Blade Runner
I am aware that this is the type of movie that I should rant endlessly about. This is merely a movie, but similar to A.I. and other science-fiction work, there is a large and fascinating world around it, and many questions revolving androids are raised. Perhaps the huge following of the movie is injustified, but I rather had the impression that the movie only had two hours to show things that have enough potential of filling up easily a 52-episodes TV show. The characters’ past, their relationships towards each other, their inner conflicts, a lot of these things could have gotten better treatment in my opinion. Perhaps I should have read the novel to kill my thirst for more background information, but this is not the point. It’s just rare that I see a movie where I think the time frame of a movie is too restricted to do justice to the story.
Apart from that, there really are myriads of information about the film. Imdb, fansites and Wikipedia have enough reading for you to spend five times as much time on the reading than on the film. I read about the different versions of the film, and find the differences rather striking, although the main story was not changed, of course. I find it rather meaningful that they made the white pigeon fly into a dark sky instead of a light one (at the very end of this post) in the final version. I’m not sure what I would prefer actually. Apart from these details, there are also a lot of essays about the film, its different versions and its impact on science fiction.
Style-wise, Blade Runner is not exactly aesthetic. The dark cyberpunk film noir mix in it is rather creepy, but stylish at the same time, and all in all, I think I actually like it for its unique and distinct characteristics. I loved J.F. Sebastian’s toys, and perhaps he is generally my favorite character, because he was the only one of all of them who acted out of some sort of humanity. In general, I felt I have seen the style many many times in newer works; it looked very Battle Angel Alita-ish to me at least. Of course one cannot deny this movie’s influence.
Blade Runner is yet another movie that was not popular at its time, both at the box office and among critics, but became a classic later. Vertigo, Donnie Darko, Citizen Kane, One Two Three, A Time to Live and a Time to Die – there seems to be a lot of these cult films that had this “inpopularity in its first run” problem. (What are movie critics worth anyways? Sometimes I wonder about that…) Sadly, I rarely stumble upon films that were met with enthusiasm among critics at their times, but are now basically forgotten.
This is yet another one of those titles that I have bought because I felt bad about never having seen this classic. It is deservedly one, and I am curious both about the book and about “A Scanner Darkly” now.
I’d strongly recommend Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? because you’re absolutely right about how the two hours of screen time isn’t enough to address everything in the original story. The fact that Blade Runner is still as thought-provoking and enjoyable as it is, despite leaving out large chunks of the novel, is impressive in itself. A Scanner Darkly sticks much, much closer to its source material though.
I found Rutger Hauer’s final speech in the rain to be one of my favourite moments – his performance was excellent…come to think of it, I think this movie was Harrison Ford’s best too!
I also like the old story about how Ridley Scott drew from the sights of north-east England in his vision of the industrial cityscapes of the film – although many of the factories and whatnot surrounding Hartlepool and Middlesbrough are closed now, those things are literally just up the road from me!
Oh my, so with those cityscapes you must totally have even more of an identification potential with the movie. :) And Ridley Scott is indeed an interesting director – he did so many mainstream movies, yet has a certain distinct and artistic style.
I just found that “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is over 200 pages long, so yeah, I would expect it to have more content than the film too. I read a little about the book, like how Rachael and Pris have the same face and stuff – how intriguing!