Blade Runner warned us about companies like Amazon — now Amazon is making the Blade Runner series
Blade Runner spent four decades warning us about a corporation that builds artificial people to replace the real ones. The new series is made by a company with $50 billion riding on OpenAI, and it
Blade Runner spent four decades warning us about a corporation that builds artificial people to replace the real ones. The new series is made by a company with $50 billion riding on OpenAI, and it starts after the humans have already lost.
Prime Video showed a new trailer for Blade Runner 2099 at New York Comic Con on Saturday 10 October; all eight episodes land on 25 November. Michelle Yeoh plays Olwen, a replicant Blade Runner who is days from dying. Hunter Schafer is Cora, a human fugitive who goes undercover as a Blade Runner with the LAPD. One of the most-liked comments under the trailer on YouTube had boiled the whole thing down to a sentence: "Amazon prime is exactly what the original Blade Runner movie warned us about."
The $50 billion punchline
The villain of Ridley Scott's 1982 film is the Tyrell Corporation, which manufactures replicants as slave labour for the off-world colonies, under the slogan "More human than human". In February, Amazon agreed to invest $50 billion in OpenAI: $15 billion up front, the other $35 billion once certain conditions are met. "Brought to you by the very same people the films warn you about," ran another comment under the trailer. Fair enough.
The sharpest version of the joke came from the same convention, on the same day. Nicolas Cage, who has worked for Amazon, told his NYCC spotlight panel on Saturday morning:
"Amazon is a very AI friendly company to the tune of 50 billion dollars invested to OpenAI. I am not an AI friendly actor. I didn't sign the waiver to let them use AI on Spider-Noir."
— Nicolas Cage, at his NYCC panel
Prime Video cancelled Spider-Noir after one season in September, and Cage reckons he's "probably not going to be working with that studio again". Last December Amazon also pulled an AI-generated Fallout recap that placed the flashbacks in the 1950s instead of 2077. A third commenter's question, "Why would you give this to a studio that focused on killing shows", rather answers itself.
Read more: Nicolas Cage quits 'AI-friendly' Amazon — just as Prime Video buys a film without a real face
The worst has happened
In the films, the replicant uprising is only ever a threat. The series skips straight past it. Showrunner Silka Luisa put it plainly to the NYCC crowd:
"We are 50 years after 2049, and bad news. The worst has happened. The replicant uprising that has been bubbling up in the films has taken place, and humans have lost."
— Silka Luisa, showrunner, at the NYCC panel
Replicants now run Los Angeles; humans are second-class citizens. Executive producer Broderick Johnson made the point himself on stage, noting that "we're all living in a world with the emergence of artificial intelligence". He didn't name the streamer. He didn't have to.
Blade Runner used to ask whether the machines would win. Blade Runner 2099 assumes they have, and streams on the platform that is betting on it.
The best detail from the panel footage is Olwen's hands. Her nail beds are turning blue, a nod to Roy Batty's hands in the 1982 film, and the colour progresses as she nears death. Luisa explained: "there needed to be some marker that she could always look down and remember it's only days."
What we know
The plot is still under wraps. Olwen is supposed to be hunting human insurgents but is actually looking for Merrick, a missing fellow Blade Runner. According to Luisa, that has never happened before.
- Premiere: 25 November, all eight episodes at once, in more than 240 countries and territories.
- Cast: Yeoh and Schafer, plus Dimitri Abold, Lewis Gribben, Sheila Atim and Tom Burke.
- Behind the camera: creator and showrunner Silka Luisa, with Ridley Scott as an executive producer and Jonathan van Tulleken directing the first two episodes.
Scott set the original in Los Angeles in November 2019. The sequel arrives in November too, eighty years further on, after the war the films were dreading has already been lost. Amazon will be handling delivery.
Read more: Ridley Scott won Hugh Jackman over on Treasure Island — here’s how