> I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket
BR largely created that bucket.
Spoilers:
If, as depicted in the original release, Deckard is human and Rachael is a replicant, then the movie is a true love story. The message of a true love story is that the Other is as deserving of love and dignity as I am. It's the message of Romeo and Juliet, Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird, to name three offhand.
Whether your allotted lifespan is four years or threescore and ten, if you understand that you don't know how much time you really have, then you are entitled to the full measure of decent regard and respect the melancholy of that understanding earns. Batty bought that respect for Deckard and Rachael's sake. Thus the original ending is moving, and completes the film's overall themes.
If Deckard is also a replicant, as subsequent versions try to establish more and more explicitly, then of course he's going to want to be with Rachael. It's a no-brainer, it's no sacrifice, and there's no moral revolution of the characters. In which case I don't really know what the movie is supposed to be about. Boy robot meets girl robot, boy robot loses girl robot, boy robot gets girl robot? Boring. Definitionally cliché.
I suppose the realization of it is supposed to be some kind of shocking twist, but to me it simply empties the film of meaning.
It's a really fascinating look at tech that's gone so far we really don't know how to identify the difference, or it's more than possible at that point there isn't one. The sentient AI isn't some super machine that's going to build the singularity. It's "artificial" people forced into short lived slavery in a world that couldn't begin to give a damn about it.
Of course, if Deckard is a replicant, then that interpretation goes out the window, and BR is just another forgettable sci-fi plot twist movie. And since Ridley Scott seems to think so, the movie is now ruined for me -- I have never watched the sequel, because it is just too painful to watch the original movie that I loved be destroyed.
I saw a movie that wasn't just a new visual style for 80's cyberpunk, it was so much more.
Larry Niven, for example, was a pioneering sci-fi author over many books but most of these books aren't great. Ringworld, for example, was one of the earlier works to talk about megastructures and the efficiency of living area per unit mass. The structure itself doesn't make sense (ie it would be torn apart by centrifugal force) but it's an important idea.
Neuromancer gets mentioned a lot in this particular genre. It too was groundbreaking but it's actually not that great of a book. Still, the groundbreaking aspect feeds into nostalgia, particularly if you read it when it came out. I feel like a lot of the BR hype falls into this same bucket. That's really all I'm saying.
BR created the visual dystopian cyberpunk world of the future without focusing on internet/online things...
Neuromancer changed and set the tone for the internet to come.
The thing is, that at 47, MANY MANY MANY of my contemporaries and peer grew up in the 80s with these concepts for which they said "wouldn't it be cool if...." <--- and then we went about building all this shit.
Its the nerds of the 80s that have all worked to make the cyberpunk-esque current systems we have, and the evil corps as described in both have come to pass.
This is why I like the idea of solarpunk. And yet, cyberpunk brings conflict/struggle which makes it interesting.
Solarpunk so far seems like a boring utopian dream. While I'd rather that in my future, it won't sell or interest people.
Combined with William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It was a combined effort.
Then again, I do think this is a case of the "if you'd only seen it at the time!" I saw 2001 A Space Odyssey recently for the first time, and while I really appreciated the practical effects, compared to fast paced, exciting movies made in the past 20-30 years it was boring and utterly baffling. Time passes, things change, the fact is not everything is for everyone, and assertions of "Thing X is the greatest of all time" are and always will be nonsense.
I'm not sure about that. It definitely would have been more interesting if I saw it when it was novel, but the biggest fans of it always say I'll love it if I just watch cuts that came out a lot later.
Blade Runner seems to age like wine, and becomes more poignant with each re-watch.
It has a good pace, amazing visuals, asks tough questions, has some really good action sequences, etc.
Of course, everyone is looking for different things in movies and the experience is highly subjective.
Blade Runner will always be one of my favorites - right there with Contact, They Live, Jurassic Park, and other top-notch SciFi films.
If I may add: the score produced by Vangelis.
IMO, much depends on when you were born.
When it came out, Blade Runner was truly something else and rode in on multiple deep cultural vibes of that era (e.g. Japan, Vangelis's synth music, etc...).
Second, the book it was based on (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_...) was also quite unique in the SF genre of that era, as was the author (Phil K Dick).
The thing is : on top of that, amazingly enough, the visuals / art direction has aged rather well, going from what was a futuristic vibe at the time to something that now looks steampunk-ish.
I must confess to being boringly average when it comes the Blade Runner: I do love the movie, and it is certainly in my top ten sci-fi movies list.
That said, I really liked both at the time.
Apocalypse Now wasn't a flop and had a reasonably good critical reception at the time (although Brando's performance was criticized) but overall it was seen as pretty middle of the road among Vietnam War and Vietnam War-adjacent (e.g. Born on the Fourth of July) films. Being seen as a great film by many mostly came after its initial release.
Yutani is a Japanese name, Weyland-Yutani sounds like the merger of an Occidental and Oriental firm.
I was not supporting the Japanese xenophobia zeitgeist idea vis-a-vis the names, I was indicating that the name itself (in Blade Runner) did not support it and indicating that from the source material of the book it was not supported.
Probably a combination of both to represent the Axis, in the book even the Soviets are also still around and the Cold War actually went hot, which is what lead to thermonuclear WWIII that left Earth increasingly inhabitable.
Interestingly enough, the screens in the film 2001 were all flat - because they were rear projection screens, with film or slides projected onto them.
Even if not keyed, the rear projection would have worked too. Doesn't matter I guess. I didn't realise 2001 had flat screens! Good pickup.
This is a super interesting critique of basically everything cyberpunk, that I've only recently come across. I still don't totally buy the xenophobia angle, because to me it just came across as a projection of hyper-corporate/capitalist. Like it's an extrapolation out from where we were, but the problem isn't that it's foreigners, it's that it's hyper-capitalist. In blade runner the world has been globalized to the point where we don't recognize downtown LA, but that's not actually what's wrong with the world - big faceless corporations and environmental destruction are what's wrong with the world. While the environment itself is heavily influenced by asian imagery, Tyrell and Weyland-Yutani aren't very strongly coded asian. i.e. Tyrell is run by an Elon Musk type engineer-ceo, and Weyland is a decidedly white name to go along with the Yutani part.
I'm still digesting this idea tho, I definitely need to re-watch with this in mind. There is definitely some playing with xenophobia there, just... how much? and is it re-enforcing it, or is it challenging it?
You cannot separate art from the time when it was created. It's why you see a lot of countercultural themes in 1960s movies, for example.
Some of my favorite pieces of art are deeply flawed. What's important is understanding what ideas they contain, so you don't just uncritically and subconsciously believe those ideas. The xenophobia in cyberpunk idea is jarring to me because I wasn't really aware of it, and if it is there, it means I have some unexamined biases that hid it from me.
In Blade Runner? I don't recall that... don't they kiss, and then it cuts to next scene. They still have their clothes on, standing by the door!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IjO8wsjPqbg
It’s… unpleasant, at best.
But you’re right it’s not exactly a “sex” scene, since any sex is implied
They proceed to kiss each other, and consensual sex is then implied.
It's zero.
Why aren't you getting your moral radar in a spin about the numerous violent and aggressive scenes in this or any movie? The real world has a huge problem with violence and guns after all.
I presume you eat popcorn as people or replicants are shot and killed on screen, or when poetic, philosophical replicants crush the skulls of their maker humans.... but draw the line at a coercive kiss? That's when you put the popcorn down?
Fiction movies are not real-life benchmarks or instruction manuals for life. Characters are flawed, scenes shocking, stories twisted. Deckard is not Dr Richard Kimble. Deckard is a "killing machine" in a dark sci-fi movie. His pre-kiss tantrum was him as Mr Nice Guy relative to his other actions.
British Leyland was a car company which broke up shortly after Alien came out. The implication in the W-Y name is pretty clear: A Japanese company bought out Leyland.
[0] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
Edited for clarity and language.
SPOILER WARNING
To understand the plot structure (such that it is) in Interstellar, you have to start with the writer's desire for the emotional ending of the main character with his daughter, who is now old. Everything that happens in the movie is a really forced way to reach that outcome.
The whole watch time-travel thing was more of that illogical nonsense in service of that conclusion.
The time dilation to make all this happens just doesn't work that way. You have to get to a significant percentage of c before time dilation becomes really noticeable. For example, at 0.9c you're still only at ~2x time dilation [1].
The gravity effects of the black hole don't make sense either.
The "science" of Interstellar is no more realistic than Star Trek or Starship Troopers.
Possibly you’re confusing stellar mass black holes and super massive black holes?
Time dilation doesn’t only occur at high velocities, so your link focusing entirely on velocity is accurate, but I think not really relevant.
The physics was pretty reasonable for the time dilation. Possibly off by an order of magnitude or so, but not ridiculous on its face.
Except for the wormhole.
Could have stood to be a full hour shorter, though.
When I watched Inception for the first time I walked out of the theatre in love with that movie (and I still am), but, leaving Interstellar I felt confused and underwhelmed.
Perversely I think I was actually very overwhelmed by Interstellar because after seeing it many times in the almost a decade since it came out (oh my god how has it been 10 years) it's become one of my favorite films, but, there is just so much going on that it was difficult to connect with it on the first viewing.
Blade Runner is a great movie for its time and it has inspired a lot of artists. It is a Noir (Sci-fi), and the type of movie that only adults would appreciate, due to its storyline. If you are under 25, probably it is not a good movie for you.
Same with 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came much earlier. any other movies of the time.
Also Interstellar is very unique in one major aspect: They had to model true science (and maybe made a discovery) when they modeled the look of light around the super massive Black Hole. 5 years later, the real black hole halo pictures came out, and the movie got it spot on.
You might not like the story, but good movies like that try to predict the future. They often miss, but sometimes get it right. Blade Runner deals with AI, Androids, and the question of 'What is human'. We might face this issue if General AI becomes a thing 50 years down the road.
I have the same "am I crazy?" thoughts with Blade Runner. Unlike coffee it's not bad (subjectively). I just don't get the hype.
It's a product of its time too. I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket where the noir surroundings and mega corporations are a product of xenophobia, basically. There were genuine fears the Japanese were "taking over". And Blade Runner reflects this zeitgeist. In Blade Runner it's the Tyrell Corporation. In Aliens it was the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.
Rutger Hauer did give a good performance and there were some good lines [1] but I'd never put it in my list of top films. Not even my list of top sci-fi films. It is better than Interstellar though, which is trash, so there's that.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRxHYHPzs7s