Critically acclaimed near future sci-fi, noir, dystopian, possibly cyber punk, detective...you're not even reading... thriller...these trite film pigeon hole words...exploring concepts of humanity...really are you...
Some potentially mixed views over on "The Worst Moments of the Levitz Legion (with and without Giffen)"
I think Blade Runner is a victim of its own brilliance these days. So many modern filmmakers ape Ridley Scott's gritty cyberpunk setting and tone that the concept has become pretty pedestrian to many modern moviegoers. I imagine that a kid who watched Blade Runner for the first time today might feel that the concept seems unoriginal after being exposed to it's successors like Surrogates, Total Recall (remake), The Matrix, etc.
Seriously, though, I haven't seen it since about 1995, so I have to go strictly by memory.
I remember it as being an ugly movie about an ugly time and place, thematically muddled, humorless, and badly protagonized by Harrison Ford and Sean Young, two of the actors least deserving movie stardom IMO. Rutger Hauer, Joanna Cassidy, and Daryl Hannah made for potentially lively villains, but the turgidity ultimately drowned their valiant efforts.
Love Blade Runner, even with its Chinese menu of versions (With voice over or without? With Unicorn or not?, etc). It was an interesting stab at Film Noir/Sci-Fi mashup, and Decker was different enough from Indy and Han, that Ford could bring a lot to the role, both as a quiet guy and the chatty voice-over one. The villains were sympathetic, and the heroes, not very heroic. It really all played extremely well.
As a teenager I watched it and initially didn't like it, but then felt compelled to watch it again, and then again (with my friends--these days it would take a miracle for me to watch a movie a second time). As I kept watching it, the more I liked it until eventually I admitted to myself that I thought it was pretty great.
I really have no desire to watch it again though. I think I've moved on.
I didn't see it until years after it was out, but I remember being a bit underwhelmed. I didn't think it was bad or anything, but it just wasn't something I really felt the need to re-watch.
I've seen it quite a few times and gone to see a few versions of it over the years.
It was certainly something different. The mix of sci-fi and noir was well done.
It's very well shot. It owes a great deal to Lang's Metropolis. A number of things are taken from it. No bad thing, and doesn't detract from it. Like seeing Star Wars after watching some Kurosawa movies.
But so much time was spent faffing around with getting the city scape done that we only really get similar shots of it.
Scott was going for the Deckard-as-replicant plot. Having a genre busting unicorn throws me out of the film. It's just not needed. Particularly as there are other strong hints (some we see in the same room as he has that dream).
After a couple of watches (which I admit isn't fair) you see that Ford isn't just playing a tired, rather trapped bounty hunter. He's a tired, rather trapped actor. He's colossally bored sounding in the versions with the narration.
It's a boredom that goes well beyond the muted performances of (a very high maintenance) Young and some of the others. That approach might have been on purpose due to the human/replicant storyline. But it could just have easily been bored actors tired off having to do yet another take for the director.
I glimpsed the comic before I saw the movie. I don't think I read enough of it to spoil the movie, but Al Williamson's art was a big stand out.
I later read the book. I seem to recall Scott being a little dismissive of it. But the film still owes a lot to it. I quite enjoyed it as it tackles some different themes (as Dick wasn't trying to channel Fritz Lang in his version) to the movie.
I read that the guys doing the city model had spent ages on a version. Ages and ages. Only for Scott to come in and say that it was a good start or not to like it much.
I think the point I was supposed to take from it was that Scott was totally in control and knew just what he wanted. What I actually took from it was that tons of cash and important time had just been wasted by not checking in on the guys as they were going along. Also that the director had just utterly demoralised some of the guys on the film.
I kind of like it, but the behind the scenes documentaries on the 4 disc set were really interesting. Those of you who have heard the narrated version should hear the recording outtakes. Ford can hardly get the words out before be immediately starts complaining about them. I admire a lot of the work that was put into making the movie, but so many years of people going on about how great Rutger Hauer's final speech is have dampened my enthusiasm for the whole thing.
I saw it before people droned on about it. Nothing kills my enthusiasm more than other people's endless enthusiasm.
Speaking of droning on, was Hauer's speech not supposed to be a long thing? But he just cut it way down. With the sun coming up, I take it they just wanted it done, although it was possibly better too.
I've not got the 4 disc set. Having picked up a couple of other versions, I couldn't see the advantages of unicorns in even more versions.
An interesting footnote on someone's review (interesting that I'll need to go back and read the reviews at some point)
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was reportedly written in 1966, although Philip K. Dick probably worked with the same concepts much earlier. The truly groundbreaking film on the subject of synthetic humans and the robotic future is Jay Simms' 1962 Creation of the Humanoids.
An awkwardly static and talky obscurity, Humanoids shares with Blade Runner the notion of robots becoming indistinguishable from live people and likewise depends for its main twist on the idea that a robot might be unaware that it isn't human. Creation develops the same core ideas much further. Instead of self-destructing like a consumer product, Simm's 'clickers' can function for 150 years."
Robots and humans are locked in a legal-political competition, while some humans are even 'marrying' robots. Creation even ponders the meaning of life and God in a world where humans define themselves by their faith. A robot proclaims, "I know who created me. You have to accept your creator on faith."
I note that Alan Moore used the derogatory term "clickers" for the robots in Top 10, and wonder if some of the themes there came from Simms.
I particularly liked that Blade Runner didn't pander or talk down to the audience.
The overall question of whether or not the main character was also a replicant was never answered on the film, unlike one of M. Night Shamalamadingdong's movies where the 'twist' ending has to be explained to you, along with a brief recap of all the clues you missed, so that you can admire the directors jeenyus.
I also a fan of Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah, so that helped. Hauer's lines at the end, 'all these moments will be lost, like tears, in rain,' were crazy powerful, and you kind of realized that this was a movie about his character, who went through a much more exciting and meaningful arc, attempting to escape his pre-programmed fate, and Ford's character (human or not, it really made no difference) was just a cog in a machine, doing what he was made to do.
The replicants were out there living whatever brief lives were allotted to them, while the humans were mired in a dead-end life.
The movie AI touched on similar themes, where the various human characters were trapped in roles coded into their DNA (creating robot kids to sate parental urges, for instance), or acting inhuman (the robot-smashers), while the AI themselves were capable of wonder, fear, hope, longing, desperation, all the things that the human characters had lost.
I like that sort of thought-provoking sci-fi, where you are left with questions, and everything isn't wrapped up in a shiny bow (or, worse, IMO, explained to me like I'm a three year old, multiple times). Sadly such stories don't often include giant robots who turn into cars and get in fights and topple buildings, or alien ships blowing up famous landmarks like the White House, so they are considered 'boring' or 'monotonous' to today's audiences, in favor of big budget spectacle that has no real underlying social commentary or grown up themes about the nature of humanity in a world in which science forces us to redefine what we think of as 'people' (whether it be aliens or humans changing themselves profoundly, or machine intelligence).
Good points on the themes Set. The book looked at how humans could be categorised and discarded as if they were consumables. The fear/disgust of replicants was very much felt towards others in their own society. The film touches on this with JF, who can't leave to the colonies with everyone else. Yet, he's the most sympathetic humane character in it.
I loved this film back in the day and I love it still, but for different reasons.
For one, the over-examination of it has ruined people's enjoyment of what exists on the screen. I had no idea about Ford being tired or not liking the lines - who cares? Nobody liked being on the set of "Apocalypse Now" but that's not the point is it?
I loved it at the time because of the innovations of plot, of thought, of design, and how the "bad guys" were motivated by something other than "being evil". A lot of that still holds up for me despite how many people have ripped it off since then. (I had the same problem when I first watched "Casablanca" but that movie was copied so many times for a reason - it's fuckin' awesome)
One other thing I've come to appreciate having rewatched it recently (the movie version, not some "Deckard is a replicant" what might have been version) is that the pacing is different - in a good way. The movie doesn't devolve into a gigantic SFX-gasm of explosions and CGI stunts. Most movies nowadays introduce a thought-provoking premise only as the setup then spend the other hour and a half blowing shit up as though it were a satisfying resolution. "Blade Runner" is not that. The other reviews on this thread seem a bit too cynical about it, but I think it holds up and might be even more relevant for how thoughtful sci-fi can be represented without a ton of stunts and SFX.
I had no idea about Ford being tired or not liking the lines - who cares?
Occasionally I will see a movie where the actors lack of engagement / enthusiasm for the material shines through and kind of taints the movie for me. Kevin Costner, in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, was apparently all tuckered out from Polkas with Porcupines or whatever, and he really did seem to be sort of slumped over, mumbling his lines.
Val Kilmer is another one who sometimes brings his A game (as he did in Willow and The Saint) and other times just reads his script and goes home to cash his check (whatever Batman movie he was in).
I didn't really notice it as much in Blade Runner, because the character was supposed to be a low-key hard-boiled type, and not a more cast-to-type Harrison Ford character full of insouciance / irreverence, charm and quips, delivered with his trademark half-smile.
Instead, he was 'the robot,' while the synthetic people were screaming and dancing and flipping out, being more 'alive' than the (purported) humans in the movie.
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I think it holds up and might be even more relevant for how thoughtful sci-fi can be represented without a ton of stunts and SFX.
Yup. Same with AI, IMO. It lacked the blow 'em up sequences of other films that dipped their little toes into the same pond (such as Surrogates or various Terminator movies or movies about aliens, which also touched upon the classic sci-fi dilemma of 'what is human' or 'where does human end, and machine begin').
