The movie that put Denis Villeneuve into “massive artistic danger”
The movies of Denis Villeneuve are feasts for the hungry eyes, and throughout his excellent career, the director has delivered some of the most intense and visually inspiring films of the 21st century, from his tense 2013 thriller Prisoners to his spellbinding efforts in the science fiction genre.
While Villeneuve’s cinematic works have truly captivated time and time again, and he’s brought us worlds that could only be conceiving in the deepest recesses of one’s imagination, it’s also fair to say that the Canadian filmmaker has taken on his fair share of cinematic risks.
After all, Villeneuve has shouldered the task of creating versions of worlds that are already known and loved in the form of Dune and Blade Runner 2049. Dune was already adapted into a disastrous movie by David Lynch, and Blade Runner was already one of the most celebrated science fiction films of all time.
It was Villeneuve’s Blade Runner sequel that looks to remain on the director’s mind, primarily because of its disappointing box office return. 2049 was meant to be Villeneuve’s box office breakout, but it made $260million against a budget close to $180m, which seems fine on the surface, but factoring in the $80m marketing and distribution costs leaves the film as something of a commercial failure.
When Villeneuve appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he admitted that he was grateful to still be in his job after the box office bomb. “The miracle of Blade Runner 2049 is that I am still making movies, and you are still talking to me,” the director told Josh Horowitz. “I knew when I was [making] this movie, I was flirting with disaster.”
Blade Runner 2049 saw Ryan Gosling play K, a Nexus-9 replicant blade runner who discovers a conspiracy that may threaten social stability and the future of humanity. Harrison Ford reprised his role of Rick Deckard, and the likes of Ana de Armas and Jared Leto also starred.
Continuing to explain his worries about 2049, Villeneuve went on: “I put myself into massive artistic danger. That was like walking; as Christopher Nolan put it to me once, you’re walking in sacred territory. It’s true, it was like sacrilegious what I did. It could have been… it was a dangerous game to play.”
While Villeneuve certainly took a risk, the gamble arguably paid off. Sure, the Blade Runner sequel was a box office failure, and some felt that a sequel was unnecessary in the first place, but his movie is a fantastic work of cinema with excellent acting, cinematography from Roger Deakins, and score from Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch. Villeneuve put himself in artistic danger, but he came through the other side still making movies.
