Blade Runner
By David Morgan
In the 1970s and '80s a new
generation of science fiction
filmmakers, greatly inspired by
the films of the 1940s and '50s,
brought to their work staples
from film genres which had vir-
tually disappeared from movie
screens: westerns, adventure
serials, and film noirs. The suc-
cess of such movies as "Star
Wars," "Close Encounters of the
Third Kind" and "Alien" reinvigorat-
ed science fiction as a cinema staple, and gave it more
credibility than it ever had in the days of Saturday mat-
inees, when aliens came bearing zippers.
"Blade Runner" (1982) is itself an off-shoot of a genre
which had virtually disappeared from screens: the hard-
boiled detective story, such as the classics born from the
novels of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. The
dystopian air of "Blade Runner" should feel very familiar to
fans of such dark-hued crime stories as "The Big Sleep,"
"Double Indemnity," "The Postman Always Rings Twice"
and "Out of the Past" โ stories in which urban centers like
Los Angeles were hotbeds of vice and scandal, with a
seen-it-all narrator presiding above the fray.
Created by director Ridley Scott with production designer
Lawrence G. Paull, visual futurist Syd Mead, cinematogra-
pher Jordan Cronenweth, and visual effects supervisors
David Dryer, Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich,
"Blade Runner" is set in the Los Angeles of the year 2019,
a city inhabited by the lowest dregs of the human race.
(People with means and foresight โ who could pass the
physical at least โ had long since relocated to colonies "off
-world"). In this oppressive environment where night rules
and the rain never ceases, Harrison Ford's Deckard, a
retired policeman of the Blade Runner unit (a force re-
sponsible for recognizing and terminating human-like ro-
bots called replicants, which are illegal on Earth), comes
back into action. His mission is to find a band of four
Nexus-6 replicants, which has made its way to Earth and
to the Tyrell Corporation, the company responsible for
their creation.
The initial theatrical release of the film was even told in the
manner of '40s detective stories, with Deckard's wise-
cracking narration layered on top, at the studio's insistence
(supposedly to help the audience identify more with the
taciturn hero and better penetrate the film's coolly dark
atmosphere).
Deckard (VO): "Sushi. That's what my ex-wife used to call
me. 'Cold Fish.'"
Also nodding to the conventions of film noir were the styl-
ized fashions of the beautiful robot Rachael (Sean Young),
whose manicured hair and broad-shouldered attire re-
called '40s screen icons like Barbara Stanwyck and Joan
Crawford. Also resonant was the bluesy saxophone that
glided over the electronic music score by Vangelis.
But just as some elements of "Blade Runner" pointed to
'40s films, there were other elements that decidedly did not
โ explicit, bloody violence (including one man having his
eyes gouged out by a replicant's thumbs); a more contem-
porary anti-corporate cynicism (L.A.'s hellish landscape,
when not spewing fire, blasts giant neon ads for Coca-
Cola, Pan Am, Atari, and Oriental conglomerates); and
philosophical questions concerning a robot's life and
death.
As personified by Roy (Rutger Hauer), a Nexus 6 born
with the implanted memories of a childhood which never
existed and who anticipates his date of termination follow-
ing a maximum four-year life span, the replicants are seek-
ing both the purpose of their existence and the seemingly
impossible notion of immortality.
Roy: "It's not an easy thing to meet your maker."
Roy's meeting with Tyrell (Joe Turkel), head of the Tyrell
Corporation and the person responsible for the design of
the Nexus 6 replicants, is like that of a prodigal son return-
ing to his father's home. But Roy does not come seeking
forgiveness or redemption. He wants what he sees as his
due: life. He has been cheated out of existence beyond
four years due to his makers' fear of their creation.
Tyrell: "You were made as well as we could make you."
Batty: "But not to last."
Tyrell: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as
long, and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy."
Deckard, like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, does not con-
cern himself with such metaphysical questions while he is
doing his job. The cynicism with which he at first separates
himself from society, and from the personalities of the rep-
licants he hunts down and "retires," is liberated only after
having faced death too many times, with little of the buoy-
The spacescape of 2019 Los Angeles as depicted in โBlade Runner.โ Courtesy Warner Bros.
