Pretty much everybody likes Ridley Scott’s original 1982 Blade Runner—or at least the “Final Cut” version that makes all the others look like garbage—but even its biggest fans can probably admit that the film has some flaws. For one thing, it’s a little hard to get a read on its antagonists, the rogue Nexus-6 replicants led by Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty. Their quest to live longer is fairly sympathetic, but also they kill people and are kind of scary, so how is the audience supposed to feel about them? What they really needed was an explicit visual reminder metaphorically plastered across their foreheads that could give people a sense of their mental state. Hot Topic would’ve sold a lot more Blade Runner t-shirts, at least.
Anyway, in completely unrelated news, Variety is reporting that Jared Leto has just joined the cast of director Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner sequel (which is being produced by Alcon Entertainment, the studio that controls the Blade Runner rights these days). All details about Leto’s character are being “kept under wraps,” but we do know that he’ll be appearing alongside Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Barkhad Abdi, Ryan Gosling, and original star Harrison Ford—all of whom should get ready to start receiving some weird shit in the mail. Maybe not condoms and dead animals this time, but probably origami unicorns, hard-boiled eggs, and eyeballs.