Get To Know Jared Leto’s ‘Blade Runner 2049’ Villain In This Unnerving Short Film

The "2049" in the title Blade Runner 2049 refers to the year the movie takes place in. Since the original Blade Runner took place in 2019, that’s 30 years of history that director Denis Villeneuve was tasked to fill with his new story. But because he only has so much time in the average runtime of a movie, the director commissioned three other filmmakers to make short films which will attempt to tell us what’s gone down in this dystopian version of Los Angeles in the intervening years.

The first one just dropped online, and it’s called 2036: Nexus Dawn, named in part again after the year it takes place in. The short film introduces us to the movie’s big bad, Neander Wallace, played by a contacts-wearing Jared Leto with a stoic menace, who is presenting to a board his latest model of replicant (the humanoid robots at the heart of the Blade Runner mythos), in an attempt to get the ban on replicants lifted. This one is called the Nexus 9, and he looks like a German Olympic swimmer who just came off the runway at a Rick Owens show. He’s also completely under his creator’s command, as evidenced by the movie’s very unnerving ending. It’s also worth noting that the short was directed by Luke Scott, whose father Ridley directed the original Blade Runner. 

Watch 2036: Nexus 9, above.