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Blade Runner at 25, Why the F/X Still Matter
mattnyc99 writes "Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's dark vision of the future that changed the future of filmmaking and still stands up today, argues Adam Savage of The MythBusters (and the F/X crews of The Matrix and Star Wars). Between the "lived-in science fiction," pre-CGI master models, futuristic cityscapes and tricked-out cars, don't you agree? And after we got the first official glimpse of him from Indiana Jones 4 this weekend, isn't Harrison Ford still the man?"
http://props.steinschneider.com/blade_runner/bldru nbl.htm
What happened to it? I've been waiting for years now. The latest update here seems hopeful, but nothing since.. and it was suggesting a release in time for the 25th anniversary..
Still living with my parents 25 years on
The one thing that did distract from the movie was the extremely obvious wires holding up the spinner in several scenes. That's one "enhancement" I could stand the Special Edition DVD having.
"All this will be lost, like tears in the rain"
"Time to die"
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Oh, shit! Put a spoiler alert above that!
Let's not forget Blade Runner's completely smokin' Sean Young ...
there is no more perfect science fiction movie to me
the problem with most science fiction movies is that the sampling of the philosophical implications of their subject matter is too shallow (or they are outright fantasy riffs without any attempt at philosophisizing). you don't get that with a good sci fi book. a good sci fi book gets you to really think and wonder. a good science fiction movie just usually entertains you... sometimes entertains you REALLY well, but the thinking part isn't usually there
but blade runner really got to me. especially the scenes at the end, with deckard and batty, the movie collapsed all of the science fiction trappings into meaning: the essential human struggles with life and death and what is the whole damn point anyway? blade runner really sticks with you. every time i watch it i think of something new
i really don't know of a better example of how deeply a 2 hour scifi movie can really get to you in a deep way
well maybe contact, but contact comes second in my mind to blade runner
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...Harrison Ford's holding up pretty damn well.
Oh...what? Damn!
I'm not usually into movie trivia like this, but that was a pretty neat article. Their single-minded devotion to creating the exact prop from the film is a bit eerie, though.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
On today's episode of Mythbusters, Jamie and Adam examine the myth that a four-paragraph article should be spread across four pages.
One of the great questions of "Blade Runner" is whether Deckard (Harrison Ford) is, or is not, a replicant himself.
"Knowing" Phillip K. Dick (through reading most of his works) I think personally the answer is a yes, but the debate has raged on for a long time, at least when the subject comes up. Others say no, and that's the greatness of the movie: you can't be completely sure.
Read #14 of the Blade Runner FAQ here and ponder it for yourself.
For...
Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford have stated that Deckard was meant to be a
replicant. In Details magazine (US) October 1992 Ford says:
"Blade Runner was not one of my favorite films. I tangled
with Ridley. The biggest problem was that at the end, he wanted the
audience to find out that Deckard was a replicant. I fought that
because I felt the audience needed somebody to cheer for."
Against...
- Could you trust a replicant to kill other replicants? Why did the police
trust Deckard?
- Having Deckard as a replicant implies a conspiracy between the police and
Tyrell.
And so forth and so on...
What made Blade Runner great was what made Dark City, Liquid Sky and the Original Manchurian Candidate good sci-fi, realisim. Yes it had flying cars, but things were still pretty much the same, people still worked, took taxi's, wore semi-normal looking clothing and ate regular food. The haunting subtle differences are what made it future we could accept as real which in turn made the "dark" future all that more scary because we belived at least for a couple hours that it could happen. Having Ridley Scott at the helm didnt hurt much either.
In case you haven't seen it yet, the UK Channel 4 documentary On The Edge of Blade Runner.
REALLY looking forward to the super-duper-mega box set coming out, my HD to DVD conversion of the DC is nice but the 5.1 audio doesn't sound much better than the original 2.0 fed through Pro-Logic II, and getting a proper copy of theatrical version is going go to be great (no more putting up with the laserdisc transfer) - I just hope they don't copy Lucas and make it a 4:3 letterbox release like the OOT.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Ahh nuts, looks like they finally removed On The Edge of Blade Runner from google video. I take it as a sign that the DVD box set is definitely happening, they wouldn't want people watching their stuff for free when they know they can make people pay for it.
I still have my original VHS recording of it though.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
The visual effects stand up (unlike those snowalkers on SW V that really look jerky). The noir mix of futuristic and deco design seems to model the new-old mixes we have today. The Asian cultural mixes (we see those in Firefly as well) seem to properly project the history moving east to west that we see today. All these things stand up.
The horizon-less smoke stacks of dystopian so-cal eco-collapse do not age well. Same as the over-populated streets of NY in Soylent, where the city of Philadelphia was going to grow to the borders of NYC. The population of our evil developed world has plateaued. Our water is getting clean enough for the return of fish migrations. And in the midst of our Phila-NYC sprawl, we are getting the return of top predators bears and even cats (largely to the detriment of themselves if they manage to be seen), but top predators indicate healthy enough pyramids underneath, right?
German guy: So, Doctor Jones, boxers or briefs?
Indiana Jones: Depends....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Absolutely the right attitude, IMHO! A lot of the stuff in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep would be impossible to film in anything like a mainstream movie, I suspect. Mercerism? Buster Friendly? C'mon, it would either have to be camp or experimental. The book and the novel are totally different beasts. In this case, we have a brilliant novel and a brilliant movie. 'Nuff said.
BEST MOVIE EVAR!
If you were born before 1970, chances are you that you "get" why this is such a great film on so many levels:
1. Based on a story by the master of science fiction for the thinking person: Philip K. Dick (PKD)
2. Got the approval of PKD when he saw the portion that was in production before he died
3. It was the very beginning of the cyberpunk model for all scifi films in this genre to come.
4. Directed by Ridley Scott who has an incredible sense of visual artistry and does nearly everything very well
5. Soundtrack by Vangelis. Who better to do scifi soundtracks? Orchestral sound tracks are overrated, and the modern approach of using pop music is lame.
6. Excellent selection of actors and actresses well suited to the roles they played
7. Fun production glitches to look for (aka "easter eggs")
8. Any film about machines from an emotional perspective is exactly what *I* like. I LOVED A.I. But I saw it from a totally different perspective than most. I saw it from the perspective of a machine.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
One of the keys to Bladerunner's look was visual density. I recall a quote from one of the set decorators that they had emptied prop houses and junkyards for miles around to get the street scenes ready. When Ridley looked at it he said "That's a good start."
Movies that try to imitate the Bladerunner look fail because they lack the commitment and/or resources to achieve that same visual density. They end up looking like sets.
Alien was like a test run for Bladerunner's set design. The command area is very dense, control panels are studded with screens and controls, as well as personal items, signs that the area is in use and has been for some time.
After seeing Bladerunner in the theater when it first came out all other movies I see will be compared to it, and very few have come close to the strange combination of realism and science fiction, two words that should in a sense be mutually exclusive, but Ridley Scott brought them together better than anyone before or since.
Link to printable version without 4 pages of ads.
First God made idiots. That was for practice. Then He made Jack Thompson.
The guy who made the movie could argue that Deckard was a repressed homosexual communist dyslexic Jew, but since none of that is ever conclusively answered in the film it's still argument fodder. There's a world of difference between "what I meant" and "what I actually showed," y'know.
That said, Deckard's a robot and you're a douche.
I enjoyed "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - but the movie is a different story, only based off of Dick's novel.
The emphasis, as I read it, of Dick's novel was that no matter how real something seems, it is never as good as the real thing. No matter how realistically a replicant could look or act, it would never - ever - really be human.
The movie took the opposite stance. We created the replicants as slaves, but we made them too human - quite possibly "More human than human". Replicants were harsh, violent, and angry - which makes sense considering that they had the emotional experience of a 4 year old. They knew fear - not the reflexive mechanical fear of the book's replicants, but wild animal fear of a human who doesn't want to die. In the book, a replicant that knew it was screwed just gave in - in the movie, they did anything... anything they could... to escape and survive another day. I also don't recall replicants really caring for eachother in the book - whereas in the movie is was a primary driving force. The pictures they kept in the book were mostly to keep up appearances, while in the movie it was a sad attempt at building a past.
Also you have to admit - Batty as he was in the book wouldn't have been that memorable a villain. In the movie, he was one of the most memorable fictional villains ever. A ruthless poetic madman who was getting a crash course in emotions and ethics, and who didn't really understand life until the very end.
The book was good, but I'll take the movie any day - not just for cool factor, but because I feel the movie had far greater literary value (watered down as it was to suit the needs of a 90-minute action movie).
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
The reason that the effects were so good is that they were by and large accents, rather than fabricated whole cloth. Big flashy effects still look dated very quickly, because the technology is improving so rapidly. I'd go so far as to say that the original Star Wars series (4-6) will stand up better than the newer series because the limitations of the day forced them to use more "real" models, rather than quickly dated CG.
Blade Runner was subtle; it used environmental effects and models to create a sense of the future that the viewer could fill in with his own imagination.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
a good sci fi book will always makes you think and wonder about 100x more than a movie ever could. a book shares thoughts better than any movie, simply as an aspect of one medium versus another
however, like life, thought alone is nothing. thought must be combined with action in real life to have any meaning. we denigrate, for good reason, action without thought (in movies, politics, etc.). but i think the corollary: thought without action, is just as bad
the point being, movies are better than books. simply because sharing the audiovisual action and not just the thought has more meaning to a human being, it effects a more compelling impact than a book
a movie is an evolutionary advance over a book in mankind's ability to communicate ideas. you need more than thoughts. you need something compelling to give ideas impact and weight. and whether you like that concept or not, this is an aspect of human nature that won't be surmounted. out brains are wired for that kind of prejudicial emphasis on the audiovisual over unbound thoughts. movies simply carry more wieghts than books in terms of their ability to stay and impact you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You know, the widescreen *theatrical* version (some of us *like* the voiceovers) because Mr. Scott is pulling the same shit that Mr. Lucas does/did...only allowing us to see his "vision" of the film.
PITA that was.
That aside, the F/X are very good, and given that it wasn't done in CGI, more believeable and realistic IMO.
CGI attempts to emulate reality more cheaply than can be done by traditional F/X, but with the state of CGI advancing so rapidly, older CGI flicks look worse than if they'd been done the traditional way, and yet, even the most high tech and up-to-date CGI doesn't look as good to our eyes as reality, something about the way light bounces off things is my guess.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
. Their single-minded devotion to creating the exact prop from the film is a bit eerie, though.
Savage is (or was) a prop guy. That's what they do. I know one who made a working replica of the Logan's Run Blaster just for grins. (Working in that it spews green flames, not in that it terminates runners.)
Oddly, today I happened across some '04 Mayoral candidates that were given the Voight-Kampff test. (The Nexus 7 won.)
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Anyone wants to see what quality film is should go get SpaceBalls.
Rick Moranis's "Dark Helmet" is pure genius.
May the Schwartz be With You!
This is my sig.
One of the biggest is the cost of making something fake. Good CGI is expensive and a lot of it is edited with the attention of a hummingbird to cover up faults and the expense of it all. Blade Runner works not only because of the tangability but because it's not hidden away behind a pile of jump-cuts.
Does your sig apply here or was this one intentional?
Yes, Bladerunner was undeniably superb -- this from a guy that had already brought us "Alien", and was later to bring out "Thelma and Louise" -- both excellent films, but entirely different genres. And then he produces "Gladiator"... even with his track record of greatness, can we ever forgive him for this travesty?
"The movie was stupid. I'll take Jar Jar Binks any day, even, over this crap."
And what would you like for your tenth birthday?
Need Mercedes parts ?
or design?
Or are they the same thing?
One of the most convincing Sci Fi movies of all time was The Day the Earth Stood Still. The key to that movie is the relentless ordinariness of the sets, the way the scenes are short, and the actors (other than Michael Rennie whose phsyiogamy is a special effect in itself).
It seems to me that (relying on my twenty five year old memory of the movie) Blade Runner's hybrid noir/ginza landscape works in the same way, suggesting that the people who inhabit it are overstimulated on the outside and empty on the inside. The most human people are those who are the replicants, who at least aspire to something.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"When this movie came out, Reagan was President, the Cold War was on, and the real vision of the future was more about mushroom clouds rising up over all of Europe, Asia and North America. At least if the world was going to end, it wouldn't just burn out like BR did, it would go out in a blaze of manly glory."
And then what?
Read the book (but don't read too much of the wikipedia page if you want to avoid spoilers for it). I don't think it is clearly mentioned in the movie, but in the book the setting *is* post-nuclear war. That's why so many people are being encouraged to go to the "off-world colonies", and why the place is in such a dilapidated state (most people have left, and the weather is screwed up).
Ah, you're probably trolling anyway.
Sure, I guess way back in the day when Blade Runner came it, it must have been visually exciting to watch. But as a younger person, I only saw it for the first time last year. Personally, I find most of today's modern CGI movies to be the same or more interesting than Blade Runner.
/.'ers feel the same way? The only sci-fi movie that I can think of that I enjoyed from that pre-CGI era was Star Wars and Star Trek 2.
Do other younger
...Decker shot first?You kiddin' me? Decker always shot first.
Any sort of “Special Edition” release is only going to emphasize that point; he had a job to do, and it meant shooting at something. (Coincidentally, it looks/feels/acts human in every way, even down to the blood.)
If this were truly to fall in the footsteps of “Lucas-ized” video releases, then...
*Pray* that I am mistaken about any of these changes coming to pass. <knock, knock>
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Are you by chance a Hollywood producer? Just like them, you seem to think "science fiction" is just another backdrop for a story: one with cool-looking futuristic stuff and gratuitous robots. I call this the "Michael Bay" phenomenon.
On the other hand, most fans of real science fiction (the kind in books) are fans because of the interesting implications of technology extrapolated into the distant (or not-so-distant) future, the philosophical overtones, and the thought-provoking scenarios, and the unforgettable characters (Lazarus Long, anybody?).
All in all, I prefer "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" over "Podkayne of Mars"...and if you don't know what I'm talking about, then perhaps you should stick to watching Pirates of the Carribean 3.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
I thought A.I. was one of the best sci-fi movies, and IMO both a better film than Blade Runner and more philosophically provocative.
I guess I'm in the "hate it" group since I thought AI was a great example of the worst that sci-fi movies can be: ham fisted grandiose pop-philosophizing set against generally mediocre movie-making. It was just so damn trite and formulaic (not to mention boring).
I'm also curious how you can call it a great film, and then just throw out half an hour of it - great movies tend to be great all the way through. Admittedly, half an hour was only, what, like 1/8 of the damn movie?
sic transit gloria mundi
He never was a *man* he was a replicant.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, as movie sci-fi goes, I suppose. I thought it was just a story about killer robots. The film adaptation looked nice, and it was certainly dark and miserable enough to be taken 'seriously' by film critics at large, but honestly, I got the same message out of Terminator II. "Humans are paradoxical and life sucks after nuclear war."
I found Bladerunner's so-so handling of the psychopath angle disappointing. The scene where replicants were tearing legs off spiders without compassion was one of the more straight forward and insightful elements in the book. Too bad it got cut.
As science fiction goes, I thought The Matrix had more interesting things to say; and presented with enough camp to make the critics sputter in self righteous glory. Always a plus.
"Contact" was naive, but fun. I found, however, its blundering introduction of Occam's Razor into the public lexicon and its endless misapplication thereafter unforgiveable. --And that contact from aliens would become officially recognized public domain knowledge was almost too childish to swallow even for the sake of a ten dollar afternoon distraction. We've got crop cirlces right here, right now and the media and public at large prefer to look the other way blaming such an astonishing phenomenon on a couple of bozos with ropes and planks. That's reality. Jodi Foster all fumbling-cute with a clip board is a total pipe dream.
You're right, though, about sci-fi being better in book form. There are just so few writers who know how to think beyond the societal confines. Perhaps Philip K. Dick being a bit crazy is probably why he was able to do a passable job. Seems like a needlessly painful way of going about it though.
-FL
that the umbrellas in Blade Runner with the neon/glo-stick cores would have caught on in real life.. that was the one of those little things about blade runner that made it so appealing for me at least, much more so than the special effects, it was the atmosphere & aroma that the producers built into the blade runner future, you could almost smell what it was like in the era of replicants.
Props and in-camera F/X shots still hold up over time because they are shots of something real. What I mean is, a physical model has a depth and weight that a CGI model has difficulty replicating. Think of that Star Destroyer chasing Princess Leia's ship in the opening scene of A New Hope. Doesn't that Star Destroyer just "feel" huge and heavy? It lumbers across the screen as though it's a real flying fortress. Cut to the mega-ships of Revenge of the Sith. Yeah, they look great and fancy, but do they feel as "real" as the model ships of A New Hope? IMHO, no. CGI ships float in an unreal realm. Models have real depth and weight that translates to the screen as "real." Another example would be the puppet Yoda vs. the CGI Yoda. Which one is more real and true in your mind?
Also, consider the more modern pseudo-sci-fi movie Children of Men. Now there's a fantastic example of F/X and set design over CGI. Every shot feels like it comes from a real place because every shot is a "real" set piece or "real" in-camera F/X. Don't get me wrong, CGI has made movies explode into our imagination (Lord of the Rings, for example), but real models and in-camera F/X shouldn't be lost to the ages. Yes, they're more expensive and time-consuming, but the long-term effect is worth it.
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I love it! I'd love to see the candidates' reactions, however.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
...Ridley Scott confirmed it a few years ago, it was even a story here on Slashdot when it was confirmed. I did a quick search, but the years of Cruft in the database will not bubble it near the top no matter how I do the search.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Too bad they didn't try to do the 'gun' in the movie Logan's Run more like the gun in the novel..it was MUCH more interesting, and deadly. Having the homer fired at a runner was a nasty thing....would have made for interesting special effects watching it unravel his entire nervous system.
That was one movie where the book was SO far ahead of it better, that I almost wish the movie hadn't been made.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Original Article:t m
1 7
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/825641.s
Slashdot Story Pointing to article:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/09/20582
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Gentlemen, if he is, I think we may have just found the man who keeps giving Keanu Reeves new roles.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I was hoping to see some behind the scene photographs of Adam Savage working on this movie. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Actually, Vancouver is in the southwest of Canada. It's not really in the northwest of anything.
I was getting ready to give you some good mod points, but had a thought and decided not waste it. (You already have a lot, anyway.) In the book, I remember trying to find some feel that one type of being was better than the other, but PKD didn't seem to try to put that thought across. (Admittedly, it was more years ago than my teens have years since I read it.) Eventually, I think I just left with the feeling that perhaps neither was "better" than the other. That each had a relative value, which was established by the action of the character, not the essence of the being. Not a bad idea, I suppose.
Aye, those were the days.... and then it was 1986 and Aliens finally appeared.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
I don't have any mod points left, so I'll just say, thank you. You summed up everything I thought perfectly. There's really nothing else to be said, IMO. Great comment.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
This was expained in one of the Han Solo Trilogy books, about a young Solo working his way up the Hutt Syndicate.
The Kessel Run is close to the Maw, a collection of black holes, that is between Kessel, a prison/spice production planet, and Nar Shadda, the smugglers moon orbiting the Hutt homeworld. Because of the gravitational pull of the Maw, smuggler ships that pass between Kessel and Nar Shadda have to skirt around the black holes to avoid the event horizons (even if it would take infinitely long to fall in). Faster ships can run closer, shortening their time and distance.
But then I finally got to see it in the theaters (a special edition re-release), and was totally blown away. The DVD does not do the movie justice - the amount of detail within this film is staggering, even when blown up onto a large movie screen.
If it ever gets released in an art house by you, do yourself a favor and check it out. While a lot of the look has been copied many many times since then, so loses some of the innovative edge it had at release, its a totally different experience in the theater, with a good copy projected properly on the big screen
Look, I LOVE Spaceballs, but to claim it as greater than Blade Runner is lunacy. Thats right, lunacy! I said it! I dont care if your schwartz is bigger than mine!
Well, its not quite a mop, and its not quite a puppet, but man.. So to answer your question I don't know.
It is fair to say that Vancouver is in the Pacific Northwest, a commonly used name for that region of North America that includes the Columbia River Basin as it's center.
[Ego]out
Batty as he was in the book wouldn't have been that memorable a villain. In the movie, he was one of the most memorable fictional villains ever. A ruthless poetic madman who was getting a crash course in emotions and ethics, and who didn't really understand life until the very end.
That's interesting because Batty isn't a bad guy at all - what changes is our perceptions about who is good and who is bad. We are prejudiced against Batty because of what he was created to do, and all of the other replicants. We think that Deckard is the good guy - except that it was Batty, not Deckard, that showed mercy, love and compassion.
"Aren't you supposed to be the good guy, Deckard?"
In the end, the real monstrosity is mankind, willing to create a slave race of people who think, feel and remember just like we can - and then give them only four years to live and a single dreadful task to perform for that time - and be grateful to their Creator for this?
"I've done...questionable things" says Batty. This isn't a robot, its a thinking sentient being asking "Why am I here? Is this all there is?" But Tyrell couldn't see it. And we can't see it - until its too late.
Blade Runner is one of the greatest movies of all time - a genuine classic whose philosophical themes will be discussed for decades to come - long after trash like Indiana Jones is forgotten.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Hi. Thanks for your post; it brought back some memories from my youth. I agree, the book had a lot of stuff that would've been cool to see in the movie (and not just more of the gun). But from my memory of the book, a lot of it probably would've given the movie an "R" rating. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that it was only PG as it was. But things were different back in '76.
:-)
I still enjoy watching the movie to this day, though. Perhaps this is because it holds a special place in my heart... it was the first movie in which I ever saw a fully naked woman... and I mean fully!... and Jenny Agutter at that! Rowrr. At age 12, that makes an indelible impression.
Take it easy.
First android on film. http://www.scifidimensions.com/Feb01/metropolis.ht m
Actually, A.I. *could* have been at least an okay movie, had it not been for the absolutely dreadful "and he lived happily ever after" ending . If they'd just ended the movie with him dying in the ocean, I would've been much more impressed... but no, gotta cap it off with a happy ending!
It appears to be included but to me the voice over was key to the movie, it let us in his head.
I was supremely disappointed with the directors cut, yet the movie is so good I still would watch it.
What I would not give to see the follow up book made into a movie... then again part of me thinks all that the first movie had to say has been said
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Who modded me as a troll? I suspect a Blade Runner "fanboy." Is this what /. has come down to? If someone has a different opinion, and even writes it in a non-combative way, he is automatically modded as a TROLL?
/.'ers also felt the same way. Please tell me how this is trolling.
I stated I didn't find Blade Runner to be that great, mostly prefer today's modern CGI movies, and asked if younger
here
I think Bladerunner is a prime example that well done model-based SFX actually look better than CGI. Another example is the first Star Wars trilogy. If you look closely at the scenes in Bladerunner, they have a gritty quality, with plenty of film grain on the dark spots. CGI typically doesn't have this. I don't know if this is the primary reason, but the CGI in the newest Star Wars movies just looks too "perfect" and not real. Maybe they need to start reducing the picture quality, like intentionally bring in noise? If you look closely when you are in a dark room, your eyes actually exibit something like ISO noise. This is natural for any light-detecting mechanism, either biological or electronic. But this is lacking in CGI.
The real answer to "Is Deckard a replicant?" is "Does it matter?" The movie works better if you don't know for sure. Even the director's cut, which strongly hinted that he was, didn't make it certain; it just drew more attention to the possibility, whereas in the theatrical release many audience members might have missed the possibility entirely.
There was a PBS documentary on the other day (the name of which unfortunately escapes me) about the production design of various classic films. Apparently one of the reasons the street scenes in Blade Runner were so incredibly detailed is that during the early stages of filming, the screen actors guild in L.A. went on strike for 8 weeks or so. The only folks still able to come into work and that had anything to do with no actors around were the set-building crew and production designers, and left to their own devices they went nuts. Apparently "Ridleyville" (as the main street set was jokingly referred to) ended up one of the most intricately detailed in movie history by the time the actors came back to restart shooting.
Q.E.D.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
and Jenny Agutter at that! Rowrr. At age 12, that makes an indelible impression. :-)
And at 36 too...
That was one movie where the book was SO far ahead of it better, that I almost wish the movie hadn't been made.
There's a remake of the film that's in preproduction (last I heard, anyway) that is supposed to be much closer to the book in a lot of ways.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Somehow I never managed to see it until recently. I've seen all the other geek classics, but not Blade Runner, even though I was certainly aware of the movie. And I've read a collection of Philip K. Dick stories, too. So finally watched it Blade Runner last year (the Director's Cut--yeah, I know).
And, wow, was it a waste of my time. It's moody, it has nice special effects, but it's such a flimsy and boring show. I actually kept losing interest and hoping something would happen to move it along. The characters were flat. The ending was generic action movie stuff, but less exciting than most action movies, and I still cared nothing for the characters.
I don't understand the fawning all over this one. Please don't say it's "deep," and I'm too pop-culture. I watch art films all the time. I just don't get what makes this an interesting movie. In 1982, maybe, purely because the effects (think "TRON"), but today?
Strange - the take home message I got from the book was "what is the difference"? The lives, ambitions and purposes of the humans in the book were just as synthetic and imposed as the replicants fake memories. By the end of the book Deckard is pretty definitely real, but most of his life has been exposed as fake and/or a control method: the fake religion, the "mood organ" that lets you adjust your temprament to fit in, the fake DJ, the social pressure to keep an animal (even if its fake) the entire fake police station...
For me the biggest thing missing from the film was the details of the "Mercerism" religion, which make it clear that the VK test used to identify "andys" is mainly a test of religious orthodoxy, and the significance of replicant's inability to take part in the empathic "communion" that is central to the religion (and later revealed as electronic trickery).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
AI isn't great, it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy that Kubrick didn't do it, and it got stolen by that lame pop hack Steven Spielberg. In the hands of a better director, that basic story (minus Spielberg's lame aliens-save-the-day epilogue) could have offering a meaningful insight into the human condition. In Spielberg's hands, it comes off as trite and sanctimonious. Kubrick knew how to do subtlety. Spielberg has all the subtlety of a runaway freight train.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
> it was the first movie in which I ever saw a fully naked woman... and I mean fully!...
> and Jenny Agutter at that! Rowrr. At age 12
Age 10 here. She was my first "crank", if ya know what I mean. A huge, warm place in my heart.
That Logan got to live in a world where you could walk up to a woman and say, "let's have sex", and she probably would, shee-it. That didn't help any.
My favorite SCI-FI work, of all time, was Isamov's Foundation Trilogy. Heinlen is not even in the same league.
This is my sig.
Mods like Contact? WTF? Are you ALL on crack? IT SUCKED ASS! It wasn't just bad, it was dreadful. The kind of people that liked it are the kind of Sci-Fi dilettantes that liked The Matrix or Cocoon. Posers.
Waste your damn mod points modding this troll, it's my honest opinion. I don't give a rat's ass what someone dumb enough to like Contact thinks anyway.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
A movie is still artwork, not only books are. So, it may indeed have been closer to the book, but is is a material problem, not an artistic one. I mean: nothing says that if the director have gone out of his heartfelt way to imitate closer the original, maybe without getting that particular sense of it, thus having its own way.
There's not a scale of closeness to the original thats makes art good or bad. It's something else, and a heartfelt artwork will always be thousands times better than a half assed perfect copy. I wish the lord of the rings guy did knew that.
In the heyday of USENET I recall a thread on one of the rec.arts.movie... boards arguing that Deckard was a 57 Chevy. Wish I could find an archive of that thread.
This sig intentionally left justified.
> No matter how realistically a replicant could look or act, it would never - ever - really be human.
Come on, a Darryl Hannah or Sean Young wouldn't be a vast, many-league improvement to the already disturbingly adequate pr0n + Rosie?
Puh and leeze.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Part of what really set the movie apart is the great Vangelis soundtrack IMHO.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
I'll have to go rent it and watch it sometime in the next couple of days. I'll just lay off the espresso beforehand.
Redundancy is good And also good.
"Minority Report" - last half-hour = decent flick "War of the Worlds" - half-hour with Tim Robbins = decent flick
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
The book had too much of a "beat you over the head with the point" slant to it that really just puts me off. If I feel badgered by the point of a book (or movie or whatever) then I just cant get into it in the same way. Maybe this is related to the focus on religious themes, I don't know.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
...but in one of those detailed street scenes, the film shows its rings: There's a neon sign for Pan-Am Airlines.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Dick's book did focus somewhat heavily on the religious aspects of existance, or at least looked at it from a religious angle.
The movie didn't bring in any Spielbergisms when it dealt with replicant emotion, though. The few good experiences they knew were few and far between, and to a great extent the movie explored the darker side of humanity. Spielberg's movies, at least his later ones, mostly focused on very basic and clear-cut emotions. The movie targetted ones that are harder to portray - and not particularly pleasant to think about. The idea wasn't that androids had feels too - it was that we created something equal or superior to ourselves, then wondered why it turned against us. In this respect, the movie was closer to Faust or Frankenstein, rather than the original subject matter.
I really didn't consider DADOES to be a particuarly signifcant novel, at least to me. It was a very interesting story, and it dealt with powerful philosphical themes, but I've read far more stimulating work from Dick, let alone other authors. On the other hand, as far as sci-fi goes, Bladerunner was much more direct in it's philosophy. A movie can never compete with a book in terms of sheer content - an author has hours, days, and even weeks to get his point across, where a scriptwriter and director only have an hour and a half, as well as a crew and actors to pay.
I wouldn't literally consider any movie a literary masterpiece because it's a totally different media. However, movies do often have artistic value - at times even more so than most books, if done particularly well. In that respect, I think Bladerunner, once you shave away the flying cars, moody cinematography, and physical combat, had more total value as a story than the book did - if only because the core meaning behind the story provided a better reflection of humanity than the book.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
Aw shoot. I'm nodding and agreeing with you as I read your post and thinking "well said" until I get to your last line. Using the word trash to describe Indiana Jones...oops, okay, only the first one was worth sitting through. The next two made me nauseated.
Exactly. And that really needs to be the answer to all those purists who bitch about film derivatives of written works - they are different beasts and need to stand or fall on their own merits, without one slavishly referencing the other.
Man, my favorite movie of all time is 25 years old. All of the reasons that I love it have been stated above, so I won't reiterate. I hope they come out with this movie on Blu Ray disc. This movie in Hi-Def would kick ass. And I hope they do not change on damn thing. Not one damn thing, from the Final Director's Cut that is! :)
But seriously, while on the subject of dystopian futures and wonderful books, where is our movie version of Neuromancer? I want that story to be made into a movie with the quality of Blade Runner. Fuck The Matrix. Neuromancer is the cyberpunk legend. William Gibson needs to forget the Matrix was ever made and get on the screen play writing horse. That story done right would be glorious to behold in movie form!
Ridley Scott not that long ago confirmed that Decker was a replicant
That's good news - uncork a new model for them to use in making Indy 4.
I don't think that the book would transfer well to film. there's just too much sub text and the whole near-suicidal feeling of the book won't translate to film.
This is where that love-it/hate-it thing comes in, I guess...
(First off, I know you didn't say this, but it'll inevitably come up--those aren't aliens, damnit! They're advanced mecha. One of them is even the narrator; the movie starts with him/it saying "Those were the days when..." It's unfortunate that so many people never realized this, but on the other hand it clicks if you watch it a second time and then you get a lot more out of it.)
Many people have called the movie a fairy tale, and they'd be right to do so. But you can take that even further; it's a fairy tale that advanced mecha tell each other, long after humans have gone extinct. What parts of the last half-hour were real, if any? When he went back to his house that seemed both real and eerily artificial, the visuals suggested to me that it was all a vision in his head. They read his mind anyways; they might as well have been feeding him these images, even as he was really still half-frozen at the bottom of the ice excavation. The time-space continuum excuse especially sounded like a fabricated lie... Was it inevitable that David would be woken up by *something* someday, simply because he was not mortal? Perhaps there are thousands of discarded robots like him, buried inside the frozen Earth. The advanced mechas eventually dig out and feed a similar story to each that finally satisfies and terminate its program. Is this compassion between robots? Why do they do it? Are they trying to make robots dream, or are they saying that death is just another dream?
The movie asked a lot of questions about what it means to be human--similar to BR, but focused on love. I remember a particular review of A.I. (it had quite good reviews) that summed it up quite well and it seems to me the message of the movie: "To be real is to be mortal; to be human is to love, to dream and to perish." Perhaps that's why the advanced mechas gave him the choice. Hmm...
Anyways, personally I found that the ending was incredibly sad and not a happy one at all. I disagree that it would have been at all satisfying for the movie to just end on the ocean's floor, and for David to truly never "die." But you could take it either way, and stuff like this is why I found it so fascinating. And then of course there was the (first "mature") Alternate Reality Game/viral marketing that was really neat in itself. Ultimately, of course, it's up to your own experience.
I also like the name is made up of the letters of the four bases that make up DNA (AGCT). I dunno if that was a coincidence or not, but it's pretty nifty either way.
Dark? Yah, I suppose it's kinda dark if you're a replicant.
The movie is so predicable that it hurts and you'll be fighting to stay awake, but at least the ending is to your liking. I don't get why some many are cawing unhappy endings these days? When I watch movie I do it to be entertained, not to see characters suffer to the end.
I loved both the book and the movie. What was really impressive was that Scott was able to make a movie of the book, that didn't feel like it was following along just to be faithful to the source material, and yet still was able to tease out some meaning.
I also find it interesting that it is one of the few films where TV censorship actually adds something to the film. When the replicants finally confront Tyrell and Batty says "More life Fucker!". In the television edit, they change it to "More life father!"
Usually I hate the edited versions, but I think I like this more. It really brings thing back to the real point of the film, the human condition. Some how it also seems more angry. Here is this guy about to die, angrily confronting his father/God. He doesn't know what the point was and spent all his life as a slave, but in the end, he wants more. 4 years or 80 years, we're all here for a limited amount of time. Nobody knows when they'll die, and for many, it haunts them.
I'd almost guarantee what you saw was inferior and hastily remixed, 1992 "Director's Cut".
The director's cut is the only version shown on TV and is the only version to ever be made available on DVD.
I and many others find the original theatrically released version of Blade Runner to be a far superior film. The differences between the two versions are massive. Substantive changes are present in nearly half the scenes of the movie, including the ending.
Other than the huge shift in the ending, the key difference between the two cuts is the absence of the detective noir style voice-overs. All of Harrison Ford's voice overs were removed from the director's cut. Some claim the voice overs were put in over Ridley Scott's objections, but evidence at the time of filming strongly contradicts this. (see the excellent Paul Sammon book "Future Noir - The making of Blade Runner" for the specifics)
Plainly put, the voice overs give the movie a far different feel and do a far better job of explaining the environment in which the film takes place. Had I not seen the theatrical cut, I would have found the director's cut to be quite vague.
Do yourself a favor, search the bittorrent sites for the original theatrical cut. Or wait for the October release of the 25 year anniversary package. It's been reported that an HD version of the theatrical cut will be one of the included versions.
The original theatrical version is simply a much better film.
It was one of the first DVD I bought. I lended it to a friend before I actually got around to see it though. When I eventually got it back three years later after repeated requests, the cover was empty..
Now I'm holding out for the revised version coming out before I purchase it again.
It probably looks better than the real one, which I saw in the SF Hall of Fame last year. Helped me appreciate what it's like to be in an sf movie, pointing a little hand-sculpted piece of painted wood and trying to act like it's something real.
Would be cool if they had the original "About Logan's Run" featurette, that went on about the detailed city model with working monorail. Little did they know Star Wars was just around the corner...
I drank what? -- Socrates
It was not coincidence. Do they even say the word Gattaca in the movie? I don't remember them ever doing so.
Hang on. Didn't those movies suck? Maybe Adam is the film equivalent of Ted McGinley?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Gattaca is the name of the corporation that he is working for.
Oh wait, you didn't like the movie...
I lost my sig.
Wish I could find an archive of that thread.
You mean this one?
(Shows up as the first link when you search for 'deckard 57 chevy' on groups.google.com)
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's dark vision of the future..."
Wasn't it Phillip K Dick's dark vision of the future?
Well, the Jar Jar Binks was a little over the top. But, it was an over the top reaction to a movie that, really, when it came out, was a total flop with a bad ending. Blade Runner had stunning visuals, of that there is no doubt, but as a movie, released to my generation, most people didn't like it. Even my film professor made fun of the ending. So, take BR for what it is, a lot of great eye candy, without much more. If you look at it in the right way, it really is just another gloomy Phantom Menace. If you made Jar Jar really depressed, chain smoking and a bit noirish tipsy, he would actually be pretty cool, and he would fit right in BR. Meesa want another smoke!
This is my sig.
Actually, A.I. *could* have been at least an okay movie, had it not been for the absolutely dreadful "and he lived happily ever after" ending . If they'd just ended the movie with him dying in the ocean, I would've been much more impressed... but no, gotta cap it off with a happy ending!
A kid committing suicide? Come on now, that is too much. And it was not not quite "happy". He had only one day with his mom. It was a kind of compromise. I think the film failed for other reasons.
Table-ized A.I.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
What is this? Advertising? Yeah thanks for the awareness of the latest blockbuster did you get $$$
Weird. I'd never watch it for the eye candy.
I lost my sig.
Can I recommend the Director's Cut? When there's less talking over the scenes, it makes you think more.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I meant that Indiana Jones is relatively speaking worthless trash compared to the sublime classic that is Blade Runner.
I enjoyed the first Indy too, but it doesn't age well. Blade Runner, for me, improves with age like a fine wine. Every time I watch it, I see a subtly different film, because I realise that the prejudiced one is me.
Deckard (of Rachel after testing her with the machine): "How can IT not know what IT is?"
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
If not to solely kill the god awful someone-shoot-the-continuity-guy fuckup where the doctor (Xander Berkley) is shown holding a test tube (that fake-Jerome is actually hiding about his person at that moment in time) instead of the syringe that was just handed back to him. Actually confused me the first time i watched the film about what was going on, even though the editor probably thought "meh, it's just a 0.5 second edit, no one will notice"
Still, one of my favourite films overall, not just SF. Just goes to show that something needn't be flawless to be brilliant
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Why trash Indiana Jones when there is a plethora of bad movies to choose from for you example. Indiana Jones was a phenomanaly groundbreaking movie for it's day and not soon forgotten. If you want to pick on Lucas, why not the last 4 Star Wars movies for example?
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
"The emphasis, as I read it, of Dick's novel was that no matter how real something seems, it is never as good as the real thing." One Sean Young replicant, to go, please.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
People were wrong.
... and then they built the supercollider.
You are Jeff Murdoch, and I claim my five pounds.
Hey guys, I live in Shanghai now, and this city keeps reminding me of the Los Angeles portrayed in Blade Runner... Especially if It rains! It even has talking screens on boats and zeppelins and stuff... Look at that picture and you might agree: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=537350642& size=l
Just thought I should share that...
Unless you are being deliberately coy, you clearly know virtually nothing about the subject you are condemning. This is very common, but wow. What a shame! Most Slashdotters, I would guess, spent a lot of time wishing to experience the very thing which is now passing right under their noses. It's tragic when the curiosity of youth is co-opted by misplaced cynicism and willing blindness.
Honestly. This is worth investigating. There's even a good documentary on the subject. I found a copy at BlockBuster, (of all places)!
-FL
Actually in the original release there is a very subtle scene that, in my opinion, tells you that Deckard is indeed a replicant.
Deckard sits down to play the piano with Rachel and together they play that piece together. Given the fact that both new that same piece I take it as pretty convincing evidence that they both had the same memories implanted.
Also, watch the first scene where the head cop is trying to get Deckard to come back. It is obviously strained. This guy knows that there Deckard has memory implants and is forcing himself to play the part.
Remember nothing in a movie is an accident.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Shouldn't the line, "Ridley Scott's dark vision...." read "Ridley Scott's version of Phillip K. Dick's dark vision....".
-Clio
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Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Am I the only one that thinks Douglas Trumbull does not get enough credit for this film? It may have been Scott's vision, but it's really Trumbull who manifested it in the form that we still rave about today. We're talking the man who gave us the experiences in 2001, Close Encounters and Brainstorm. I'd say that he set the bar for visual F/X prior to CGI. BTW if you happen to be in the NYC area, I suggest checking out the Museum of Radio & TV in Queens because they have the original Tryell Corp building model.
Indiana Jones is trash? If i had points i'd mark this as overrated, because it sure as hell is not insightful. More like pretentious. The post is fairly intelligent, aside from the bit of snobbery at the end.
Opinion != Facts.
Just because something isn't subtle, deep and symbolic doesn't mean it lacks value. And just because you are too stuck up to find value in the IJ series doesn't mean that others don't find it.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
And it was not "inventing material". They were incredibly advanced compared to the boy. It was obvious he would never be part of their society. He was more like a zoo exhibit.
And I don't think he was necessarily unconscious the whole time he was underwater. At the end, yes. But who knows how long he sat there underwater before his circuitry failed...
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Not much substance in the Savage article. So why exactly did the effects work where no computer effect since then has? Was it the film stock? Was it the lens type? Was it the project planning?
So says Spielberg and the people he paid off.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
But, one thing is for sure, whatever the Kubrick version would have ultimately looked like, the Speilberg version is undeniably shit. Steven don't do ambiguity and he don't do dark endings. Kubrick was Kubrick, Speilberg is Hollywood.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.