I was going to bump up an old thread about Blade Runner but the comments were mostly negative so I thought I would start a new thread.

I watched the 2007 Final Cut version of the movie (no voice over, ends in the elevator - no driving scene). I also watched all of the commentaries and the Dangerous Days making of Blade Runner DVD.

There is a lot to be said about this movie as being the last of its kind. This is the last science fiction movie to be made without computers. Everything was created on film. Some of the scenes required over a dozen passes to get the desired effect.

I admire this movie because it was so unusual. The scenery was so detailed it sort of became a character. The concept of it being a film noir detective movie set in the future worked on many levels.

Any other fans of Blade Runner?

















[This message has been edited by Old Main (edited 1/10/2013 10:51a).]

boring

Hate to admit, I've never seen this movie.

Watch it. Not for the sake of seeing this movie but for the sake of avoiding a conversation with folks who will be all like "OMG YOU HAVEN'T SEEN BLADE RUNNER IT'S AWESOME".

I really like the movie. I'm the type that LOVES a rainy day, so the fact that the movie is constantly dark and rainy really jives with me. In general, it's just a really great sci-fi flick with good acting and to this day I really enjoy the special effects and just fictional world they created.

I'll also say that I've never been one over analyse the story and I can't tell you the difference between the directors cut, original cut, or which version of the movie I have on DVD. I just watch it and enjoy it. And yes, I have also asked myself the question "Is Deckard a replicant?" and I could care less if somebody claims to have the answer.

PS#1: I bet anybody younger than 30 has a hard time appreciating this movie, just like I can't appreciate many movies from the 60's & 70's.

PS#2: Your last picture is from a video game, not the movie!

Love the movie!!!

Showing my age, but I remember when it came out in theaters the first time.

Then, I got to go see it when it was re-released as the director's cut without the horrible voice-over narration by Ford. Much, much better as Scott originally intended it!

The visuals and effects are outstanding! Even for today, the movie looks good, but at the time it originally came out, it was one of the best looking sci-fi films of all time.

This was one of the most visually stimulating sci-fi movies back in the day. Harrison Ford and Sean Young.

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Even for today, the movie looks good

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I dare say it looks BETTER than many sci-fi movies today. I'm not being artsy fartsy with it or knocking todays technology... but the whole thing (specifically pulled back shots of the city) just felt more real. It also helped that everything being a bit slower and more subtle back then.

Current CG has a lot of WOW and I love it too, but sometimes you gotta slow it down, get rid of the shakey cam, etc. so that we can really appreciate it.

The new Star Wars are the perfect example... the scene in Attack of the Clones when they are flying through the city at night is fantastic for sure... but there is just too much crap flying around for me to really care. No doubt it took 1,000+ man hours to create the hundreds of "cars" flying around in that scene, but Blade Runner and the old Star Wars gave us something much more real... something we could actually see for more than .2 seconds on screen before it flies away, blows up, etc!

Dang I'm getting old!

I saw it when it first came out on the big screen and it remains one of those movies that I'll always pause and watch when I find it on TV.

Plot is fine but what really does it for me is both the scenery and the music which does such a great job of creating the right sort of mood.

I have always loved this movie. It is visually exceptional even today, and in fact is better visually than stuff being done today as well. It speaks volumes when ILM is reported to have said the goal of the Coruscant scenes in Attack of the Clones was to out-Blade Runner Blade Runner, or something to that effect.

The movie does drag some I suppose; it's not Indiana Jones after all. It tells a solid science fiction story with the replicants that want to meet their maker, so to speak. Harrison Ford did a great job as Deckard, and every time I see Rutger Hauer, I see Baty.

I never cared for the voice over nor the insertion of footage from The Shining (the mountain sequence that was at the end of the theatrical version and the beginning of the Kubrik movie). This movie was supposed to be dark, lots of moody atmosphere, stuff like that, and then all of a sudden the pupils get hit with this blinding sun light. That stunk. So glad Ridley Scott excised that footage for the director's cut.

It makes me sad to call this movie a "classic," visually its more refreshing than most of the garbage that comes out nowadays and it puts most of the scifi of the last 30 years to shame.

Excellent movie.

I actually prefer the version with the voiceover. It's more like true film noir.

To me, Blade Runner is a movie that gets better the more other movies you watch. The visuals, the pacing, the writing, hardly a weak point anywhere. The opening scene never fails to get me.

Love Phillip K. Dick, love Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, love Blade Runner.

The cast in Blade Runner is awesome. William Sanderson and his creepy creations!

I've tried to watch it numerous times and fall asleep. I think its the score that's lulls me to by.

To me, this is the scene that made the movie.

"They're just questions, Leon."

Boring

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"They're just questions, Leon."

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Leon: My mother?
Holden: Yeah.
Leon: Let me tell you about my mother...

Seriously, one of my favorite movie scenes ever. The back and forth between these two characters in a brief few minutes is GOLD.

Holden: Yes. You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down-
Leon: What one?
Holden: What?
Leon: What desert?
Holden: It doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely hypothetical.
Leon: But how come I'd be there?
Holden: Maybe you're fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself, who knows? You look down and you see a tortoise, Leon, it's crawling towards you-
Leon: Tortoise, what's that?
Holden: Know what a turtle is?
Leon: Of course.
Holden: Same thing.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. [laughs] Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like.......tears in rain. Time to die.


This makes the movie for me. Awesome scene

One of my all-time favs!

the music and the visuals are incredible. perhaps the most authentic vision of the "future" in any movie.

the plot is slow, but don't confuse that with boring.

Blade Runner was a good movie, imo. It's not meant to be a mindless popcorn flick action movie. Maybe that's why some don't seem to enjoy it.

Anyone watch BSG? The rant by Cavil about a star going supernova almost rips off BR. It may have been an homage. But it shows the difference between an android in regret versus an android in anger.

Some interesting tidbits from the special features DVD:

- Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott did not get along during filming. They have since made amends and Harrison admits (in retrospect) that Scott obviously knew what he was doing.

- Sean Young had almost no acting experience, but did a great job. Scott wanted her for her look. When they were shooting the kissing scene in Decker's apartment Ford asked Young to stop something that was making noise (a pacing device). She asked why and Ford said because he didn't want to do any looping later. Sean Young then asked was looping was.

- If you knew how they made the opening shot you wouldn't believe how well it turned out.

- Ripley Scott did some things that made Blade Runner so detailed and "real". He had a backstory for everything. For the buildings his theory was that it was cheaper to retrofit the mechanical systems on the outside of the old buildings (rents on the lower levels were dirt cheap) so that philosophy became a big part of the look of the movie. He believed that all of the pollution and overcrowding would cause the cities to have their own "micro environments" so that is why it is always raining. In reality the night shoots and rain were really more about maximizing the production value. In several shots Scott had the production designers turn huge columns upside down so the detail would show up in the shot.

Roy Batty's death scene below. Rutger Hauer wrote the monolugue himself. He ran it by Ridley and the director loved it. One of the themes of Blade Runner is that the replicants often showed more humanity than the humans who were hunting them down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHUUtUMXEA










[This message has been edited by Old Main (edited 1/16/2013 1:49p).]

I read something recently about why Bladerunner bombed at the box office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_film

Bladerunner's producers and investors wanted to get their money back as soon as possible so they released the movie in the summer of 1982 as soon as it was ready for distribution. E.T. was the biggest blockbuster of the year and Bladerunner never got an audience. Some of the cast and crew saw the movie that summer and said they were the only people in the theatre. Bladerunner is not a summer blackbuster popcorn flick anyway - and that is how it was marketed. If they had waited until November or December to release the movie it would have probably found an audience and done better in the Academy Awards as well. I don't have a link for the marketing/distribution failure, but I thought it was interesting. If the producers and investors had been more patient they probably could have made a fortune on the initial theatrical release. Marketing and distribution is obviously an important part of a movie's success.














[This message has been edited by Old Main (edited 2/11/2013 7:16p).]

Only six more years until flying cars, human like replicants invented long enough ago to already have been banned from Earth, off world colonies and so forth (it's set in 2019). I saw the movie in the theater when it came out in '82 and even then I remember thinking that 37 years in the future was way too soon for our world to "advance" to the level depicted in the movie. I liked it, but they should have made it set at least another 50 years into the future.

So does the oriental woman in the floating sign say " ET phone home"

So was Harrison Ford a replicant?

^ I never got the sense that he was a replicant, although there is some dialogue, I think, where Rachel asks if he's taken the VK test but he doesn't answer.

In response to a post above, Blade Runner really should not have been released in the summer. It was not that kind of movie. It was just another movie in that fabulous summer of '82 that saw Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, The Road Warrior, Tron, and ET released. I actually saw Blade Runner one day where my buddy and I were the only ones in the theater.

Funny also that Blade Runner was released theatrically on the same day as John Carpenter's The Thing. Both seem to be considered classics now but on the day of their release, given the blockbuster status of ET and others that summer, neither future classic could find an audience.

Great film, and probably the most copied science fiction film of all time.

It is just entertaining and stimulates the brain. It raises questions like....

1. What really makes us human?
2. Would sentient artificial life be human?
3. Is morality a cultural thing or a product of some inner motivation?
4. Are all kinds of slavery wrong?
5. Great taste, less filling?

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Great film, and probably the most copied science fiction film of all time

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I just saw two items, a movie and a video game, in the past week that have very much borrowed from the feel of Blade Runner's "future".

The new Total Recall movie has a location known as "the colony" which is home to the worker class of people. Almost every scene in this area is dark (no sun) and very rainy and wet all the time. The resident space interiors are very plain and blocky, and the retail areas have lots of basic concrete accented with neon lights. It's also impossible to miss how everything has a big Asian influence (architecture, signage, river boats, etc). Very easy to see the similarities. I also highly recommend Total Recall as a clean, simple yet fun action sci-fi movie.

And the new Dead Space 3 video game's 1st level starts off on a planet. In the previous two games you have only ever been in space and no image of a colonized planet was ever given... sure enough, as you run through the streets its all very dark, wet, and lots of concrete structures illuminated by neon lights. The games 1st view at life on a planet and they go with a blade runner type feel.

Very easy to see Blade Runner's influence in both! And it works... its a very real feeling future and I personally LOVE rainy days, so I completely dig this setting.

Some pics to illustrate my post above:

Total Recall








Dead Space 3

It may have been mentioned earlier, but Ridley Scott used the rain and darkness to enhance the production value. He was totally frustrated because this was the first movie he shot in the United States. Hollywood by far has the best film infrastructure in the world, but Scott just wasn't used to some of the union rules, attitude of the crew, etc.

I think what he did was really smart as far as the darkness and rain. His philosophy was that he didn't have enough money to design and dress the entire set to his level of satisfaction, so he hid what wasn't detailed enough with darkness. Also, the rain and wetness adds to the film noir/cyber punk noir mood of the movie. The wet streets reflected lights and neon and added another layer or texture to the production design. Of course this sounds incredibly simple, but I don't remember another director doing this (to this extreme) before Ridley.











[This message has been edited by Old Main (edited 2/13/2013 5:37p).]