I finally saw Ridley Scott’s dystopian sci-fi classic Blade Runner (1982) (are there any other kind besides dystopian? 😄) The version I saw was the The Final Cut, the remastered one that Scott made in 2007 with some scenes inserted that were missing from the original 1982 theatrical release, as well as the ending changed to the one he had wanted from the “happy ending” that had been forced upon him at the time by the studio. Not sure why I had just not gotten around to plugging this gap in my sci-fi viewing all these years. But having seen it now, I can see its remarkable influence on the ones that came after it like Terminator (1984), Total Recall (1990), The Matrix (1999) etc. From the noir-cyberpunk production design of its cityscape to the synth musical score to its philosophical core asking what it means to be a human and would a sentient robot fed with artificial memories be distinguishable from a human. It’s a particularly relevant question 40 years after the movie was made with the advances in robotics and AI. Although of course some of the sci-fi is hilarious. All those movies from the 80s that were looking ahead into early 21st century, whether it was 2019 like in Blade Runner or 2015 like in Back to the Future Part II (1989) all somehow thought we would be all in flying cars by now. All computer monitors and TVs were still cathode ray tubes. And companies like Atari, Radio Shack and PanAm are still around 😄
May 7, 2022