So we recently hit the 40th anniversary of Blade Runner (1982). I took the opportunity to finally watch my 5 disc ultimate collectors edition box set that I bought around the 25th anniversary. This is the version used for the disastrous test screenings that ultimately lead to the theatrical version with it’s voice overs and happy ending. Many years later in the early 90’s it was given a theatrical run and was so well received it prompted the creation of the so called “Directors Cut” in 1992.
It made for interesting viewing and I thought it was a good time to start talking about the movies I truly love, starting with this science fiction classic. This is going to be a hefty read as I am covering everything I can think of here outside of a scene by scene break down (Which I’m seriously considering doing at some point). As such I’ve decided to split this into three sections. The second part looks at world of Blade Runner (both thematic and production), including a comparison to the source novel and the various visual influences, the third and final part breaks down the different releases and spin offs (Including my review of the sequel).
This first part breaks down the basics of story and characters and while you will see many of my own takes on these things here, if you are a big fan of the movie and don’t want to go over all that you may want to just skip straight to part two where I’m pretty sure you’ll find some interesting things you probably didn’t know before. If you are a more casual fan or just want to read my takes (thank you for that), let’s get started!
Brief Plot Summary (Spoilers)
Set in a 2019 (Joining the likes of Back to the Future 2, Escape from New York and 2001 a Space Odyssey in now being set in the past) in a dystopian Los Angeles, the film tells the story a former “Blade Runner”, a police officer that specialises in hunting down and “retiring” rogue replicants (Androids manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation for off world use).
Retiring feels very much like killing a human being, but is seen in a legal sense as decommissioning a faulty piece of equipment. In the theatrical versions Deckard’s voice over makes it clear that he has had enough of the killing, the implication being that to him at least, it felt too much like killing. Perhaps he has developed some sympathy for the replicants over the years. The other versions of the film leave leave this more open to interpretation, but certainly he is a man with his own demons, tired of his role in the world and perhaps tired of the world he finds himself living in.
Deckard is effectively given no choice but to return to the force as they need him to hunt down four rogue replicants. These are particularly dangerous models of the latest design (The “Nexus 6”), from a military detachment. Their leader “Roy Batty” is a particularly dangerous military model. This seems the set up for a solid science fiction action movie, but that’s not quite that straight forward. One of the questions that Blade Runners never seem to figure out until it is too late is what these rogue Replicants want? Why have they come to Los Angeles? They figure it has something to do with the Tyrell Corporation, but they don’t know what.
It’s an interesting question because had they thought about the replicants as acting on human emotion the answer would be obvious. The Nexus 6 model only has a 4 year lifespan, which was built in due to that model being so human like that around that point they start to develop their own emotional reactions, notably empathy which in turn would make them immune to the “Voight-Kampff test” which is the primary means by which Blade Runners can identify replicants. So really it’s obvious what these Replicants want, they want what we all would want: More time.
The only lead Deckard has is from a killing at the Tyrell Corporation of the previous Blade Runner on the case by a replicant that had infiltrated the staff. The replicant escaped and was identified as one of these four Nexus 6 replicants. Deckard picks up some leads from the Replicants apartment and is able to pursue them to another Replicant called Zhora who posing as an exotic dancer. Deckard confronts her to determine if she is indeed a replicant, but sensing something is up Zhora attacks him and then flees. Deckard pursues and dispatches the first of his targets.
Things are complicated further for Deckard through an additional replicant being thrown into the mix. While visiting the Tyrell Corporation he is introduced to Tyrell’s assistant Rachael, who he is encouraged to test with the Voight-Kampff test under the pretence of “Wanting to see a negative”. Though it takes far longer than usual, the test does expose her as a replicant. Rachael is a new experimental model that is totally unaware she is an artificial construct having been implanted with false memories from Tyrell’s niece. After visiting Rick’s apartment, she learns the truth about her life and goes on the run herself, eventually saving Deckard’s life from a vengeful Leon (Confronting Deckard shortly after he has “Retired” Zhora) and becoming entangled romantically with him. Deckard has now ticked two names off the list, but Gaff informs him one more has been added: Rachael.
The remaining two replicants meanwhile, are pursuing their own leads in their quest to extend their lifespans. Their journey leads them to chase engineers that work for Tyrell until they find a man that can give them access to their creator directly. It can be argued their story is actually more interesting than Deckard’s, it is certainly more visually entertaining taking them to a kind of cry-lab, to an eccentric genius that lives in an abandoned building and builds himself robot friends that resemble toys and finally brings them to meet “god” on the top floor of the Tyrell building high above the city. If not for all the killing they could be the protagonists of a Tim Burton movie. Interestingly it is their actions that eventually lead to final stand off with the Blade Runner and the famous “Tears in Rain” scene..
The epic conclusion of our story sees Deckard pursue the two Replicants to Sebastian apartment after they have met and killed Tyrell. Pris manages to get the jump on Deckard (quite literally) but is taken out in the ensuing fight (Luckily for Deckard she is not a combat model). Roy Batty however is a much more capable opponent and soon the hunter becomes the hunted. Batty ends up pursuing Deckard to a roof top where a badly planned leap almost sees Deckard to his death, only be shockingly rescued by his enemy. Having reached the point with his emotional growth he can actually feel empathy and accepting that his own death in imminent and unavoidable Roy gives what wold become one of the most famous speeches in movie history:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… 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”
After a while Gaff appears and tells Deckard he has “Done a man’s job”. Deckard says he is done and leaves. As he departs Gaff says “It’s a shame she won’t live… but then again, who does”. Rick returns to his apartment to find Rachael and the two leave to go on the run together. On his way out he finds an origami Unicorn, left by Gaff. Depending on the version you are watching there may be more to this scene but for the sake of this summary I’ll leave it here. Let’s have a look at the characters because ultimately the characters are the heart of this story.
Rick Deckard
Deckard is played by Harrison Ford and it is a very different role for him from his two most famous ones: Indiana Jones and Han Solo. All three characters are a little moody at times and somewhat cynical, but Indie and Han are fun, sarcastic action heroes with buckets of charisma, while Rick Deckard is far drier in his personality and deeply melancholy. He has an inner strength and a strong sense of professionalism, but is largely warn down by the world in which he lives. Indie by contrast managed to remain generally upbeat despite having to deal directly with Nazi’s and Han Solo likewise despite dealing with both the Empire and the galactic underworld. One of my biggest disappointments about “Blade Runner 2049” (2017) was that this seems to have largely been forgotten by Dennis Villenueve who seemed to turn Deckard into something closer to those other two characters.
Deckard is something of a throwback to the Hard Boiled Detective novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and his personality could probably be found somewhere between the gritty pragmatism of Sam Spade and the more empathetic Phillip Marlowe. In a way the two detectives represent conflicting elements of Rick’s personality, which him moving closer to Marlowe and further from Spade as the movie progresses. It’s worth noting originally Deckard was going to wear a classic 1940’s detective hat, but the similarity between that and Ford’s previous role as Indiana Jones and his iconic hat lead to a change of aesthetics and that was probably for the best.
As I mentioned earlier, in the novel Deckard’s journey is that through years of hunting emotionless androids he himself finds he has become no different to them. He has lost his own humanity. This isn’t quite the journey for the character in Blade Runner. Instead perhaps that is a journey that the character has suffered prior to the start of the movie and the reason he resigned form his job as a Blade Runner. So instead his journey is actually about rediscovering his humanity and it is ironic he is only able to do this through his interaction with replicants. Obviously the big question in regards to Deckard is if he is a replicant. We will come back to this.
Roy Batty
Perhaps the most interesting character in Blade Runner is “Roy Batty” played by an often overlooked and underrated Actor of great talent: Rutger Hauer. More than any other actor in the movie Hauer really defined the Roy Batty we saw on screen. From his drive to have Batty display the full spectrum of human emotions throughout the movie, to his moment of genius in altering the overly complex and wordy final speech of Roy Batty on the fly into what became one of the most famous bits of dialogue in movie history. The “Tears in Rain” line was never on any of the scripts and is the one line that resonates with everyone watching. Roy Batty is without doubt the crowning achievement in Hauer’s career.
Roy Batty was created to be an emotionless killer. Through his role he saw action in every off world combat since his creation date. As a replicant he had no off time so his life was nothing but combat and warfare. When Batty talks about the things he’s seen, he isn’t exaggerating. If you were to imagine what a human veteran may have seen in a time of war and then set those wars on alien worlds and deep space you start to get an idea. When those emotions started to creep in on Roy it’s not a stretch to consider that Roy may have suffered a certain amount of PTSD. This gave him a shock awakening to the reality of his existence and his mortality with his expiration date just around the corner.
Not only did Roy want to live, he likely also wanted some guidance as to what it all means. For all his tactical sills a physical superiority he was ultimately a child and every time he expressed emotions they seemed over the top, like he is being overwhelmed by them. This is entirely intentional. Rutger suggested this to RIdley Scott, who loved the idea and made sure to write these moments into the script. Between the pair of them we see Roy playful, wrathful and lustful. We see him mourning the death of his friends, we see him in utter despair when he finds there is no way to extend his life and we see him moments before his demise show empathy and compassion for the very person that moments earlier was trying to kill him. Of all the characters in the movie he is the most human and that ultimately is the entire point.
Rachael
The third character of note in the movie is of course Rachael, played by Sean Young. She completes both the movie trinity of hero, villain and love interest but also a trinity of contrasting emotional journey’s of self discovery. While Deckard has lost his humanity and finds it again through the events of the movie and Batty has gained a humanity he was never supposed to have, Rachael has just had her humanity (or at least as she understands it), stolen away from her by the revelation that she is a replicant. Her memories are not her own, the image of who she is in her mind has been shattered. She is left with just the knowledge that she was an experiment, that her whole reason to exist was to serve as a vanity project for a scientist with a god complex.
The only thing in her life that is real is the man that shattered her illusions, Rick Deckard. When she saves his life by killing fellow replicant, Leon, the pairs destiny becomes tied together. She made a choice to do the right thing and protect him and he makes the same decision with her. But more than that of course because they have also fallen in love. Something set up from their first meeting where she completes the Voight-Kampff test in a scene that felt very intimate. Sean Young plays her part perfectly. She has a certain aloofness about her, but not in a way that feels like a machine, it’s more like a 1940’s Femme Fatale. It’s a character trait that breaks down as her world breaks down around her and it creates an interesting contrast, when she thought she was human she acted less emotionally than when she knew she was a replicant. Her scenes with Deckard all have a sensuality to them, that makes me believe the pair could fall in love after having known each other for a short period of time.
The Rest
There are some interesting, unique characters amongst the rest of the cast too. The other three escaped replicants for instance have their own unique personalities. Triss, played brilliantly by young Daryl Hannah is playful and manipulative, which makes sense given she is a pleasure model. Leon however was a manual labour model and seems to be on a simpler level emotionally than the rest. He is quick to anger but has a big emotional attachment to his photographs and to his friends, the other replicants, especially it seems to Zhora. Indeed it may be that the four replicants were two couples, though that is pure speculation.
It is no wonder he has such strong attachments and simple emotions having spent his entire life loading nuclear fissionable material. He has not had much contact with the outside world. Brion James plays the role well and I always had sympathy for the character. Zhora played by Joanna Cassidy gets the least screen time of the replicants but perhaps the second most memorable death after Roy’s. She seems to be street smart and cynical, seeing right through Deckard almost right away. But her fear and panic shine through when she realises her time may be at an end.
The Tyrell Corporation has a few interesting characters of it’s own. Eldon Tyrell (played by Joe Turkel), creator of the replicants seems to revel in playing god. He loves his creations, but doesn’t treat them compassionately. Indeed what he did to Rachael was really quite monstrous. Eldon it seems lives alone and his only friend appears to be Sebastian who he mostly only communicates with through their remote chess game. Yet he is surrounded by luxury in his 700th floor apartment atop the Tyrell building that looms over the city itself. A suitable place for a god to reside. It’s never made entirely clear what Tyrell’s motivations are, especially in regards to making Rachael and that question is further complicated by events of the sequel. In isolation though we can easily believe that Tyrell created Rachael simply because he could and perhaps also for the same reason that Sebastian created his “Friends”.
Sebastian (William Sanderson) meanwhile resides in an apartment in the Bradbury Building (Which appears to be mostly abandoned) and appears to have an even more lonely existence. His apartment is dusty and his friends are all mechanical creations of his own, far simpler than the replicants. He is shy, socially awkward and suffering from a physical condition that causes premature aging. Perhaps because of this he falls so easily for Pris and Roy’s manipulation, after all they just want the same thing he wants: more time. Sebastian is a tragic character, well meaning and unlike Tyrell not deserving of Roy’s vengeance. But underneath this perhaps the two geniuses are only really divided by social status and resources. As I will examine later, taken with information from the Source Novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” there is a strong suggestion that genetically inferior people are banned from moving off world and generally treated as barely human. It’s no wonder Sebastian was so easy to manipulate.
The last character of note is the most mysterious. Gaff, played by Edward James Olmos is on the surface a vein brown nosing career cop. Wandering around in his flamboyant outfits with his cane and talking in a mixed up language known as “Cityspeak”. He is mostly Police Chief Bryant’s errand boy, but seems to have been assigned to keep an eye on Deckard, presumably to make sure the want away detective is doing his job. He seems to dislike Deckard and is critical of everything including his appearance.
Where he becomes mysterious is in his use of origami where he seems to always provide some form of symbolism perhaps to Deckard’s state of mind or just to events. Initially creating a chicken during Deckard’s briefing, a man with an erection while searching Leon’s apartment and then finally leaving the famous unicorn outside of Deckard’s apartment. An action that also suggested that he knew Rachael was waiting for him and was allowing him to run.
Most significantly the origami unicorn, paired with Deckard’s dream of a Unicorn previously was intended as a hint that Deckard is also a Replicant. That made the character of Gaff pivotal to that particular mystery. The other thing worthy of note here is Gaff’s “City Speak”. For a character with minimal screen time the effort that Olmos put into it was staggering, literally inventing the language himself for the role, utilising his own knowledge of language and even going to the Berlitz School of Languages in Los Angeles to research and develop his ideas.
End of Part 1
There is further context to be gained through examining the source material, influences and the multiple versions of the film. But before we get to that (in part 2 and 3) I think it is clear already that a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into the creation of this movie. More than your average production. While there was no doubt a few to which it was just a job, others I think realised there was something special here. Olmos gave his all to a relatively minor role, Rutger Hauer not only came up with one of the most memorable lines in movie history but put on the performance of his entire career here.
It could also be argued this is Ridley Scott’s masterpiece too, even considering the spectacle that was “Gladiator” and that other time he turned the science fiction genre on it’s head with the ground breaking “Alien”. Jordan Cronenweth and Douglas Trumbull, really provided a masterclass on lighting and camera work and Trumbull even came up with a clever technique using a small mirror that allowed for those occasional glowing eyes that Replicants have (Somewhat replicating an effect he also provided Kubrik with for 2001). To cap it all off Vangelis made perhaps his own masterpiece with the soundtrack, something we will examine further in Part II.
This movie was always going to be something special, but it was perhaps an accident of timing as to why it failed at the box office on release. We were already slipping out of the grittier more director driven films of the late 70’s/early 80’s to the more fun action packed movies of the mid 80’s, so perhaps the movie was already a year or two past it’s optimal release time, but the summer of 1982 was ruled by the release of Spielberg’s “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial”. Alongside E.T. you had “Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan”, so right out the game you have two of the most famous science fiction films of all time, one with family appeal and the other a built in fan base already out before Blade Runner launches. On top of that you have “Rocky III” “Poltergeist”, Clint Eastwood’s “Firefox “and the similarly ill fated “John Carpenter’s The Thing” competing for the general publics hard earned cash. Today it’s hard to imagine Blade Runner (or The Thing for that matter) not finding an audience, but 1982 was an insanely strong year for movies and ultimately the movie flopped. But the box office isn’t everything and the film more than made up for it later.
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