Bladerunner 2012

A couple of days ago I was telling my housemate about how great Bladerunner was as a movie, and got the question what would it be like if it were being made now?

While walking on lunch break I kinda expanded my initial opinion - which is pretty much that there'd be a lot of cosmetic changes, but the underlying story wouldn't change too much. Here's what I think a circa 2012 version of Bladerunner would be like;

• The "future noir" aspect wouldn't be there unless you had a director with a particular stylistic vision for it. Instead I'd imagine a design aesthetic very much influenced by the last decade - technology would be small and the Voight-Kampf test would definitely be a handheld device. I can envision Deckerd's gun being intentionally designed as radically different from those of the other policemen - it'd be more visually obvious that their sidearms were compact and sleek and deadly, and his would be more obviously retro and largebore. I actually can see the police Spinners being pretty much the same with the concept artists trying to avoid the same design motifs used by hovercraft in the Matrix trilogy.
  
  
• Because of current interest in biotechnology, it would be very clear that the Replicants were the product of genetic engineering and accelerated growth. I don't think the writers/directors would stop there, though; they'd envision a world with a lot of bioengineered stuff going on, and a lot of the human diversity in Bladerunner might be people with bioware instead of a multicultural population.
  
  
• Thanks to advantages in CGI, there'd be far more cityscape shots, possibly with less impact. Anything going on with the Replicants' eyes would be far more obvious and it'd be far more obvious in Deckerd's case as well, although I think they might pull the punch of coming out and saying Deckerd's a Replicant. There'd also be more use of something like bullet time to show just how much more physically capable a Replicant is than a human - again, there might be places where it was more obvious that Deckerd could keep up.
  
  
• There'd be a bit more explanation of how the future got to be this way and they'd definitely include the scene in which Tyrell was revealed to be a Replicant, with the original Tyrell in cryogenic suspension somewhere within the pyramid. This is really cosmetic because the explanation would really slow down the story and those scenes would be cut from theatrical release, appearing instead in the DVD/Blue-Ray full versions.
  
  
• The big script changes would probably include softening the view of the police - Bryant's really unlikeable in the original, and I think they'd soft-pedal him instead. Gav would probably not change much. I think they'd tweak the relationship between Deckerd and Rachel - Deckerd would actually be a lot more successfully a white knight in a 2012 version, as opposed to the original where he's trying to be a white knight and is basically an abusive jerk.
  
  
• I don't know who they'd get for anyone else, but I think their casting choice for Deckerd would be Will Smith, Leonardo diCaprio, or possibly Keanu Reeves if they wanted to really stress someone physical and something of a blank. All of these choices would make for a far more likeable version than the original's.

I think the result of all these changes would be a really good movie, in some ways more visually stunning than the actual movie, but not that unusual for the time period. There just wasn't anything like Bladerunner when it came out. I think a 2012 version with no predecessor would be something people would like, but not as many people would really remember as special and interesting. What do y'all think?