The Blade Runner Experience

The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic

Will Brooker

• Publisher: WallFlower Press
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9780231501798
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Since its release in 1982, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, has remained a cult classic through its depiction of a futuristic Los Angeles; its complex, enigmatic plot; and its underlying questions about the nature of human identity. The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic examines the film in a broad context, examining its relationship to the original novel, the PC game, the series of sequels, and the many films influenced by its style and themes. It investigates Blade Runner online fandom and asks how the film's future city compares to the present-day Los Angeles, and it revisits the film to pose surprising new questions about its characters and their world.

SECTION 1: THE CINEMA OF PHILIP K. DICK

REEL TOADS AND IMAGINARY CITIES: PHILIP K. DICK, BLADE RUNNER AND THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE

AARON BARLOW

‘The electric things have their lives, too.’

– Rick Deckard (Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

Two intertwined strands of science fiction cinema, one focused on ‘the spectacle of production technology’ and the other on ‘the impact of technology’ (see Landon 1992), are represented in Blade Runner by director Ridley Scott’s creation of a fulsome future landscape and by author Philip K. Dick’s considerations of problems resulting from human creations. This combination has helped reshape the genre, influencing the likes of Brazil (1985), Akira (1988), La cité des enfants perdus (1995), Strange Days (1995) and Dark City (1998).

The ‘standard’ vision of the city of the future now comes from the Los Angeles that Scott and his ‘visual futurist’ Syd Mead created for Blade Runner, a city Scott Bukatman calls ‘a richly layered futurity … which exists solely to present this urban space both bewildering and familiar’ (1993: 132). Even the planet-covering city of Coruscant in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) echoes the Los Angeles of Blade Runner.

The separate influence of Dick is just as extensive; six science fiction films – Blade Runner, Total Recall (1990), Screamers (1995), Impostor (2002), Minority Report (2002) and Paycheck (2003) – come from his fiction. His influence can be found in The Truman Show (1998), Donnie Darko (2001), Vanilla Sky (2001), Mulholland Dr. (2001) and A Beautiful Mind (2001). In each of these, the ‘reality’ depicted proves untrustworthy, as it often does in Dick’s fiction.

The extraordinary impact of Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott, both separately and combined in Blade Runner, can be illustrated by a quick look at one of the Internet lists (randomly selected via a Google search) of the top ten science fiction movies of the 1990s, this one compiled by James Oehley for The Sci-Fi Movie Page (with my comments in brackets):

1. Twelve Monkeys (1996) [showing influence of Dick, but with additional influence coming from Scott. The screenplay was co-written by David W. Peoples, who also co-wrote Blade Runner].

2. The Matrix (1999) [showing strong influence both of Scott and Dick].

3. Starship Troopers (1997).

4. Contact (1997).

5. Strange Days [showing influence of both Dick and Scott].

6. Dark City [showing strong influence of both Dick and Scott].

7. Terminator 2 – Judgment Day (1997) [showing some influence of Scott and perhaps more of Dick].

8. Star Trek – First Contact (1996).

9. Total Recall [showing strong influence of Dick and some of Scott].

10. Cube (1997) [showing influence of Dick and some of Scott, particularly through his Alien (1978)].

Seven out of the ten movies listed are clearly influenced by both the ideas of Philip K. Dick and the vision of Ridley Scott, and at least six owe a debt to the combination of the two in Blade Runner. Oehley’s Ten Worst, on the other hand, includes no movies with a clear link to Dick, though a few, like Batman Forever (1995), do echo or parody Scott’s vision of the city of the future.

The vision of Scott coupled with the ideas of Dick provided a new dynamic for the science fiction film genre, taking it away from its early focus on technology. Scott’s utilisation of film noir aesthetics, Dick’s questioning of perception, Scott’s complex film worlds, and Dick’s unease with technology all show up consistently in science fiction film today, moving the questions considered from ‘our things’ to ‘us’. Because of these two creators, questions on the value and meaning of humanity and the place of ‘reality’ in life will long continue to concern science fiction filmmakers.

Film noir’s sense of pervasive and impending doom is evident in Blade Runner, in look, narrative structure and, according to Vivian Sobchack, ‘its enunciation of the future’ (1987: 248). It helps Scott pose questions of culpability, presenting characters of complex moral nature whose physical beings (and the ontologies of their existences) are often ambiguous. Though the idea of a simple good/evil dichotomy continues in science fiction movies – Total Recall, The Fifth Element (1997) and 28 Days Later (2002) continue this tradition – Scott’s use of film noir has helped alter much of the genre. Bukatman writes that earlier works such as the Star Wars and Star Trek series ‘dichotomised good and evil and sent them into pitched battle. Blade Runner’s world was neither so certain nor so resolved’ (1997: 34). Cube, Brazil, Twelve Monkeys, Strange Days, La cité des enfants perdus and others reflect a similar ambiguity; though a few earlier films, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) do so, too. Though even the Star Wars series (Bukatman notwithstanding) deals with good and evil in its complexities at times (after all, Anakin Skywalker, hero of the ‘first’ trilogy, becomes Darth Vader, the villain of the ‘second’), Blade Runner’s ambiguity and lack of overt judgement tilted science fiction film towards a more nuanced and post-structuralist approach.

In both The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Double Indemnity (1944), template noir films, evil is found close to home, within a lover, a femme fatale. The tension in the Deckard/Rachel relationship (though she is neither evil nor predatory) in Blade Runner recalls these films, as does the identification between Deckard and the replicants in general. Similarly, in Total Recall, the hero discovers that he may be the creation of the man whose body he inhabits (as is also the case in Macroscope, a 1969 science fiction novel by Piers Anthony, author of the 1990 novelisation of Total Recall); in Impostor, the main character is a bomb; in Strange Days, it is the best friend of the main character – recalling Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949) – who turns out to be responsible for a gruesome killing; the killers of Screamers are descended from creations of the ‘good guys’; and Minority Report has as its villain the mentor of its main character.

Perhaps only Mel Gibson’s Max Rockatansky in Mad Max (1979) and Mad Max II: The Road Warrior (1981) and Kurt Russell’s Snake Plisskin in Escape from New York (1981) precede Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard as the hard-boiled noir anti-hero in a science fiction scenario – and Plisskin is much more a parody than a characterisation of a hard-boiled type. Rarely quite the best, merely the most persistent and focused, this anti-hero’s moral code dominates his hardboiled agenda. Since Blade Runner, characters played by Robert De Niro in Brazil, Peter Weller in RoboCop (1987) and Screamers, Olivier Grüner in Nemesis (1993), Christopher Lambert in Fortress (1993), Ray Liotta in No Escape (1994), Sylvester Stallone in Judge Dredd (1995), Ralph Fiennes in Strange Days, Bruce Willis in Twelve Monkeys and The Fifth Element, William Hurt in Dark City, Kurt Russell in Soldier (1998) and Tom Cruise in Minority Report have followed Ford. All of them focus myopically on a narrow range of tasks undertaken because of a moral decision, generally the result of a perceived imbalance. Their tasks are necessitated by their individual moral compasses, though not necessarily by a belief in distinct good and evil.

Like a hard-boiled character, Dick himself did not distance good and evil, seeing evil as almost banal, often the result either of ignorance or inattention, or misunderstanding – and good as almost the same thing. Thors Provoni, a possible ‘saviour’ in Our Friends From Frolix 8, is described by the book’s main character: ‘He is a man who did what had to be done. No, he isn’t a nice man – he’s a mean man. But he wanted to help’ (1970: 274). Evil and good and the motivations behind them are always ambiguous. Director Terry Gilliam shares Dick’s viewpoint, though here he turns it around: ‘What’s evil is Jack Lint [the protagonist’s pal and, eventually, his torturer in Brazil], the person who’s the best friend, the nice guy who does what he does. And that’s evil’ (Brazil DVD: Chapter 27). Both Dick and Gilliam see the appearance of evil as merely intent to seem evil, the appearance of good merely as an intent to seem good. Both seek out real evil and good elsewhere – and look for the human even in the most horrific visages. Neither ever forgets the fact that, as Gilliam puts it, there is a ‘human touch even in the most inhuman moments’ (Brazil DVD: Chapter 22).

Dick claimed that the ‘two basic topics which fascinate me are “What is reality?” and “What constitutes the authentic human being?”’ (1985: 2), questions that also intrigue contemporary filmmakers. Director Gary Fleder calls ‘Impostor’ ‘the quintessential Dick story … in which this guy wakes up one morning, goes to work, and all of a sudden is being accused of being something else. And that’s … the most terrifying conflict of all. If you aren’t who you are, what is reality, what is accusation?’ (Impostor DVD: ‘The Impostor Files’). Director Paul Verhoeven asks, in relation to Total Recall, ‘Is it the reality of a dream? Or is it the reality of somebody that has a dream but comes out of the dream?’ (Total Recall DVD: Imagining Total Recall).

Scott ‘has compared film direction to orchestration, and “every incident, every sound, every movement, every colour, every set, prop or actor” has significance within the “performance” of the film’ (Bukatman 1997: 10). Though a few earlier science fiction films – notably 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the Star Wars series – show this kind of care, rare was the movie with visual depth or ‘“layering” Scott’s self-described technique of building up a dense, kaleidoscopic accretion of detail within every frame and set of a film’ (Sammon 1996: 47).

Following Jacques Lacan through Fredric Jameson, Giuliana Bruno describes the visual component of Blade Runner as ‘pastiche’, ‘an effacement of key boundaries and separations … intended as an aesthetic of quotations pushed to the limit’ (1990: 184), adding that the ‘postmodern aesthetic of Blade Runner is thus the result of recycling, fusion of levels, discontinuous signifiers, explosion of boundaries and erosion’ (1990: 185). Critical is a lack of overt judgementalism: the landscape, environmental deterioration and all, just ‘is’. According to Bukatman, part of this can be attributed to Effects Supervisor Douglas Trumbull, whose works ‘reveal an ambivalence toward technology. They are neither celebratory nor condemning’ (1997: 25). Not even the Tyrell Corporation can be held responsible for the state of the world; Eldon Tyrell, through the gruesomeness of his death (and his passivity in facing it), becomes as much a victim as anyone. The Earth has been ruined; people are moving off-planet. Blame must be universal, if it is to be assessed at all. Even the victims share in the responsibility.

‘Scott’s hallmark was a visual density that revealed as much as, or more than, the script. The characters inhabited complex worlds that provided oblique contexts for their decisions’ (Bukatman 1997:14). Scott understands quite well a point Brooks Landon makes, that ‘a series of images creates its own logic quite apart from the prose narrative that it conveys’ (1992: 9). Just so, Hampton Francher, the first screenwriter on Blade Runner, recalls an incident when ‘Scott suddenly looks at me and says, “Hampton, this world you’ve created – what’s outside the window?”’ (Sammon 1996: 53). For Scott, the story becomes but one of a number of elements, for he understands that the ‘most significant “meanings” of science fiction films are often found in their visual organization’ (Bukatman 1997: 9). As Roger Ebert says of Dark City but could have been saying of Blade Runner, ‘it’s almost the keystone of a movie like this, that the effects express what the idea behind the movie is and we’re not simply looking at a sideshow’ (Dark City DVD: Chapter 8).

This is particularly true of the mise-en-scène of Blade Runner, which is as much a simulacrum as the replicants, and in many of the same ways. Jean Baudrillard describes simulation as ‘a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal’ (1988: 166). Put another way, both the landscape of Blade Runner and its replicants are a hyperreal looking for an unattainable reality (a history). The ‘hyperreal’, however, allows for no past, so both the city and the androids are doomed to quests without resolution.

Prior to Blade Runner, science fiction movies generally presented worlds showing an implausible architectural continuity. Scott’s complex vision reflects the hodge-podge of real cities, extrapolating from past growth to an unrealised future – in 1982, that is. Parts of today’s Beijing and Guangzhou look eerily like the Los Angeles of Blade Runner. In John Burdett’s mystery novel Bangkok 8, the movie is even used to help paint a picture of Kaoshan Road in Bangkok, 2002: ‘Between the stalls and the cafés there is hardly room to walk … Remember the Chinatown scenes in Blade Runner?’ (2003: 46).

In Blade Runner Scott creates a world that, at a distance, appears throbbing and dynamic but that, up close, shows a more squalid and jury-rigged quality. According to Paul M. Sammon, one ‘early and key Blade Runnerv\sua\ influence was artist Edward Hopper’s hauntingly lonely painting Nighthawks’ (1996: 74) where the lights glow brightly while the people reek of defeat. As Jack Boozer notes, the movie’s ‘unmotivated lighting and exotic, retro-futuristic scenic design call attention to expressionistic distortion and spectacle …; we are limited to a claustrophobic world of artificial lights and shadows’ (1991: 214).

Contributing to the chaotic effect of Blade Runner is the use of what Anna McCarthy (2001) calls ‘ambient television’, outdoor video advertising. The sounds of such ads, very much a part of any world inspired by Philip K. Dick, had evolved a great deal by the time of Minority Report (based on Dick’s short story ’ The Minority Report’), where the audio components of the sophisticated large-screen (almost screenless) advertisements are tailored to the individual passer-by.

One notable visual aspect of the hodge-podge of Blade Runner is ‘retrofitting’, defined by ‘futurist’ Mead as ‘upgrading old machinery and structures by slapping new add-ons to them’ (Sammon 1996: 79). Scott also likes to show the underpinnings of a city, the odd mechanical devices needed to keep human life palatable, counterpoints to a smoothly-operating exterior. Along with the teeming surface of the world, these evoke what Bukatman calls a ‘bewilderingly complex urbanism’ (1993: 223).

Two of the most fully-evoked science fiction film cities since Blade Runner are the Neo-Tokyo of Akira and the Hong Kong of Ghost in the Shell (1995), animated films based on Japanese ‘manga’, or comic books. As in Blade Runner, the street level tends toward the filthy and anarchic while the heights are sleek and modern. By the end of each, the viewer has a sense of the geography of the city and a feel for its operations and complexity. There is none of the disjointed feeling one gets from Brazil, where the parts of the city do not seem integrally connected, or the myopia of La cité des enfants perdus, wher...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Editor’s note
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: 2019 Vision
• The Blade Runner Experience: Pilgrimage and Liminal Space
• Post-Millennium Blade Runner
• Section 1: The Cinema of Philip K. Dick
• Section 2: Playing Blade Runner
• Section 3: Fans
• Section 4: Identities
• Section 5: The City
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index