Are we living in post-spoiler world where there’s no point in keep anything a surprise because people are awful and will ruin stuff on social media for you anyway? Or is there still some value in the experiencing something with no idea of what’s about to happen? If you’re talking to Denis Villeneuve, he’d definitely prefer the latter. And before “Blade Runner 2049” opened, he hoped that moviegoers would have their viewings untouched by foreknowledge of plot details.
“I think that it’s great for an audience to experience the movie as [critics] did, which is that you have no preconceived idea. I think that for me, myself as a cinephile, I love to receive a movie being almost a virgin, knowing as little as possible. There’s a hunger among bloggers right now to be the first one to spoil everything, and that’s sad a little bit because it diminishes the pleasure of the audience,” Villeneuve said in October.
“… people want to know too many things before. They should read about the movie after they see it, not before,” he added later that month.
Fast forward to February and the filmmaker reveals that if he had his druthers, he would’ve kept Harrison Ford‘s return as Deckard under wraps.
“Listen, as a film director I would love to keep everything a secret, I would love the audience just to trust and come to the theater having not seen anything of the movie,” Villeneuve said on the Empire Podcast. “Because of course, when you design the film you try to create surprises, tension… at the end of the day it would have been tough because everyone knew that Harrison was on the project, but yes, the answer I would have loved the audience not to know how he appears, where he appears, yeah.”
Honestly — it kinda would have been amazing if they managed to make “Blade Runner 2049” without any news of Ford’s return making it out in the world, and he emerged as a huge surprise midway through the picture. I don’t know that it would’ve improved the movie, but it certainly would’ve been a pretty cool moment. Alas, we’ll never know.
It’s interesting to hear Villeneuve say all of this in one breath, while in the next complain a little bit that Warner Bros. “wanted it to be a total secret, like ‘Star Wars.’ ” It seems at some point, there might’ve been a disconnect between the director and studio about how much and which information about the film they wanted to put out in the world. Listen to the full talk below. [via Flickering Myth]