Blade Runner - Futuristic and downbeat crime fiction from director Ridley Scott.

Blade Runner (1982) was director Ridley Scott's follow-up to Alien and has proven to be one of the most popular and influential science-fiction films of all time, in the process it has become an enduring cult classic favourite. The film however, was originally a financial failure at the box-office after it received negative reviews from critics who described it as muddled and baffling.
Contextually, it was released in the same time period as Spielberg's E.T. (1982), an era in which the popularity of science fiction was closely tied to the original release of Lucas' Star Wars Trilogy

Based on the Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the ambitious, enigmatic, visually-complex film is a futuristic, noir crime fiction detective thriller with references to all its classical influences apparent. The storyline delves into the implications of technology for the environment and society by reaching to the past, using literature, religious symbolism and classical dramatic themes.

In meeting the alienated hero of questionable morality, the viewer gains access to an emotional portal in to an otherwise bleak, sterile portrayal of the post-modern psyche. With the beautiful femme fatale, airborne police vehicles called "Spinners", dark sets and locations the film creates a dystopian vision of Los Angeles in 2019. This imagery, along with the downbeat tone of the narration together act as another character and a work as a sublime method for progressing the narrative and developing the theme.

This tension, between past, present, and future is mirrored in the retrofitted future of Blade Runner, in which the high-tech and gleaming is juxtaposed against the decayed ruined imagery of an archetypal dystopian future. Many of the themes explored are an early example of cyberpunk concepts expanding into film.

The main character, Rick Deckard is played by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. Deckard is a world weary, former police officer who is reluctantly dispatched by the state to search for four androids, termed 'replicants' by Scott. The development of robotics and artificial intellgence has progressed in the world of Blade Runner to an extent that the androids are almost indistinguishable from humans and as such have been created with limited life spans, a built-in fail-safe mechanism to protect their human masters.

The genetically engineered renegades have escaped from the enslaving conditions on an Off-World outer planet. Driven by a need to understand emotion, the Nexus Models have come to Earth to locate their creator and have their questions answered.
‘It’s a not an easy thing, meeting ones maker.’
‘… and what can he do for you?’

Control over the environment is depicted as taking place on a vast scale, hand in hand with the absence of any natural life, extinct animals and species being replaced with their uncanny, synthetic counterparts. This oppressive backdrop explains the frequently referenced migration of humans to extra-terrestrial ("off-world") colonies.

Corporate power looms large, the police seem omnipresent, vehicle and warning lights probe into buildings and the consequences of huge biomedical power over the individual are explored - especially the consequences for replicants and their programming.

These thematic elements provide an atmosphere of uncertainty for Blade Runner's central theme of examining humanity. The replicants are juxtaposed with human characters that lack empathy, whilst the replicants appear to show compassion and concern for one another, at the same time the mass of humanity on the streets is cold and impersonal. The film goes so far as to put into doubt whether Deckard is a human and forces the audience to re-evaluate what it means to be human.