Movie Rundown: Blade Runner (1982)

This seminal Science Fiction classic needs careful watching to enjoy but it's worth the time.
By J. Delano

From YouTube - Fair Use

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Parental Advisory:

- Some partial top nudity while Zhora was dressing up.

- Batty crushes the head of a person in a gruesome scene

     In the movie, 2019 was just like any year.  You can get great street hawker bites in the alleys of Los Angeles while you bask in the neon glow of a gigantic electronic billboard featuring a geisha selling cosmetics.  A large dirigible acts like those sports blimps but it offered deals to off-world or beyond-Earth real estate all the while flipping its perimeter lights in order for it to stay clear of the city's buildings.

     Off-world sounded cozy.  However, the cops knew of a Replicant uprising a few years back.  Replicants are bioengineered robots that resemble human beings made by the Tyrell corporation to do tasks humans are unable or unwilling to do.  You know, like Titanium mining on Saturn's moons or prostitution.  The newest Nexus 6 version was really close to the real deal, human-like.

     On the onset, it looks like just another streaming site feature.  You have to understand though that 30 years ago there were a few of these movies.  Spaceships would be gray metallic and you had a robot as somewhat of a pet.  Science Fiction or basically the future as we saw it was usually positive to a degree like the upgraded Star Trek the Motion Picture or TV shows like Lost in Space.  Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977 was an exciting space opera set in a galaxy far away and also far from the roads and farmlands of Earth.

     Then there were those few SF movies that mashed up poetry, style and muck.  Schaffner and Heston's 1968 Planet of the Apes was one, penned by Rod Serling, the writer of the Twilight Zone.  And then Blade Runner came out in 1982 and it was soy sauce dour at first.  By the time you came of out of the movie theatre, it settled in like chocolate cake.  

     The first thing that was satisfying was the movie had something familiar for the viewers, the film noir tone.  This then placed Blade Runners as one of those neo noir or science fiction noir movies together with The Terminator.  The disdainful detective, the off-beat case, the steamy or in this case the rainy city streets were part of the story, because there's something wrong in the city.  In this case, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is the cop that sought out the Replicants and retired them.  On the other hand, the Replicants weren't replacements for normal but a counterweight for the suspense. 

     The cop-and-robber dynamic wasn't far from the novel the film was adapted, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? although it didn't follow the book as much.  Nonetheless, Dick has a knack of digging into the mystery that needs to be solved or asking deeper questions on existence and consequences.  Director Ridley Scott and writers Hampton Fancher and David Peoples did the rest by breathing life into it making a thought-provoking movie.

     Next, the Replicants give us a proposition.  The four who flew back to Earth were attempting to survive.  Physically and intellectually gifted, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Pris (Daryl Hannah) and the others knew that only their Maker, Dr. Eldon Tyrell, can extend their four year shelf life.  On the other hand, Rachael (Sean Young), who was supposedly Tyrell's niece, goes to Deckard to prove, perhaps to herself, that she's human and not a Nexus 6.  Being autonomous machines, somehow they are acting like humans, including the flaws.  Are they more than just machines?

     Where do Dr. Tyrell (Joe Turkel) and J. F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) fit in this puzzle?  Both brilliant loners, the two were the principal head and hands making the product, with the help of other contractors like Hannibal Chew (James Hong).  However, it was Tyrell who coded their DNA to end its host's life and he told Batty when he confronted him it was irreversible.

     Which brings us to that "like tears in the rain" scene with Deckard and Batty.  Contextually, you have to go back to when Batty broke Deckard's fingers.  Also, I'm skirting the other, bigger fan theory because frankly I don't know the definitive answer to that.  

     Batty was already near his shelf life and was dying.  He can't do anything about it.  On the precipice of a building, faced with a decision, Batty chose something above and beyond.  Then, nearing the end and Deckard lying confused in front of him, Batty sat on the balcony floor as a heavy drizzle fell.  He meditates on his memories and voices it out.  Now that's really good chocolate icing, that a supposed robot contemplated on its own experience and death.  The movie version where Deckard narrates said that Batty began to love life more but tragically it was at his end. 

     Lastly, if you ask me, it's better that Deckard isn't what the theories say he should be, despite which version you've watched.  The first three studio versions of the movie or the last two Scott-approved versions may perhaps tow us into opposite conclusions.  Although, with or without a sunny ending, a human can carry those deep memories and trinkets to future, or at least til 2049.

About the author

J. Delano is an amateur photographer, story buff and occasional CPR stand-in.