Excitement for Denis Villeneuve‘s Blade Runner 2049 is picking up steam, as trailers have promised us a return to the intoxicating futurist world that first captivated audiences back in 1982. A big part of the success of the trailers has been the snippets of Johann Johannsson‘s score, which has attempted to echo the famous 1982 score by Greek composer Vangelis.
Despite Johannsson seemingly capturing the Blade Runner mood quite well, Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch have been hired to collaborate on the film’s score.
Johannson is still involved and is still composing the main theme, but reportedly Zimmer and Wallfisch have been brought on board to help out with the monumental task of living up to the classic Vangelis score. Villeneuve told The Playlist:
“Given the magnitude of the task, Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer joined the team to help Johann. It’s hard to [follow] Vangelis! We had some astonishing atmospheric [pieces] by Johann, but I needed other options, and Hans helped us”.
Zimmer is one of the most renowned composers in modern Hollywood, having composed scores for The Dark Knight, Inception, The Thin Red Line and Gladiator, to name a few, while Wallfisch is best known for scoring horror films, such as A Cure For Wellness and Lights Out. The two previously collaborated on Hidden Figures.
So fans need not worry that Johannsson has fallen off the rails and ruined the score, but it does show how important the score was to the original film and how attempting to recapture that magic 35 years later is incredibly difficult.
The combination of three talented composers will hopefully be enough to at least somewhat recapture the magnitude of Vangelis‘ classic 1982 work, and hopefully the film itself doesn’t disappoint. Considering Villeneuve’s recent output, and the talented people he’s working with, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Blade Runner 2049 opens in cinemas on Friday, October 6.
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