#39 We just watched this on Netflix streaming: Blader Runner

The Film: Blade Runner

The Replicants supposed couldn't feel empathy...hmm.

I’ve had varying degrees of love for Blade Runner since I first saw it when I was in 7th grade. I know the precise age because I wrote an essay on how much I liked it for a writing contest. My teacher lambasted me, saying I was too young to be watching such movies. (She was a Christian) I began to dislike Blade Runner as I moved into my teenage years, the story is kind of thin, but then fell back in love with it again about a year or two ago.

I arrived at Philip K. Dick through Blade Runner, so I owe it that much as well. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Eletronic Sheep? is masterful in a way only Philip K. Dick can be. How one work turned into the other is hard to say, but perhaps no other human being could have made Blade Runner what it is aside from its director, Ridley Scott.

The story follows Rick Deckard as he’s assigned to take down renegade Androids who have escaped an off-world colony and come to Earth illegally. A plot, and maybe its just me, that science fiction fans only dreamed would come to the big screen with such style and grace.

Why to watch it: The most timeless visuals ever made.

One shot shows just how organic this world felt. For some reason nothing has ever come close since. (Maybe Dark City)

It might be the greatest visionary achievement in filmmaking history. Fritiz Lang would have stared in awe at the textures, depth, and power of Blade Runner‘s images. But haven’t we seen this before? Doesn’t Avatar look more epic and Star Wars more awesome? I’m not sure – that is for you to decide. But something that George Lucas stressed in his first Star Wars film has been lost in modern special effects. The idea of the “used future”. Star Wars felt very real and organic because the environments felt “used”.

When individuals move around Blade Runner‘s world, everything looks used; grimy and unkept. It is one of the few times when watching a science-fiction film I don’t feel I’m watching a cartoon or grand adventure, but a gloomy, dark future on the brink of destruction.

If cyber punk ever leapt out of the imagination of William Gibson’s mind, down to the textures, lights, characters, and griminess, this film would be its realization.

Pay attention to this: Soundtrack

How did they do this shot almost thirty years ago?

The movie’s soundtrack might be its strongest element. Not because it is the best music you’ve ever heard or that it was groundbreaking (which it was), but because it was just so…appropriate. For a movie that attempted to look so organic, its music is the exact opposite. It doesn’t seem from this world or to come from recognizable instruments. It just feels futuristic.

It has a grand scale to it, but stays grounded in the noir style that was so important to the overall feel of the movie. The soundtrack, by Vangelis, has all these things, but remains an experimental work that even the most modern, progressive DJ would admire.

Final note: Blade Runner does have its flaws. The story, which is supposed to be about what makes us human, is never fleshed out. It got lost somewhere in the fray. Also, the plot doesn’t move forward  in a very logical way. Which is fine, but the “Tears in Rain” speech never feels right. I never got the need to have birds flying away and shit like that. Moreover, the cliff hanger with Deckard being a Replicant doesn’t really feel right either. It hints at very little.

That there has been so many Director’s Cuts and rereleases suggests Scott’s finest movie has never satisfied him. He knows the flaws and has tried to fix them. It is still one of the best science-fiction films ever made, second only to 2001 Space Odyssey, a movie which will sit pretty at #1 forever. But Blade Runner could have been one of the crowning achievement of all filmmaking. A movie that realized worlds and stories we only read about in books and see and experience in our imaginations. It came close though.

-Collin