Blade Runner

Although not successful on its initial release in North America, Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner (1982) is now considered one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. Loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), the film embraces the author’s cyberpunk style: the characters are not heroes but ordinary people trying to escape from a difficult or complex situation in a bleak and disfunctional world.

The film is set in Los Angeles in 2019. The Tyrell Corporation builds ‘replicants’: artificial humans build to perform demeaning jobs on Earth’s Off-World communities. The replicants believe they are human and are perfect in every way, except that they have an expiration date and their memories are not real but implanted. Discovering this, a group of replicants escapes to Earth with the intention of persuading their creator to expand their lifespan. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a semi-retired Blade Runner – essentially a bounty hunter – is enlisted to kill them.

Despite its faltering start, Blade Runner became a cult hit in Europe and through video rentals eventually recovered its costs. It made stars of its then-unknown supporting cast, including Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah. Scott, however, was never happy with the original version, in which the studio had forced him to add a Raymond Chandler-style narrator’s voice-over and a happy ending. In the Director’s Cut (1992), he removes both elements, staying truer to the original story.