Cyber Punk was warming up in the batter’s box and Willam Gibson had already started writing short stories in his universe but Neuromancer wouldn’t be published for another two years. Scott also hired Syd Mead to do the production design and Mead is strongly influenced by Metal Hurlant’s artwork (Heavy Metal magazine in the US). The 1920s German surrealist school clearly inspired the imagery. There are other shots that are pretty similar but you get the drift. A lot this film’s imagery is owed to another film with strong cinematography, a weak storyline, and an evil robot. Scott works in visuals, and Blade Runner’s visuals are the best thing in this movie. Ladd knew he had a handful with Ridley Scott but the results so far had been correspondingly rewarding. It was clearly going to need a better title* but a SciFi noir premise had real potential. Ladd okayed a script treatment for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Sadly the butcher’s bill came due with Blade Runner. Science fiction was the reason for his success. Science fiction had not done well at the box office before 1977 but Ladd had seen the future and it was… well… The future. He left Fox and started the Ladd Company. With two big wins under his belt, he decided to hang out his own shingle. Next, he followed that one up with the lighting in a bottle, Alien. Alan Ladd Jr briefly became a Hollywood wunderkind in the late 70s by dint of two decisions, first, he green-lit Star Wars, then fought tooth and nail for it when the studio wanted to shut down the production due to overruns. Much of which was improvised by Rutger Hauer himself.īlade Runner has a lot of good and plenty of bad but how did it all get there? It builds in intensity while it leads up to his confrontation with Deckard and the famous Tears in the Rain soliloquy. The secondary, concurrent storyline with Roy Batty is clearly the film’s greatest strength. The art design was revolutionary, (even if a lot of it was based on German surrealism of the 1920s). The Eighties techno soundtrack fit perfectly. The stunning visuals set a film school standard. I could go on but you probably have a list of your own. The exposition scene between Deckard and his boss was dumb, Deckard was the best Blade Runner out there, and he didn’t know replicants only have a four-year lifespan? Seriously? Seriously, what was that pervy nerd thing about? Where did that come from and why did he do it? It reeks of the kind of thing where the director is having the actor do a scene a thousand different ways and Scott went with the worst one. And then there is Harrison Ford’s weird little bit of performance art in the strippers’ dressing room. There are other worries as well, for one thing, there was no chemistry between the leads which is understandable because Harrison Ford and Sean Young hated each other. Later cuts remove the narration but insert a heavy-handed and fairly major plot change that wasn’t even hinted at in the original version of the film. It felt awkward and tacked on because it was both (more on that later). The trouble is that each of the major cuts is an obvious failure, each in its own special way.įor instance in the original theatrical version, you have a bad narration that was inserted post-production. It’s just that it’s hard for anyone to agree on what they are. It is an extraordinarily influential film.Įveryone knows that it has problems. Some argue not even a good movie, but they’re wrong and they’re bad, and here’s why. Blade Runner is a film I hold in considerable affection and yet it is not a great movie.
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