Set Design

5 Reasons We're Not Surprised Blade Runner 2049 Is Nominated for an Oscar

These surprising set design facts about the Ryan Gosling film helped it score a win in Production Design at the Annual Art Directors Guild Excellence Awards too
Ryan Gosling as K in BLADE RUNNER 2049
Ryan Gosling as K in BLADE RUNNER 2049, which is nominated for an Oscar for Best Production DesignCourtesy of Alcon Entertainment

The sci-fi world of director Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is still the dystopian universe of Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner from 1982. But since it takes place 30 years after the original film's 2019 setting, the world is a much darker and more toxic place. Extreme climate change has left most of earth covered in rain, snow, and dust. “We wanted to send a dream back to the original film,” says Blade Runner 2049 production designer Dennis Gassner, whose work on the movie has earned him his sixth Oscar nomination (he won for 1991’s Bugsy), and a win at the recent Annual Art Directors Guild Excellence Awards as well. “And the dream was the dream of brutality and chaos, which were kind of the catch words we had for the film. But we knew we had to create our own signature for our own film to kind of stand-alone against the original.”

Blade Runner 2049 stars Ryan Gosling as K, a bioengineered human, or "replicant," who enlists the original blade runner Harrison Ford to help prevent a possible war between humans and replicants. “It was all hard,” Gassner says. “Every set was a challenging set. It was all about being respectful of the original film, but we also wanted it to have an epic quality.” Gassner shares some of the more surprising inspiration and design information, but reader beware: there may be a spoiler or two buried amongst all this knowledge.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

1. Ryan Gosling’s Futuristic Car Actually Worked

Ryan Gosling’s flying car, otherwise known as a Spinner, was the first thing Gassner designed for the film. “I said to Denis, ‘Let’s start with something iconic,’ and that was the Spinner,” Gassner says. “I also knew it was going to take an extremely long time to manufacture because it all had to be practical and very functional. It had to be kind of a working vehicle."

And it was—at least one of the models. They built two with one that actually could driven up to 50 miles per hour. The second was used to hang from wires for flying sequences.

© 2017 Alcon Entertainment, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

2. The Snow Plows Were Inspired by a Night in Montreal

Gassner was getting ready for bed in Montreal after a pre-production meeting with Villeneuve when the look of the movie’s Los Angeles snow plows was hatched. “Denis called me and he said, ‘The snow sweepers are out. You have to go out and see them,’” Gassner recalls. “So, I bundled up and went out there and it was amazing. The thing about Montreal is they know how to take care of snow because if they don’t, they don’t survive.”

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

3. Las Vegas Was Recreated in Budapest

In the movie, the Las Vegas of the future has become one of the most toxic places on earth after having been decimated by a dirty bomb that was unloaded on the city 50 years prior. But it’s also home to one of the most pivotal scenes in the film when K finally locates Deckard, who is retired and living in an abandoned hotel and casino.

While most of the movie was shot on sets built on sound-stages in and around Budapest, the lobby of the casino was constructed inside a building that had been Budapest’s largest television studio. “It was under renovation so we worked in and around that,” Gassner says. “We were lucky enough to find this location because we never would’ve been able to build that on the stages because we ran out of stage space. We had already turned our stages spaces around twice.”

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

4. The Squeaky Floors of An Ancient Japanese Temple Were Behind the Villain’s Pristine Offices

Gassner looked to Japan for inspiration to design the slick offices of the movie’s villain, Niander Wallace (Jared Let), a blind industrialist hell bent on creating an army of replicants. The office walls and floors were covered in wood similar to an ancient temple that Gassner had visited years ago while working on a film in Kyoto. “It was an amazing piece of architecture,” Gassner says.

However, the temple floors squeaked. “It was the security system,” Gassner explains. “They left the wood slightly a gap so at night when everyone is sleeping, if you hear the floors, they knew there was an intruder.”

Gassner decided to replicate this same "security" mechanism for the futuristic office: he added a pool of water to Wallace’s office because sound is amplified when it travels over water. “It was Wallace’s security system,” Gassner says.

5. The Production Designer Had History with the Original *Blade Runner*

Gassner actually had a hand in the look of the original Blade Runner. He was working at Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Films as a graphic artist when Ridley Scott inquired about the neon lighting the production designer Dean Tavoularis used in Coppola’s One From the Heart. “He came to the office and I took him to the warehouse that was full of two and a half miles of neon,” Gassner remembers. “I said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ He said, ‘I’m making a film called Blade Runner.’ He was clever enough to know that we would have the neon after we finished filming and that he could possibly use it. So, when I first started talking to Denis and the producers [at Alcon Entertainment], I told them the story. They said, “Well, you’re going to have to do this film!’"

But that original neon was not repurposed for 2049. “We actually used very little neon,” Gassner says. “We mostly used LEDs because it’s more contemporary.”