Blade Runner: Difference between revisions

'''''Blade Runner''''' is a [[Genre Busting|genre-bending]] 1982 [[Science Fiction]] film that borrows stylistic elements from [[Film Noir]] and [[Hardboiled Detective]] fiction. Set in a [[Dystopia|dystopian]] [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|near-future]] [[City Noir]] version of Los Angeles, it established much of the tone and flavor of the [[Cyberpunk]] movement and the film style of [[The Future Is Noir|Tech Noir]]. It is a highly intelligent film, [[Visual Effects of Awesome|visually stunning]] and features a seriously great script. The definitive high-def/[[Blu-Ray]] [[Directors Cut]] came out in 2007.

 

 

 

 

A sequel, ''[[Blade Runner 2049]]'', directed by [[Denis Villeneuve]] (''[[Prisoners]]'', ''[[Sicario]]''), starring [[Ryan Gosling]] and with Roger Deakins as cinematographer, was released on October 2017. [[Harrison Ford]], as well as original writer Hampton Fancher and [[Ridley Scott]] as an executive producer, returned for the production.

* [[Alas, Poor Villain]]: One of the most memorable in movie history.

* [[The Alcoholic]]: It's much faster to count the scenes in which Deckard ''isn't'' drinking. And if you can still drink with a split lip, then you are an überholic.

* [[Ambiguously Human]]: The Replicants. {{spoiler|And Deckard himself as well}}.

* [[Animal Motifs]]: Major characters have association with animals.

* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Gaff's multilingual Cityspeak, which is a mishmash of various languages including Spanish, Japanese and Hungarian. Lófasz! Nehogy már!

** The first thing he says to Deckard translates to "You are the [[Title Drop|Blade Runner!]]"

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: The director's and final cut end with Deckard realizing that the four years expiration date ''does'' apply to Rachael, and he {{spoiler|- possibly being a Replicant himself - may end with the same fate a well}}. However, the film closes on a note of acceptance, as the quote on the bottom of this page suggests.

* [[Blown Across the Room]]: Holden in the scene at the beginning of the film in which he interrogates Leon.

* [[Chiaroscuro]]: The film's dark, gritty feel set it apart from most science fiction films up to that point, and set a template for many to follow.

* [[City Noir]]: A crowning example.

* [[Crapsack World]]: One of the most influential dystopias in cinema, and a huge influence on [[Cyberpunk]].

* [[Crucified Hero Shot|Crucified Anti Villain Shot]]: Batty uses a nail driven into his own hand to stave off death for a few minutes. It's extremely visible as he {{spoiler|saves Deckard's life}}.

* [[Culture Chop Suey]]: The film has a kind of "the future is Asian" theme with a [[Far East|mishmash of East Asian cultural stereotypes]]: Geishas in advertising, Chinese noodle stalls, Japanese and Chinese writing scattered about, broken [[Engrish]], squadrons of bicycles ridden through squalid streets by [[All Asians Wear Conical Straw Hats|people in big hats]], etc.

* [[Cyberpunk]]: Possibly an [[Unbuilt Trope]]: without computer networks or virtual reality, it's just another sci-fi dystopia. The genre, however, has been informed by it for ''decades''. Even [[William Gibson]] despaired upon seeing it, because it featured the exact kind of visuals he had in mind for ''[[Neuromancer]]'' and he was afraid he'd be accused of ripping it off.

* [[Disturbed Doves]]: In the Bradbury Building, where the final confrontation takes place.

* [[Do Androids Dream?]]: Ironically more than in the book.

* [[Dull Surprise]]: The narration in the theatrical cut seems to be trying for "[[Private Eye Monologue]]" and falling into "Bored Out of My Mind" instead (part of the reason for the "[[Fanon Discontinuity|What theatrical cut?]]" mentality). Rumor has it that Harrison Ford disliked the idea of the narration and tried to prevent it from happening by deliberately botching his line delivery. [[Springtime for Hitler|The narration got used anyway.]] Ford denies that he did it deliberately, saying he did his best with what he was given. Possibly the legendarily difficult shoot had got to him.

* [[Earth That Used to Be Better]]: Overcrowded, polluted and rainy.

* [[Enhance Button]]: One of the most-often referenced examples. Possibly the [[Trope Maker]], almost certainly the [[Trope Codifier]]. Though ironically there is no actual button, as the machine is voice activated.

** Made all the more awesome by the fact that "like tears in rain" was ad-libbed by Rutger Hauer.

* [[Fantastic Aesop]]: The movie seems to be trying to use the Replicants to make a point about human understanding and identity which relies heavily on the Replicants having a short 'hard-coded' lifespan.

* [[Fantastic Racism]]: The sexually-charged racial-slur "skin-job" says a ''lot'' about how a person who uses it thinks of Replicants, as [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded by the much-maligned narration of the non-director's cut.]]

{{quote|'''Deckard:''' ''"Skin job", that's what he calls them. Historically he's the kind of cop who calls black men niggers."''}}

* [[Gaia's Lament]]: Earth is an ecological disaster, with an irradiated atmosphere, and very little natural life left.

** Indeed, aside from making human slave labor, the Tyrell Corporation has a nice [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap|lucrative little side line in synthetic animals]] going. A fact that allows Deckard to advance his search for Zhora by finding snake scales with a serial number on them.

* [[Glamour Failure]]: Can be forced by using the Voight-Kampff test to detect them, which monitors answers and subtle physical response to emotional questions. Otherwise, Replicants are identical to humans. On occasion their eyes can be seen to glow slightly, but according to [[Word of God]], this is for the audience, and characters can't see it.

* [[Gorn]]: {{spoiler|Tyrell's}} death, in the International and Final cuts.

* [[Hand Cannon]]: [http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#LAPD_2019_blaster Deckard's handgun] seems to fire explosive shells. It certainly makes pretty big holes in walls during his fight with Roy in the hotel. Its components include a bolt-action .222 rifle and a Charter Arms Bulldog revolver. So it's basically a huge single shot rifle in the shape of a pistol.

* [[Haunted House]]: The Bradbury Building is an extremely uninviting place at the best of times. When Roy Batty is somewhere inside howling like a wolf is very very far from the best of times.

* [[Insistent Terminology]]: From the opening text crawl: ''"It Was Not Called Execution. It Was Called [[Deadly Euphemism|Retirement]]."''

* [["It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It"]]: Comes up in discussions about the, ahem, ''questionable'' nature of Deckard and Rachael's "love scene", and how it was for her own good because she needed to learn how to feel.

** Or {{spoiler|if Deckard's a Replicant and therefore emotionally immature}}, he just doesn't understand the implications of what he's doing.

* [[I Will Show You X]]: When Leon shoots Holden, the interrogator who asks him about his mother.

* [[Japan Takes Over the World]]: Remembered as one of the classic examples, even though the "Asian" culture in the movie wasn't strictly just Japanese. The "building-size geisha advertisement", however, is a classic example of the trope and was more or less the image of how people in [[The Eighties]] expected things to go down.

* [[Kiss of Death]]: A symbolic example when Roy Batty kisses Eldon Tyrell just before killing him.

* [[Mandatory Unretirement]]: At the beginning of the movie, Deckard is no longer a Blade Runner, but is reluctantly recruited back. [[Riddle for the Ages|Or is he?]]

* [[Mega Corp]]: The Tyrell Corporation, whose massive pyramidal headquarters dominates the skyline of Los Angeles (not unlike the Ministry of Truth in ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'').

* [[Men Can't Keep House]]: Deckard's apartment has stuff littering every surface. When Rachael visits, he has to clear stuff out of a chair so that he can sit down. She remains standing. Deckard offers Rachael a drink, and has to clean a glass from the sink because there are no clean glasses available.

* [[Non-Indicative Name]]: There is nary a blade to be found in this movie. The term "blade runner" comes from ''The Blade Runner'', a completely unrelated dystopian novel in which the term refers to someone who sells black-market medical supplies. [[Ridley Scott]] bought the rights to the novel so that he could use the term in his film for no other reason than that it [[Rule of Cool|sounds cool]]. Also, given a certain [[Follow the Leader|thematic similarity]] to an earlier dystopian sci-fi film, it was just clever marketing to use a title with the word "[[Logan's Run|runner]]" in it.

* [[Nothing Is Scarier]]: The final confrontation between Deckard and Roy.

* [[Orwellian Retcon]]: Originally, Scott, Ford and the writers agreed that Deckard was human. When Scott made the [[Directors Cut]] in 1992, he had [[Shrug of God|changed his mind]], and he inserted a [[Dream Sequence|two-second-long clip of a unicorn]] to change Deckard's nature in the movie.

* [[Popcultural Osmosis]]: ''Blade Runner'' was highly influential on [[Cyberpunk]] and [[Post Cyber Punk]] fiction. It is such a poster child for popcultural osmosis that the imagery in the film is sometimes familiar to people who've never even seen it.

* [[Precision F-Strike]]: "I want more life... fucker!" There are cuts where Roy says "father" instead. It is extremely interesting to see how a single word can completely change the mood of the scene.

* [[Pretty in Mink]]: Rachael wears a few, indicative of her pampered status.

* [[Private Eye Monologue]]: The infamous narration was an attempt at this, although it was removed in the Final Cut.

* [[Product Placement]]: The dreaded Blade Runner Curse struck many of the brands featured in the movie. Atari was hammered by [[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983]], barely survived, and is now a shadow of its former self. Pan-Am is long extinct. Coca-Cola launched New Coke shortly after the movie was released, but managed to survive anyway. Bell was broken up for monopolistic practices. Cuisinart went bankrupt and was bought out by a rival company, living on only as a brand name. Budweiser dodged the Curse all the way up to 2008, when Anheuser-Busch was bought by InBev.

** Tsingtao is another brand name mentioned that survived the alleged curse, though the bottle Deckard buys after killing Zhora [[In Name Only|more resembles Gin or Vodka]] than the real world Chinese Lager.

* [[Punch Clock Hero]]: Deckard.

* [[Smug Snake]]: Gaff. So very much. Possibly Holden too.

* [[Snakes Are Sexy]]: "Ladies and gentlemen... Taffey Lewis presents... Miss Salome and the snake. Watch her take the pleasures from the serpent... that once corrupted man."

* [[Stealth Mentor]]: Gaff, in the Westwood Studio's [[Video Game]].

* [[Stock Footage]]: Not quite "stock", but reused. At one point, a computer displays a clip from ''[[Alien]]'', and more noticeably, the original theatrical ending was {{spoiler|actually one of the alternate opening credits sequences for ''[[The Shining]]''}}.

* [[Ubermensch]]: Roy Batty was intentionally created to be one, with a genius-level intellect. He naturally becomes the leader of the escaped Replicants.

* [[Ugly Hero, Good-Looking Villain]]: The final showdown. Compare the grimy, grizzled, blood-smeared form of Deckard to the nearly naked, nearly flawless body of Roy Batty. May or may not be an inversion and/or subversion depending on who you regard to be the hero and villain of the piece. During the '80s Harrison Ford was well-known for getting his ass kicked on camera really well.

* [[Video Phone]]: Deckard has a vidphone in his car, which he uses to call Sebastian's residence, only for his call to be answered by Pris.

* [[Villain's Dying Grace]]: Roy has Deckard in a literal cliffhanger but is dying himself. At the last moment, Roy saves Deckard's life, and is rewarded with an [[Obi-Wan Moment]].

* [[We Are as Mayflies]]: Inverted with the Replicants, who only live four years before they shut off.

* [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]]: A major theme in the film.

* [[Window Pain]]: Zhora's retirement.

* [[Younger Than They Look]]: Sebastian has an aging disease, making him look over fifty when he's in fact in his twenties. Replicants never live past four, by design.

* [[Your Approval Fills Me with Shame]]: After Deckard kills Zhora, Bryant tells Gaff that he could learn a thing or two from Deckard and refers to him as a "God-damned one-man slaughterhouse" with a huge grin on his face. Deckard's expression at this point is one of utter disgust, though it's not quite clear if it's disgust at Bryant for his praise, or disgust at himself because he knows Bryant is right.

----

::''It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?''

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]

[[Category:National Film Registry]]

[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]

[[Category:Hugo Award]]

[[Category:Films With Recuts]]

[[Category:Films Based on Novels]]