To enjoy Blade Runner, you need only disregard, as far as possible, the actors and dialogue. (And the score) The script is another reworking of a threat to humans by humanoids —one more variation on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers theme.
Slovenly plotting and characterization, but consistently fascinating detail: exploitative violence and humanistic regrets: shallow formulas and philosophical questioning—this is the mix of banality and brilliance to be found in Blade Runner.
In this interview West Coast editors Blake Mitchell and Jim Ferguson talked to Syd about his career past and present, and specifically his involvement with the soon-to-be-released sf thriller, Blade Runner.
Doll and Faller assert that Ridley Scott’s film, Blade Runner, exhibits elements of two distinct pulp genres, film noir and science fiction. The genre cross-pollination is a reflection of Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, upon which the movie is based.
Interviews with screenwriters Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, industrial designer Syd Mead, production designer Lawrence C. Paull and director Ridley Scott. Articles & Interviews by Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier for Starlog magazine, November 1992 issue.
Ridley Scott’s film “Blade Runner” is rooted in the myths and legends of Western culture and draws on a number of genres including film noir and science fiction. Central to the plot, though, is the Genesis story of the creation and fall. Gravett examines the religious subtext of the film, and discusses Deckard and Roy Batty’s relationship in terms of the biblical story of Jacob and Esau.
Excerpts from an interview with David Dryer, one of three special photographic effects supervisors for Blade Runner along with Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich
“Films usually attempt to do the future by presenting a rather bleak, pristine, austere, clean look. It could go that way, but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to go the other way.” Ridley Scott is discussing his approach in directing Blade Runner, a detective thriller set forty or fifty years in the future.
At last, a studio executive who believes in science fiction. Starlog magazine interviews Alan Ladd, Jr.
Ridley Scott’s 1982 film ‘Blade Runner’ appeared just before William Gibson’s quintessential cyberpunk novel ‘Neuromancer’ was published in 1984, and the two share enough features that one might well retroactively call Blade Runner the first truly cyberpunk film.
The article discusses the contradiction between the two versions of the film, Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott.
Se gli androidi di Dick sono stupidamente malvagi come vuole il loro programma, non diversamente vanno le cose per i pochi esseri umani che incontriamo in questo paesaggio con rovine
Both in what it shows and in what is absent from it, Blade Runner (1982) deviates in morally significant ways from the 1968 novel by Dick on which it is based.
Late in his career, in the essay “Man, Android and Machine,’’ Philip K. Dick said the android is “a thing somehow generated to deceive us in a cruel way, to cause us to think it to be one of ourselves.”
One of the big questions in Blade Runner is “What does it mean to be Human?” John W. Whitehead has a look at this and related questions in Blade Runner couched in a view of the postmodern world.
Blade Runner (1982), review by Norman Spinrad for Starlog magazine, November 1982 Issue
Hampton Fancher believes ‘Blade Runner’, at its heart, is a love story between Rick Deckard and Rachael.
Essay about an ecofeminist perspective of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
At the end of Blade Runner, why does Roy Batty catch Deckard as he is about to fall?
Scott’s definitive Blade Runner: The Final Cut (2007, 117 minutes) was released by Warner Bros. on October 5, 2007. This is the only version over which Scott had complete artistic and editorial control.
by Michael Dempsey In director Ridley Scott’s $30-million noir thriller, Blade Runner, set in Los Angeles 36 years from now, sophisticated new robots known as