Perhaps the most interesting thing about Blade Runner is the world building. Ridley Scott avoiding being too explicit in designing this world and avoided extensive exposition about it. Outside of the visual aesthetics were are given very few hints about the world and yet the verisimilitude is off the charts. This feels like a genuine, lived in world. To break down the world of Blade Runner our first stop must be with the source material. Philip K Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K Dick’s novel is at heart a philosophical work. The author viewed androids as symbolic of the part of humans which he refers to as the “Automotive reflex machine”, where humans shut down everything about them that makes them human and in it’s extreme form allows them to become self centred and remorseless killers. While this is the replicants natural state, the bounty hunters who are tasked with retiring rogue ones find themselves walking a fine line between cold professionalism and empathy for those they hunt. The more they cut themselves off from feeling anything the more like their own prey they become, but if they allow empathy for these things they won’t survive long in the field. The novel’s protagonist Rick Deckard constantly finds himself struggling to find this balance, and it’s interesting to note that by the end of the novel Rick’s state of mind (outside of a strange religious experience) is reflective of where Deckard starts out in the movie, done with it all and ready to retire.
As the films story evolved and with Ridley Scott in the directors seat the view of the androids/replicants gets largely flipped on it’s head but many of those original beats remain and it certainly laid the scene for what has become the big question of the film over the years: is Rick Deckard a replicant? Interestingly this idea is toyed with in the novel, but mostly with Phil Resch, another Bounty Hunter who for a portion of the book is suspected by both Deckard and Resch himself of being an android. However it turns out he’s basically just a sociopath that enjoys his job a bit too much. Deckard’s involvement with Resch leads him to question his own stance in regards to the androids. Despite all this though the androids themselves remain for the entire story incapable of empathy and highly dangerous because of it. Sometimes they are envious of human empathy but more often they despise humans for it (Something especially notable with Roy Batty).
One of the major changes from book to film is we have gone from an underpopulated world devastated by nuclear fallout to an overpopulated one devastated by over industrialisation and resource shortages. It’s worth noting some articles ignore this (probably because that’s been retconned, but Scott was pretty clear in interviews at the time that the world was as it was because of over population and industrialisation. He said it was a natural progression from where we are now (Though he hoped it wouldn’t be the future). He made no mention of Nuclear War and that wouldn’t really fit in with the way he painted his world. In the novel however the entire set up is due to “World War Terminus”.
Blade Runner 2049 shifted things back more in line with the novel by including more post apocalyptic elements, including Las Vegas in the aftermath of a dirty bomb. The original movie had nothing like that and of course in the theatrical release they actually leave the city you see a world that really doesn’t look post apocalyptic. Despite this change, both versions end up with a major drive for humanity to head to off world colonies, which of course is the entire reason for the Replicants/Andy’s existence.
One element from the book that is very subtly kept in the movie is that of the rejection of genetically inferior humans. In the novel the character “John Isidore” has mutated due to radiation and is now what is referred to as a “Chicken Head”. In the film Sebastian is partially based off of him, though his issue causes premature aging (and it’s not mentioned that it is caused by radiation). Both characters live in a nearly abandoned apartment block that becomes the setting for the final show down and both characters are associated with Pris.
It is suggested both characters are unable to travel off world because of their condition. Unlike John though Sebastian is a genius, just a nervous, socially awkward one. Intelligence is mentioned briefly though by Leon when he suggested workers (even menial ones as Leon would have been) at Tyrell are subjected to regular IQ tests. In the novel those that fall short of the acceptable IQ score are deemed less than human, like poor John Isidore. It’s not directly mentioned if this is the case in the film, but it seems likely.
The movie also drops the global religion of Mercerism, an empathy based religion involving a kind of shared consciousness and puts less emphasis on the rarity of living animals. True every animal we come across in the movie turns out to be synthetic and it’s clear having a live owl or snake is incredibly rare, but we are never told why or how bad it is. In the novel animals are almost completely extinct and as such preserving the remaining ones are considered of the highest moral duty (Including something as simple as a spider). Owning a real animal gives one a high social status and those with fakes pretend they are real (Unlike in the movie where the response to “Is it real” is usually “Of course note”).
In the novel Deckard actually owns an electric sheep that he keeps on his roof (Yes, the sheep from the title is actually physically present) and later buys a genuine goat with his bonuses and near the end of the book he finds a toad in the wasteland. It’s interesting how much more context this gives to the questions in the Voight-Kampff test and their regular references to animals. The scene in the movie where Rachael is tested is perhaps the only scene from the book almost directly replicated, including the questions asked (Up to a point). So when Rachael is being asked about a painting of a naked woman, the important thing in the book was that the woman is on a bear skin rug. In the movie they didn’t mention the rug.
According to Dick, in contrast to how he saw his androids, Scott saw replicants as “Supermen that cannot fly”, certainly he viewed them with more wonder than Dick and that perhaps assisted in bringing them to life on screen. While Scott’s “Replicants” certainly share their core being with Dick’s “Andys” the thing that defined them as dangerous and inhuman for Dick is used by Scott to demonstrate how they have evolved to be just like humans. Empathy is still key to the story, the characters and the world, but in a different way. The humans of Blade Runner are not the religious, empathy obsessed survivors of an apocalypse that they are in the novel. They are not trying to rise from the ashes of the old world, they are instead still sinking into the decay of the past. Instead of the few being brought together by a device that allows a shared empathic experience, the many are instead driven apart by a world where the little people are walked on and everything is fake. Philip K Dick’s Androids would fit right in to that world, so instead it is the Replicants themselves that are reminding us what it means to be human.
Roy Batty and Rachael are most notably different. Though Deckard does fall for both versions of Rachael, in the book this is mostly done as a manipulation by Rachael and he is not the first Bounty Hunter to fall for it. However her seduction doesn’t stop him doing his job, nor does it lead to him becoming colder as it did with Phil Resch. This confuses and infuriates Rachael to the point where she murders Deckards recently acquired goat. That Rachael is emotional, but not empathetic. The version Harrison Ford’s Deckard falls in love with however is not an emotional manipulator, but instead a victim that has woken up from a lie. She feels enough empathy for Deckard that she saves his life by taking that of another Replicants and then puts her fate entirely in his hands. Ultimately her character couldn’t be more different. It’s also worth noting in the novel that Pris is the same model of replicant as Rachael. Something totally skipped in the movie, that could have been interesting. It’s interesting to note the kind of manipulation Rachael does in the book is somewhat transferred onto Pris in the movie.
Roy Batty’s empathy meanwhile becomes key to the entire movie’s climax. The breakthrough in saving Deckard’s life totally breaks Philip K Dick’s view of an android and that is of course the point. In the novel Batty is the most militant of the androids in his hatred of human empathy. But because of this he is also not the greatest threat to Deckard (Instead that is Pris, who appears exactly like Rachael). When Deckard confronts Batty in the novel there is a brief shoot out that Deckard wins relatively easily. In the movie however Deckard is so outclassed by Batty that the hunter becomes the hunted and ultimately Rick is at Roy’s mercy. This contrast really summarises the difference between the two approaches. But it’s worth noting that in both empathy is key. To understand the differences between the two versions of the story all you really need is to understand the changes to these pivotal characters. In both they define what it is to be an android/replicant, but what that is fundamentally changes between versions.
When it comes to the visual aesthetics though, despite Dick’s world being far more desolate and post-apocalyptic the author felt that Scott had truly managed to put on the screen exactly what he was seeing in his head. One of the things that Dick mentioned a lot was “Kipple”, the detritus of societal decay that the residents were constantly trying to hold back the flow of, this is certainly present in the film though in a different from. The world on screen seems to have decayed far slower over a long period of time instead of through a key cataclysmic event. It’s worth noting that Dick wasn’t especially descriptive of these things so the novel wasn’t the main source of inspiration for those aesthetics. Strangely that was Heavy Metal Magazine and three of it’s artists.
Heavy Metal
Unknown to many fans of his films, Ridley Scott’s secret weapon has always been the science fiction and fantasy comic magazine “Heavy Metal”. First published in English in April 1977, as the American wing of French magazine “Metal Hurlant”. The magazine would go on to influence the minds of some of the greatest science fiction visionaries in the movie industry, but none more so than Ridley Scott. Of specific note to Scott was the work of Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud. In the late 70’s Scott was looking to get into science fiction, having just watched George Lucas’ Star Wars. His plan at the time was to create a science fiction version of medieval chivalric romance story “Tristan and Isolde” and to base the visuals on Giraud’s work.
While Scott was busy working on Tristan and Isolde, Giraud was working on another ill fated project, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Dune”. Through that he was introduced to Chris Foss, HR Giger, and Dan O’Bannon. After the collapse of both projects that team would end up working with Scott directly on what would become Alien. While Giger obviously designed the Alien itself, Giraud designed the space suits and a few other bits and pieces. His time on the movie was short, but it wasn’t the only collaboration to come out of the failed “Dune” project. While production was slowed to halt on Dune, Dan O’Bannon and Giraud teamed up directly with Dan O’Bannon to produce the story “The Long Tomorrow” for Metal Hurlant.
Moebius and The Long Tomorrow
The Long Tomorrow is a short, two part Noir Detective story within a sci-fi setting and while not directly inspired by Philip K Dick, it seems like something that could be straight out of his mind. It’s art style may have defined both “Tech Noir” and “Cyberpunk”, with the grandfather of Cyberpunk William Gibson giving it credit for how the world of his novels look. It’s influence is also apparent in everything from “Escape from New York” to “The Fifth Element” and yet the story really couldn’t be simpler. Private Detective Pete Club is given a job by a glamorous Femme Fatale to collect a package from a lock up in a rough part of town. The short story goes on to involve a couple of fights, a brief chase and a shape shifting alien that Club inadvertently has sex with.
The story itself has little baring on Blade Runner outside of perhaps the styling of Pete Club as a 40’s hard boiled detective in a futuristic world. But the interesting thing is how the world is depicted. While it’s clear things are happening in outer space most of humanity seems to be buried deep in a multi-layered subterranean labyrinth of a city, with the surface world apparently desolate and seemingly only accessible for the space port (It isn’t made clear, but the setting is likely not on Earth). The higher levels of the city seem to be for the well to do, while the lower ones are over populated and run down. Travelling between the layers seems to be done in some form of hover car.
Enki Bilal and Philippe Druillet
Moebius wasn’t the only artist contributing to Heavy Metal Magazine that had a big influence on the design of Blade Runner. According to Rutger Hauer when he asked Scott what Blade Runner would look like he pointed him in the direction not of Moebius but another French artist, Enki Bilal, whose works (at the time they were filming) included “Exterminator 17” and “Légendes d’Aujourd’hui“. Bilal would later go on to become a movie director in his own right, making films such as 2004’s “Immortal”, which featured a mixture of live action and animation and was certainly one of the more stylish and original films I’ve seen in recent years (though clearly far more ambitious than the budget warranted, so a 6/10). Much like Ridley Scott, it is clear Bilal has a real gift for stunning visuals.
While Scott was looking at Moebius And Bilal the movies producers had already earmarked Druillet’s “Lone Sloane” story “Delirius” from 1973 as a template for the films cityscape. The title refers to the planet Delirius which is a planet-wide city. It’s worth noting that while Isaac Asimov’s “Trantor” predates Delirius both pre-date George Lucas’ Coruscant (and both were possibly an influence). However, unlike the administrative cities of Coruscant and Trantor, Delirius is a planet wide pleasure city. Think of a planet made entirely of Las Vegas. Druillet was famous for his futuristic cityscapes so his work seems a good place to draw influence when creating one of your own. Incidentally, all the AI generated art I used in the section about the novel was done specifically in the style of Moebius, Bilal and Druillet. It seemed the appropriate way to bring the scenes to life.
Edward Hopper and Nighthawks
The last art based inspiration for Blade Runner is Edward Hopper’s painting, “Nighthawks”. Often seen as an exploration of the loneliness of a large city the paintings theme is entirely appropriate for the vibe of Blade Runners dystopian cityscape. One of the techniques used by Hopper, especially in “Nighthawks” is distance. By placing the viewer far enough away that everything is still clear, yet the viewer feels isolated from the people in the picture. The theme of loneliness is common in Hopper’s work so if looking to make your characters feel isolated it’s not bad inspiration. In the movie, wide angles and distance is regularly used to invoke precisely those feelings.
The use of light and contrast is also of note in the paining. There the light from the fluorescent bulbs of the diner seem to leak out into the darkness of the street outside. Light and darkness plays a vital part in the feel of Blade Runner too (Indeed whole video essays have been produced on that topic alone). Of course there is one other influence that likely impacted the lighting styles more than Hopper and that is Film Noir.
Film Noir Influences
Film Noir is a genre whose visual aesthetic is almost entirely built around light and shadow. Rain and fog plays a part sometimes too, along with creative camera angles, but the use of shadows is consistent. It’s clear that while Scott was determined not to let the 1940’s style dominate the aesthetics, there is a deep level of influence both from the genre’s production values and from the hard boiled detective novels that occasionally provided the source material for the movies. When you see a worn down Deckard pour himself a glass of Johnny Walker, you could quite easily imagine him as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe pouring himself some Rye. Indeed the elements of Noir are so prevalent in the film, it is regarded as the first “Tech Noir” film.
Another aspect of Blade Runner that resembles Film Noir is behind the scenes and a great example of how limitations can inspire creativity. Like many Noir’s, Blade Runner was pressed hard with it’s budget and schedule, which lead to often having to find creative ways to get around the limitations. Things like the heavy use of fog, re-use of neon signs and even things like the recycled Millenium Falcon that is used to form part of the city. The directors of Film Noir discovered early on that the creative use of lighting along with some creative camera angles could help hide set limitations while at the same time manipulate the viewers emotionally and put them on the edge of their seat.
Setting the mood – The Music of Blade Runner
When talking about Blade Runner, you simply cannot ignore the importance of the score. The haunting, synthetic melancholy manages to encapsulate the entire story and translate it into music. It is built into the very DNA of the film and without it, the movie simply wouldn’t be Blade Runner. It’s hard not to notice the impact of the change in music for Blade Runner 2049, even though they attempt to maintain the mood and the complete change of genre for Blade Runner: Black Lotus can only be described as a disaster. Many consider the soundtrack to the original film to be Vangelis’ best work and a masterpiece of cinema and it is hard to argue with that.
Perhaps one of the reasons for the music being such an important part is down to how Ridley Scott utilised it (At least what had already been composed at the time of filming). Possibly taking a page from Serio Leone’s book he would actually play the soundtrack from speakers while the actors were preparing for scenes. So as the actors performed they would have had the soundtrack in their mind, so no wonder it fits so perfectly for the atmosphere on screen. It’s hard to know just how much of Vangelis’ work was available during filming (Certainly by the time they put together the work print the majority of it was complete) but even if temporary music was used it certainly assisted the actors in setting the scene.
Amongst the individual tracks the highlight and perhaps most synonymous track with the franchise outside of the opening and closing themes is “Blade Runner Blues”. A fascinating piece in it’s own right, the melody, such that it is falls into a very organic pattern. Some may describe it as random, but it is only as random as life itself, indeed it reminds me of some of the best performances of my favourite classical piece Chopin’s “Raindrop” (Prelude, Op. 28, No. 15). It reminds me of that even more so than “Tears in the Rain” which had a more delicate feel to it (perhaps because it is more about the tears than the rain or maybe just because it was a bit tighter in the rhythm). The thing I find so interesting with Blade Runner Blues in particular is that this organic feeling track is of course heavily synth based, it tells the listener (whether they realise it or not) “I am alive and yet I am synthetic” which makes it perhaps the beating heart of the entire soundtrack.
Of course the two most important pieces in any score are the opener that sets the mood for the entire film and the closing theme the audience takes home in their head as they leave the theatre. In this case the pair couldn’t be more perfect and they provide an interesting contrast. The opener is dramatic and epic, that gives few clues to the characters but immediately sets the scene for the world in which they live. The closing theme however is fast moving and insistent, implying action, perhaps because the story closes with Deckard and Rachael on the run, making it a lot more personal but also leaving the viewer wanting more and questioning what happens next. It also doesn’t hurt it’s the catchiest most memorable piece in the entire score.
End of Part Two
That’s it for my look at the movies production. There actually could be a whole lot more to discuss in regards to the tensions on set, the “T-Shirt Wars” between Scott’s “Xenophobia Sucks” and some crew members “Yes Guv’nor My Ass”, the pressure of the budget and deadlines and of course the disagreements between Scott and the movies producers. However that has all been very well covered in documentaries and really doesn’t help us that much in understanding what makes Blade Runner so great. Suffice to say some creative people thrive under pressure and with conflict and Ridley Scott usually delivers under such circumstances. Probably the biggest impact of all this conflict is the multiple versions of the movie and that I will get into with the final part of this deep dive.
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