Blade Runner (film)
"Blade Runner" is a science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, released in 1982, based on Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The story is set in a dystopian, overcrowded Los Angeles in 2019, where former police detective Rick Deckard, portrayed by Harrison Ford, is tasked with hunting down and "retiring" renegade replicants—biological androids that have illegally returned to Earth. The film is notable for its dark, film-noir aesthetic and profound themes, exploring the boundaries between human and artificial life, as well as issues of class and alienation.
Despite initial mixed reviews and a troubled production that saw the film exceed its budget and schedule, "Blade Runner" has since become a seminal work in both the science fiction and film noir genres. Its visual design, characterized by a richly textured, cyberpunk environment, set new standards for cinematic storytelling and aesthetic presentation. The film's complex narrative challenges viewers' perceptions of morality and identity, ultimately posing significant questions about what it means to be human in a technologically advanced society. Over the years, it has influenced countless filmmakers and spawned various adaptations of Dick's works. In 1992, Scott released a director's cut that aligned more closely with his initial vision, further solidifying the film’s legacy.
Blade Runner (film)
Identification Science-fiction film
Director Ridley Scott
Date Released June 25, 1982
Blade Runner’s groundbreaking design blended film noir and punk sensibilities, striving to portray a realist vision of the architecture, fashion, and technology of the future. Although its initial theatrical release was unsuccessful, the film garnered growing popular approval and critical reappraisal through videotape rentals. Through its eventual cult popularity and original design, it came to influence the look of countless science-fiction films that followed.
Key Figures
Ridley Scott (1937- ), film director
Fans of Harrison Ford were expecting him to act in Blade Runner like the wise-cracking action hero of Star Wars (1977), Han Solo; they were surprised and disappointed to see him play a downbeat, film-noir-inspired character. Rick Deckard is a former police detective living in a bleak, rain-soaked, shadow-filled, overcrowded, postmodern Los Angeles. His job was to hunt down and kill renegade replicants (biological androids) who had illegally come back to Earth in 2019. The film was based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The production had gone over schedule and over budget, reaching approximately $28 million, and director Ridley Scott had been forced to borrow footage from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) to complete the original theatrical ending. As a result, he lost control of the film to Warner Bros. studios, which decided to add an expository voice-over and other explanatory elements to the dense film, as well as tacking on a romantic happy ending.
Despite the film’s slow, standard plot and a plodding pace, its strengths lie in its visual design, including its cinematography, art direction, production design, and special effects. Art director David Snyder was assisted by a talented crew that included visual futurist Syd Mead, who also worked on Tron (1982), 2010 (1984), and Aliens (1986), among other films. The goal of the design was to create a coherent, dense environment characterized by dystopian bleakness, alienation, and “terrible wonder” or “strange sublimeness.” Scott said he liked to give the eye so much to see in a film it was like a “seventy-layer cake.” Blade Runner’s design changed the look of science-fiction cinema as drastically as had Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and George Lucas’s Star Wars before it.
The film also featured a thematically complex plot. It blurred the boundaries between hero and villain (Deckard sees himself as little better than a murderer, and the replicants are by turns inhuman and sympathetic), as well as between hunter and hunted and between artificial and human life. It also incorporated allegories of class and slavery and envisioned a bleak future meant to explore the excesses of 1980’s international conglomerates and the globalization of capitalism, while soberly pondering what it means to be human in the context of mechanized commodity culture. Like Star Wars before it, the film portrayed a future in which technology could be shabby rather than shiny, but it put a decidedly cyberpunk spin on this portrayal, influencing many of the near-future fiction and films that followed.
Impact
In retrospect, Blade Runner can be seen as a distinctively postmodern film, in that it incorporates a pastiche of many different elements to assemble a vision of the future. As much film noir as science fiction, the film surmounted its component subgenres to achieve something new that would influence many other filmmakers once public opinion caught up with it. It was also the first major adaptation of a story by Philip K. Dick , who died just before the film was released. Dick’s stories, once “discovered” by Hollywood, would become the basis for many television and film adaptations, including Total Recall (1990), Screamers (1995), Impostor (2002), Minority Report (2002), Paycheck (2003), and A Scanner Darkly (2006).
Subsequent Events
By 1992, Scott had enough clout in Hollywood to revisit Blade Runner, eliding the film’s voice-over narration and restoring some deleted footage to bring the film closer to his original vision. This “director’s cut” of the film was released in theaters and later on VHS videotape and digital video disc (DVD), and it represented one of the first “director’s cuts” of any major studio film.
Bibliography
Brooker, Will, ed. The “Blade Runner” Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic. New York: Wallflower, 2005.
Bukatman, Scott. “Blade Runner.” London: British Film Institute, 1997.
Kerman, Judith, ed. Retrofitting “Blade Runner.” Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991.
Sammon, Paul. Future Noir: The Making of “Blade Runner.” New York: HarperCollins, 1996.