Notable cast/crew: Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard. Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. Sean Young as Rachael. Edward James Olmos as Gaff. M Emmet Walsh as Bryant. Daryl Hannah as Pris. William Sanderson as J F Sebastian. Brion James as Leon Kowalski. Joanna Cassidy as Zhora. Soundtrack by Vangelis.
Running time: 117 minutesDirector: Ridley Scott
Verdict: While not a commercial success on release, Blade Runner has become one of the more influential movies of the last 30 years. The film is fairly straightforward in its plot, but it's the imagery and the philosophical questions it poses that have led to its longevity in the public mind. Ridley Scott was coming off Alien, and Harrison Ford was in the midst of his highest notoriety having been Han Solo and Indiana Jones shortly before this. Sean Young hadn't gone crazy yet, and Vangelis had just won an Oscar for his work in Chariots of Fire.
The movie is an adaptation of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? There are a number of differences between the book and the movie, but the movie did a good job of capturing the essence of what the book was about which led Dick to comment that he felt the movie surpassed the book in taking things further than he had in the questions it posed. This movie led to a number of other of his books being adapted to film (Total Recall, Minority Report, etc).
The visual depiction of the gritty dystopia of the film is one of its lasting influences seen in other films (Dark City and The Fifth Element, for example) and still influences sci fi depictions today. SyFy's The Expanse borrows heavily from the look of Blade Runner and even some of it's themes.
As it's a by the numbers noir set-up, there isn't much to the characters aside from Hauer's Roy Batty who questions why he cannot become human when his designer intended him to be "more human than human" (which became the title of a well known White Zombie song). Accordingly, there isn't a lot to the performances. No one is bad, but very little rises above average. It doesn't help that Batty goes batty at the end removing any sympathy one might have had for what was a robot slave revolting against its masters.
The book does a better job of explaining the characters' motivations as well as the world the story takes place in. There are repeated references to the animals shown being synthetic machines, but only in the book is it explained that wildlife was virtually wiped out by a nuclear holocaust. The significance of having a real pet, life versus facsimile, and even Rachael's relation to Deckard are better explained in the book.
The movie suffers a bit from the chaos behind the scenes. There were constant rewrites while shooting, and the studio interfered to make changes after Scott had finished filming. The end result is that there are seven different versions of the film. Ironically, as the characters in the film question what is the essence of humanity, one can question what is the essence of Blade Runner? Which is the real film and which the replicant?
Out of five bananas, I give it:
The movie is an adaptation of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? There are a number of differences between the book and the movie, but the movie did a good job of capturing the essence of what the book was about which led Dick to comment that he felt the movie surpassed the book in taking things further than he had in the questions it posed. This movie led to a number of other of his books being adapted to film (Total Recall, Minority Report, etc).
The visual depiction of the gritty dystopia of the film is one of its lasting influences seen in other films (Dark City and The Fifth Element, for example) and still influences sci fi depictions today. SyFy's The Expanse borrows heavily from the look of Blade Runner and even some of it's themes.
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| Grandma, what big eyes you have! |
The book does a better job of explaining the characters' motivations as well as the world the story takes place in. There are repeated references to the animals shown being synthetic machines, but only in the book is it explained that wildlife was virtually wiped out by a nuclear holocaust. The significance of having a real pet, life versus facsimile, and even Rachael's relation to Deckard are better explained in the book.
The movie suffers a bit from the chaos behind the scenes. There were constant rewrites while shooting, and the studio interfered to make changes after Scott had finished filming. The end result is that there are seven different versions of the film. Ironically, as the characters in the film question what is the essence of humanity, one can question what is the essence of Blade Runner? Which is the real film and which the replicant?
Out of five bananas, I give it:
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