What is so special about Blade Runner?

[Paul_C]

Blade Runner is excellent sci fi because it does something only sci fi can - proposes a problem that doesn't yet exist, and then explores it. In this case; what happens when our sentient AI devices object to being owned and used.

And I think Blade Runner does something really great to explore this - it gives us humans to empathize with as it introduces us to the "machines". And then over the course of the film makes those humans increasingly alien while the androids become more and more human. By the end of the film we understand Batty to be the most human character of all, full of love and wonder. Then we discover that our human, Deckard, never was. Now we are empathizing entirely with the enslaved machines. Its brilliant.

Blade Runner is also a film noir detective story, wonderfully converted from the '40s to the future.


As far as "why replicants?", I think the answer is actually simple: creating real AI from scratch never happened in the Blade Runner universe. Instead, the discoveries about memory implantation, genetics and cloning allowed Tyrrel to build human mind/body analogs. Scientists don't truly understand the nature of intelligence or life, but have the ability to replicate most of its functions very closely and very inexpensively. If they could make a machine as smart as Roy Batty out of computer chips, they would. But they can't, so they use our genes to make replicant "machines" instead.

The three year life span is about control, and also so the audience understands that the slaves are living under a death sentence.


Deckard is undoubtedly a replicant - he's the same series as Holden, and the two share many personality traits and mannerisms. Given the fact that he, Holden and Rachel have personalities and memories that could pass for human - and are allowed free reign on Earth - one might conclude that they don't have the 3 year lifespan protection built in. I think it is possible that Deckard is newly decanted in the beginning of the film and what he believes was him having quit the force is simply how the police integrate new replicant blade runners into service. Because they need to have empathy for both people and the replicants they hunt, the blade runners are built with mixed feelings about their jobs.

Whilst I feel that this is one of the better arguments I've heard yet in favour of Deckard being a replicant, I would like to offer a counter-argument.

(I will try to restrain myself in future but there are very few things I'm adamant about and this is one )

If they're using replicants to hunt replicants, why hobble the hunters by making them weaker than the ones they're hunting ?
Deckard gets a kicking from pretty much all of them before the end of the film, which doesn't make him a particularly efficient replicant hunter.

It does make him a pretty typical hard-boiled detective though, one who regularly gets beaten up and knocked about by the baddies before riding off into the sunset with the girl (with the exception of Casablanca, of course), which is probably why the voice over works so well for me.

 

[Overread]

Don't forget the Replicant's he's hunting in the film are military grade and designed for use off-world and in space. He's likely more used, in an urban environment, to hunting down domestic based replicants which won't have the same strength modifications and reflex needs.

There's also some aspect of him being hidden; if he could take repeat inhuman hits in public it might expose him. The desire to hide the use of replicants hunting replicants might trump the effectiveness of each individual hunt. He might also be very short term in life span expectancy so a faster turn around on replacement could be expected and part of his "budget" of use.

 

[Danny McG]

Was there a mention of domestic based replicants in the film?
I thought the point of the hunt and destroy them policy was they were banned on Earth; unless it was only the military grade ones who were banned?

 

[Paul_C]

Pris is described as a "basic pleasure model" but she still gives Deckard a tough time.

 

[Peter V]

Deckard I would suspect is an older model. Of course if memories are implanted we do not know the true age - are replicants made to be a certain age at inception or do they age normally, albeit potentially at a significantly faster rate? (Depending on model). Clearly some are created to a higher specification and the higher the spec, the shorter the life span. As Tyrell says to Roy: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy

 

[Overread]

Paul very true, however I guess a lot depends on the physical specifications of the various models. Pris might be a pleasure model, but might have had a body superior to most human bodies and simply have had mental adjustments to suit her intended role. Also as all three came from a military based situation it would stand to reason that even a pleasure model in a warzone would have higher capabilities than one intended to go in to a more neutral or safe area.

 

[Paul_C]

The simple (and my preferred) answer is that Deckard is, and always has been, human.

 

[Peter V]

The simple (and my preferred) answer is that Deckard is, and always has been, human.

Ridley Scott himself has stated that Deckard is a replicant. The origami unicorn is proof enough.

 

[Paul_C]

I'm going to retire gracefully from the field at this point.
I could continue with the argument but there really is no need on my part as I am quite happy with my view of things and nothing anyone can offer will change my mind.
I'm also certain that the same is true for those who hold the opposite view, and I have no problem with that.
I've tried to keep out of this argument over the years, but sometimes I can't help myself

 

[Stuart Suffel]

Haven't read all the posts, but in answer to the thread title question

1/ It postulates on the one big central existential question, which also has sub elements

2/ The cinematography

3/ The Fact no hippies were hurt or injured during the making of the movie

4/ What's her names' haircut.

5/ The inevitability of great Asian food proliferating through the universe.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

Obviously the answer is Vangelis

 

[KC York]

I love this movie, and unlike most people, I don't really have a preference for the original, director's, or final cut. I like them each separately as they are -- almost like they are all fanfictions of a source material we have lost. Which as I write it, is an interesting concept to ponder...

...I've re-written this post three times now, only keeping that opener...

Answer: it's transcendent.

I saw it when it came out and I was a mere 12 years old. What did I see in it then, at that young age? What do I see in it now, in middle age? Different things, but also some of the same: a widening of my creative vision, a great philosophical quandary, characters I care about to some degree (hate, fear, love), and an emotional connection to the story arc.

I think movies like Blade Runner stand alone for many reasons, not one; as someone else pointed out, Mad Max:Fury Road falls into this, and I would add 2001: A Space Odyssey. These are movies that gave us a satisfying story without all the answers, along with profound images of humanity. They transcend the issues of plot, dialogue, cinematography, craft through a careful combination of all that and more.

So, I don't mind if other people have different interpretations of it, or prefer one version over another, or even (sadly) don't like it. None of that is pertinent to the structure of our perceptions of its importance.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

The advantage of the cinematic and director's cuts of Blade Runner being so tremendously different is that they make an excellent tool for teaching commutation tests.

 

[HanaBi]

There are a number of reasons why I feel this film is perhaps one of the most outstanding SF films ever made! But here are three particular highlights that captured my imagination back in the 1980s and still linger heavily even today!



The Opening Scene and the Tyrell Corporation looming in the distance.

Rachel's Voight-Kampff Test - the lighting and the almost Daliesque visuals are breathtaking

.. and of course Roy's "Tears in the Rain" soliloquy near the end, is the icing on the cake!

 

[Overread]

You know one thing of that era of film that we don't get today is HAZE. Film in that era; esp in fantasy films, had a kind of hazy effect that muted things a little. It kind of make it a little like animation in that it was different and not quite real whilst being real. We don't get that same haze or foggyness in cinematography today.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

.. and of course Roy's "Tears in the Rain" soliloquy near the end, is the icing on the cake!

And didn't Hauer ad-lib most of it? Complete genius!

 

[Peter V]

Obviously the answer is Vangelis

Superb piece of music. Many years ago on holiday at a hotel in Cyprus, a magician used it as a backing track to his act. It elevated the show from ok to awesome

 

[Peter V]

And didn't Hauer ad-lib most of it? Complete genius!

The original script was this:
I have known adventures, seen places you people will never see, I've been Offworld and back...frontiers! I've stood on the back deck of a blinker bound for the Plutition Camps with sweat in my eyes watching the stars fight on the shoulder of Orion. I've felt wind in my hair, riding test boats off the black galaxies and seen an attack fleet burn like a match and disappear. I've seen it...felt it!

It was not ad-libbed as such but was re-written by Hauer:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

There is no comparison. Hauer's version is immortalized in SF movie history and in my opinion simply superb.

 

[KGeo777]

Not a fan of it--I have watched a couple different versions over the years-even have the Making of collector's magazine as I was a big Harrison Ford fan back in the day but I think it is mostly about visual style, the idea, and I don't think the execution works. Ford is very bland here-not a good noir protagonist in this at all--M Emmet Walsh is the most lively character. And making Deckard a replicant? Rubbish! (And I am not even British-maybe I used the term incorrectly).

By this time the major studios had this thing about portraying "paleface" alpha male characters as weak or failures or bad parents---Harrison Ford had already done a couple of such roles (Han Solo and Indiana Jones--I could give a detailed explanation but it is late here--basically Han is a far cry from Eastwood's Man with No Name, he is a poor smuggler who owes debts to a gangster and when he has the chance to pay he doesn't and his girlfriend has to rescue him--as for Indiana Jones, his lack of purpose in the Raiders plot is well known, but consider that he had a scandalous relationship with Marion, betraying his own mentor, and later he has problems with his father).

Deckard is pretty feeble really--shoots a fleeing female replicant in the back, Rachel has to save him, and it is only the mercy of Batty that prevents his death..well except he may also be a replicant--I really hate that idea.
The decline of the alpha male character is an interesting subject--deserving of its own thread since you can trace it back a few decades and notice the contrast with European cinema or the smaller studios like Columbia and RKO.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

It's worth noting that in the book Deckard gets the job because he's so sh*t that they've already hired - and lost - their best men and he's all that's left.