinn), plus at least two dozen other unnamed creators whose early science fiction works were mined for the story. Predictable, derivative, slow-paced, and overly long, Blade Runner 2049 still lands as a solid sequel and will no doubt please fans loyal to the 1982 film. The beauty of the sequel is the earnest, ambitious effort of Villeneuve under the eye of executive producer and original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott to give the story a reserved touch. The sequel has the now classic dystopian look of the Mad Max or Terminator: Salvation variety, stretching the original Syd Mead futurism and punk noir vibe into a different but logical new direction–think Blade Runner with the lights turned on.
From the first scene Villeneuve & Co. dig in to not just sci-fi tropes but cyborg heavy themes that sci-fi fans know very well from similar explorations in countless books, television series, and films since the early 1980s, when the idea of adapting something like Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into a big budget film was something less familiar to film audiences. The filmmakers touch on many classics–Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Pinocchio, Shakespearean tragedy–to countless episodes of the Star Trek franchise (lead character and Replicant K/Joe played by Ryan Gosling revisits several direct themes the android Data explored in Star Trek: The Next Generation). More than ten minutes is spent revisiting the latest technology called an “emanator” that Star Trek Voyager fans will be familiar with as the Emergency Medical Hologram’s “holo-emitter,” a device allowing holograms to move around the world. What in the early 1980s may have wowed audiences is here not so eye-popping because of the legacy Trek tech called the holodeck. But none of these flashbacks to sci-fi’s past really takes anything away from the elements re-used in Blade Runner 2049 because they are all stitched together into a clean story. To some it will be a Where’s Waldo? of sci-fi storytelling and to others the simple nostalgia of exploring Isaac Asimov’s themes of the Robot and the Self will be worth a revisit.
Many questions are asked in the lengthy 2 hour-and 43 minute-long film, and some, but not all, will be answered, disappointing a few loyal fans of the original. Deaths of characters and actors since the original limit the return of certain characters from the original, but where they happen it’s done right. One scene, however, is a complete misfire–a character walked onto the screen to the gasp of this reviewer’s theater audience, only to find it wasn’t really who was expected based on the build up of the scene. But the biggest misfire is Villeneuve’s use of sound and score. Villeneuve turned to Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer for the musical score, unfortunately creating a dreadful use of sound in the film, compared to the original film’s excellent score by Vangelis. Where the use of Vangelis’s synthesized cautious, futuristic melodies took a backseat to story and dialogue in the original, here Wallfisch and Zimmer lean on dissonant John Cage-esque chords and blare noises like someone sitting on a piano or a kid plugging his guitar into an amp for the first time, over and over, at full volume–the aural equivalent of J.J. Abrams’ lens flares. The poor sound takes away from a visual work that could have benefitted from a closer look at the use of sound in the original. I.e. take at least one earplug along, especially in an IMAX or other digital theater.
