Contact Admin. What do the off-world colonies look like? Are androids the next stage in human evolution, or merely useful gifts for the 21st-century sociopath who has everything? Will Deckard and Ana ever restore their father-daughter bond, given he abandoned her to that awful orphanage as a small child? Villeneuve and screenwriters Hampton Fancher and Michael Green might well have been hoping to answer all these questions in future instalments.
Certainly Blade Runner , despite being relatively self-contained, would have made an enticing first instalment in an eventual trilogy. Both Fancher and Green have admitted dreaming of sequels. The three most critically acclaimed science fiction and fantasy movies of so far are Wonder Woman , Thor: Ragnarok and Logan , all of which performed well at cinemas. The obvious difference here is that Blade Runner is a muscular-yet-cerebral science-fiction thriller rather than a superhero flick, which perhaps explains its disappointing reach.
Blade Runner inspires its audience to consider big questions about the nature of humanity, artificial intelligence and the soul, rather than simply marvel at the futuristic spectacle on show.
Perhaps we should be asking ourselves quite why BR cost so much to make when TV shows such as Westworld and Humans are meeting the needs of smart sci-fi fans on the small screen for a fraction of the cost.
For if Hollywood cannot turn a profit on big-budget cerebral sci-fi, it will surely look elsewhere to make money. If Blade Runner were not a genre movie, it could yet hope to pick up box office as awards season kicks in. And it is not just that BR fails to fit the mould of an awards season big-hitter. It is that for all its brilliance, the movie was clearly never intended as an arthouse production.
