It wouldn’t be a Blade Runner movie without a nasty villain, and Blade Runner 2049 has a pretty creepy antagonist. Jared Leto plays blind replicant engineer Niander Wallace, a stand-in of sorts for Joe Turkel’s Eldon Tyrell, but he wasn’t originally the first choice for the role. That would have been David Bowie.
For Jared Leto so loved the world that he gave his eyesight so that whosoever sees Blade Runner 2049 shall enjoy a quality performance. That’s right: Your boy Jared Leto is at it again. According to director Denis Villeneuve, Leto was so committed to his role in Blade Runner 2049 that he made himself blind for the whole shoot. Ever the humble cinema servant, Leto downplays it like blinding yourself is no big deal.
Friends and readers, it is with a heavy heart that I must report that our boy Jared Leto is at it again. Though, in another sense, a man who is never not at it cannot truly be at it again, and Leto never seems to let up from being at it. At what, you may ask? Take your pick: he’s gonna play Andy Warhol, he wants to return to the DC cinematic universe as the Joker, he’s allegedly prepping a new 30 Seconds to Mars album, he runs Fandor now for some reason, and he’ll soon make his debut as a feature director with a thriller about Patty Hearst. Indeed, Jared Leto is in a state of perpetual at-it-ness, the only changing factor being the nature of what it means to be “at it,” again or otherwise.
The latest trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is full of new dialogue and sequences that reveal plenty of new details about the sequel, but even if you watched this trailer on mute it’s a beauty. (But actually don’t watch it with the sound off because Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score is like synth porn for the ears.)
The spotlight in the DC Extended Universe is squarely on women right now. Wonder Woman is still tying moviegoers in knots; just one more good weekend will make it the second biggest DCEU movie in the U.S., and it could pass Batman v Superman for the top spot not long after. Princess Diana will get back in the spotlight in Justice League this fall, and last summer was all about Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn stealing scenes from Will Smith and the rest of the Suicide Squad. Basically DC sisters are doing it for themselves.
Everything’s gone topsy-turvy in 2017, and not in the fun way, where Mike Leigh dramatizes the life and times of operetta composers Gilbert and Sullivan. Our reality TV star President now clutches glowing orbs of power with foreign dignitaries, young people are pouring lattes into gutted-out avocados, and four hours can’t elapse without some precedent-shattering new development on the global stage. In a year where straight-up kookoo-bananas insanity has settled into the new normal, doesn’t it make a nonsensical sort of sense for real-life supervillain Jared Leto to assume the reins of power at our beloved Fandor?