Cyberpunk Movie Countdown to Release: Day 21 - Blade Runner (1982)
I thought it would be fun to do a countdown of nightly Cyberpunk movies to watch for each day between the previous and current (and hopefully final) Cyberpunk 2077 release date. The original draft here had a lot of interesting links to tangents about the movie (links for more info on the comic, where to watch it online, etc) but apparently the cavelcade of links has set off the r/cyberpunkgame subreddit's spam filter, so here it is presented sans links. I suppose I could post links as a comment.
Without further adieu then...
So to start at the beginning, here is Blade Runner. Probably the progenitor of most of popular cyberpunk, this movie bears Ridley Scott's trademark atmospheric storytelling. Based on the Phillip K. Dick novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, this movie drives off in a very different direction from the book, while still staying true to unique dystopian near-future of the original.
An intensely inspired performance by the late Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, a made-to-design biological replicant fighting for his very right to exist is balanced by the cool and aloof presence of Sean Young as Rachel, a replicant who doesn't even know her own nature. The replicant's own artificially accelerated mortality puts forward the question of how one deems the meaning and purpose to their own lives.
Filmed to evoke the film noir aesthetic of the detective films of yesteryear, Harrison Ford plays Deckard, a man hired to find and kill replicants loose in on the perpetually rain slicked night streets of a Los Angeles extended to the terminal end of a decaying 2019 future.
The movie has spawned it's far share of extended life not only through it's sequel Blade Runner 2049 but through many other forms of media including :
- A point-and-click video game that stands as a solid example of that style of game
- An old comic book adaptation and a new series of comic books: two comics (Blade Runner 2019 and Blade Runner 2029) covering the exploits of an ethically loose blade runner named 'Ash' and an upcoming comic, Blade Runner Origins, exploring the origins of the blade runner division
- A series of shorts filling the gap between the two movies
- An upcoming anime, Black Lotus, coming to Adult Swim in the next year
This movie is also known for the main differing edits of the movie, including the theatrical cut, international cut, directors cut, the final cut (an updated director's cut of sorts made long after the movie's release), and an early work-print cut. Each version has their share of advantages and disadvantages, but some skew much more heavily on disadvantages, the most notorious of which being Harrison Ford's voice-over narration in the theatrical and international cuts. I personally prefer The Final Cut, which balances fixing and improving various parts of the movie to be in-line with the director's vision with maintaining idiosyncrasies that audiences have grown to love over the interceding years.
If you want to watch Blade Runner tonight but don't own the movie there are some options:The movie is available for rent on YouTube and it is available to watch for free for Amazon prime members at the moment.