What is so special about Blade Runner?

[Judderman]

I find C. P. Snows 'Two Cultures' quite interesting in that the literary perspective often makes no sense to me. Calling biological organisms machines merely renders the word 'machine' of little value.

The description from 5:00 to 6:00 in the video above explains it. It is associating lack of emotion with machine.

 

[psikeyhackr]

The description from 5:00 to 6:00 in the video above explains it. It is associating lack of emotion with machine.

It is interesting. I would have to read the diary but do not assume that I would come to the same conclusion as PKD. I think Blade Runner is a great flick, better than PKD's book.

What we decide to do with genetic engineering is more important than the machine metaphor.

 

[Marks]

It is interesting. I would have to read the diary but do not assume that I would come to the same conclusion as PKD. I think Blade Runner is a great flick, better than PKD's book.

Agreed!

What we decide to do with genetic engineering is more important than the machine metaphor.

"The Machine" as a metaphor is one you're going to run into a lot in the arts, especially science fiction and fantasy. Tolkien was especially fond of it. See: http://theconversation.com/tolkien-and-the-machine-35826

 

[StormFeather]

As I grew up, I only ever saw the Directors Cut of the film. For years, that has been my only reference point. I've always loved, and in a way, feared this film - as a child growing up in sunshine, this dark, wet, crowded future, where even the animals weren't real, and you couldn't be sure if the people were either, left a deep impression.

Roy's final words will always, ALWAYS, be my most favourite moment in my movie history.

Recently, we got a Sky upgrade and I was searching through movies and came across Blade Runner - why the heck not!? Kids in bed, hubby out - and it turned out, that it was the ORIGINAL!!!!

For me, it was a real eye-opener. I have never seen the film with Deckhards monologue, and the insights that gave to everything. A real game changer. And I finally got to see the 'riding off into the sunset' ending that I'd heard about.

I know this film isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it does pose so many questions - the only 'people' who show emotions are the replicants - they show the loss, fear, passion that humans should be feeling, but all the 'humans' in the film are flat, emotionless, 'doing their job'.

When Roy say's 'Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.' - That struck a chord.

Anyway, I'm not clever about these things, I tend to like or dislike something without thinking too deeply into it, but I did want to share my joy at finally seeing the original. I would be interested to know the difference between directors cut and final cut - maybe I have seen both, but had no idea!

(btw - while the unicorn scene in the directors cut was totally out of place, and I can see that now - the much younger 'me' who saw it many years ago, did love, if not at all understand, that sequence!)

 

[Marks]

This expresses it better than I did:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hPBbPqc5Sk

 

[Judderman]

Yes. Exactly makes sense. The emotion is shown by the replicants, not the humans. We can view these films as a warning in a way.

 

[Al Jackson]

But the visuals and mood always wins me over and makes up for a fairly mundane exposition of "kill all robots"

I had never seen a science fiction film that had a better Lived-In look and few since.
Ridley Scott is a fan of classic prose science fiction. Blade Runner's milieu looks more derived from 1950's 'cyberpunk'(before there was cyberpunk) , an example The Stars My Destination. Scott is also a fan of the French comic artist Jean Giraud . Giraud's designs show up in Blade Runner . (Tell ya Scott must also be a fan of the great science fiction artist Ed Emishweller because there seems to be even more influence by him.) I can't say the story in BR is super great but it is good enough (it is not Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, tho there is one scene lifted straight from the book.) The score is a knock out one of the best movie scores around. It is more than costume and sets it all has an integrated feel to it which complements the story.
It is very noticeable how good Ridley Scott's set design is when not many years later Paul Verhoeven made Total Recall which was supposed to have cyber-punkie look, well it was flat and under realized , Scott set the standard for cyberpunk and I have only seen it fully realized again in Blade Runner 2049.

 

[Overread]

Not all directors (and their cinema team) know how to speak and describe with the camera and set. Sometimes its budget limits, but often as not they just don't quite get the magic.

I think also sometime its the little scenes that get cut out because they are not driving the plot forward at lightning speed.


Sergio Leone knew how not just to make you immersed in a film, but even to describe characters without showing much more than a few moments of their life. Tarantino also has that skill (and has lifted it greatly from Sergio's films).
I saw Desperadoes the other day, in that you really not just get a sense or but can see, feel and smell the heat of the setting. The sheen of sweat on actors; the grime on the bars; even a short segment that shows poverty next to richness etc... all little things and little details that build up the visual scene.


And in Blade Runner we get it too; we get the atmosphere of the setting; the reality of it all. We see our lead character living a mundane normal life; we see little bits and hints of what's just regular old life.

I recall reading a line by a street photographer who said one of the secrets to good street photography is being able to smell the street in the photos. I'd say the same is true of films; you've got to be able to smell the landscape and scene. Be it a town, a jungle, a city or a wasteland. I think a move to CGI sets has taken some of that aspect out unless the director is very keenly aware of it - to leave the sweat on the actors perfect face in the studio; to have those scenes where it is just walking across a street; to show those little glimpses into daily life.

Indeed in many super-hero or action films one great failing is that you often can't see the daily life of many characters, esp the antagonists. You never really imagine Lord Vader outside of his position on the command ship; nor the Emperor not seated in his seat of power. You can't see them sharing a meal, or sitting down in a chair for a rest or going to bed. Snoke is the same though even more extreme as we only really ever see him in his chair!
Just like a setting or a scene if we can't see normality (for the setting) we lose just that little bit of immersion.

 

[KGeo777]

I'd say the same is true of films; you've got to be able to smell the landscape and scene. Be it a town, a jungle, a city or a wasteland. I think a move to CGI sets has taken some of that aspect out unless the director is very keenly aware of it - to leave the sweat on the actors perfect face in the studio; to have those scenes where it is just walking across a street; to show those little glimpses into daily life.

On a related note--I was watching AT THE EARTH'S CORE and there is a scene where Doug McClure is going through a tunnel by himself, and then has to pass by sleeping dinosaur creatures. It's a slow sequence, with no music, and got me to thinking how in most films especially in recent times--with the editing and sound so sensational and rapid, they would never stop to smell the prehistoric roses.

As crude as the effects were, watching the creatures asleep added an extra element of realism to the proceedings.

 

[HanaBi]

Not all directors (and their cinema team) know how to speak and describe with the camera and set. Sometimes its budget limits, but often as not they just don't quite get the magic.

I think also sometime its the little scenes that get cut out because they are not driving the plot forward at lightning speed.


Sergio Leone knew how not just to make you immersed in a film, but even to describe characters without showing much more than a few moments of their life. Tarantino also has that skill (and has lifted it greatly from Sergio's films).
I saw Desperadoes the other day, in that you really not just get a sense or but can see, feel and smell the heat of the setting. The sheen of sweat on actors; the grime on the bars; even a short segment that shows poverty next to richness etc... all little things and little details that build up the visual scene.


And in Blade Runner we get it too; we get the atmosphere of the setting; the reality of it all. We see our lead character living a mundane normal life; we see little bits and hints of what's just regular old life.

You make some very interesting points regarding the vision of Leone. He was most certainly one of the old-school directors who much preferred giving nearly every character some depth, even if they weren't around all that long!

The opening 12 minute scene into "Once Upon a Time in the West" is a case in point. Not a lot happens in terms of action, but Leone sets the mood by focusing on the three gunslingers waiting at the train station. The attention to detail is intense - with one scene showing a fly buzzing around the whiskers of one the gunslinger's and his growing irritation at it. Or a follow-up scene of another gunslinger drinking from the "bowl" of his cowboy hat because he has been standing underneath a dripping rain barrel on the station platform for what seems like a long time!

For those 12 minutes we don't even know their names with barely a word spoken throughout; but by the end of those 12 minutes we feel like we've known them all our lives!

The only other directors of that ilk that spring to mind would be Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah, Robert Bresson and Martin Scorsese. Scott is very much the same, although he is doesn't have the same luxury as Leone did, given that we live in a different era where time and exposition is everything.

 

[Overread]

In Tanrantino's Django there's a scene past half way through where a group of, what would otherwise be called " bad guy goons" are resting in their cabin. Up to this point we only saw them hunt and have their dogs tear apart an escaped slave; they were only shown as that - evil henchmen.

And yet now we get a slow scene of reflection; one is looking at pictures of people (we never know who they are but it appears important to her); another is having a bath, one is making a bird house. It's a very calm, very quiet and quite homely scene.

In a few moments of the camera panning and a few words if that between them they go from just faceless goons to characters. Characters with stories, personalities, faces and identities and a bit of mystery about them. The camera makes you interested in them - this is then coldly contrasted 5 seconds later when the door bursts in and they are all shot by the good guy. It's a bittersweet scene that I think really embraces this concept of showing character not just function.


In most films goons are, well, totally faceless and there purely to perform a task for the story or to die and we think nothing of them; and because of that they are like the clones of Mr Smith out of the Matrix - just bodies rather tahn characters.

 

[Onyx]

In Tanrantino's Django there's a scene past half way through where a group of, what would otherwise be called " bad guy goons" are resting in their cabin. Up to this point we only saw them hunt and have their dogs tear apart an escaped slave; they were only shown as that - evil henchmen.

And yet now we get a slow scene of reflection; one is looking at pictures of people (we never know who they are but it appears important to her); another is having a bath, one is making a bird house. It's a very calm, very quiet and quite homely scene.

In a few moments of the camera panning and a few words if that between them they go from just faceless goons to characters. Characters with stories, personalities, faces and identities and a bit of mystery about them. The camera makes you interested in them - this is then coldly contrasted 5 seconds later when the door bursts in and they are all shot by the good guy. It's a bittersweet scene that I think really embraces this concept of showing character not just function.


In most films goons are, well, totally faceless and there purely to perform a task for the story or to die and we think nothing of them; and because of that they are like the clones of Mr Smith out of the Matrix - just bodies rather tahn characters.

The notion of fleshing out characters is very popular on a writing website, and I agree to an extent that it is the more interesting alternative. But I think that the example you give is just another one of those times when Tarantino is well aware of the conventions and is purposely screwing with them for the sake of humor/horror. Showing Vincent killed early in Pulp Fiction is another of those moments. He's gleefully violating narrative 'rules' mainly to provoke an immediate audience reaction, rather than out of concern for a more realistic depiction of humanity.

Is it bad to not flesh out the Storm Troopers, orcs or drug lords? It really comes down to whether the author/film maker is depicting the violence as the tragic/just death of a human being, or whether the violence is there to depict the protagonist's struggle/fury/skill in the face of deadly adversaries as obstacles in her quest. The second would certainly be tremendously weighted down if a battle between thousands of soldiers was expected to flesh out the character of every on-screen death. Some characters in fiction are simply going to lack agency, and that should be okay.

 

[KGeo777]

One notable thing about 1960s Italian cinema--i.e. spaghetti westerns, is that they cast really interesting faces. The men were ROUGH looking. That bandit that Lee Van Cleef goes after at the start of For a Few Dollars More--that guy-you didn't need a backstory on him. His face said everything.

Leone was more sketchy/operatic in his approach when compared to the other Sergios, Corbucci and Sollima, who had more dialogue, character arcs. Morricone was usually doing the soundtrack for them too though.

In Star Wars there was that casual discussion between the two Stormtroopers when Obi Wan is going to shut down the shield.

 

[HanaBi]

Having recently watched BR-2049, I really have come to appreciate the vision of life in 30 years time. I think most of the hardware in that film is probably already with us, or not that far away. But the Spinners fascinate me, and I would think it will be the next progression for the typical driverless car.

It's a long way off from happening of course, but it would not surprise me if spinners were abundant in our skies come the 22nd century.

 

[paeng]

I just remembered that according to his bio shown in Aliens Dallas, the captain from Alien, worked for the Tyrell Corporation.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I just remembered that according to his bio shown in Aliens Dallas, the captain from Alien, worked for the Tyrell Corporation.

I think we have to be careful when discerning what represents a 'joint universe' or what represents an 'Easter egg' or 'in joke'.

Given the problems trying to hunt down and 'retire' replicants, I'm not sure that within a century they would become an integral part of manned space crews.

Either way, it's still pretty neat to spot such breadcrumbs when watching movies.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

I think Ridley Scott is on record stating that in his own mind canon, the Alien and Blade Runner franchises are set in the same universe. Not that it makes it official or anything. But yes, there were references to BR in both Alien and Prometheus.

The 1998 Sci-Fi Actioner Soldier, with Kurt Russel, was set in the Blade Runner universe according to its screenwriter (who co-wrote Blade Runner) and director. It's not an official part of the Blade Runner canon and is even less likely to ever be recognized as such now that Blade Runner has spawned an official sequel and series - and that Soldier flopped hard. But for a long, long time this and the K.W Jeter's Blade Runner novels were the closest things one could get to a Blade Runner expanded universe.

 

[Vladd67]

It has also been suggested that Sean Connery's space version of High Noon, Outland, is also in the Alien universe.

 

[CupofJoe]

I think Ridley Scott is on record stating that in his own mind canon, the Alien and Blade Runner franchises are set in the same universe. Not that it makes it official or anything. But yes, there were references to BR in both Alien and Prometheus.

The 1998 Sci-Fi Actioner Soldier, with Kurt Russel, was set in the Blade Runner universe according to its screenwriter (who co-wrote Blade Runner) and director. It's not an official part of the Blade Runner canon and is even less likely to ever be recognized as such now that Blade Runner has spawned an official sequel and series - and that Soldier flopped hard. But for a long, long time this and the K.W Jeter's Blade Runner novels were the closest things one could get to a Blade Runner expanded universe.

I haven't spotted it, but in a junk yard scene in Soldier there is a BR spinner on a pile of cars...

 

[Bick]

It has also been suggested that Sean Connery's space version of High Noon, Outland, is also in the Alien universe.

By who, and based on what?