Roger Deakins: ‘Blade Runner’ Sequel will be a standalone
Cinematographer Roger Deakins is going to be rocking the Blade Runner sequel, and the world will be better for it. Recently Deakins was talking about the film, and revealed that the movie will be a standalone movie.
You couldn’t really ask for two better talents to be behind the upcoming “Blade Runner” sequel. Denis Villeneuve has show a tremendous skill for taking what seems like routine genre pictures on the surface, and then turning them instead out, and finding deeper layers of meaning within them. Meanwhile, he has found a collaborator in revered cinematographer Roger Deakins who, after shooting two pictures with the director (“Prisoners,” “Sicario“), will embark on a third with the followup to the sci-fi classic. However, Deakins wants to make clear their effort will be distinct, and not a carbon copy of the original.
“We’re just treating the new one as what it is; it’s an entirely separate movie that will stand by itself,” he told ScreenCrush. “I mean obviously it has elements that connect it to the original. But it’s going to stand alone by itself as a movie. And I’m not going to do shafts of light coming through a window with rain just for the sake of doing shafts of light and rain — although it was really superb the way it was done. No, you have to think about the script and approach it anew.”
However, Deakins does admit he did have a moment of pause before jumping in. “I mean, I did think twice about it. Because you think ‘Oh yeah, Blade Runner, the original is so wonderful.’ And I thought ‘This script is not the old script. It’s not a remake. It’s another take on the story. It’s another story and a progression.’ And I thought ‘There’s so few good science-fiction films out there. Of all the science-fiction films, this deserves another.’ I mean they made about 20 ‘Planet of the Apes,’ and they still haven’t made one as good as the original. They only ever made one ‘Blade Runner,’ so I think we can do another one,” he stated.