“Replicants are the future of the species, but I can only make so many,” intones Jared Leto in an inscrutable, unsettling accent an international TV spot for Blade Runner 2049. As we gleaned from the film’s San Diego Comic-Con panel, Leto’s character is Neander Wallace of the Tyrell Corporation, and he both solves a worldwide hunger crisis and works to lift the ban on creating replicants. But this is the Blade Runner universe, so even people who solve a hunger crisis are hiding something. And finding out he considers replicants to be a superior replacement for humans (and is presumably trying to phase out humanity), it makes his statement in the second trailer even more chilling: “Every leap of civilization was built off the back of slaves.”
The spot also shows more of Ryan Gosling’s seeming girlfriend/sex robot, named “Luv” (a little on the nose there) and played by Sylvia Hoeks. She channels a definite Cherry 2000 vibe, and we’d be shocked if she ended up being anything other than the new Nexus 8 model of replicants who don’t have the life span limits of Blade Runner‘s Nexus 6 line. Sidenote: in what universe would Ryan Gosling need to buy a girlfriend? I know humans are supposed to be outnumbered by replicants in the timeline of this movie, but still. He’s Ryan Gosling. Additional sidenote: if Ryan Gosling ends up being a replicant himself, all his scenes with his girlfriend are going to be hilarious to rewatch, just two hot robots pretending to care about the other one’s day. That might make the movie even better, come to think of it.