The recent announcement that Ryan Gosling will be costarring with Harrison Ford in the long awaited/probably unnecessary sequel to Blade Runner has spurred two major questions: What will the film’s plot be, and how will Gosling’s character play into it?
While we couldn’t possibly answer those, we can speculate on them and what Gosling will look like in the Blade Runner universe. We’ve generated 15 photos that place Gosling within the world that Ridley Scott created. Trust us: We’re just as disappointed as you are that they just look like poorly Photoshopped images. But we’re going to analyze them, anyway.
Onto the results:
Joey Keeton
1) Here were have Gosling consoling Deckard. Deckard really didn’t deserve to handle all that stress alone in the first film—this time around, maybe we’ll get more of a Buddy Cop scenario, which is really what Blade Runner always needed.
Joey Keeton
2) Here we’re getting another vision of a Buddy Cop scenario, but this time with Gosling as the Owen Wilson-type character—the gleeful sidekick that’s just glad to be eating some food, while everybody else is acting all concerned about something he doesn’t quite understand.
Joey Keeton
3) This prediction suggests that maybe Gosling will be playing the villain. Here we see him from Lars and the Real Girl, pushing his Real Doll around and scaring the bejeezus out of Deckard. If he’s the villain, expect a scene that looks very much like this—minus the Real Doll in the wheelchair. Probably. Unless that’s part of his character’s thing, which we’d be totally OK with.
Joey Keeton
4) Maybe Gosling will be playing a hologram/ghost sort of character that follows Deckard around to keep tabs on/spy on him, sort of like if Patrick Swayze were hired by a replicant hunting company in Ghost to make sure the agents weren’t sleeping with their targets and whatnot. This image seems to indicate that Gosling’s character thoroughly enjoys the job.
Joey Keeton
5) Here, we’re reminded that it’s always possible that Gosling will be playing the exact same character from Drive. Of course, all cars in the future have their steering wheels in the middle. We’re not sure why that’s the case; it’s just what our generated images are telling us.
Joey Keeton
6) Maybe Gosling might just be playing himself, with the paparazzi following him around. That’s probably the worst idea ever—so don’t count it out.
Joey Keeton
7) Wow. I guess the idea here is that Gosling is, himself, a replicant, and he’s hitting it off with a replicant that Roy’s totally into. Also: I guess Roy’s been resurrected. Hey, it could happen; he’s a robot, after all.
Joey Keeton
8) This prediction involves Gosling being an employee of the Tyrell Corporation, and that he must be really high up in the corporate chain to get away with not having to wear a shirt.
Joey Keeton
9) Not too much plot is predicted here, but we can see that Deckard is being scorned by Gosling’s love for Rachel McAdams. (No, McAdams is not cast in the film—yet.)
Joey Keeton
10) Here, we see yet another prediction that Gosling is playing a replicant. Or, he could be hunting replicants, but something really cool happened off-screen just before he apprehended them.
Joey Keeton
11) All we can gather here is that Alcon is overplaying Gosling’s role as a “starring” one big time, and that he may actually just be casually strolling by the screen a few times throughout the film, with his character possibly not even having a name or ever being addressed by anybody else.
Joey Keeton
12) We’re not really sure what to make of this image’s implications. Comic relief, stoner character, perhaps? It seems weird for a starring role, but if Prometheus could go against its predecessors so drastically with making it’s scientist characters so incredibly stupid, then I guess we can imagine that the Blade Runner sequel could co-star a goofy stoner.
Joey Keeton
13) Now this prediction feels more in line with a Blade Runner starring role—just driving around the streets of future Los Angeles on a motorcycle, acting like a boss, and doing super cool future stuff that involves robots.
Joey Keeton
14) This is by far the worst of the images we came up with, but it may very well end up being the film’s official poster.
Joey Keeton
15) Yes, this guy from Tyrell Corporation seems a little cold and evil—but this image suggests that maybe, just maybe, Gosling plays a character who turns his heart warm when he falls in love with him. Here, it looks like he’s about to give him a flower, with this being the scene in which he declares his love for him. We’re guessing this would be the end of the first act.