What is so special about Blade Runner?

[Toby Frost]

There's a considerable overlap in the crew who made it, and the look and themes of Outland are very similar. The recent Alien roleplaying game mentions very similar activities (mining on Io, etc), but doesn't use any of the fictional names, which are presumably someone else's copyright.

I think Outland fits quite convincingly into the Alien world, but Blade Runner doesn't. To be honest, I don't want a Blade Runner franchise beyond the first film. Like the film of Starship Troopers, it doesn't need anything else. It's self-contained.

 

[Vladd67]

There's a considerable overlap in the crew who made it, and the look and themes of Outland are very similar. The recent Alien roleplaying game mentions very similar activities (mining on Io, etc), but doesn't use any of the fictional names, which are presumably someone else's copyright.

I think Outland fits quite convincingly into the Alien world, but Blade Runner doesn't. To be honest, I don't want a Blade Runner franchise beyond the first film. Like the film of Starship Troopers, it doesn't need anything else. It's self-contained.

I have planned to play the Alien RPG and to start off with an Outland style story, so as my players are expecting an alien to pop up at any moment I will hit them with drug dealers and company employed hitmen. As the player characters evolve as a team of investigators and move out into space I may slip the odd alien in amongst the cold war / corporate espionage storyline.

 

[paeng]

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.

I also found out that they use the same software:

 

[paeng]

The only connection I could find to Outland:

TERMINATOR, ALIENS and PREDATOR are all connected in a shared universe (with The ABYSS)?

Explained in our Trivia Volume 8, every fan knows that the “The Terminator” and The Abyss films both exist in the same universe. But did you know there are strong theories to suggest both Alien an…

skynetsarmy.wordpress.com

Bishop was supposed to have been made by Cyberdyne Systems. That's the same company in the Terminator franchise.

One chemical that's used in Terminator is also used in Outland.

Outland

Outland is a British-American sci-fi thriller film released in 1981 written and directed by Peter Hyams. The Con-Amalgamate company from Capricorn One is mentioned in this film. Polydichloric Euthimal, a fictional chemical from this film is mentioned in both Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The...

tommywestphall.fandom.com

 

[paranoid marvin]

I also found out that they use the same software:

Exactly the same computer screen in each movie; I hadn't realised that. Well spotted.

 

[Judderman]

I think that is related to budget issues and reusing props/screens. Could even call it laziness rather than in a common setting. There are other repeated shots. They are also set decades apart.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/14lhdh

 

[Vince W]

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.

Soldier connects Blade Runner, Escape From New York, The Thing, and Stargate. And Aliens.

http://www.theefnylapage.com/escape/pictures/culturalreferences/soldier1998.jpg

 

[JunkMonkey]

One thing that I appreciate about Blade Runner is the sense you get that there is a real world at play. It's a busy film with lots of background detail which gives the impression that there is a working economy and social and cultural life beyond that required to tell the story of the film. The background is not just sketched in with token gestures.
(My go to example of that kind of cinematic scene setting lazyness is the vast number of mediaeval and pseudo mediaeval fantasy films which contain scenes set in huge castles full of banqueting nobles; castles placed in otherwise empty plains. Sometimes without even a road leading to it. Where are the fields? Where are the farms? the livestock? the hundreds of peasants who would be required to put all that food on the banquet table and fodder in the stables? Gods know but they are not on the screen when you would expect to see them - though, ocassionally, there will be the odd chicken around for the heroes to startle as they ride past, or wagon full of hay to land in when they jump from a window. )

In Blade Runner you have the feeling that all those people in the
background on the steet are going somewhere, they have things to do, lives to live beyond the frame line. There's the feeling that each and every one of them thinks they're the hero of the movie.

It's something that is lacking in a lot of SF films (before and since) and is spectacularly lacking in the sequel.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I think that is related to budget issues and reusing props/screens. Could even call it laziness rather than in a common setting. There are other repeated shots. They are also set decades apart.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/14lhdh

True. If the use of stock footage places any two films it is used in in the same universe then all sorts of silliness follows. Spermula and The Starlost for example would be part of the same universe as Silent Running - though only in some parts of the world because footage from Silent Running was only cut into the English dub of Spermula and the promotional material for The Starlost .

EDIT: or even closer to the thread, that Blade Runner and Legend are part of the same universe.

 

[Vladd67]

Did the Barclays ad come out before or after Bladerunner?

 

[paranoid marvin]

One thing that I appreciate about Blade Runner is the sense you get that there is a real world at play. It's a busy film with lots of background detail which gives the impression that there is a working economy and social and cultural life beyond that required to tell the story of the film. The background is not just sketched in with token gestures.
(My go to example of that kind of cinematic scene setting lazyness is the vast number of mediaeval and pseudo mediaeval fantasy films which contain scenes set in huge castles full of banqueting nobles; castles placed in otherwise empty plains. Sometimes without even a road leading to it. Where are the fields? Where are the farms? the livestock? the hundreds of peasants who would be required to put all that food on the banquet table and fodder in the stables? Gods know but they are not on the screen when you would expect to see them - though, ocassionally, there will be the odd chicken around for the heroes to startle as they ride past, or wagon full of hay to land in when they jump from a window. )

In Blade Runner you have the feeling that all those people in the
background on the steet are going somewhere, they have things to do, lives to live beyond the frame line. There's the feeling that each and every one of them thinks they're the hero of the movie.

It's something that is lacking in a lot of SF films (before and since) and is spectacularly lacking in the sequel.

Yes, I think I mentioned before that what's happening in the background, especially the street scenes with all the adverts, vehicles and clothing, is what really sells the movie to me rather than the storyline or the characters.

They tried to do something with the sequel, but it didn't work nearly so well.

 

[paeng]

Best I could find:

Are Alien and Blade Runner Set in the Same Universe?

We dig into all the considerable evidence that suggests Ridley Scott's Alien and Blade Runner universes are one in the same.

www.denofgeek.com

While speaking on one of many Blade Runner DVD director’s commentaries, Scott said this about their similarities:

“So almost this world could easily be the city that supports the crew that go out in Alien. So, in other words, when the crew of Alien come back in, they might go into this place and go into a bar off the street near where Deckard lives. That’s how I thought about it.”

So, it's either the two universes are alike or are the same.

 

[Swank]

The obvious reason that BR and Alien are different universes is their relationship to androids/replicants.

 

[Judderman]

They don't even seem remotely similar.

 

[BAYLOR]

In the Blade Runner universe Replican have an only 4 year life span , I underhand why they did it but to me , It's cruel.

 

[paeng]

They don't even seem remotely similar.

Apparently, the director claims otherwise.

 

[paranoid marvin]

In the Blade Runner universe Replican have an only 4 year life span , I underhand why they did it but to me , It's cruel.

Though this does kind of defeat the point of Blade Runners. Why go chasing after replicants when you only have to sit back and wait...

 

[Swank]

Though this does kind of defeat the point of Blade Runners. Why go chasing after replicants when you only have to sit back and wait...

Maybe to prevent all the murders they committed in the short time since they boarded the shuttle?

 

[paranoid marvin]

Maybe to prevent all the murders they committed in the short time since they boarded the shuttle?

But if they had been allowed to travel and return to Earth, instead of being pursued and shot on sight, (it seems replicants don't get a trial or prison sentence) then they probably wouldn't have done those things, and simply expired naturally.

 

[Swank]

But if they had been allowed to travel and return to Earth, instead of being pursued and shot on sight, (it seems replicants don't get a trial or prison sentence) then they probably wouldn't have done those things, and simply expired naturally.

Have you seen Blade Runner?

A group of replicants, who were not previously in a team together, became concerned with their impending deaths and banded together to hijack a shuttle by killing the crew. On earth they kill three prominent scientists, including the trillionaire owner Tyrell, in an effort to stop their aging - or take revenge when there is no help for them.

The replicants are motivated, extremely dangerous and in the mood to seek revenge for their slavery and short lives.