The weird thing was the obsession with robotic animals that's not in the movie at all. I think it was meant to underline the apocalyptic world where living things have mostly disappeared.

The best thing for me about blade runner is the visual style of the movie. It spawned an entire visual genre of cyberpunk and most cyberpunk franchises still lean very heavy on this. The darkness with neon, the 80s vision of the computer, the heavy branding and Eastern influences, the music etc.

It's still my favourite genre for techno party cosplay.

It's neat that the adaptation for Children of Men also did this, even though it's very much in the background.

Although I haven't played the game or read the book, the movie features a robotic snake, and there's dialogue about real snakes being very expensive. It seems reasonable that this would apply to other animals too.

What other alternative genres are out there?

Then again, the whole Jesus-was-an-Engineer subplot that was dropped from that film but still alluded to also makes me doubt that Scott's take would have been particularly "nuanced".

Actually, those are all good ideas. But other than Scanner Darkly, Dick's work has mostly attracted people interested in the pulpy science fiction ideas and not so much the existentialism and the critiques of mainstream religion. It's a bummer.