Blade Runner

Ridley Scott, 1982

I guess no great film list would be complete, from me at least, without including what I consider to be one of the greatest movies ever made ~ Blade Runner. I’m not talking about the grimly reductive reboot Blade Runner 2046, but the 80’s original.

Credit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/?ref_=mv_close

Made well over 40 years ago now, we’ve actually surpassed the year the futuristic Sci-Fi was set (2019). Some might argue that although the projected dystopia was considerably different, it might also arguably still be better than the one we’re in right now..

Blade Runner is memorable for a lot of reasons, the chief one being that it was the last Effects-heavy Studio movie to be shot using old-style methods, like comprehensive miniature set-builds and running the same piece of film neg through the camera multiple times to build up the final image, element by element.

The skyscape was cut-out of brass sheet to silhouette crisply. Scott also worked really cleverly to transform the soundscape, adding extraordinary atmospheres to interior scenes. Also pressing the Production Designer to deep-dive into extraordinary detail in the ideation and creation of even the street furniture - parking meters, crosswalks, lighting, etc.. everything needing to be recognisable, only different. Not only that, but everything also needed to feel lived-in. Grubby. Functional, but tired.

So rather than the pristine nature of sets and cossies found in say, Star Trek, this now twilit, abandoned LA, bedraggled by monsoon weather needed to reflect the sense of a once-loved but now derelict world, hollowed by the ghost of progress (in the off-world colonies). With the remnant population all as grubby as the neon urbanscape they inhabit.

Drinking himself to slow oblivion in this re-imagined American Hong Kong is Blade Runner Deckard, the man sent to terminate any skin-jobs or Replicants who dare to trespass back on Mother Earth, for whatever reason. But of course killing comes at a cost - even when they aren’t human. Especially when they look ‘more human than human’, as the proud creator and Head of the Tyrell Corporation would have you believe.

Rutger Hauer plays antagonist - and probably the best antagonist you’re ever likely to come across. On the night before he was due to film his last scene, word has it he was distinctly underwhelmed with Batty’s final speech, that he rewrote it, re-spoke it, so reinterpreting it, re-imagining into something far greater… elevating the whole film into something beyond the sum of its parts -

- and into the stuff of legend.

Credit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/?ref_=mv_close

And then there’s the brilliant supporting cast, M Emmet Walsh (never better), Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Joe Turkel, William Sanderson, Daryl Hannah, James Hong, Brion James.. fine actors all, just the icing on the cake.

Hauer, by reinventing his end-scene to better complement his character merely adding the cherry atop the icing on the cake. To be fair, Scott was already taking huge liberties with the screenplay, reinterpreting scenes as he saw fit. Many directors will.. a screenplay after all, is just that: Written word on a page. A movie is a story told through moving image.. and those are two very different things, absorbed in two very different ways, by different parts of the brain.

Apropos of nothing, I’d also add that Sci-Fi is a special genre, because effectively it’s no genre at all, requiring the writer to involve a different genre in order to complete the package. So Alien for instance (another Ridley Scott masterpiece) although a Sci-Fi, is of course primarily a Horror film wrapped in a Sci-Fi package. Star Wars is an epic Actioner. Space Balls a Comedy. You get the picture. But what this also means is it can be harder to pull off.

I’m not going to go off on a whole other rant about the Studio not understanding and doing its best to ruin Scott’s vision and how there are now multiple versions out there (try for the Directors Cut).. but there’s an interesting aside that Scott actually took original footage from Kubrick’s opening helicopter footage to The Shining to finish Blade Runner to the satisfaction of the Studio..

It competed for only two Oscars; Visual Effects and Art Direction, failing to land either, but to be fair, 1983 was really not the year to be competing: Gandhi won for Art Direction and ET for Visual Effects.. moreover, it was also the year of Sophie’s Choice, An Officer and a Gentleman AND Tootsie.

But quality never dies.. and the number of movies - never mind TV programmes and commercials - influenced by Blade Runner are legion; the film has only grown in stature in the intervening time.

It’s one of those rarities that excels on two levels ~ as a piece of standout entertainment, but also as a filmmakers film. I like so many aspects of this film.

I only wish I could watch it again for the first time.

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