Blade Runner at 25, Why the F/X Still Matter

mattnyc99 writes "Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's dark vision of the future that changed the future of filmmaking and still stands up today, argues Adam Savage of The MythBusters (and the F/X crews of The Matrix and Star Wars). Between the "lived-in science fiction," pre-CGI master models, futuristic cityscapes and tricked-out cars, don't you agree? And after we got the first official glimpse of him from Indiana Jones 4 this weekend, isn't Harrison Ford still the man?"

Special edition DVD?

[James_G]

What happened to it? I've been waiting for years now. The latest update here [brmovie.com] seems hopeful, but nothing since.. and it was suggesting a release in time for the 25th anniversary..

Just remove the wires, OK?

[ashitaka]

The one thing that did distract from the movie was the extremely obvious wires holding up the spinner in several scenes. That's one "enhancement" I could stand the Special Edition DVD having.

"All this will be lost, like tears in the rain"

"Time to die"

CGI is nice, but let's not forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget Blade Runner's completely smokin' Sean Young ...

But Is Deckard A Replicant? Or Not?

[ausoleil]

One of the great questions of "Blade Runner" is whether Deckard (Harrison Ford) is, or is not, a replicant himself.

"Knowing" Phillip K. Dick (through reading most of his works) I think personally the answer is a yes, but the debate has raged on for a long time, at least when the subject comes up. Others say no, and that's the greatness of the movie: you can't be completely sure.

Read #14 of the Blade Runner FAQ here [faqs.org] and ponder it for yourself.

For...

Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford have stated that Deckard was meant to be a
    replicant. In Details magazine (US) October 1992 Ford says:

                "Blade Runner was not one of my favorite films. I tangled
                with Ridley. The biggest problem was that at the end, he wanted the
                audience to find out that Deckard was a replicant. I fought that
                because I felt the audience needed somebody to cheer for."

Against...

- Could you trust a replicant to kill other replicants? Why did the police
    trust Deckard?

- Having Deckard as a replicant implies a conspiracy between the police and
    Tyrell.

And so forth and so on...

Re:Just remove the wires, OK?

[CastrTroy]

Or changing who shot first.

Some things stand up, some don't

[Anonymous Coward]

The visual effects stand up (unlike those snowalkers on SW V that really look jerky). The noir mix of futuristic and deco design seems to model the new-old mixes we have today. The Asian cultural mixes (we see those in Firefly as well) seem to properly project the history moving east to west that we see today. All these things stand up.

The horizon-less smoke stacks of dystopian so-cal eco-collapse do not age well. Same as the over-populated streets of NY in Soylent, where the city of Philadelphia was going to grow to the borders of NYC. The population of our evil developed world has plateaued. Our water is getting clean enough for the return of fish migrations. And in the midst of our Phila-NYC sprawl, we are getting the return of top predators bears and even cats (largely to the detriment of themselves if they manage to be seen), but top predators indicate healthy enough pyramids underneath, right?

Re:i love blade runner

[green453]

I like Gataca a lot as well. I think it goes beyond shallow subject matter--it forces you to think about the ethical implications of the movements in science. It might seem shallow at first, but think about when it came out. Dolly had just been cloned. Biotech was on the minds of people and when they saw the movie when it first came out, they had to think about whether or not we should always let science advance for the sake of science. It made us think about the 'essential human struggle with life and death.' It told us the whole point -- the human spirit is triumphant but we have to be careful that our zeal for advancement doesn't ever quash our humanity. I'm not trying to say Gataca > Blade Runner. I like both a lot and they take us into slightly different areas, but both force us to think about what it means to be human. For me though, Gataca gets me more deeply than Blade Runner does. Maybe just because I'm a limited nerd that wants to triumph rather than a uber-cool cop (alright, I could identify better with Deckard in DADoES, but we're talking about the movie here...)

Visual density

[rbanzai]

One of the keys to Bladerunner's look was visual density. I recall a quote from one of the set decorators that they had emptied prop houses and junkyards for miles around to get the street scenes ready. When Ridley looked at it he said "That's a good start."

Movies that try to imitate the Bladerunner look fail because they lack the commitment and/or resources to achieve that same visual density. They end up looking like sets.

Alien was like a test run for Bladerunner's set design. The command area is very dense, control panels are studded with screens and controls, as well as personal items, signs that the area is in use and has been for some time.

After seeing Bladerunner in the theater when it first came out all other movies I see will be compared to it, and very few have come close to the strange combination of realism and science fiction, two words that should in a sense be mutually exclusive, but Ridley Scott brought them together better than anyone before or since.

Re:it would have been way better

[LithiumX]

I enjoyed "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - but the movie is a different story, only based off of Dick's novel.

The emphasis, as I read it, of Dick's novel was that no matter how real something seems, it is never as good as the real thing. No matter how realistically a replicant could look or act, it would never - ever - really be human.

The movie took the opposite stance. We created the replicants as slaves, but we made them too human - quite possibly "More human than human". Replicants were harsh, violent, and angry - which makes sense considering that they had the emotional experience of a 4 year old. They knew fear - not the reflexive mechanical fear of the book's replicants, but wild animal fear of a human who doesn't want to die. In the book, a replicant that knew it was screwed just gave in - in the movie, they did anything... anything they could... to escape and survive another day. I also don't recall replicants really caring for eachother in the book - whereas in the movie is was a primary driving force. The pictures they kept in the book were mostly to keep up appearances, while in the movie it was a sad attempt at building a past.

Also you have to admit - Batty as he was in the book wouldn't have been that memorable a villain. In the movie, he was one of the most memorable fictional villains ever. A ruthless poetic madman who was getting a crash course in emotions and ethics, and who didn't really understand life until the very end.

The book was good, but I'll take the movie any day - not just for cool factor, but because I feel the movie had far greater literary value (watered down as it was to suit the needs of a 90-minute action movie).

Re:Some things stand up, some don't

[jiawen]

Ridley Scott's vision of Los Angeles always seemed amazingly futuristic and innovative to me until I went to live in Taiwan. Los Angeles 2019 = Taibei/Taipei 2002 with more white people. The mix of dirty and ultracool newness is very, very close to what things look like in Taiwan. And if you go across the straits to China, things look even more like Blade Runner.

Re:didn't know what a steier .222 looked like, fou

[OECD]

. Their single-minded devotion to creating the exact prop from the film is a bit eerie, though.

Savage is (or was) a prop guy. That's what they do. I know one who made a working replica of the Logan's Run Blaster just for grins. (Working in that it spews green flames, not in that it terminates runners.)

Oddly, today I happened across some '04 Mayoral candidates that were given the Voight-Kampff test. [thewavemag.com] (The Nexus 7 won.)

Re:Special edition DVD?

[Hawthorne01]

I thought that both HDDVD and Blu-Ray were pretty much stillborn and that everybody--even people with HDTV--is still using DVD.

I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with reasons why I need to upgrade to an HD disc format. We love movies and have the A/V firepower to work with an HD disc player, but we use our DVD player for so much more than just movies, such as Firefly discs and videos for my kids. At best, then, any HD disc would be used for 1/3 of the things we use our current DVD player.

Not worth the money and time.

Re:Special edition DVD?

[tji]

I don't know about the DVD, but I was happy to see it broadcast in High Definition on HDNet Movies. Seeing those old movies in HD format, in their original aspect ratio, it the next best thing to seeing them on the big screen (or, maybe even better.. in the controlled environment of your own home).

For some of those movies I originally saw in a butchered 4:3 VHS version, the Hi-Def widescreen presentation is like seeing another movie.

Re:Maybe?

[jenkin sear]

The director's cut of the DVD makes it pretty clear; Decker's eye flashes just like the replicants, and there's these weird little origami unicorns everywhere. I kind of preferred the ambivalence of the original... but not the voiceover. ecch.

Re:i love blade runner

[Angostura]

I think Forbidden Planet had the biggest impact on me as a kid, and still holds up well today.

I have a rather soft spot for Dark City as well.

Ah well. ... but yes, Blade Runner is splendid.

Re:But Is Deckard A Replicant? Or Not?

[naoursla]

"You've done a man's job" -- Gaff to Deckard on the roof.

I think Deckard was the replicant that they caught trying to sneak into Tyrell Corporation. They erased his memories, implanted new ones, and set him off to kill his comrades. The other replicants react oddly towards him. I think they recognize him and realize something isn't quite right and play along until they figure it out.

Re:Maybe?

[Dun Malg]

Isn't there a statute of limitations on spoilers of 25 year old movies based on 39 year old novels? Plus, it's not even in the movie, it's speculation based on the movie.

I'd say it depends on which Blade Runner movie you're talking about. If you mean the original theatrical release, where the studio execs said "cut out that confusing unicorn, give it a lame happy ending, and add fucking idiotic narration because we are stupid men who got where we are via nepotism rather than talent and couldn't follow what was going on so we assume no one else would be able to either", then yeah, it's not really in the movie. If you mean the '92 Director's Cut version, or this Final Cut version, then it's undeniably more than just "speculation" that Deckard is a replicant, it's strongly suggested, to the point of obviousness even. Crimony, what the heck do you think all those unicorn dream sequences were about? Why did Gaff leave that origami unicorn for Deckard at the end, if not to telegraph the obvious, that Deckard is a replicant? Why would we hear Deckard "remember", when he finds the origami unicorn, the line from Gaff "It's too bad she won't live; But then again, who does?" Sure it's just implied, but it's implied with a sledgehammer.

Re:Deep. . ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always sort of wondered what kind of idiot would believe in space aliens traveling a fuckzillion miles to Earth just to trample strange patterns in the local agricultural project... now I know.

Re:Maybe?

[kaffiene]

I completely disagree. To me the whole point of the movie is examining what it means to be human. For all intents and purposes, the replicant *are* human - it's just the programmed in termination date that makes them differ from anyone else. And at the end of the film, when we are wondering how long Decker and Rachel will have together, one should realise that that;s the situation that we're all in, "real" or not. None of us know what the future holds.

Re:A.I.

[pa-ching]

This is where that love-it/hate-it thing comes in, I guess...

(First off, I know you didn't say this, but it'll inevitably come up--those aren't aliens, damnit! They're advanced mecha. One of them is even the narrator; the movie starts with him/it saying "Those were the days when..." It's unfortunate that so many people never realized this, but on the other hand it clicks if you watch it a second time and then you get a lot more out of it.)

Many people have called the movie a fairy tale, and they'd be right to do so. But you can take that even further; it's a fairy tale that advanced mecha tell each other, long after humans have gone extinct. What parts of the last half-hour were real, if any? When he went back to his house that seemed both real and eerily artificial, the visuals suggested to me that it was all a vision in his head. They read his mind anyways; they might as well have been feeding him these images, even as he was really still half-frozen at the bottom of the ice excavation. The time-space continuum excuse especially sounded like a fabricated lie... Was it inevitable that David would be woken up by *something* someday, simply because he was not mortal? Perhaps there are thousands of discarded robots like him, buried inside the frozen Earth. The advanced mechas eventually dig out and feed a similar story to each that finally satisfies and terminate its program. Is this compassion between robots? Why do they do it? Are they trying to make robots dream, or are they saying that death is just another dream?

The movie asked a lot of questions about what it means to be human--similar to BR, but focused on love. I remember a particular review of A.I. (it had quite good reviews) that summed it up quite well and it seems to me the message of the movie: "To be real is to be mortal; to be human is to love, to dream and to perish." Perhaps that's why the advanced mechas gave him the choice. Hmm...

Anyways, personally I found that the ending was incredibly sad and not a happy one at all. I disagree that it would have been at all satisfying for the movie to just end on the ocean's floor, and for David to truly never "die." But you could take it either way, and stuff like this is why I found it so fascinating. And then of course there was the (first "mature") Alternate Reality Game/viral marketing that was really neat in itself. Ultimately, of course, it's up to your own experience.

Re:Special edition DVD?

[tcc3]

I keep hearing this "its really not that much better" argument, and its BS. If thats what you need to belive to sleep at night with your diss-the-new-format attitude then fine. I want HD. I can see the difference. What I dont want is a pointless format war. Joe Sixpack didnt care about the DVD picture quality either. There are still people who cant see the difference between RF,Composite, and S-video. The price is a moot point too. Were still in the early adopter phase. My 1st dvds were $25-$30. They will go down as they are adopted by the masses. But thats not going to happen as log as the masses arent sure which format will have staying power.

Re:I want the voice over

[ukemike]

Blade Runner with the voice over was my all time favorite movie, until the Director's Cut came out. There is nothing in the voice over that you can't learn by observing the movie, so it is extra, superfluous, repetitive, AND redundant. If you want insight into Deckard's mind, Gaff's origami figures speak volumes.

What so many people can't seem to get is that movies AREN'T TV. You don't need to fill every second with dialog. Movies work better when the story is told visually. Voice overs can work but usually they are used to make up for poor directing. Just like flash-backs are often used to cover up for poor script writing.

Re:Maybe?

[__aawdrj2992]

Please note: I understand you were joking. The missing logic you were speaking of is the dream he has with a unicorn in it, BEFORE he even sees the oragami unicorn. Basically Gaff was telling Deckhard that "I know what dreams they implanted you with," the same way Deckhard told the girl what her earliest memories were.

Additionally, the oragami unicorn represents something that is make-believe. Gaff early in the movie folded a chicken when Deckhard wouldn't come back to the force and was acting like a ... chicken. There is some symbolism (albeit far-stretched), the unicorn was made of chewing gum foil: half organic paper, half metal foil. Sybolic of an android (although replicants are entirely organic).

Re:Need I Say It?

[Cederic]

Bad set design, bad wardrobe, overblown visuals

I'm astounded. Some of the costumes were dodgy, but the set design and the visuals have been influential on most sci-fi (and many non sci-fi) films since.

Hell, let me quote William Gibson,

"About ten minutes into Blade Runner, I reeled out of the theater in complete despair over its visual brilliance and its similarity to the "look" of Neuromancer, my [then] largely unwritten first novel. Not only had I been beaten to the semiotic punch, but this damned movie looked better than the images in my head! With time, as I got over that, I started to take a certain delight in the way the film began to affect the way the world looked. Club fashions, at first, then rock videos, finally even architecture. Amazing! A science fiction movie affecting reality!"

Bad set design? hmm.