Bladerunner would be forgettable without the soundtrack.

[chk071]

The idea of creating human slaves is kind of BS anyway. Machines, which are made exactly for the purpose, will be much more efficient than any human, or human machine can be really. Even for wiping the floor, a machine built efficiently for the task will be able to do the job much better than some artificial human. So, the questions Blade Runner asks are the wrong ones to start with in the first place. Not to bash the film really. A thrilling story doesn't have to be logical, a film or a game doesn't have to be logical.

[incubus]

I like "possible outcome in the future" movies. I don't agree even a little bit about the OP title of this thread. Visually it was stunning. The acting was superb. The story is fascinating. And even though I was only 17 when it came out, I "got it".

Pity for those who don't and would rather have faster pace, and more shit "blown up" for no reason to be entertained.

[IncarnateX]

milk and cookies kept you up all night?

I don't like cookies. Even less when I am asked whether I mind them on every internet site I visit, which I do.

About Blade Runner. Those of us who are truly lovers of science fiction will of course have read Philip K. Dicks' Do androids dream of electric sheep upon which Blade Runner is build (along with Ubik, Eye in the Sky, The man in the high castle and other masterpieces). Blade runner does not capture half of the existential and religious themes that were stuffed into this great novel. I like Blade Runner as a kind of expressive painting that touched a slice of the novel, but especially the "electric sheep" was a very important missing theme in the movie. People buy articificial animals to gain status pretending they are real, though most are extinct and there are only a few real examples left on Earth. They are so perfectly made that it is very hard to distinguish them for real ones, but point is that no one really cares whether they are, apart from Deckard as he develops an increasing urge to find out who are real beings and humans, including whether he is one himself. During the story Deckard gets into more and more doubts about himself and his mission, since he gets involved with humans who turn out to be androids and androids with more human traits than humans, and not at least finds out that his rival Blade Runner, Resch, despite all suggestions to the contrary is human, though just a very ruthless one with even less empathy than the androids. There is also a deep religious theme about the potential scam of religions who claim to represent human love and self-sacrifise, in the story represented by the virtual religion Mercerism in which Deckard believes but turns out to be a hoax. It has always been hard to interpret Dick unambigously but the story overall seems to question all that we believe is evident to being human, leaving us to an eternal doubt, where the question become meaningless because in the end it is about whether you live, exists and feel as one and not whether you formally are. The tears in the rain speech captures of glimpse of this theme from the novel but nothing that really captures it's essence. Neither did the soundtrack. Instead the movie more or less ended as a classic detective story in a postapocalyptic setting, even messed up further with the stupid voice over in the primary cut to reach the lowest common denominator. However as such, it was and is a beatiful movie, and I liked it and the soundtrack nevertheless.

Just my million cents

And now it is time for my meds.

C ya

[aMUSEd]

The idea of creating human slaves is kind of BS anyway. Machines, which are made exactly for the purpose, will be much more efficient than any human, or human machine can be really. Even for wiping the floor, a machine built efficiently for the task will be able to do the job much better than some artificial human. So, the questions Blade Runner asks are the wrong ones to start with in the first place. Not to bash the film really. A thrilling story doesn't have to be logical, a film or a game doesn't have to be logical.

Yeah but the female ones were basically sex slaves so you could see the motivation for making them at least human looking (and I know there is commercial interest in such things however sick). Ex Machina explores this beautifully, there comes a point where you have a being that is created by humans but has the same (or higher) level of intelligence and self awareness - regardless of whether these beings look human or not how we treat those creations says a lot about ourselves and I think that is a point Dick was trying to make - he used this theme a lot in his stories to hold up a sort of mirror to ourselves. As in Ex Machina, if we treat a fellow sentient being with inhumanity, as a slave or sex object, we risk getting inhumanity back, being 'human' is not about your body shape it's about how you are treated by others. This is also going to be true when we eventually have contact with beings from other planets.

[IncarnateX]

Double

[fedexnman]

Maybe and Maybe not ? I think the soundtrack/music still sounds fresh to this day . Aside from the crt and analog photos , I think it still seems futuristic enough to be good to this day .. I thought Bladerunner was boring the first time I had it on TV , I was half assed watching it .... I was also recording it of TV with a VCR/VHS recorder ... When I finally watched it and paid attention to it , I was blown away with the movie(early 90s) was a little slow but Rutger Huger , Daryll Hannah , and that guy from the 80s show Newhart as well a Harrison Ford really tied the movie together .. and Gaff even was interesting , actually all the characters really worked well ... I didn't care for the police chief guy " hey I'm gonna need the old Bladerunner back " guy would be my least favorite character maybe it's his lines ... I went to see it on the big screen when they did the directors cut rerelease ... Donnie Darko is another sleeper hit that never gets old for me either aside from the 80s music it had a unique score as well ..... Odd .....

[Numanoid]

Maybe and Maybe not ? I think the soundtrack/music still sounds fresh to this day.

It is timeless

The movie also deals with timeless topics ("wanting to meet the maker") so it will never pass a best by date.

I use to watch the movie once every year or so.

[Musicisbest]

Maybe and Maybe not ? I think the soundtrack/music still sounds fresh to this day.

It is timeless

The movie also deals with timeless topics ("wanting to meet the maker") so it will never pass a best by date.

I use to watch the movie once every year or so.

Agreed, Philip K. Dick is one of the great Science Fiction writers of all time.
He had a great ability to deal with timeless topics and make you think.

[seismic1]

IncarnateX makes some great points, and I agree with pretty much everything he said. The point about the film noir is definitely right on the money.

I wasn't over-impressed when the film first appeared. I liked it and wanted to see it again, but I think it was about 10 years later when I saw it for the second time. That was when it clicked with me. I still enjoy watching the movie once a year or so.

I don't think the soundtrack "made" the film, but I do think they are inseparable and complementary.

The comparisons with the book are valid, but consider this - The film is less than 2 hours long. I think it took me 7 or 8 hours to read the book. Ideas and plot/character development are regularly sacrificed by Hollywood in order to condense stories into consumer-manageable chunks. Most blockbusters don't have to deal with this problem.

So yeah, the film is missing a lot of the detail found in the original story, but as a film, it is a spectacular piece of movie history, and Fancher/Peoples' abridged adaptation of the story does a very good job telling their story.

[Compyfox]

Maybe this is a nice addition to the discussion that I found on Youtube by chance the other day:

[xoxos]

[T-CM11]

and your example of beyonces dreck isnt applicable. technical accuracy ≠ craftsmanship, there is an element of artistic merit inherent in the word.

So when is something art and when isn't it? (= when is something 'mere' accuracy and when is it craftsmanship?)
For example; when Van Gogh was alive his paintings were considered 'dreck' and years later they were art. Conclusion: "art" is not inherent, but in essence a popularity contest and/or defined by the select few that define it as that.
Pieta / starry night / mozarts requiem are just pieces of music, and their quality nothing more than personal opinion. The concepts good/mediocre/bad and any shade in between have no objective meaning. And if you say they do, you're just getting "religious" and lost me in this conversation.

[T-CM11]

it is objectively good

That's how religious wars usually start.

[chaosWyrM]

The movie is asking the question 'what is life?' - what defines a human being. Does a silicon based 'organism' constitute a human if it looks and acts and thinks like one?

this bugs the crap outta me, and i cant believe how many times i need to explain this...its absolutely fundamental to understanding the film....

the replicants are not "silicon based"...they are not robots...they are not androids...they are not mechanical in any way shape or form.

they are artificial people. they are 100% carbon based biological living human beings, comprised of hearts and lungs and livers and bone and blood. i mean...they come out and specifically say so in the film. seriously...all the people we see in the film involved in making them are geneticists...not robotics engineers. how on earth do people keep missing this basic and important point???

replicants are real human beings...they were just manufactured.

the question being asked in the film is not "what is life" but rather...what is SELF. what makes you you...and how do you know its "real"?

its a question of identity and self awareness, not what constitutes a sentient being.

i agree for the most part.
which is why rachel is such an important character. she has memories that define who she is, but they are not her memories. Does this mean that Rachel is not human? the central question for me.
there bodies are real and biological, there memories are unquestionable, so what and who decides what constitutes being human? if deckard admits to their humanity, then he must accept a prior i that he is a murderer. even though he has read the dossier on Rachel and knows he memories he still allows her to live as an equal, the fact she is not built to expire she is effectively on every level human.
remember tyrell's motto : "more human than human".
i wish people would remember the subplot that is quite clear Deckard is a replicant himself. this is due to the dream about a unicorn that gaff seems to know in the same way that deckard knows about rachel hence the origami unicorn gaff leaves outside Deckard's apartment. in the same way that Rachel is an experiment with no expiration date, we can assume that deckard is of the same. in the original release we got that absolutely terrible tacked on ending which made no sense at all. i for one think scott's 'final version' is the best beyond a shadow of doubt.

yes yes...the entire affair is a false flag psy-op perpetrated by tyrell himself, in order for him to test the new model before final production.

[IncarnateX]

It is an old debate whether Deckard himself is an Android which is either no, maybe or absolutely according to which cut referred to.

https://www.quora.com/Was-Deckard-a-rep ... ade-Runner

In the book he isn't but we are left in doubt with Deckard until he finally is tested together with Resch. The twist is that at the point Deckard finds out that both he and Resch are human, he is not able to distinguish humanity from non-humanity by whether you are an android or not. The question doesn't make sense anymore. It makes no difference.