>>>>The logline works when you have prior knowledge of the world. Otherwise…

The short answer: As I said, it’s a sequel. Not a fresh story, not a spec script. The title alone tags it as such, “Blade Runner 2049”. Any power player in Hollyweird who doesn’t have prior knowledge of the first movie has no business being in show business.

The long answer (since you didn’t ask): First of all, we write loglines for 2 purposes: 1] To develop a pithy pitch for a script. 2] To develop a pithy statement of the plot, to find and bring into sharp focus what the script, reduced to the bare bone essentials, is really about.

I wrote this logline as an exercise for the 2nd purpose. To figure out the plot, what “Blade Runner 2049”, reduced to its essential story elements, is really about. The inciting incident for the exercise was a story twist in the movie.

(Spoiler alert!)

The story twist in “Blade Runner 2049” that incited me was that, come to find out, another character wants to find the illicit offspring, And his motive is not to “retire”, but to replicate.

“K”, the protagonist blade runner has a rival. Who has the same objective goal — but for a different reason.

The rival is the new owner of the technology for manufacturing replicants. He wants to find out how the “flawed” Nexus 8 generation (Rachel) could reproduce. Why? Because replicants are expensive and time consuming to manufacture. The rival wants to mass produce them fast and cheap the old fashioned way — by sexual reproduction.

I wondered whether a logline (for either a pitch or the plot) needed to include the rival and his rival goal. Maybe something like:

When evidence surfaces that an earlier generation of replicants has reproduced, a next generation blade runner must find and ‘retire’ the child before the new owner of replicant manufacturing technology captures the child to discover how to make replicants cheap and easy — by sexual reproduction.

Injecting a rival into the plot certainly amps up dramatic tension (and deepens and broadens the theme). But injecting it into a logline increases the word count past what I deem to be an acceptable length.

And after reviewing logline fundamentals, I concluded it wasn’t necessary. Because:

A logline is written from the pov of the protagonist. It is based upon what the protagonist knows at the time he commits to his objective goal. What he believes to be the stakes at that plot beat.

Now then. At the time the police chief orders “K” to find the illicit offspring, “K” is unaware of the rival or his intention. So is the audience: we don’t find out about the rival until the rival finds out about the child — many minutes and several scenes after “K” does. So neither “K” nor the audience know “K”is up against a rival with different motives, different stakes.

Which is to say, there’s no dramatic irony at that point in the story. The audience is not privy to information relevant the to central plot (aka: the “A” story) that the protagonist is unaware of. So there’s no need for irony in the logline.

(And BTW:I don’t recall “K” ever realizing why his rival wants the illicit offspring — but I may have nodded off and missed a plot beat.)

So I opted for the logline that focused only on “K”, the protagonist, what he knows, what he believes to be the stakes. I resisted the temptation to treat the logline as a Christmas tree, to adorn it with additional plot decorations.

For the purpose of figuring out the plot, I used the logline to find the “clothesline” (to mix/mangle metaphors) on which everything else hangs. And in “Blade Runner 2049” that clothesline is the blade runner’s search and destroy mission.

fwiw