Blade Runner

I finally saw my first Blu-Ray movie today, and I watched the immortal classic Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford. I know it is kind of weird to consider Blade Runner a "classic", but the movie was made in 1984 and is 26 years old.

(For the folks that don't know what a Blu-ray disc is, it is essentially a DVD in high definition.)

The Blu-Ray version is like watching a completely new movie. The high-definition makes Blade Runner look like something that was released this past summer. The special effects, which in 1982, were ahead of its time, still holds up, even in the face of the plethora of big budget CGI movies. I have only seen the movie on various VHS tapes and cable showings, so I have never experienced it so clear and crisp. I wonder if even the original showings in the theaters looked like this.

Blade Runner takes place in 2019 Los Angeles where mankind has built androids that replicate human features but are more capable in doing manual labor. They are called replicants, and are built with only a 4 year lifespan to keep their numbers smaller. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a type of detective that specializes in hunting down rogue replicants. He is a Blade Runner. On Wikipedia, part of the concept is attributed to the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall (great), Minority Report (awesome), and Next (terrible).

The replicants have developed their own emotions and are trying to extend their own life. During the movie, I actually felt sorry for the replicants as their are slowly gunned down by Deckard. Their own memories are impants and artificial so they feel that they down have their own identity. The movie calls to mind the common Sci-Fi theme of "what is real?" and "what makes us human?".

What makes this movie an absolute classic is the setting and atmosphere. It seems to be an essentially crime-noir genre film set in the future with androids. If that doesn't sound completely awesome, then I don't know what to say. Harrison Ford retains the charisma from Han Solo and makes Deckard an even more distant and cold version of himself. What you'll notice when watching this movie is that a lot of things in future Los Angeles is in Japanese. Remember that the movie was made in the early 1980s when America was fearing a global Japanese takeover, which obviously didn't pan out. I wonder if Blade Runner was made today if everyone would be speaking Chinese (ala Firefly).

My favorite special effect shot is when Deckard is waiting in his car, doing what crime-noir detectives do (evoking pathos). Suddenly, there is a police car that zooms from up above (in the future we have flying cars), and instructs him that he is in a restricted zone. Harrison Ford identifies himself as a Blade Runner and the policeman acknowledges and flies away. The car flying away let an indeliable image in my mind when I was a child. I actually believe that cars could do they, and my drawings were filled with numerous flying cars that operated in the same way.

The city of Blade Runner greatly inspired my imagination. Whenever I read a book or thought of my image of a futuristic city, I immediately thought of Blade Runner. It is weird, being the immense Star Wars geek that I am, I do not dream of Mos Eisley or Cloud City, but instead I wonder about living in the nitty gritty Los Angeles of 2019.