How 1982's 'Blade Runner' Defined the Sci-Fi Film Genre (esquire.com) 101
Esquire celebrates the 40th anniversary of the movie Blade Runner:
Based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, Scott's film created a world so rich, so dirty and wet and worn out, so visually stunning, that imitation was an inevitability. Less gym-bro than The Terminator, less wacky than Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and less all-out apocalyptic than Mad Max, Blade Runner arguably defined not just 1980s science fiction, but in the forty years since its initial release, sci-fi films in general. From Ghost In The Shell, to Total Recall and Minority Report and even Black Panther, Blade Runner is owed a debt of gratitude.
Working from a formula he perfected in 1979's Alien, Scott brought his world of grimy industry and neon-lit shadows, rogue androids and put-upon protagonists to California, swapping Alien's body horror for the police procedural. Granted, Deckard isn't Ellen Ripley, but in its portrayal of the battered and bruised detective battling against the system, Blade Runner is a Chinatown of the future. That it was only Scott's third film as director makes it all the more impressive. (As an aside, has Harrison Ford's three film run of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), and Blade Runner (1982) ever been beaten?).
Famously, the film was a critical and commercial flop in the U.S. with VHS sales and endless re-edits eventually leading to its cult status. (In 2004, it was even voted as the best science fiction film of all time by a panel of global scientists). Today, it's difficult to picture a sci-fi film that doesn't play homage. Would HBO's Westworld have updated its 1973 film version so successfully and stylishly without Blade Runner paving the way both visually and in terms of its musings on free will? And, decades before Elon Musk looked set to take over the world, Blade Runner's Tyrell Corporation (and indeed, Alien's Weyland-Yutani) was inspiring evil empires from Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation to RoboCop's Omni Consumer Products and The Terminator's Cyberdyne Systems.
The article argues that Rutger Hauer's replicant character Roy Batty "delivers one of the greatest speeches in cinematic history in his 'Tears in rain' soliloquy."
And it points out that fans of Ridley Scott's prequels to Alien speculate those movies also exist in the same cinematic universe.
Working from a formula he perfected in 1979's Alien, Scott brought his world of grimy industry and neon-lit shadows, rogue androids and put-upon protagonists to California, swapping Alien's body horror for the police procedural. Granted, Deckard isn't Ellen Ripley, but in its portrayal of the battered and bruised detective battling against the system, Blade Runner is a Chinatown of the future. That it was only Scott's third film as director makes it all the more impressive. (As an aside, has Harrison Ford's three film run of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), and Blade Runner (1982) ever been beaten?).
Famously, the film was a critical and commercial flop in the U.S. with VHS sales and endless re-edits eventually leading to its cult status. (In 2004, it was even voted as the best science fiction film of all time by a panel of global scientists). Today, it's difficult to picture a sci-fi film that doesn't play homage. Would HBO's Westworld have updated its 1973 film version so successfully and stylishly without Blade Runner paving the way both visually and in terms of its musings on free will? And, decades before Elon Musk looked set to take over the world, Blade Runner's Tyrell Corporation (and indeed, Alien's Weyland-Yutani) was inspiring evil empires from Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation to RoboCop's Omni Consumer Products and The Terminator's Cyberdyne Systems.
The article argues that Rutger Hauer's replicant character Roy Batty "delivers one of the greatest speeches in cinematic history in his 'Tears in rain' soliloquy."
And it points out that fans of Ridley Scott's prequels to Alien speculate those movies also exist in the same cinematic universe.
Fully agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fully agree (Score:3)
Nope, that would be Alien.
Re:Fully agree (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
What proliferation of monsters?
There was only one monster in Alien - and the food source thing is covered in the official novelisation, with a scene showing the alien ransacking the kitchen for food.
In fact, the Thing from The Thing is possible even worse than Alien for your scenario
Re:Fully agree (Score:3)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
As the comment at -1 notes, that was Aliens, the sequel orientated around action rather than horror (not a negative judgement, it was a good film - together the four films cover almost the entire range of genres: horror, action, suspense/thriller, comedy), this time with guns and a military presence, so they needed more aliens to go kill. Hence being set in a human colony with lots of hosts.
Plus no one really knows the physiology of the alien, it could happily eat plastic for all we know.
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Come to think of it, a plastic eating monster would be quite an asset these days.
Um, maybe not so much. . .
https://archive.org/details/mu... [archive.org]
Great story. Needs an update and a movie treatment!
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
It would have needed to eat the whole galley to grow from the small creature that burst out of Kane's to the full sized Alien that shows up by the end of the movie.
Just to clarify, I don't expect movies to be totally logical so I don't really care if it is physically possible for that kind of growth to occur.
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
The thing was the best scifi movie in its time (Score:1)
Re:The thing was the best scifi movie in its time (Score:2)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Sci-fi is essentially "What if?", and BR explores that much more effectively than Alien.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Acid blood, really?
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Human blood would be a solvent to aliens made of cotton candy with their sugar-hulled ships
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
Why not?
Stranger things have been observed in nature. And while it's probably just for the shock effect of "uhhh, acid, deadly shit", it could actually have some reason in the metabolism of the Alien to have acidic blood, even aside of being an offensive/defensive weapon. Something their body needs could only be soluble in that particular acid.
It's kinda mood to discuss the physiology of a fictional creature, but ... quite frankly, I have more problems with pretty much any idea of FTL travel, yet it's pretty much a requirement to make Sci-Fi workable due to the distances involved.
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
You know the *really* scary part about the Alien?
1) Worked together as a hive, in cooperation
2) Acid for blood, as a defense mechanism
3) Able to withstand hostile environments
4) Able to be knocked back down to a single unhatched egg and rebuild from there
5) At least somewhat intelligent
6) Rapid growth - both singly and as a hive.
7) Fast
8) Able to get into small spaces easily.
9) Eggs viable for long periods of time, also in hostile environments.
Take all that together. We don't know where these things came from, but wherever it is, one thing is certain.
They were NOT at the top of their food chain.
Now, that's scary.
Re:Fully agree (Score:2)
yeah, great news?
Re:Fully agree (Score:1)
One of the best. But the book is horrible. I had to struggle to finish it. I've never been a fan of Philip K. Dick. He had great ideas, but his meth fueled writing marathons usually turned great ideas into second rate books.
Do you know what made it great? (Score:5, Insightful)
An actual plot that emphasized characters over explosions and mindless car chases.
Also, Deckard was a human. Scott said so himself before he bowed to pressure and made him a replicant (which is flat out stupid is you devote more than 2 drain cells to the issue)
The replicant issue was editing errors not ambiguous tidbits, but the internet does love a good controversy...
It's a shame Scott has fallen so far that he's become a parody of his earlier work.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Deckard was a human. Scott said so himself
Not quite. Scott said Deckard was a replicant [cavemancircus.com], but Ford disagreed and argued Deckard was a human. The screenwriter wanted everything left ambiguuos while Dick said absolutely, Deckard was human.
So, it's clear as mud whether Deckard was human or not. It all depends on who you ask.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:5, Informative)
Philip K Dick always intended the question to be left ambiguous.
In interviews he even proposed a third option: that they were all replicants.
BTW. Big props to Denis Villeneuve for purposely keeping the question open in Blade Runner 2049.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
Indeed. A key part of the effectiveness of Bladerunner is that you don't know for sure, and the fact that the director and actor disagreed helps inject that ambiguity into the movie. The ambivalence about Deckard's nature is essential to the lasting strength of the film.
It seems in the Final Cut (the real "director's cut), the best version of the film, that Gaff is hinting that Deckard is a replicant. But hints are all we have.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
And that really is why Blade Runner is better than Alien.
Blade Runner supports decades of intense speculation and discussion while the Alien franchise just incites derision as people try and make a cohesive whole out of, what is essentially, a mindless horror franchise (I will state here that I will watch anything Alien, the original graphic novel is necessary to watching Alien and I eagerly await Terminators showing up in the Alien/Predator series)
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
I take Alien on its own terms, and try not to measure it against its successors (although, as a piece of military SciFi, you won't get much better than Aliens). Alien is not meant to be a subtle film; it's not a police procedural that asks some big questions. It's an isolation horror film, like its spiritual inspiration; the 1951 version of The Thing (which is a very effective SF horror film as well). Within that genre, I think Alien stands out as probably one of the best films of its kind. Like the two versions of The Thing, it really shows its roots in Golden Age sci fi, with its interest in how technicians and engineers deal with a horror stalking them.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
The undeniably stupid (as was the Original The Thing) predecessor to Alien was Dark Star, where the alien was a beach ball with monster feet
The "Beachball with Claws" segment of the film was reworked by O'Bannon into the science fiction-horror film Alien (1979). After witnessing audiences failing to laugh at parts of Dark Star which were intended as humorous, O'Bannon commented, "If I can't make them laugh, then maybe I can make them scream." [wikipedia.org]
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
Philip K Dick always intended the question to be left ambiguous.
In interviews he even proposed a third option: that they were all replicants.
BTW. Big props to Denis Villeneuve for purposely keeping the question open in Blade Runner 2049.
You will notice that this is true of almost every PKD story, though. The nature of reality is always ambiguous, and you will never know what is really happening. I believe he was just writing what he knew. He was a massive meth addict and, after a few days (or a week) without sleep, this tends to make you (A) completely paranoid and (B) think that drones are following you, underground gnomes are stalking you, and you've had telepathy all along but, at least you're friends with the godlike alien culture that is secretly watching us.
Most meth addicts aren't actually capable of cranking out stories the way he did, and I think he died broke, anyway. So, I can't advise meth for either the experience or the small chance of being able to write the really weird stuff.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
PKD had a psychotic break/spiritual epiphany in 1974 [oup.com] that left his own concept of reality suspect, and imo that is what gives his work such a deep level of uncertainty
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
Worth mentioning that practically speaking, all of us are replicants, just some of us have a little longer lifespan than others.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:0)
The screenwriter wanted everything left ambiguuos
Let's all take a moment to extend a finger or two for screenwriters like this. You have one job, to tell a story, how about you actually DO IT!
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:3)
In times gone by I might have made a suggestion that you stick to comic books. But comic books, ahem, "graphic novels" have long since gotten more sophisticated in their writing.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
The screenwriter wanted everything left ambiguuos
Let's all take a moment to extend a finger or two for screenwriters like this. You have one job, to tell a story, how about you actually DO IT!
Just because you are too ignorant to understand the message doesn't mean it wasn't a good film and actually told a full story.
Anytime you want to publish us your masterwork, all ears and eyes.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:4, Insightful)
Scott said that later on, yes. He changed his mind, for some reason.
But that Deckard is human is the only way for the movie to make sense. He's a grey man, living a grey life - he can't even get four pieces of fish with his noodles, ffs - and a combat toaster comes along and shows him what it means to be alive.
If Deckard is not human, nothing in the movie makes sense any longer. Not the theme, not his background, not the resolution - either of them - and most of all not what he is.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
Deckard's life and that of many other humans was reduced to emotionally distant synthetic experiences in the dystopian future, yet some of the replicants had more pungent and intense lives, and desire for them.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
Deckard's life and that of many other humans was reduced to emotionally distant synthetic experiences in the dystopian future...
To me, that's totally relatable as a human who once worked for The Incredibly Bureaucratic Monstrosity Corporation, (IBM).
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
But that Deckard is human is the only way for the movie to make sense.,/eM>
If you read the link I provided, the person brings up some interesting tidbuts such as when Deckard is asked if he ever took the test, he never answers. How is it Deckard could be beaten three different times by replicants yet sustain no apparent cognitive impairment? Also, Roy knew Deckard's name even though he wasn't previously told about it.
Even taking into consideration Deckard and Rachel having a kid, the comment about witnessing a child come from love and a new age of replicants, that could mean replicants are able to reproduce since they are (supposedly) identical to humans in every way except for lifespan and lack of memories.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
He sustains cognitive impairment. Not major, but he's beat up by the time he finds Roy. And he's almost completely worn out by the time he hangs on at the end, and Roy, who was literally bashed repeatedly in the head with an iron pipe, casually left handed pulls him up.
Deckard's physical activity in the movie in no way shows him off as a replicant. Decent physical shape, sure, but not even close to the weakest of the replicants he faces. Even the pleasure model with no combat training found him to be no match if it wasn't for his gun.
Deckard gave his name around replicants several times. He ID'd when entering Leon's apartment, he ID'd (while Leon watched, again) after retiring Zhora. And it's not unlikely he made the news, with his rather public retirement methods.
In the script, Roy hacked the police system to learn about what they were up against, but that wasn't filmed. But even without that, I'd hardly be surprised that a top tier operative is able to figure out who he is.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
If Deckard is not human, then it just shows the transitory nature of all things and they are eventually replaced with something better
It is just that in Blade Runner, the commodity seems a lot like us
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
There's actually a reddit about the food order, but I personally first thought the dust up was about the use of the number four. Following, that Deckard could have 2+2, but not four--in that it would be superstitious. However, I guess, he was actually only served two pieces, so maybe not. Two is fine.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
"Futatsu de jubun desu yo", "two is enough", is what the server says. When Deckard resignedly says "and noodles, he follows up with "wakatte kudasai yo" which is a rather sarcastic way of saying "don't you get it". He never accepted an order for four, or for two plus two.
The point of it is, Deckard is such a loser he can't even get four pieces of fish with his noodles.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
We see it in Alien (1979), where important characters make nonsensical decisions: That character flaw in multiple characters creates massive plot-holes in Prometheus (2012). In Alien, interstellar space travel was ordinary so it's not surprising they're quickly overwhelmed by the unknown but in Prometheus such travel was unknown and dangerous, so acting like they're on a cross-town joyride makes the movie inconsistent.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
We see it in Alien (1979), where important characters make nonsensical decisions: That character flaw in multiple characters creates massive plot-holes in Prometheus (2012). In Alien, interstellar space travel was ordinary so it's not surprising they're quickly overwhelmed by the unknown but in Prometheus such travel was unknown and dangerous, so acting like they're on a cross-town joyride makes the movie inconsistent.
What you must remember is that in Prometheus, the bulk of the crew is not profesional crew, but rather "payload specialists"/"domain experts"/"civilians", and, in the end, fanboys. Yes, they probably underwent training and all, but in the end, their "enthusiasm" got the best of them...
JM2C
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
That may be, but the way they just sort of casually run around the Engineer installation (later revealed to be the spaceship), despite a helluva lot of visual evidence that fucking terrible things happened in there, not to mention the fact that Weylands and the android David seem to know a lot about the Engineers, enough for Weyland to think they can make him young and spiffy, suggests insanity on Weyland's part, and not having a team of heavily armed soldiers around, but rather some pretty dull-witted researchers, seemed more like the writers got impatient. They had the bones of a good story; in particular the sociopathic nature of David, which basically drives both films, but they needed to get to the gotcha horror moments, and didn't really give the plot the time to roll out in a sensible way.
Alien works, even the extended directors cut, because it gives you enough information to create the seeds of terror, but the people on the ship behave like reasonably intelligent and well-trained professionals; in other words, take away all the futuristic science fiction aspects, even when they break the rules, by bringing Kane back on the shuttle with an alien facehugger on his face, you can go "Yeah, if that were my buddy, I might tell Ripley to stuff it." Everyone but Ripley and the cat die in the end, but mainly because they don't fully understand the threat, and not until near the end do they realize that one of the crew is an android whose mission was to get his hands on the alien regardless of cost in lives.
But the crew in Promotheus, while perhaps lacking information, don't behave like sensible professionals, but like suicidal idiots.
Re:Do you know what made it great? (Score:2)
TFA says is was a commercial flop in the US. Coincidence I'm sure.
Really? (Score:2)
Blade Runner arguably defined not just 1980s science fiction
It was good. But Alien came first. And there were others with that dirty, worn out feel. Outland comes to mind.
Re:Really? (Score:3)
Re:Really? (Score:2)
Re:Really? (Score:2)
Forbidden Planet definitely does not share the same gritty ambience as Alien or Blade Runner.
You want gritty before Blade Runner: Logan's Run (Score:2)
Forbidden Planet definitely does not share the same gritty ambience as Alien or Blade Runner.
Once logand goes out of the nice levels, and into the guts of the city.
Actually, if you squint hard enough, you could count Nolan's novel as inspiration for the film ;-)
Re:You want gritty before Blade Runner: Logan's Ru (Score:2)
The HK new-wave - people like Wong Kar Wai and his photographer Wing Shya - had basically already nailed the Blade Runner style by then. That 'night-time, gritty, futuristic urban high-rise neon reflected in water on the street' style was new to western eyes, but already very familiar in HK cinema.
In fact, anyone who's walked around the outskirts of Hong Kong knows that 'Blade Runner' feeling well. But HK was around long before Blade Runner!
Re:Really? (Score:2)
What Blade Runner or Alien might or not have defined is the MODERN sci-fi FILMING and atmosphere. Alien (1979) has practical effects of a creature and an oppressive atmosphere that would be the same in a movie made today and one can watch it without guessing it's that old. Forbidden Planet (1956) deserves credit for showing us what a movie about monsters on another planet could be, but is like an old painting in a museum. It smells painted cardboard and acted as in theatre. I feel a young person could watch late 1970 movies e.g. Alien or the Star Wars original trilogy and enjoy as much as we did, but laugh at the setting of Forbidden Planet. Two decades made a difference in cinema atmosphere, which can also be found comparing The Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956 and the remake from 1978.
Re:Really? (Score:2)
You could start with the progenitor of the dystopian urban landscape; Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Visually it's probably one of the most influential films in history, and Bladerunner is pretty much a direct descendant.
I read DADoES recently (Score:2)
So there are androids, and people tasked with finding and taking them out, and the main character is called Decker, and a few other names. Aside from that it was like a totally different story. Likewise with Minority Report. "Based on PKD" movies seem to have a very liberal license with respect to the "source" material.
Re:I read DADoES recently (Score:2)
So there are androids, and people tasked with finding and taking them out, and the main character is called Decker, and a few other names. Aside from that it was like a totally different story. Likewise with Minority Report. "Based on PKD" movies seem to have a very liberal license with respect to the "source" material.
Movies based on books have almost always taken a very liberal license with respect to the source material. Remember, the Soylent wasn't green in the original book.
Re:I read DADoES recently (Score:2)
Totally agree with you. I read DADoES decades ago after I saw Blade Runner in the theater. Don't remember much about ti now except the book was not much like the movie and disappointing.
Re:I read DADoES recently (Score:2)
Alternatively, imagine Blade Runner as a sequel to DADoES. The human Deckard is alive and well; retired with his wife and away from Los Angeles. The replicant Deckard is programmed to think his wife left him. He is then tasked with cleaning up a problem of old models returning home. And yes, that means the Tyrell we meet is also synthetic, probably with all of Eldon Tyrell's memories (a version of immortality). As for Blade Runner 2049 and a child produced by two synthetics: is it a miracle, or a long term plan?
Re:I read DADoES recently (Score:2)
Alternatively, imagine Blade Runner as a sequel to DADoES. The human Deckard is alive and well; retired with his wife and away from Los Angeles. The replicant Deckard is programmed to think his wife left him. He is then tasked with cleaning up a problem of old models returning home. And yes, that means the Tyrell we meet is also synthetic, probably with all of Eldon Tyrell's memories (a version of immortality). As for Blade Runner 2049 and a child produced by two synthetics: is it a miracle, or a long term plan?
I like your fanfiction. As for 2049, the long term plan/experiment failed. while two replicants were able to reproduce, the offspring was subpar. And without replicant Tyrell to continue tweaking/experimenting with the process, it becomes a dead end.
And predicting the 6th mass extinction spot on (Score:2)
Minority Report? (Score:2)
I has been a while since I've watched it, but I don't remember it being bleak and desolate. Does Tom Cruise even do bleak, gritty, and desolate? And, considering Dick wrote Minority Report in 1956, while Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was published more than a decade later... I'm not sure why the former was included here.
Re:Minority Report? (Score:2)
collateral
Re:Minority Report? (Score:2)
War of the Worlds, grim AF. One of his best if not his best film.
Re:Minority Report? (Score:2)
What I mainly remember is Cruise mainly shouting through the whole film. It was an okay adaptation, I guess, but for some reason Cruise just really spent most of the film hamming it up.
Re:Minority Report? (Score:2)
Tom Cruise only does Tom Cruise. Nothing else. He can't act at all. It's the same character in every single movie he's ever been in.
Re:Minority Report? (Score:2)
I thought Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder was a pretty unique character, and one I would dearly love Cruise to revisit. The character is a pretty hilarious stereotype of the crazy megalomaniacal film producer, but like all good parodies, only slightly exaggerated.
sleep aid (Score:2)
Re:sleep aid (Score:2)
Stories like this always leave me thinking "what didn't I get?".
Then, I read your post, and I am heartened that I am not alone.
Maybe I will try coffee, No-Doz, and Red Bull before the next attempt o watch.
Re:sleep aid (Score:0)
Re:sleep aid (Score:1)
Shame really (Score:1)
Yeah, SciFi is still making shows with long-ass flying over the whatever scenes. Frickin waste of time, tried watching the Obiwan show and it was just that... all that.
If I picked up a scifi novel and 2/3s of the book was lengthy descriptions of scenery, I'd never read that author again.
Re:Shame really (Score:3)
cinema is a visual and musical experience, like opera
Re: Shame really (Score:2)
And it rhymes. Like poetry.
Fascinating what gets left out (Score:5, Interesting)
Very few articles about Blade Runner ever mention Kowloon Walled City and the obvious use of it as a template for the world of Blade Runner and countless other sci-fi stories.
In a way, it's understandable because they don't want to glorify the poverty, lawlessness, gang activity, drugs and other things that went on there. Still, it would be nice to see them acknowledge one of the primary inspirations for that walled-in underclass area where crime is rampant and the police rarely investigate any of it (and, in fact, fly over it most of the time) that we see in Blade Runner.
Seriously Arrogant, What is new.... (Score:2)
Holy Shit! What is with the hyperbole to get people pissed off these days?
play homage. LOL @ Javaid (Score:3)
It's pay homage. Don't you have to speak English to qualify for a visa?
"Defined" (Score:2)
It defined the "stereotypical" sci-fi movie.
Westworld (Score:1)
I wish they did not mention that series. I bought the HBO hype and honestly tried to get into this mess for the whole season.
It's an overblown crap.
Replicants are escaped slaves (Score:5, Interesting)
My favourite move of all time in any genre. For me the most important line in the movie is when Pris says: "I think, Sebastian, therefore I am".
From that moment, we realise that the replicants are sentient, and are in fact escaped slaves.
Re:Replicants are escaped slaves (Score:0)
Nice comment, but no mod points.
empathy (Score:1)
Frankenstein's monster (Score:2)
Are not the replicants a version of Frankenstein's monster?
The monster is an artificial life form cobbled together from human body parts. It is reanimated, but does it have a soul? The Blade Runner version of this is "does it have empathy"?
Rewatched it before Blade Runner 2049 (Score:1, Funny)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:3)
Re:2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:2)
Yes, I immediately thought of the corporations in Metropolis when the summary mentioned Tyrell Corp. as foundational. TFA also ignores previous literature and film, aside from the quoted mention of Chinatown. But our comments are late enough they will only be read by robots!
So while neither I nor, apparently, the author are Blade Runner experts, seems we have a few new things going on beyond other sci-fi: the lively street life below the Metropolis-like evil corporation, and the film-noirish government assassin. Evil corp has a precedent before Metropolis in the play that invented the word robot, R.U.R. by Capek. The automaton damsel in distress is like Olympia in the 1881 opera Tales of Hoffmann, based on a story Sandman from 1816! I love the 1951 film by those British scamps, Powell and Pressburger.
But the government assassin program is not even a film noir idea, since those guys were outside the system. It's a crazy cold-war thing from Dick I guess. You do have Apocalypse Now / Heart of Darkness (1899), but that's just capping off a single rogue.
Re:2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:2)
Also, the speeches by Roy Batty are not that great. If Dick wrote them, he probably did them as a joke.
Re:2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:2)
(Of course 2001 is always compared to Solaris, a very different take.)
Re:2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:2)
Re:2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:1)
As revolutionary as Blade Runner was, (Score:1)
Re:As revolutionary as Blade Runner was, (Score:2)
Tron is still a pretty visually stunning film. I rewatched it before the sequel was released (probably the first time I had watched it since 1982), and while a few CGI elements had shown up here and there before it, and while the film isn't purely CGI, it was an incredible achievement for the time and really gave people a sense of what computers could do. I don't think you would have had Terminator 2 without Tron and the CGI Genesis simulation sequence in Wrath of Khan.
Blade Runner did win the Hugo ... (Score:2)
... so at least the fans knew it was something special at the time.
I was in the audience at Worldcon when Scott accepted the award. He thanked the fans, and said as an aside:
Sean Young (as Rachael) (Score:1)
Oh, she kills me every time.
No mention of Syd Mead? (Score:2)