Blade Runner. (Wikipedia) It’s been hailed as the greatest science fiction movie of the last 30 years, possibly the best ever. Admittedly it’s a great piece of filmmaking on a number of levels. Ridley Scott has called it his most complete movie. Instead of debating the greatness or expounding upon the influence it’s had within the genre, I thought I’d point out some of what I found most interesting about the movie.
If you haven’t seen it, I’ll give you a quick synopsis without spilling the beans: in the (not so distant) future, mankind has begun settling other planets to escape the crushing existence on earth; during this period of colonization genetic engineers have created artificial humans, known as replicants, that aren’t allowed on earth; the story is based around the hunt for four fugitive replicants. There’s a TON more to the story but that’s the quick version.
One of the first things to I noticed about the movie is how dark and gritty the future is portrayed. The movie was made in 1982 and set in 2019, what did they think was going to happen in that relatively short time span that would fundamentally shift our reality? I know it’s not a meant to be a realistic picture of the future but it’s not even close. Although flying cars would be pretty damn cool!
The use of video payphones also stuck out to me. I’m sure at one point in the future I’ll have to explain to my children that there was a period where we didn’t have cell phones, but had to carry around change to make a phone call. Remember collect calls?
Everything considered though, Blade Runner is a great movie. I enjoyed watching it with my wife who had never seen the entire movie. It definitely deserves a spot on the Top 100 movies of all time, I dare say it could even stand to be placed higher on the list. If you’ve never seen it, add it to your Netflix queue today! Here’s the original trailer courtesy of YouTube:
