Blade Runner at 25, Why the F/X Still Matter

mattnyc99 writes "Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's dark vision of the future that changed the future of filmmaking and still stands up today, argues Adam Savage of The MythBusters (and the F/X crews of The Matrix and Star Wars). Between the "lived-in science fiction," pre-CGI master models, futuristic cityscapes and tricked-out cars, don't you agree? And after we got the first official glimpse of him from Indiana Jones 4 this weekend, isn't Harrison Ford still the man?"

didn't know what a steier .222 looked like, found

http://props.steinschneider.com/blade_runner/bldru nbl.htm [steinschneider.com]

Special edition DVD?

What happened to it? I've been waiting for years now. The latest update here [brmovie.com] seems hopeful, but nothing since.. and it was suggesting a release in time for the 25th anniversary..

Re:Special edition DVD?

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=36328 [scifi.com]

"Blade Runner: Final Cut will arrive in 2007 for a limited 25th-anniversary theatrical run, followed by a special-edition DVD with the three previous versions offered as alternate viewing."

Re:I want the voice over

It appears to be included but to me the voice over was key to the movie, it let us in his head.

I couldn't agree more.

I couldn't DIS-agree more. While I certainly like the idea of having the voiceovers, the actual execution I personally find to be the most grating piece of voiceover work in the history of cinema. It just grates on me to no end whenever I hear Ford droning on in that bored humdrum monotone. Neither Ford or Ridley Scott wanted the voiceover to begin with, the studio forced their hands to put it in (some say Ford tried his absolute worst when recording it to try to force them to leave it out), and it IS NOT in the "Final Cut" version. Both the US and International theatrical cuts will be in the special edition box set, so yes you will get your voiceover in the special edition box set, just don't get you're hopes up for it being in the new "Final Cut" version that'll be in theaters this year.

Re:Special edition DVD?

I thought that both HDDVD and Blu-Ray were pretty much stillborn and that everybody--even people with HDTV--is still using DVD.

I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with reasons why I need to upgrade to an HD disc format. We love movies and have the A/V firepower to work with an HD disc player, but we use our DVD player for so much more than just movies, such as Firefly discs and videos for my kids. At best, then, any HD disc would be used for 1/3 of the things we use our current DVD player.

Not worth the money and time.

Re:Special edition DVD?

Some people said that SACD or DVD-Audio would be the next CD...

Oops. :-)

Dystopian future

Still living with my parents 25 years on

Just remove the wires, OK?

The one thing that did distract from the movie was the extremely obvious wires holding up the spinner in several scenes. That's one "enhancement" I could stand the Special Edition DVD having.

"All this will be lost, like tears in the rain"

"Time to die"

Re:Just remove the wires, OK?

I can live with those sorts of "enhancements", just so long as they don't put a CGI jamaican frog-man into any of the scenes.

Re:Just remove the wires, OK?

Meesa thinks yoosa prejudiced.

Re:Just remove the wires, OK?

Or changing who shot first.

Re:Just remove the wires, OK?

the extremely obvious wires holding up the spinner in several scenes

*snort* C'mon, those were obviously a phased-array antenna system for their UltraSuperMegaStreetFighterTurboDefinition 1:4:9 phase-conjugate audio/video/tactio deck. Everybody's got those in the future. Everybody who's anybody, anyway.

Re:Just remove the wires, OK?

The real controversy will be when Deckard shoots first. ;)

Poor, Harrison.

Re:Just remove the wires, OK?

Gee thanks, I never noticed them...until now!

Maybe?

And after we got the first official glimpse of him from Indiana Jones 4 this weekend, isn't Harrison Ford still the man?

Maybe he's still the man ... I thought that he was "the android" in Blade Runner.

Oh, shit! Put a spoiler alert above that!

Re:Maybe?

The replicants in Blade Runner are 100% organic.

Re:Maybe?

The director's cut of the DVD makes it pretty clear; Decker's eye flashes just like the replicants, and there's these weird little origami unicorns everywhere. I kind of preferred the ambivalence of the original... but not the voiceover. ecch.

Re:Maybe?

Isn't there a statute of limitations on spoilers of 25 year old movies based on 39 year old novels? Plus, it's not even in the movie, it's speculation based on the movie.

I'd say it depends on which Blade Runner movie you're talking about. If you mean the original theatrical release, where the studio execs said "cut out that confusing unicorn, give it a lame happy ending, and add fucking idiotic narration because we are stupid men who got where we are via nepotism rather than talent and couldn't follow what was going on so we assume no one else would be able to either", then yeah, it's not really in the movie. If you mean the '92 Director's Cut version, or this Final Cut version, then it's undeniably more than just "speculation" that Deckard is a replicant, it's strongly suggested, to the point of obviousness even. Crimony, what the heck do you think all those unicorn dream sequences were about? Why did Gaff leave that origami unicorn for Deckard at the end, if not to telegraph the obvious, that Deckard is a replicant? Why would we hear Deckard "remember", when he finds the origami unicorn, the line from Gaff "It's too bad she won't live; But then again, who does?" Sure it's just implied, but it's implied with a sledgehammer.

Re:Maybe?

I completely disagree. To me the whole point of the movie is examining what it means to be human. For all intents and purposes, the replicant *are* human - it's just the programmed in termination date that makes them differ from anyone else. And at the end of the film, when we are wondering how long Decker and Rachel will have together, one should realise that that;s the situation that we're all in, "real" or not. None of us know what the future holds.

CGI is nice, but let's not forget ...

Let's not forget Blade Runner's completely smokin' Sean Young ...

Re:CGI is nice, but let's not forget ...

...who will be digitally replaced with Hayden Christensen in the special edition.

Re:CGI is nice, but let's not forget ...

...who will be digitally replaced with Hayden Christensen in the special edition.

This would be a somewhat appropriate excuse to have that shot of Darth Vader yelling "Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!"

And its strange English-to-Chinese-to-English subtitle:
"Do Not Want".

it would have been way better

it would have been way better if they would have stuck more to the book

the idea he was cheating on his wife with a replicant made the story a tad more intersting

esp when she throws his goat off the top of the building and then his wife find s out

that said the effects do stand up

i heard philip k dick patterned his city off of vancouver,

the dark depressing rains of the north west really set the tone well

Re:it would have been way better

it would have been way better if they would have stuck more to the book

It would have been a different movie if they had stuck more to the book. Whether or not it would have been a good movie is up in the air. In any case, BR is a good movie, so let's just count ourselves lucky and enjoy what we have.

Re:it would have been way better

Absolutely the right attitude, IMHO! A lot of the stuff in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep would be impossible to film in anything like a mainstream movie, I suspect. Mercerism? Buster Friendly? C'mon, it would either have to be camp or experimental. The book and the novel are totally different beasts. In this case, we have a brilliant novel and a brilliant movie. 'Nuff said.

Re:it would have been way better

I enjoyed "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - but the movie is a different story, only based off of Dick's novel.

The emphasis, as I read it, of Dick's novel was that no matter how real something seems, it is never as good as the real thing. No matter how realistically a replicant could look or act, it would never - ever - really be human.

The movie took the opposite stance. We created the replicants as slaves, but we made them too human - quite possibly "More human than human". Replicants were harsh, violent, and angry - which makes sense considering that they had the emotional experience of a 4 year old. They knew fear - not the reflexive mechanical fear of the book's replicants, but wild animal fear of a human who doesn't want to die. In the book, a replicant that knew it was screwed just gave in - in the movie, they did anything... anything they could... to escape and survive another day. I also don't recall replicants really caring for eachother in the book - whereas in the movie is was a primary driving force. The pictures they kept in the book were mostly to keep up appearances, while in the movie it was a sad attempt at building a past.

Also you have to admit - Batty as he was in the book wouldn't have been that memorable a villain. In the movie, he was one of the most memorable fictional villains ever. A ruthless poetic madman who was getting a crash course in emotions and ethics, and who didn't really understand life until the very end.

The book was good, but I'll take the movie any day - not just for cool factor, but because I feel the movie had far greater literary value (watered down as it was to suit the needs of a 90-minute action movie).

Re:it would have been way better

Batty as he was in the book wouldn't have been that memorable a villain. In the movie, he was one of the most memorable fictional villains ever. A ruthless poetic madman who was getting a crash course in emotions and ethics, and who didn't really understand life until the very end.

That's interesting because Batty isn't a bad guy at all - what changes is our perceptions about who is good and who is bad. We are prejudiced against Batty because of what he was created to do, and all of the other replicants. We think that Deckard is the good guy - except that it was Batty, not Deckard, that showed mercy, love and compassion.

"Aren't you supposed to be the good guy, Deckard?"

In the end, the real monstrosity is mankind, willing to create a slave race of people who think, feel and remember just like we can - and then give them only four years to live and a single dreadful task to perform for that time - and be grateful to their Creator for this?

"I've done...questionable things" says Batty. This isn't a robot, its a thinking sentient being asking "Why am I here? Is this all there is?" But Tyrell couldn't see it. And we can't see it - until its too late.

Blade Runner is one of the greatest movies of all time - a genuine classic whose philosophical themes will be discussed for decades to come - long after trash like Indiana Jones is forgotten.

i love blade runner

there is no more perfect science fiction movie to me

the problem with most science fiction movies is that the sampling of the philosophical implications of their subject matter is too shallow (or they are outright fantasy riffs without any attempt at philosophisizing). you don't get that with a good sci fi book. a good sci fi book gets you to really think and wonder. a good science fiction movie just usually entertains you... sometimes entertains you REALLY well, but the thinking part isn't usually there

but blade runner really got to me. especially the scenes at the end, with deckard and batty, the movie collapsed all of the science fiction trappings into meaning: the essential human struggles with life and death and what is the whole damn point anyway? blade runner really sticks with you. every time i watch it i think of something new

i really don't know of a better example of how deeply a 2 hour scifi movie can really get to you in a deep way

well maybe contact [imdb.com], but contact comes second in my mind to blade runner

Re:i love blade runner

I like Gataca a lot as well. I think it goes beyond shallow subject matter--it forces you to think about the ethical implications of the movements in science. It might seem shallow at first, but think about when it came out. Dolly had just been cloned. Biotech was on the minds of people and when they saw the movie when it first came out, they had to think about whether or not we should always let science advance for the sake of science. It made us think about the 'essential human struggle with life and death.' It told us the whole point -- the human spirit is triumphant but we have to be careful that our zeal for advancement doesn't ever quash our humanity. I'm not trying to say Gataca > Blade Runner. I like both a lot and they take us into slightly different areas, but both force us to think about what it means to be human. For me though, Gataca gets me more deeply than Blade Runner does. Maybe just because I'm a limited nerd that wants to triumph rather than a uber-cool cop (alright, I could identify better with Deckard in DADoES, but we're talking about the movie here...)

Re:i love blade runner

The thing is, both Blade Runner and Contact are a pale shadow of their books. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", on which Bladerunner is theoretically based, contains many times the depth and probably only takes you the same couple hours to read. In Contact, the entire point of the book was more or less missed by the movie-- in the book, the dichotomy between faith and science is addressed by the ending. The movie makes it into a gimmicky twist.

I agree that Blade Runner is one of the best science fiction movies of all time. And it stands up amazingly well to modern special effects and scenery. But the movie is still a movie-- entertainment with tunnel-vision, spoon-fed philosophy.

Re:i love blade runner

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", on which Bladerunner is theoretically based, contains many times the depth and probably only takes you the same couple hours to read.

I disagree, sorta. They're such different stories, with such different protagonists, themes, and antagonists, I don't think the comparison is apt. An earlier post said it pretty well: there's no way of saying whether a movie that closely followed the book would be great. The movie "Blade Runner" is great, so let's enjoy it for what it is.

As for one being deeper than the other... personally, I find the movie's resolution of the synthetic/authentic dichotomy more satisfying. The book says that the synthetic is never as "good" as the authentic. The movie says it can be.

This analysis is consonant with my impression of Penrose re: AI's potential. Penrose says we can't simulate intelligence using Von Neumann computers because intelligence relies on quantum-mechanical nondeterministic computation to evade Godel's incompleteness theorem. I say that Penrose has made at least three significant errors: 1) his argument that human intelligence does successfully evade Godel's incompleteness theorem is pure speculation; 2) simple electrochemical models of brain operation include nondeterministic elements (neurotransmitter diffusion, etc.), without any need for quantum-level effects; and 3) that it would be difficult to add probabilistic operations to Von Neumann systems if nondeterministic elements were found to be necessary to simulate intelligence.

Don't get me wrong. I love reading PKD's stuff and am a huge fan. I just happen to disagree with his thesis in that story ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"), and that disagreement leads me to be more satisfied with Ridley Scott's variation on the story.

Regards,
Ross

Re:i love blade runner

Well, since it's impossible to predict future fashion trends, you're stuck with only two options--either go for broke and create "futuristic" fashions (and forever date the movie) or play it down and have everyone basically dress in conservative contemporary style (and risk confusing your audience). Personally, I would generally go for the latter, since it holds up so much better over time (t-shirts, jeans, dress shirts, basic business suits, etc. rarely change much).

In Blade Runner, Scott mixes the two pretty effectively. Decker, Rachael, the police chief, etc. dress pretty conservatively, and they hold up pretty well. The extras and many of the replicants, on the other hand, look like leftovers from a Sex Pistols concert.

Re:i love blade runner

well maybe contact [imdb.com], but contact comes second in my mind to blade runner

Contact is definitely first in my list, because of the "my daddy is an alien" and "your mind can't bear how we actually look" cop-out ending.

You gotta be very brave to masterfully build suspence for hours in this otherwise great movie, and end with daddy talking condescendingly to the main protagonist "honey, you're too stupid to even have a look at me".

I mean, what the hell could they be? Really ugly fat green gelatinous blob monster? Seen that [darkhorse.com]. Gaseous purple clouds? Seen that, too (although the comic version [wikimedia.org] looks kinda different).

I mean WHAT, what the hell did it look like? Maybe they all looked like middle-aged average dads and this is why all the lies. Outer space jerks.

Re:i love blade runner

Batty's assertion of his own humanity at the end is still one of my favorite science fiction scenes of all time. It's so subtle and simple, yet so powerful. Rarely do you see so much meaning condensed into just a few lines (and kudos to the great Rutger Hauer for his performance).

There is a lot of good "grown-up" science fiction in movies out there for those willing to look for it. I would add movies like "12 Monkeys" and "Primer" (rare serious looks at the ramifications of time travel) as personal favorites, as well as (of course) "2001: A Space Odyssey," one of the few science fiction films to treat alien/human (or is it God/human?) contact in any serious way. "Gattaca" was also good, but a bit heavy-handed for my tastes. A lot of people hated "The Fountain," but I thought it was an interesting meditation on human mortality.

Re:i love blade runner

Personally, while Blade Runner is a good movie, it seems to me it's just yet another "we built it, and now it goes bad and kills people" movie that we've seen a million times before. Whether it's a replicant in Blade Runner, Skynet in Terminator, or robots in I, Robot, it's all basically the same plot over and over.

I don't think that's a particularly accurate characterization of Blade Runner. While it's true that the big flashy action scenes were replicants killing people, the whole point was that they weren't just mindless or evil killing machines embodying a metaphor for technology gone too far. The point was nearly the opposite of that; they were, fundamentally, human. Humans whose situation and capabilities exceeded their emotional maturity, and who were failing to deal with that in the way that humans are wont to do.

They were in fact the most terrifying of all things: extremely powerful children. Blade Runner has less in common with Terminator than with Lord of the Flies.

Re:A.I.

Actually, A.I. *could* have been at least an okay movie, had it not been for the absolutely dreadful "and he lived happily ever after" ending . If they'd just ended the movie with him dying in the ocean, I would've been much more impressed... but no, gotta cap it off with a happy ending!

Re:A.I.

This is where that love-it/hate-it thing comes in, I guess...

(First off, I know you didn't say this, but it'll inevitably come up--those aren't aliens, damnit! They're advanced mecha. One of them is even the narrator; the movie starts with him/it saying "Those were the days when..." It's unfortunate that so many people never realized this, but on the other hand it clicks if you watch it a second time and then you get a lot more out of it.)

Many people have called the movie a fairy tale, and they'd be right to do so. But you can take that even further; it's a fairy tale that advanced mecha tell each other, long after humans have gone extinct. What parts of the last half-hour were real, if any? When he went back to his house that seemed both real and eerily artificial, the visuals suggested to me that it was all a vision in his head. They read his mind anyways; they might as well have been feeding him these images, even as he was really still half-frozen at the bottom of the ice excavation. The time-space continuum excuse especially sounded like a fabricated lie... Was it inevitable that David would be woken up by *something* someday, simply because he was not mortal? Perhaps there are thousands of discarded robots like him, buried inside the frozen Earth. The advanced mechas eventually dig out and feed a similar story to each that finally satisfies and terminate its program. Is this compassion between robots? Why do they do it? Are they trying to make robots dream, or are they saying that death is just another dream?

The movie asked a lot of questions about what it means to be human--similar to BR, but focused on love. I remember a particular review of A.I. (it had quite good reviews) that summed it up quite well and it seems to me the message of the movie: "To be real is to be mortal; to be human is to love, to dream and to perish." Perhaps that's why the advanced mechas gave him the choice. Hmm...

Anyways, personally I found that the ending was incredibly sad and not a happy one at all. I disagree that it would have been at all satisfying for the movie to just end on the ocean's floor, and for David to truly never "die." But you could take it either way, and stuff like this is why I found it so fascinating. And then of course there was the (first "mature") Alternate Reality Game/viral marketing that was really neat in itself. Ultimately, of course, it's up to your own experience.

For a 50 year old guy...

...Harrison Ford's holding up pretty damn well.

Oh...what? Damn!

On today's Mythbusters...

On today's episode of Mythbusters, Jamie and Adam examine the myth that a four-paragraph article should be spread across four pages.

Re:On today's Mythbusters...

Dude, you know how they love to blow shit up. So they exploded a story across four pages? Par for the course, don't you think?

But Is Deckard A Replicant? Or Not?

One of the great questions of "Blade Runner" is whether Deckard (Harrison Ford) is, or is not, a replicant himself.

"Knowing" Phillip K. Dick (through reading most of his works) I think personally the answer is a yes, but the debate has raged on for a long time, at least when the subject comes up. Others say no, and that's the greatness of the movie: you can't be completely sure.

Read #14 of the Blade Runner FAQ here [faqs.org] and ponder it for yourself.

For...

Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford have stated that Deckard was meant to be a
    replicant. In Details magazine (US) October 1992 Ford says:

                "Blade Runner was not one of my favorite films. I tangled
                with Ridley. The biggest problem was that at the end, he wanted the
                audience to find out that Deckard was a replicant. I fought that
                because I felt the audience needed somebody to cheer for."

Against...

- Could you trust a replicant to kill other replicants? Why did the police
    trust Deckard?

- Having Deckard as a replicant implies a conspiracy between the police and
    Tyrell.

And so forth and so on...

Re:But Is Deckard A Replicant? Or Not?

Many moons ago.... Scott gave us the answer and we posted it here:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/09/205821 7 [slashdot.org]

Re:But Is Deckard A Replicant? Or Not?

Personally, I hope that the new edition won't add anything to settle the argument... that would be a tragedy on the order of having Greedo fire first. At the end of the Director's Cut, we're left with hints that Deckard could be a replicant- that line where Rachel asks him if he's ever taken the test, the unicorn dream... but we don't know for sure. And I like that ambiguity, because it forces you to ask: well, what does it really matter if he is, or if he isn't? He has emotions, fears, dreams, memories; those exist whether or not the Tyrrell corporation manufactured him. Even if his memories are manufactured, they feel real and therefore define who he is. The only major difference is that he won't have long to live if he's a replicant, but again the movie asks, what's the difference? We all die, and we never know when it will come.

If Ridley Scott does alter that, I think we're going to hear a lot of cries to the effect of "you ruined my childhood memories!" or rather, the memories of my angst-filled adolescence when late at night, watching TV alone in the dark, I stumbled across Blade Runner on TV...

Re:But Is Deckard A Replicant? Or Not?

"You've done a man's job" -- Gaff to Deckard on the roof.

I think Deckard was the replicant that they caught trying to sneak into Tyrell Corporation. They erased his memories, implanted new ones, and set him off to kill his comrades. The other replicants react oddly towards him. I think they recognize him and realize something isn't quite right and play along until they figure it out.

Re:How does that get modded up?

The guy who made the movie could argue that Deckard was a repressed homosexual communist dyslexic Jew, but since none of that is ever conclusively answered in the film it's still argument fodder. There's a world of difference between "what I meant" and "what I actually showed," y'know.

That said, Deckard's a robot and you're a douche.

Gritty non-scifi scifi

What made Blade Runner great was what made Dark City, Liquid Sky and the Original Manchurian Candidate good sci-fi, realisim. Yes it had flying cars, but things were still pretty much the same, people still worked, took taxi's, wore semi-normal looking clothing and ate regular food. The haunting subtle differences are what made it future we could accept as real which in turn made the "dark" future all that more scary because we belived at least for a couple hours that it could happen. Having Ridley Scott at the helm didnt hurt much either.

Edge

In case you haven't seen it yet, the UK Channel 4 documentary On The Edge of Blade Runner [google.com].

REALLY looking forward to the super-duper-mega box set coming out, my HD to DVD conversion of the DC is nice but the 5.1 audio doesn't sound much better than the original 2.0 fed through Pro-Logic II, and getting a proper copy of theatrical version is going go to be great (no more putting up with the laserdisc transfer) - I just hope they don't copy Lucas and make it a 4:3 letterbox release like the OOT.

Some things stand up, some don't

The visual effects stand up (unlike those snowalkers on SW V that really look jerky). The noir mix of futuristic and deco design seems to model the new-old mixes we have today. The Asian cultural mixes (we see those in Firefly as well) seem to properly project the history moving east to west that we see today. All these things stand up.

The horizon-less smoke stacks of dystopian so-cal eco-collapse do not age well. Same as the over-populated streets of NY in Soylent, where the city of Philadelphia was going to grow to the borders of NYC. The population of our evil developed world has plateaued. Our water is getting clean enough for the return of fish migrations. And in the midst of our Phila-NYC sprawl, we are getting the return of top predators bears and even cats (largely to the detriment of themselves if they manage to be seen), but top predators indicate healthy enough pyramids underneath, right?

Re:Some things stand up, some don't

Ridley Scott's vision of Los Angeles always seemed amazingly futuristic and innovative to me until I went to live in Taiwan. Los Angeles 2019 = Taibei/Taipei 2002 with more white people. The mix of dirty and ultracool newness is very, very close to what things look like in Taiwan. And if you go across the straits to China, things look even more like Blade Runner.

Dr. Jones

German guy: So, Doctor Jones, boxers or briefs?

Indiana Jones: Depends....

Need I Say It?

BEST MOVIE EVAR!

If you were born before 1970, chances are you that you "get" why this is such a great film on so many levels:

1. Based on a story by the master of science fiction for the thinking person: Philip K. Dick (PKD)
2. Got the approval of PKD when he saw the portion that was in production before he died
3. It was the very beginning of the cyberpunk model for all scifi films in this genre to come.
4. Directed by Ridley Scott who has an incredible sense of visual artistry and does nearly everything very well
5. Soundtrack by Vangelis. Who better to do scifi soundtracks? Orchestral sound tracks are overrated, and the modern approach of using pop music is lame.
6. Excellent selection of actors and actresses well suited to the roles they played
7. Fun production glitches to look for (aka "easter eggs")
8. Any film about machines from an emotional perspective is exactly what *I* like. I LOVED A.I. But I saw it from a totally different perspective than most. I saw it from the perspective of a machine.

Visual density

One of the keys to Bladerunner's look was visual density. I recall a quote from one of the set decorators that they had emptied prop houses and junkyards for miles around to get the street scenes ready. When Ridley looked at it he said "That's a good start."

Movies that try to imitate the Bladerunner look fail because they lack the commitment and/or resources to achieve that same visual density. They end up looking like sets.

Alien was like a test run for Bladerunner's set design. The command area is very dense, control panels are studded with screens and controls, as well as personal items, signs that the area is in use and has been for some time.

After seeing Bladerunner in the theater when it first came out all other movies I see will be compared to it, and very few have come close to the strange combination of realism and science fiction, two words that should in a sense be mutually exclusive, but Ridley Scott brought them together better than anyone before or since.

Re:Visual density

realism and science fiction, two words that should in a sense be mutually exclusive

I disagree. I think when you can blend the two successfully, you achieve a much more believable effect. This is why we don't buy the Star Trek future quite as readily as the Bladrunner (or Alien or Outland) future. We inherently believe that in our real future, things will be more or less the same as they are now. It will be the little things that will be different. We'll use cellphones instead of payphones. We'll pay with "credits" instead of "dollars". We'll have voice-controlled appliances instead of switches. We'll have a few flying cars in the air, but mostly it'll still be ground traffic. These are the things that Bladerunner brought to the table and they are partly why it's believable sci fi, even today. Especially today, when some of the little things in the film have already come to pass.

Movies like this always remind me of those old Tom Selleck AT&T commercials: "Imagine taking a college course from the beach. You will!" Realism + Sci Fi.

Printable version

Link to printable [popularmechanics.com] version without 4 pages of ads.

Why Special Edition Recuts are Bad

...Decker shot first?

The reason

The reason that the effects were so good is that they were by and large accents, rather than fabricated whole cloth. Big flashy effects still look dated very quickly, because the technology is improving so rapidly. I'd go so far as to say that the original Star Wars series (4-6) will stand up better than the newer series because the limitations of the day forced them to use more "real" models, rather than quickly dated CG.

Blade Runner was subtle; it used environmental effects and models to create a sense of the future that the viewer could fill in with his own imagination.

Had to track it down from europe

You know, the widescreen *theatrical* version (some of us *like* the voiceovers) because Mr. Scott is pulling the same shit that Mr. Lucas does/did...only allowing us to see his "vision" of the film.

PITA that was.

That aside, the F/X are very good, and given that it wasn't done in CGI, more believeable and realistic IMO.

CGI attempts to emulate reality more cheaply than can be done by traditional F/X, but with the state of CGI advancing so rapidly, older CGI flicks look worse than if they'd been done the traditional way, and yet, even the most high tech and up-to-date CGI doesn't look as good to our eyes as reality, something about the way light bounces off things is my guess.

Space Balls was a Better Movie than Blade Runner

Anyone wants to see what quality film is should go get SpaceBalls.

Rick Moranis's "Dark Helmet" is pure genius.

May the Schwartz be With You!

CGI pitfalls

One of the biggest is the cost of making something fake. Good CGI is expensive and a lot of it is edited with the attention of a hummingbird to cover up faults and the expense of it all. Blade Runner works not only because of the tangability but because it's not hidden away behind a pile of jump-cuts.

Love/Hate Ridley Scott

Yes, Bladerunner was undeniably superb -- this from a guy that had already brought us "Alien", and was later to bring out "Thelma and Louise" -- both excellent films, but entirely different genres. And then he produces "Gladiator"... even with his track record of greatness, can we ever forgive him for this travesty?

Are we talking FX

or design?

Or are they the same thing?

One of the most convincing Sci Fi movies of all time was The Day the Earth Stood Still. The key to that movie is the relentless ordinariness of the sets, the way the scenes are short, and the actors (other than Michael Rennie whose phsyiogamy is a special effect in itself).

It seems to me that (relying on my twenty five year old memory of the movie) Blade Runner's hybrid noir/ginza landscape works in the same way, suggesting that the people who inhabit it are overstimulated on the outside and empty on the inside. The most human people are those who are the replicants, who at least aspire to something.

Maybe I'm too young - I didn't find BR special

Sure, I guess way back in the day when Blade Runner came it, it must have been visually exciting to watch. But as a younger person, I only saw it for the first time last year. Personally, I find most of today's modern CGI movies to be the same or more interesting than Blade Runner.

Do other younger /.'ers feel the same way? The only sci-fi movie that I can think of that I enjoyed from that pre-CGI era was Star Wars and Star Trek 2.

Re:Maybe I'm too young - I didn't find BR special

But does it all just come down to eye-candy for you?

The point about BR (at least for me) is that it was one of the last Sci-Fi movies that had a great plot, which meant the special effects were really secondary. Even without any special effects, its still a great story. It was also largely responsible for a whole new dark dystopian view of the future, which still feels infinitely more probable than the standard sterile white corridors and ray guns of nearly all the other Sci-Fi movies of the same period.

Its sad but it seems video games and most movies have all gone the same way of relying on ever-more dramatic graphics/CGI/effects to make up for the lack of a decent plot (or in the case of games, intellectually challenging gameplay).

Re:Maybe I'm too young - I didn't find BR special

> The first Alien seemed too slow. It just dragged on until the Alien popped out.

I think a major problem with Alien for younger viewers is that Alien was so groundbreaking for its day. It was so groundbreaking that it became a cliché. We live in a cinematic world that was changed by Alien and thus its impact is blunted.

Also, pacing has changed remarkably. I was surprised by how long the scenes in the original Exorcist were shot. Jump cuts were unheard-of. Small wonder if movies before 1984 or thereabouts seems slow.

No, he isnt 'still the man'

He never was a *man* he was a replicant.

I've always kind of wished

that the umbrellas in Blade Runner with the neon/glo-stick cores would have caught on in real life.. that was the one of those little things about blade runner that made it so appealing for me at least, much more so than the special effects, it was the atmosphere & aroma that the producers built into the blade runner future, you could almost smell what it was like in the era of replicants.

Models and F/X still "Real"

Props and in-camera F/X shots still hold up over time because they are shots of something real. What I mean is, a physical model has a depth and weight that a CGI model has difficulty replicating. Think of that Star Destroyer chasing Princess Leia's ship in the opening scene of A New Hope. Doesn't that Star Destroyer just "feel" huge and heavy? It lumbers across the screen as though it's a real flying fortress. Cut to the mega-ships of Revenge of the Sith. Yeah, they look great and fancy, but do they feel as "real" as the model ships of A New Hope? IMHO, no. CGI ships float in an unreal realm. Models have real depth and weight that translates to the screen as "real." Another example would be the puppet Yoda vs. the CGI Yoda. Which one is more real and true in your mind?

Also, consider the more modern pseudo-sci-fi movie Children of Men. Now there's a fantastic example of F/X and set design over CGI. Every shot feels like it comes from a real place because every shot is a "real" set piece or "real" in-camera F/X. Don't get me wrong, CGI has made movies explode into our imagination (Lord of the Rings, for example), but real models and in-camera F/X shouldn't be lost to the ages. Yes, they're more expensive and time-consuming, but the long-term effect is worth it.

No young photographs of Adam Savage?

I was hoping to see some behind the scene photographs of Adam Savage working on this movie. :)

Metropolis at 80, why the FX still matter

First android on film. http://www.scifidimensions.com/Feb01/metropolis.ht m [scifidimensions.com]

Printer friendly version

here [popularmechanics.com]

CG vs. models

I think Bladerunner is a prime example that well done model-based SFX actually look better than CGI. Another example is the first Star Wars trilogy. If you look closely at the scenes in Bladerunner, they have a gritty quality, with plenty of film grain on the dark spots. CGI typically doesn't have this. I don't know if this is the primary reason, but the CGI in the newest Star Wars movies just looks too "perfect" and not real. Maybe they need to start reducing the picture quality, like intentionally bring in noise? If you look closely when you are in a dark room, your eyes actually exibit something like ISO noise. This is natural for any light-detecting mechanism, either biological or electronic. But this is lacking in CGI.

One of the reason for the amazing sets

There was a PBS documentary on the other day (the name of which unfortunately escapes me) about the production design of various classic films. Apparently one of the reasons the street scenes in Blade Runner were so incredibly detailed is that during the early stages of filming, the screen actors guild in L.A. went on strike for 8 weeks or so. The only folks still able to come into work and that had anything to do with no actors around were the set-building crew and production designers, and left to their own devices they went nuts. Apparently "Ridleyville" (as the main street set was jokingly referred to) ended up one of the most intricately detailed in movie history by the time the actors came back to restart shooting.

Atari as we know it is dead.

Q.E.D.

Why is it a good movie?

Somehow I never managed to see it until recently. I've seen all the other geek classics, but not Blade Runner, even though I was certainly aware of the movie. And I've read a collection of Philip K. Dick stories, too. So finally watched it Blade Runner last year (the Director's Cut--yeah, I know).

And, wow, was it a waste of my time. It's moody, it has nice special effects, but it's such a flimsy and boring show. I actually kept losing interest and hoping something would happen to move it along. The characters were flat. The ending was generic action movie stuff, but less exciting than most action movies, and I still cared nothing for the characters.

I don't understand the fawning all over this one. Please don't say it's "deep," and I'm too pop-culture. I watch art films all the time. I just don't get what makes this an interesting movie. In 1982, maybe, purely because the effects (think "TRON"), but today?

vangelis

Part of what really set the movie apart is the great Vangelis soundtrack IMHO.

He says the movie doesn't age...

...but in one of those detailed street scenes, the film shows its rings: There's a neon sign for Pan-Am Airlines.

Has it been 25 years??

Man, my favorite movie of all time is 25 years old. All of the reasons that I love it have been stated above, so I won't reiterate. I hope they come out with this movie on Blu Ray disc. This movie in Hi-Def would kick ass. And I hope they do not change on damn thing. Not one damn thing, from the Final Director's Cut that is! :)

But seriously, while on the subject of dystopian futures and wonderful books, where is our movie version of Neuromancer? I want that story to be made into a movie with the quality of Blade Runner. Fuck The Matrix. Neuromancer is the cyberpunk legend. William Gibson needs to forget the Matrix was ever made and get on the screen play writing horse. That story done right would be glorious to behold in movie form!

"Ridley Scott's dark vision of the future"

Dark? Yah, I suppose it's kinda dark if you're a replicant.

Aahhh, I remember my shiny new Blade Runner DVD

It was one of the first DVD I bought. I lended it to a friend before I actually got around to see it though. When I eventually got it back three years later after repeated requests, the cover was empty..

Now I'm holding out for the revised version coming out before I purchase it again.

Adam's resume...

Adam Savage: I worked on Star Wars Episodes I and II, on the Matrix films, on AI and Terminator 3;

Hang on. Didn't those movies suck? Maybe Adam is the film equivalent of Ted McGinley [jumptheshark.com]?

QUE!?

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's dark vision of the future..."
Wasn't it Phillip K Dick's dark vision of the future?

Harrison Ford's Genital Prowess

What is this? Advertising? Yeah thanks for the awareness of the latest blockbuster did you get $$$

Shanghai straight out of Blade Runner

Hey guys, I live in Shanghai now, and this city keeps reminding me of the Los Angeles portrayed in Blade Runner... Especially if It rains! It even has talking screens on boats and zeppelins and stuff... Look at that picture and you might agree: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=537350642& size=l [flickr.com] Just thought I should share that...

Phillip K Dick

Shouldn't the line, "Ridley Scott's dark vision...." read "Ridley Scott's version of Phillip K. Dick's dark vision....".

Douglas Trumbull?

Am I the only one that thinks Douglas Trumbull does not get enough credit for this film? It may have been Scott's vision, but it's really Trumbull who manifested it in the form that we still rave about today. We're talking the man who gave us the experiences in 2001, Close Encounters and Brainstorm. I'd say that he set the bar for visual F/X prior to CGI. BTW if you happen to be in the NYC area, I suggest checking out the Museum of Radio & TV in Queens because they have the original Tryell Corp building model.

Where's the beef?

Not much substance in the Savage article. So why exactly did the effects work where no computer effect since then has? Was it the film stock? Was it the lens type? Was it the project planning?

Re:Stupid movie then and now.

Does your sig apply here or was this one intentional?

Re:Stupid movie then and now.

"The movie was stupid. I'll take Jar Jar Binks any day, even, over this crap."

And what would you like for your tenth birthday?

Re:Stupid movie then and now.

"When this movie came out, Reagan was President, the Cold War was on, and the real vision of the future was more about mushroom clouds rising up over all of Europe, Asia and North America. At least if the world was going to end, it wouldn't just burn out like BR did, it would go out in a blaze of manly glory."

And then what?

Read the book [wikipedia.org] (but don't read too much of the wikipedia page if you want to avoid spoilers for it). I don't think it is clearly mentioned in the movie, but in the book the setting *is* post-nuclear war. That's why so many people are being encouraged to go to the "off-world colonies", and why the place is in such a dilapidated state (most people have left, and the weather is screwed up).

Ah, you're probably trolling anyway.

Re:Stupid movie then and now.

Are you by chance a Hollywood producer? Just like them, you seem to think "science fiction" is just another backdrop for a story: one with cool-looking futuristic stuff and gratuitous robots. I call this the "Michael Bay" phenomenon.

On the other hand, most fans of real science fiction (the kind in books) are fans because of the interesting implications of technology extrapolated into the distant (or not-so-distant) future, the philosophical overtones, and the thought-provoking scenarios, and the unforgettable characters (Lazarus Long, anybody?).

All in all, I prefer "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" over "Podkayne of Mars"...and if you don't know what I'm talking about, then perhaps you should stick to watching Pirates of the Carribean 3.

"Yeeeeeesss." and "Maybe I am and maybe I'm not."

Aye, those were the days.... and then it was 1986 and Aliens finally appeared.

Re:Stupid movie then and now.

I disagree with you, but it's still sad to see you modded as troll for just refusing to like the movies you "should" like. At least, that is how I felt until I read the Jar Jar sentence. Good riddance, troll! ;p

We're all clones anyway - each of us is an anonymous nuclear target. Get over it.

Exactly!

Oh wait, you didn't like the movie...