Great Movies #4 - Blade Runner (UPDATED!)

Tyrell - "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very very brightly, Roy."

Blade Runner is quite simply my all-time favorite movie ever made. There are two reasons that explain my passion for this film.

Reason #1 relates to something Vince Vaughn once told me. I was hanging out at Canter's in L.A. with my sister and my friend. Canter's is an LA icon; restaurant by day, with live music at night on weekends. So, my friend noticed that Vince Vaughn was enjoying the show with us, and she sort of went nuts. This is normally a pretty outgoing chick who'll walk up to anybody and start a conversation. But when she noticed Vince, she just clammed up and got all shy. But she was still DYING to meet him. So me, being the "good" guy-friend, decides to play hook-up. As Vince exits for a smoke, I follow him out and strike up a conversation. I acted like I didn't recognize him, and I just started talking about how LA seemed to have changed so much since I left, but that I really missed it. He responded by saying that maybe it wasn't LA that had changed, but rather it was me. He said that memories of places and things are rooted in a context of where my life was at the time I experienced them. Thus nostalgic memories are less about the place or thing, and more about how I felt when I was actually there. Truer words have never been spoken. I didn't miss the smog, or the traffic, or the over-priced coffee in LA. But I did miss that feeling of "home" that I always felt when I was growing up.

Blade Runner for me is less about the movie itself, and more about my father. I lost my father on my sixteenth birthday as I was recovering from an appendectomy. And on that day, I began a journey that culminated several years later as I realized that everything I thought I knew about the man I called Dad was a series of carefully crafted lies. Lies designed to protect me, but lies nonetheless. And after understanding the truth, I slowly stopped loving him. Piece by piece, all of my pleasant memories of being with my dad were ruined by the truth-telling subtitles that my mind added. All except for one tiny memory of watching Blade Runner with him for the first time. We had rented it on VHS, and as we sat on the couch to watch it together, he reminded me for the 100th time that this was his favorite movie. And I endured it, simply because it meant that I got to spend a precious few hours with my father who was frequently absent. But I never really got into the movie. Not until after he died. Weeks after his funeral, I watched that movie over and over until I popped the tape. I think I was looking for some sort of deeper understanding of the man. If I could understand something he loved, maybe I would understand HIM better. And you know what? I think I do. And now everytime I watch Blade Runner, for just a brief moment I am back on the couch with my dad, sitting next to him and smelling his Old Spice after-shave, and wondering why there was no DIALOGUE in this freakin' movie.

Reason #2 relates to what I discovered after watching Blade Runner for the fifth time in high school. It is a DAMN good movie. My maturity level had just reached the point at age 17 where I could finally understand the core concepts. I was also just finishing up a horror movie phase, and was beginning to gain an appreciation for the nuances of quality cinema. Blade Runner as a film, evolved from a short story by Philip K. Dick called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep." At the core of that story was the question of whether humanity is simply the sum of its parts, or whether we have a soul. And if indeed we have a soul, can we confer it upon our own creations? The story itself is as old as Frankenstein, but I can't get enough of it. Ridley Scott, however, accomplished the rare feat of EXPANDING on that concept and making a movie as compelling as the short story. This was a young and hungry Ridley Scott that had just finished one of the greatest horror films EVER made: Alien. His casting choices were superb, as they have all gone on to establish legendary filmographies: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah, and M. Emmet Walsh. The atmosphere is pure future noir. Deckard is a special cop tasked with hunting down and "retiring" rebellious replicants (androids who were made a little too well). Deckard narrates most of the story in a sort of Philip Marlowe voice-over, but we also get to know each of the replicants. For me the defining scene that always stops my heart is when one of the replicant females begins running through plate glass windows in a mall trying to escape as Deckard shoots her twice in the back. And Deckard is supposed to be the hero. As one of the replicants says near the end of the movie, Deckard is supposed to be the "good" man. And yet he still shoots a woman in the back.



And then there's the controversy. The Director's cut of the movie eliminated Deckard's voice-over, cut the hopeful ending, and added a scene that seems to indicate that Deckard himself is a replicant. When recently interviewed, Harrison Ford said that the Director's cut was crap, his character was not a replicant, and he really didn't enjoy making the movie in the first place. How do you think he REALLY feels? Personally, I prefer the original theatrical version, voice-over, happy ending, and everything. I can't tell you why. I just do.

If you're a scifi fan, you'll know that Blade Runner has helped define the genre for the last 20 years. It's cinematic vision of a bleak and desolate future Los Angeles has influenced films from Total Recall to the Matrix. From the Wikipedia page:

"The film's dark cyberpunk style and futuristic design have served as a benchmark and inspired many subsequent science fiction films and television programs, including Batman, RoboCop, The Fifth Element, Ghost in the Shell, Dark Angel, Firefly, and The Matrix. It has also influenced animes, including Akira, Armitage III, Cowboy Bebop and Bubblegum Crisis. Before shooting began on Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan reportedly screened Blade Runner to the film's crew and told them, "This is how we're going to make Batman." Even the Star Wars prequels have paid homage to Blade Runner in their special effects sequences."


And if you watch it today, the special effects STILL HOLD UP! That's more than can be said of Star Wars. So, if you're in the mood for some cerebral scifi, with occasional scenes of horrific violence, get thee to Netflix. I guarantee a movie experience unlike no other.