Ten Reasons Why I Love Blade Runner

Ten Reasons I Love Blade Runner

Blade Runner is one of the greatest things about the 1980’s along with The Smiths, Boys from the Black stuff and The Rubik’s Cube and I was in my twenties when I first saw it which may have deeply informed my opinion. It remains in my top five movies and has a good claim to be number one.

Like many I caught up with it on Video and only saw it in the cinema during a re-release phase much later, but it first came to life in 1982. We are still nine years from the year in which it is set, 2019, and Los Angeles may not end up quite as the film foretells but nevertheless as a prophetic film noir Blade Runner remains fresh, relevant and never feels or looks dated.

So here they are, the ten reasons I love Blade Runner – hopefully not too obvious reasons!

1. What does it mean to be human? If you have ever known anyone ravaged by Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia you will know how much of a human personality depends on memory. Blade Runner extrapolates this and asks if we perfect the creation of a living organism and pre-programme them with memories that to them are real, what is the difference?

2. Religious Allegory. Most faith leaders will explain number one (above) as follows: Humans have a soul which is only temporarily housed in the body before ascending to heaven and God’s care. Yet here in the film God has been replaced by the Eldon Tyrell of The Tyrrell Corporation and when Roy and Sebastian meet Tyrell they ascend to his heaven, the penthouse apartment atop a great tower, in a great escalator. The chess game that Roy helps Sebastian win is actually a famous win by the Grandmaster Anderssen called “The Immortal Game” – coincidence? Tyrell is creator and Roy his son – but is he Adam or Christ? This is touched on in the final fight scene when Roy plunges a nail through his palm in a biblical allusion to the crucifixion. As Roy dies a dove flies to heaven in slow motion…his soul? Or a reminder that he doesn’t have one?

3. The Visuals. From the very first scene of the film, the Blade Runner world is set. Shortly after the words explaining what the Blade Runner Units do roll up the screen in bold typeface – “This was not called execution. It was called Retirement” – we are given a glimpse of Hades through a petrochemical haze as creaking metal towers belch fire into the skies of LA against the twin towers of the Tyrell Corporation. That attention to visual detail keeps the film within its fantasy boundaries superbly well from then on. The Neon signs, the streets, the empty warehouse apartment block it all exudes Ridley Scott’s genius of creating a world within a world – Alien, Gladiator even Thelma & Louise to an extent.

4. The drop of blood. After Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, has been beaten up good style by Leon and he returns to his apartment there is a scene when a tiny drop of blood runs down his face. The details and mood are second to none.

5. Vangelis’ music. OK its eighties synths and of its time but it never seems like that. Somehow it still sounds like a futuristic score with sweeps and dives that fit perfectly. The solo saxophone playing the love theme is also timelessly beautiful.

6. The ambiguity. Is Deckard actually a Replicant too? This is hinted at throughout and if you watch the film from the perspective that he is it does have a different dimension. In the Directors Cut the famed unicorn dream sequence was inserted when Deckard sleeps at the piano. Later Gaff leaves a tiny model unicorn outside Deckard’s apartment before he flees with Rachael…implying that he knows the unicorn memory has been planted and that Deckard is a Replicant. “It’s a shame she won’t live, but then again who does?” is also highly ambiguous. Ridley Scott has said he thinks Deckard is a Replicant but hey what does he know.

7. Leon. What a performance. What a character. See also Roy...

8. Sebastian’s Toys. “Home again Home again Jiggity Jig”. The toys in J.F. Sebastian’s flat, which he has presumably made in his spare time, seem to underline the horrific potential of advance human engineering and its implications. They also are his only friends as he is clearly a social misfit and is bullied by Roy and Pris as if he were at School.

9. Methuselah Syndrome. The irony that J F Sebastian, one of the chief human engineers, is prematurely ageing like the Nexus 6 Replicants he has created could be clunky but it isn’t. It serves to further amplify the question of the movie – what does it mean to be Human?

10. The different versions. OK so the first cinema friendly version basically expired horribly in that last scene with Deckard and Rachael driving off into a happy sunset but it is not quite as bad as it seemed to me at first. The film is questioning what makes humanity human and also raises questions about the importance of enjoying what little time you have. That final scene does continue that in a way. However I prefer the darkness of the definitive Directors Cut – Ridley Scott’s preferred version, without Harrison Ford’s Deckard voice over explaining everything as if the audience were idiots.

So there it is…ten of many reasons why I love Blade Runner.