Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
This in-world short film takes place in the year 2036 and revolves around Jared Leto’s character, Niander Wallace. In this short, Wallace introduces a new line of “perfected” replicants called the Nexus 9, seeking to get the prohibition on replicants repealed. This no doubt has serious ramifications that will be crucial to the plot of Blade Runner 2049.
This Blade Runner 2049 prelude short gives Jared Leto a commanding showcase — his performance as the messianic, blind Niander Wallace is genuinely unsettling and magnetic, elevating what is essentially an expository world-building exercise. The cinematography carries Denis Villeneuve's visual sensibility faithfully, with stark, oppressive framing that fits the cyberpunk-dystopia aesthetic beautifully. However, as a short designed primarily to set up lore for the feature film, it functions more as prologue than standalone narrative — the plot is thin and functional rather than dramatically rich, and the ending resolves nothing, deliberately deferring to 2049. Novelty is moderate: it's a well-executed piece of franchise world-building in the Blade Runner universe, distinctive in its cold theatricality but not groundbreaking as a concept.