Blade Runner! Any Good?
- Thread starter Snick27
- Start date
WOW! You're absolutely right! Can't believe I've never picked up on that, with all the times I've watched the film.
Have to hunker down again, with this new outlook on it.
Thanks, Chris!
I've seen this movie twice and it hasn't really stuck with me either time. I remember the basic gist of it- Harrison Ford is a detective, and someone turns out to be a robot- but that's about it. 
Oh and the set work was "neat". I think I may have been drunk the last time I saw it. 
I will probably give it another chance eventually. I tend to like Ridley Scott's movies.
Oh and the set work was "neat". I think I may have been drunk the last time I saw it. I will probably give it another chance eventually. I tend to like Ridley Scott's movies.
No, an allusion to previous posts in the thread.
The assistant creators being frigid and prematurely old, plus Sebastian's creepy "toys" also fit in with the inversion of humanity. The alleged inhumans, the replicants, are all far more "human" than any of the real humans. If Deckard is just another replicant, not only is the drama of the contrast between Deckard and the replicants muted, the contrast between the humans and the replicants is lost as well. The murders of the genetic engineers is just horror show.
Deckard's just one person. Moving him from the "human" column into the "replicant" column shouldn't detract from your preferred thesis too much, if it's supported by the other human characters. In the director's cut ( as opposed to the version lacking the unicorn scene ), it is likely that Deckard is a replicant, due to the fact that Gaff knows what's going on in Deckard's head ( just as Deckard knew all about Rachel's "memories" ).
I remember the basic gist of it- Harrison Ford is a detective, and someone turns out to be a robot- but that's about it.
Technically, the replicants aren't robots, but synthetic organisms, engineered biological constructs.
I don't think so. I think it reinforces the premise that you can't make the obvious assumptions about what constitutes a human and what constitutes a replicant. If the identities are inverted from what we'd expect, then the implication at the end that the character we'd believed to be human might actually be a replicant serves to underline that ambiguity. Ultimately, the point is that it doesn't matter whether Deckard is a human or a replicant. Either way, he's a person.
See, I don't see the unicorn dream as proof that Deckard's a replicant. Gaff making an origami unicorn suggests that Gaff knows Deckard's dreams and that Deckard might therefore be a replicant, but there's no firm proof that that's the case. It could be coincidence, or it could have some other explanation. It could be just part of the generally flexible reality and shades of mysticism that pervade Philip K. Dick's canon. All it does is raise the question, inject an element of doubt in the audience about Deckard's origins. It doesn't say he is a replicant, it just raises the possibility that he might be. It ends the film with a final blow against the barrier between human and replicant identities, and leaving that question open about the film's protagonist resonates nicely with the overall theme.
Deckard is a killer. People expect robot/android/replicants to be killers because they're not "human." Deckard being a replicant makes him being a killer natural, expected, undramatic. There is no dramatic contrast between his real inhumanity and his titular humanity if it turns out he was a replicant.
The point about the unicorn not being conclusive is weak. It's a forced reading that saves the director's version from serious thematic confusion by substituting pointless ambiguity for a plot point that renders the actual story insane. If Deckard is a replicant, why does he keep getting his ass kicked by other replicants? If Deckard is a replicant, why do they let him retire (allegedly for real,) or think he can at the beginning of the movie? Gaff relenting to let a human escape is hard enough to accept, but if Gaff knows Deckard to be a replicant, why doesn't he say so? Shouldn't Deckard be a lot more shook up that a unicorn origami shows up when he has a unicorn dream?
But most of all, Deckard the replicant sparing the replicant he has the hots for is one thing. After all, if he's a replicant, is he really even capable of love? Maybe he's just confused? But if the human Gaff realizes that the replicants Deckard and Rachel are people who deserve to grasp what happiness they can in a world where life itself is short and uncertain, then that is the thematic climax of the movie. Foisting the resolution onto a minor character, off screen no less is is antidramatic.
The point about the unicorn not being conclusive is weak. It's a forced reading that saves the director's version from serious thematic confusion by substituting pointless ambiguity for a plot point that renders the actual story insane. If Deckard is a replicant, why does he keep getting his ass kicked by other replicants? If Deckard is a replicant, why do they let him retire (allegedly for real,) or think he can at the beginning of the movie? Gaff relenting to let a human escape is hard enough to accept, but if Gaff knows Deckard to be a replicant, why doesn't he say so? Shouldn't Deckard be a lot more shook up that a unicorn origami shows up when he has a unicorn dream?
But most of all, Deckard the replicant sparing the replicant he has the hots for is one thing. After all, if he's a replicant, is he really even capable of love? Maybe he's just confused? But if the human Gaff realizes that the replicants Deckard and Rachel are people who deserve to grasp what happiness they can in a world where life itself is short and uncertain, then that is the thematic climax of the movie. Foisting the resolution onto a minor character, off screen no less is is antidramatic.
I didn't really catch what was happening. I was about to turn it off, but then Rachael capped that one guy and that held my interest for a while. It's a lot better if you read the Wikipedia synopsis after watching it, or maybe getting one of the versions where Harrison Ford narrates, else you're going to be in the dark the whole time (unless you're a ridiculously keen observer of minutiae).
The party line is that's not true. I believe Ford said that he did the best he could, but that he wasn't able to overcome what he considered bad writing that didn't fit the film. I'm probably paraphrasing wildly there.
There are some outtakes from the narration recording sessions on the Dangerous Days documentary and he seems incredibly frustrated with the material, rather than giving an intentional bad performance.
I can't believe Ford would be so unprofessional as to do a deliberately bad job. Being unable to figure out how to make it work seems more plausible.
Oh, boy, another Blade Runner discussion.
I'll make my usual observation: I can't imagine what it would be like to see Blade Runner for the first time in 2010. So much in the last 28 years -- movies, TV, books, video games, music, comics, advertising, you name it -- has swiped from Blade Runner that nobody can experience it now the way those of us who saw it in 1982 experienced it. Back then, there was nothing else like it, nothing else that looked or sounded like it. By now, just by absorbing basic pop culture for the last couple of decades, people have already been exposed to almost everything in it. The shock of the new that BR had in 1982 just isn't going to be there for a first time viewer now. It's going to be hard for a new viewer to get what the big deal is because they've been soaking in BR without knowing it. And, as some have mentioned, it's not an action movie. It's not a 21st century popcorn movie. Those are good things.
All of this, of course, means that anyone who considers himself or herself a science fiction movie fan needs to see Blade Runner. You may not like it, but you need to experience it.
I'll make my usual observation: I can't imagine what it would be like to see Blade Runner for the first time in 2010. So much in the last 28 years -- movies, TV, books, video games, music, comics, advertising, you name it -- has swiped from Blade Runner that nobody can experience it now the way those of us who saw it in 1982 experienced it. Back then, there was nothing else like it, nothing else that looked or sounded like it. By now, just by absorbing basic pop culture for the last couple of decades, people have already been exposed to almost everything in it. The shock of the new that BR had in 1982 just isn't going to be there for a first time viewer now. It's going to be hard for a new viewer to get what the big deal is because they've been soaking in BR without knowing it. And, as some have mentioned, it's not an action movie. It's not a 21st century popcorn movie. Those are good things.
All of this, of course, means that anyone who considers himself or herself a science fiction movie fan needs to see Blade Runner. You may not like it, but you need to experience it.
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