Fused Film Friday Classic: Blade Runner (1982)
Blade Runner
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Harrison Ford, Daryl Hannah, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer and Edward James Olmos
Rating: “R” for violence and brief nudity
Release Date: June 25, 1982
Runtime: 116 -118 min (depending on version)
Favorite Quote - “I don’t know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life - anybody’s life, my life. All he’d wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.”
Keeping up with the Dystopian mindset here on Fused Film this week with all the news regarding Fortuna and our Trailer of the Week pick - Repo! The Genetic Opera we decided our Friday classic pick should be Blade Runner.
Filmed in 1982, this is a sci-fi tale directed by Ridley Scott and stars Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah and Edward James Olmos.
Synopsis
The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically manufactured beings called “replicants” - visually indistinguishable from adult humans - are used for dangerous and degrading work on Earth’s “off-world colonies”. Following a small replicant uprising, replicants become illegal on Earth and specialist police called “blade runners” are trained to hunt them down and “retire” (kill) escaped replicants on Earth. The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the semi-retired blade runner, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment.
Review
The film didn’t gain much notoriety and had mixed reviews from critics. However due to its amazing production design and dealing with themes of many films made around that time it gained a cult classic status.
The film is credited with prefiguring important concerns of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, such as overpopulation, globalization, climate change and genetic engineering. Also its cult status came from the following of popular sci-fi story writer, Philip K. Dick.
Dick, wrote the story - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in 1968 wanting to explore the idea of the ethical dimensions inherent to the android concept literary device, in order to understand the persecution of a person based upon artificial distinctions such as “ethnic group”. This is common in Dick’s other stories which would later be made into films. Blade Runner was the movie that got Hollywood to pay attention to his stories and opened the door for films like Minority Report, Total Recall, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, and Next.
The film was pegged early on as an action film, especially with Indy/Han involved it was sought to be an epic action film but the movie isn’t that at all. Blade Runner is a movie that harnesses very deep dramatic, narrative levels of story telling in almost a film noir style. This is a movie that deals in the vein of humanity, technology, morality, philosophy of religion, science and technology.
There has been talk of a sequel and most recently there has been some light shed on this idea. Ridley Scott apparently toyed with the idea of a sequel film, which would have been titled Metropolis. However, the project was ultimately shelved due to rights issues. A script was also written for a proposed sequel entitled Blade Runner Down, which would have been based on K. W. Jeter’s first Blade Runner sequel novel. At the 2007 Comic-Con, Scott again announced that he is considering a sequel to the film. By September 2008, Eagle Eye co-writer Travis Wright was writing the screenplay. Wright worked with producer Bud Yorke for a few years on the project. His colleague John Glenn, who left the film by 2008, stated the script explores the nature of the “off-world” colonies as well as what happens to the Tyrell Corporation in the wake of its founder’s death.
Ultimately Blade Runner is major cult-classic that any film fan should watch. This isn’t a movie for everyone but fans of sci-fi truly learn to appreciate it for its narrative and production design.
