Blade Runner

https://www.filfre.net/2024/05/blade-runner/

by doppp • 2 years ago

65 62 2 years ago

Apocryphon4• 2 years ago

There’s an embarrassingly mawkish, subservient quality that dogs it even as it’s constantly trying to be all cool and foreboding and all, with all its darkness and its smoke. Its brand of devotion is an aspect of fan culture that I just don’t get.

cracks door open, throws in can of worms like a grenade, jumps away

But enough about Blade Runner 2049

rendall• 2 years ago

But enough about Blade Runner 2049

Kidding aside, while Blade Runner 2049 is a really great movie, I cannot accept it as canonical. The original has a sense of humor, sexiness, and even tenderness that 2049 does not. The original has characters doing truly reprehensible things, but no one is outright, cartoonishly evil with incomprehensible motives as in 2049.

farnerup• 2 years ago

One thing I really miss in 2049 is the soundtrack by Vangelis. The one in 2049 sounds like a primitive AI trying to sound like him, sometimes just alternating between two chords for what feels like forever.

atombender4• 2 years ago

Villneuve is a smart filmmaker and an absolute master when it comes to visual storytelling, so it's so disappointing when he makes such oddly uninspired choices. The Jared Leto character in BR 2049 is not just ridiculous, but boring — just some cartoonishly evil character with no apparent motivation other than being evil — and Villeneuve does the same thing in Dune/Dune Part Two.

keiferski5• 2 years ago

The book is actually pretty different from the film, in a good way – although both book and film are great. It plays more with the idea that telling the difference between a human and replicant is difficult and/or impossible without specialized tools.

I'll avoid spoilers, but the cop scene is really great – Decker discovers the existence of a secret separate police department operating in San Francisco, which is staffed entirely with replicants.

If you've seen the movie but haven't read the book, I definitely recommend it. It's considerably different.

Apocryphon4• 2 years ago

Still hoping someone makes a Linklater's A Scanner Darkly-level of faithful adaptation of DADoES? one day. Definitely curious to see retrofuturistic S.F., the Penfield mood organ, Mercerism.

MarcScott• 2 years ago

That was such a faithful adaption of Scanner Darkly, it was like reading the book again. I agree that a similar adaption of Do androids dream of electic sheep would be amazing. I'd also like to see the same care and attention given to some of Dick's other novels and shorts. No one has quite been able to capture We can remember it for you wholesale, and the twist at the end. I enjoyed Minority Report, but it wasn't quite up there with the story.

wkat42422• 2 years ago

That is indeed a great twist in the book.

The weird thing was the obsession with robotic animals that's not in the movie at all. I think it was meant to underline the apocalyptic world where living things have mostly disappeared.

The best thing for me about blade runner is the visual style of the movie. It spawned an entire visual genre of cyberpunk and most cyberpunk franchises still lean very heavy on this. The darkness with neon, the 80s vision of the computer, the heavy branding and Eastern influences, the music etc.

It's still my favourite genre for techno party cosplay.

F-Lexx• 2 years ago

It's still my favourite genre for techno party cosplay.

What other alternative genres are out there?

mrob• 2 years ago

robotic animals that's not in the movie at all

Although I haven't played the game or read the book, the movie features a robotic snake, and there's dialogue about real snakes being very expensive. It seems reasonable that this would apply to other animals too.

Jtsummers2• 2 years ago

There's not an obsession with robotic animals in the book, it's an obsession with animals and keeping them as part of the new religion, Mercerism, and its hyper-focus on empathy, and consequently displays of empathy. Caring for an animal is part of that. The robotic animals are not meant to be recognized as robotic, they're surrogates so people can still display their care of an animal and demonstrate empathy even if they can't afford a real one. Real animals being rarer and more expensive, and of course dying much more easily than a machine, as happened to Deckard's prior to the events of the novel.

aredox• 2 years ago

The obsession with animals is also a mark of humanity - lack of compassion for animals is part of the anti-replicant test. It's also a mark of the current neuroses of Humanity: making mechanical imitations of life, including human life.

throw48472854• 2 years ago

The book is also all about religion and specifically Christianity. It's one of the most interesting and nuanced explorations of the psychology of Christian faith that I've read. I also understand why the filmmakers thought, "yeah, I'm not touching that."

keiferski5• 2 years ago

Yeah that’s a good point. It’s a bit sad how all of the films based on PKD’s works ignore his very strong personal religious beliefs.

vanderZwan2• 2 years ago

Given that he made Prometheus, I don't think that Ridley Scott is scared of exploring Christian topics.

Then again, the whole Jesus-was-an-Engineer subplot that was dropped from that film but still alluded to also makes me doubt that Scott's take would have been particularly "nuanced".

adriand• 2 years ago

I read it as a teenager and remember enjoying it. It popped up on Libby a few weeks ago and I checked it out and absolutely hated it. Found it nigh unreadable. Hackneyed prose and all the bits about the robotic animals just seemed clumsy and dumb. In my opinion, the book has not aged well.

allturtles• 2 years ago

Interesting coverage, I was a very active computer gamer in the late 90s and have never heard of this game.

Louis Castle has often claimed in later decades that Blade Runner did well commercially, stating at least once that it sold 1 million copies(!).

Yeah... I don't believe that either.

thieving_magpie• 2 years ago

It was my favorite game from childhood. I remember finding it in an Office Max store. They had PC titles on a shelf high up. I actually played the game having no idea there was a movie/book associated with it.

I couldn't guess if it did well commercially, but I know I wasn't the only kid that had it.

LiquidPolymer• 2 years ago

I loved Blade Runner when it came out, cheesy voice over and all. At the time, I was a regular at showings of film noir that popped up at my local film center so I understood the vibe created by Ridley Scott. And I loved the Sci-Fi fusion. I remember watching later with my brother on pay-per-view and he was bored out of his gourd.

I really didn't consider the philosophy of deeper meaning contained within, so the contradictions this article points out never bothered me. They still don't. Yet I agree that the discussions around this movie that have taken place for 40 years, and its revival after box office failure continue to amaze. I do love Ridley's "Final Cut" version and the sequel as well which cements Deckard's replicant status.

keiferski5• 2 years ago

The cheesy voiceover is actually not in the original version, I think..?

This guy is recutting the film with the voiceover and some extra scenes included: https://youtube.com/@kazuchoice?si=6H8c9giAb9H-BUS5

atombender4• 2 years ago

The original theatrical version has the voiceover. It was added following negative feedback from test screenings.

kagakuninja4• 2 years ago

The book actually has a scene where Deckard gets captured by a group of cops, who administer the Voight-Kampff test. My memories are vague, but I think they accuse Deckard of being an android, but the cops are actually androids. Or something.

Anyway, it is IMO incorrect to say that the book did not suggest Deckard might be an android, and likewise, the movie only hints that Deckard is a replicant.

Phillip K Dick's writing was all about mind-fucks and the difficulty of knowing what is true.

iamthirsty• 2 years ago

Anyway, it is IMO incorrect to say that the book did not suggest Deckard might be an android, and likewise, the movie only hints that Deckard is a replicant.

Isn't it kind of confirmed in 2049 that he isn't a replicant, though?

kagakuninja4• 2 years ago

Never watched it. I imagine it has even less to do with the book than the first movie. It has a different director and writers.

tvshtr• 2 years ago

The topic was purposely avoided. The point was to have it both ways.

fullshark• 2 years ago

I remember reading someone arguing exactly this 20+ years ago now, when I was obsessed with the film and thought Deckard being a replicant was so cool. It's right, it makes no thematic sense for Deckard to be a replicant, the entire point is he as a human empathizes with replicants, having him be a replicant that empathizes with replicants is pointless thematically.

steveylang3• 2 years ago

Replicants can try to fake the appropriate emotional reaction — might even be programmed to fake it to themselves, such that even they don’t realize what they are — but there is always a split-second delay, which the trained operator can detect.

This makes sense with replicants who know they are replicants and are trying to avoid detection (I'm not sure why they would ever be 'programmed' to try to fake detection, the simpler explanation is that they know what the test is and are trying to avoid identification and death.) But it's different for Rachel. She thinks she is human and wouldn't be trying to game the test, yet it takes a long time for Deckard to assess her. So why is that? Either way...

...leading one to suspect that the Voight-Kampff test may not be measuring pure, unadulterated empathy in quite the way everyone seems to think it is....But in Ridley Scott’s preferred version of the film, the central theme falls apart, to be replaced with psychological horror’s equivalent of a jump scare: “Deckard himself is really a replicant, dude! What a mind fuck, huh?"

Those 2 statements contradict themselves, because Deckard himself being a replicant (who actually is never tested himself anyway) is an extension of blurring the lines between human and replicant, and what the Voight-Kampff test actually is testing (which already happens when Deckard tests Rachel.)

I feel like the idea of next-gen replicants like Rachel (and possibly Deckard) that blur the lines further is thematically consistent with the rest of the movie. I don't know what kind of social life Rachel has led, but if she has any friends or social interaction at all some sort of empathy would be needed to pass off as human. These kind of things are not explicit in the movie, which I think is mostly fine as the movie is more about the big picture of what makes us 'human', or what that even means ethically or experientially. The early replicants are basically psychotic so it's easy to have no ethical concerns about them even if they have agency and consciousness. But then what about succeeding versions that do come closer and closer to experiencing regular human existence?

therein• 2 years ago

Clearly inspired a lot of people. IIRC, iCloud backups were managed by an internal system named BladeRunner. It also could have been the photo backups. It's been a very long time.

romwell5• 2 years ago

(Spoilers ahead)

I disagree with the assessment that Deckard possibly being a replicant takes away from the empathy premise of the movie.

After all, the empathy test itself was designed by humans; who applies it is irrelevant.

The central point of the film is that yes, the replicants can be more human than humans — and perhaps they are.

And that the fundamental cruelty isn't even treating replicants as disposable or slaves — the replicants themselves know their worth better than that, and it's the obstacle the main characters ultimately overcome.

The fundamental cruelty is the core premise that the replicants pay for their superhuman abilities with shortened lifespan - an irreversible choice that was made for them.

And at the height of their self-realization, everything that the replicants are is yanked away from them.

All of that will be gone — like tears in rain.

The movie raises the same question as Flowers for Algernon, and is ultimately a very human one.

After all, we have many examples of parents training their children from a very young age for stardom in a particular field — at the cost of depriving them of the choice. Like Tyrell, they think it's worth it; but is it right?

The other side is — given that the replicants are beings who burn twice as bright, the kind that can walk into Tyrell's office and greet the most powerful man with "Hello, fucker", the kind who get to see starships on fire on the shoulder of Orion — are they justified in feeling slighted?

And if Deckard is indeed a replicant — isn't he arguably the more boring one, being effectively just human?

And if the viewer were to discover they are a replicant - which kind would they rather be? And if they are human, then what's the point?

The famous monologue was semi-improvised by Rutger Hauer, and that speech alone adds more meaning to the movie than the author of the article allows themselves to see.

The speech is ultimately Roy's last and ultimate gift. Deckard may not see starships on fire at the shoulder of Orion, and yet those moments won't truly be gone, because he gets to live the carry on even as Roy burns out.

The scene gives an answer to the questions above: that however we were created, there is a meaning to the each life lived; and that ultimately we need each other for that meaning to exist.

For we need memories to be ourselves, and memories are need us to carry them.

The replicant/human distinction, in the end, loses significance.

The climactic moment isn't that Deckard is a replicant — it's that in the end, Roy spares Deckard's life to tell his story — and pass the torch.

It only makes sense for Deckard to be a replicant — something that Roy would know, and choose not to tell.

But whether Deckard is or isn't a replicant ultimately doesn't matter, because the film makes sense either way.

And that's the point in and of itself.

steveylang3• 2 years ago

It only makes sense for Deckard to be a replicant — something that Roy would know, and choose not to tell.

Maybe I should have recognized this earlier, but I really like this point and feel it adds depth- whether or not the screenwriters or Ridley Scott even intended it. It's not necessary for this to be the case for Batty to spare Deckard, it's also possible that recognizing his end was near he wanted to pass something on and/or communicate his life in some way to another.

atombender4• 2 years ago

Minor correction, because this is often misunderstood:

The famous monologue was improvised by Rutger Hauer

It wasn't improvised. Hauer rewrote the monologue by cutting a few words from the original script, and adding the "like tears in the rain", which he showed to Scott and Peoples, who liked it.

The original line in the script was: "I've seen things... seen things you little people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium... I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... they'll be gone."

Source: "Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner", great documentary about the film.

romwell5• 2 years ago

Thanks for the correction!

Still, what a great addition those few words were. They become the culminating chord of the entire film.

relaxing3• 2 years ago

“Bright as magnesium” really completes the visual, wish he’d left that.

relaxing3• 2 years ago

Wait, why would Roy know Deckard’s identity as a replicant?

romwell5• 2 years ago

1. Because they physically fought;

2. Because by that point, Roy was on of the world's experts on replicants and their biology;

3. Because that provides a good explanation for why he told his story to Deckard, rather than, well, doing anything else

_wire_3• 2 years ago

PKD's novel is misunderstood as a result of the movie. This novel and his work in general were less interested in trying to know ascertain who's a robot, and more interested in why one thinks he's human.

The movie was made to play in Peoria, so it was written with a Cartesian conceit of "replicants" as others in the Baudrillard sense of simulacra: the story was designed to reinforce the idea that humanity is a stable fixed point of reference upon which cleverly designed machines are intruding. This was calculated to be assimilated my audiences (the movie functions as a memory implant) who are upon arrival to the theater were already operating under the delusion of thinking they're free because they have endless choices for consumption, including which movie to watch. The love story between Deckard and Rachel seems calculated as a somatic device to inhibit introspection that might further trouble and arouse viewers to the point of rejecting a challenging product.

My recollection of Deckard in the novel was that he wasn't much concerned with what constituted androids outside of narrow technical dimensions—though maybe I mis-recall my own reading? The character had his own problems. He was quintessentially American, preoccupied with status, possessions, work-a-day worries, televangelism, and somatic distractions, like the mood organ.

Stepping up a level, the open question of the story being who is building us as the robots we find ourselves to be? Of course there's no answer to this question: it begs a god a patriarchy, an orthodoxy.

That the movie took on a adoring following which is overly invested in particulars is typically ignorant fan fetish: Robots (fans) touching robots for pleasure. The cusp is the awareness that civilization is robotic.

Lucas's THX 1138 seems well informed by the ideas of PKD's Androids.

The uncanny and nihilistic aspect of the beast-machine was the central theme of Kubrick's 2001; the monolith illustrating a realm of authenticity inaccessible to us, no matter the power and complexity of the garments we attire as tribute to our uncanny of our self awareness. Kubrick's epic comes off as a depressive's longing for an extinction event that would result in a rebirth of the species (self) on some other plane of existence.

Tarkovsky's adaptation of Lem's Solaris tried to go further than Kubrick, with the observation that everything we feel is real is a regress of a universal mind, and our views of ourselves play out in some kind of Klein bottle of nature.

Blade Runner feels trite, but I truly enjoyed Villeneuve's sequel as just stomping ahead with the pre-suppositions of Scott's movie and continuing to build out its world of increasing alienation with some kind of an attractor of family and self-sacrifice in the midst of a gruesomely overdeveloped world: the star child has no immune system and so must live in a hygienic bubble with nothing to do but create memories for everyone else.

21st century Hollywood eating itself.

steveylang3• 2 years ago

I think the movie is definitely set up with the premise that humanity is a stabled fixed point of reference, with Deckard representing that viewpoint. But once you had Deckard falling in love with Rachel, and then the ending with Deckard and Batty, I think the movie is asking viewers to question this initial premise.

Within the context of a big budget Hollywood sci-fi actioner, I think it's about as reasonably deep as you could expect. None of its ideas are profound or new, but the cinematography and set design were.

vessenes2• 2 years ago

I think you recall wrong, and miss what's great about Bladerunner.

Who's human is a key overt point in the novel, with Deckard wondering about the indefatigable anti-android DJ, and a subtle point, with Deckard being incapable of emotionally connecting to some common 'human' things; he is not emotionally engaged with animal care, and doesn't like the weirdo emotional gestalt device I can't recall the name of. It's right in the title -- what is different about a human, an android, and an android that thinks it's a human?

To my eyes, launched the same year ET was launched, to the same audiences, Blade Runner is right at the edge of what could have been successful. And, it is full of these fundamental questions of humanity. Unfortunately the cinema release dumbed it down with Harrison Ford's narration -- a result of the studio thinking the movie was too arthouse to play widely.

Visually and narratively, the implications are strong that Deckard is a replicant, including the weird questions about what police station is real, his ability to match Roy Batty physically, Edward James Ulmos' uncanny ability to find Deckard, and know what he's dreaming about -- it's all there in the original.

_wire_3• 2 years ago

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I follow your thoughts towards ET, and offer that Spielberg has already realized an epic treatment of the theme: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which he develops the idea of corporate society and daytime TV being indistinguishable from an extraterrestrial incursion. That he invited the founder of Auteur Theory and savant of the French New Wave, Francios Truffaut to emcee projects the high awareness Spielberg had of his conceits. To my mind ET merely revisited the scenario of CE3K as something that could be cross-marketed in Happy Meals, exploiting the success of Lucas' Star Wars licensing.

Ridley Scott's Alien is also trenchant commentary on the corporate/TV zeitgeist with an attack by an unstoppable libidinal force of life (Zizek referred to this idea as "lamella") that lives beneath all the levitating signifiers of the "capitalist real" (Mark Fisher).

All of these movies are first and foremost entertainment products, which so happen to code a surprising amount of reflection on the part of their auteur creators on US/UK corporatism and existential angst.

Recognizing the power of the movies on the collective mind, I'll repeat my thesis that the central consideration for PKD is "why do you think you're human?", not "how do humans distinguish androids from themselves?"

PKD created his works un-beholden to the idioms of popular culture, and I regard his oeuvre as profoundly more intellectually free than any Hollywood adaptation can be. The arrow of artist progress goes from books to movies, not the other way around, so beware of reading the movie's themes into the books. He helped carve out a place for science fiction in literature, and the popularity of cinematic adaptations of his work reveals the resonance of his themes, so read the story then look for how the movies hew to the writing.

There's a strange reversal of books adapted from movies, but even in the case of Arthur Clarke's 2001 (vs. The Sentinel) these read as fan fiction.

_wire_3• 2 years ago

Also see Richard Rush's movie The Stuntmam (1980) which deals with the themes of PKD entirely within the realm of modern movie construction !

creer2• 2 years ago

About the movie: It's amazing how much second guessing many / most of these works get. I get that this is a result of the budgets required (although Blade Runner wasn't a high budget movie) and (consequently?) the number of people involved but it's like nobody can resign themselves to trust the original vision (script, visual design) or trust the director. With test showings fraught with the risk of being poorly understood or grossly clumsy in the correction. Major works of art - that must rely on general public ticket sales.

For me, this is one of the movies I re-watch periodically simply for the visuals - the work done on the setting in concept art and the glorious result in turning that into film. "The kind of place the crew of Alien live in when on shore leave", sure, but just a fresh look and well implemented. Certainly hugely successful on that.

Any recommendations on creative fresh looks in recent SF movies? Say the past 15 years?

Mortal Engines was fresh, silly, and fairly well done. And silly.

The Zero Theorem was quirky and worth mentioning... but... too half-assed and grunge, used-furniture that's been done many times?

Jtsummers2• 2 years ago

(although Blade Runner wasn't a high budget movie)

Its budget was comparable to Return of The Jedi, released the year after. Both around $30 million. It wasn't a high grossing movie, it made its budget back and a bit more but did not become a box office hit.

creer2• 2 years ago

Oh interesting. Yeah much higher budget than I remembered: Blade Runner $30M. Higher than, around 1982, Raiders of the Lost Ark ($20M), same as The Empire Strikes Back ($30M), higher than Conan the Barbarian ($20M), Higher than Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ($12M), similar to Octopussy ($28M), or Ghostbusters. Among the highest budgets of the period really.

atombender4• 2 years ago

although Blade Runner wasn't a high budget movie

It was a big budget movie. It had a $30m budget (which would be $100m today), which was enormous by that day's standards, making it the second most expensive movie released in 1982, after Annie (!). Meanwhile, E.T. only had a budget of $10m.

throw48472854• 2 years ago

For me the most damning thing about Blade Runner is how much it comes alive during Rutger Hauer's monologue. Maybe it was intentional that the rest of the movie feels entirely emotionally dead, but it wasn't a good decision. It's a noir pastiche, but actual noir stories are lurid and sexy. Philip K Dick understood that, and all his books no matter how mind-bending have an element of pulp.

jocoda• 2 years ago

Read somewhere that Rutger Hauer wrote the monologue the night before the scene was to be filmed and they went with that.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attacked ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion ... etc". Great scene, but with a bit of spacey nonsense.

Blade Runner

Related Stories