Blade Runner is the greatest Science Fiction film ever made. There...I said it. Stanley Kubrick be damned. This is a movie released in 1982 based on the *Phillip K. Dick novel from 1968 and it still looks, sounds and 'feels' better than ANY sci-fi film in the past twenty years. If you haven't watched this in a theater or on Blu Ray-you are missing a very special treat. This movie is amazing folks. Go buy it right now and if you don't like it-you're a moron. Simple as that.
Ridley Scott, who had Directed the wickedly scary
ALIEN three years earlier, decide to adapt one of the greatest sci-fi stories in print: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? penned by master Science Fiction author *Phillip K. Dick. Most will say that the written word is far superior to what translates to film. But
Blade Runner exhibits the exact opposite. It's visuals out-shine the novel and it just gets better and better with every viewing. Initially, the critics panned it as well as audiences too. They expected Harrison Ford, who played Rick Deckard, to pop out another Han Solo or Indiana Jones. This movie was dark and depressingly beautiful and the general public didn't know what to make of it. It took nearly a decade and a half for the mudbloods out there to embrace this amazing sci-fi noir.
Modern film, even non-science fiction films, owe something to Blade Runner. Directors have copied it's style and pacing, cinematographers copy shot for shot the amazing look and 'feel' of Jordan Cronenweth's (
Altered States,
Cutter's Way,
U2's Rattle and Hum and the Talking Head's sweet concert film
Stop Making Sense) visuals. Syd Mead's (visual futurist/artist) vehicle and weapons designs are actually in use NOW. There is a huge talent pool involved in
Blade Runner. Basically...there are too many to list.
If you strip away the effects and the wash of age and decay you get an interesting plot element: racism.
Blade Runner revolves around a race of uber robots created by the Tyrell corporation. These androids are used on dangerous or dirty off-world colony labor which most humans consider base and undesirable. These Replicants, as they are known, are not allowed back on Earth under penalty of retirement--destruction at the hands of the Blade Runner squads. Dekard (Harrison Ford) is a Blade Runner and he finds no satisfaction in blowing holes in these mirror-human machines. Replicants are the slave labor of our society. They represent the thankless masses that pick up our trash and wash our dishes at our banquets. They are the everyman. Only problem: they're stronger and faster than we are and as smart as the bio-engineers who designed them. Personally, I never could understand why the replicants were considered to be second-rate beings in the book and in the film. These machines were Gods walking among us. They should have ruled US.
In a nutshell,
Blade Runner looks like it was produced last year. It stands the test of time and it's story is as important today as it was twenty five years ago. Watch
Blade Runner. Watch the theatrical version first to understand where it came from THEN watch the Final Cut version to understand Ridley Scott's true vision. I have watched
Blade Runner several times each year for fifteen years and the best compliment I can give it is: I never fast forward ANYTHING. Every second of film is vital. You'll see...
*(Note: Several of Dick's work has made the jump to the silver screen to include: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [Blade Runner], We Can Remember it for You Wholesale [Total Recall], Minority Report, Second Variety [Screamers], Paycheck, Confessions of a Crap Artist [Confessions d'un Barjo], A Scanner Darkly, The Golden Man [Next], and King of the Elves.)
