4. The Films Look Is Now A Cliche
Blade Runner is seen as one of the early works of the sub-genre of cyberpunk. When watching the film on its initial release, William Gibson felt despair over its visual similarity (if not technological) to the novel he was then preparing Neuromancer. The film established a vision of the future as being set in crowed cities with the environment suffering beyond its borders. A dark metropolis with skyscrapers and moving billboards, with flying cars and constant clouds and rain. This became the default vision of the future for a while until the pendulum swung to everything having clean, stylized white look. However any attempt to revive this visual style is going to look dated even if the original film was a trend-creator and not a follower. While there is nothing to stop a sequel story happening in a completely different location, the makers may feel that it needs to have the visual style of the original, even though it has been copied to death. Also the association with cyberpunk may be seen as dating the property, as this sub-genre is less prominent then it was in the eighties.