Blade Runner

Harrison Ford portrays Rick Deckard, a retired police officer in Los Angeles. In 2019, L.A. is a multicultural dystopia made up of advertising, pollution and flying cars. Its inhabitants are people and replicants, humanoid robots with a short lifespan, built by Tyrell Corporation for the use during dangerous, outer space colonisation. Deckard worked as a successful blade runner, a term used for detectives who track down renegade replicants and take them out. Deckard is called in to do one last job: four replicants, led by Roy Batty (an eerily platinum blonde Rutger Hauer), have escaped and hijacked a spaceship on its way to earth. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” The intensity in Rutger Hauer’s icy blue eyes does not bode well…

Few films have influenced futuristic cinema as much as BLADE RUNNER has. Not only the costumes, set design and impressive non-digital special effects would change the look of cinematic sci-fi forever, but the atmosphere of paranoia and aimlessness had a lasting impact on the genre as well. You wouldn’t believe it, but BLADE RUNNER was a box office failure on its release. Despite the disappointing numbers, the film immediately turned into a cultural phenomenon and with time, changed from a cyber punk cult favourite into a universally embraced filmhistoric classic, and since its 2017 sequel it even changed into a franchise.

The film, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, investigates what concerns scientists still – or more and more – nowadays: the moral and philosophical dilemmas linked to the dependency on computers and artificial intelligence. The Nexus 6-replicants are, in the words of Roy Batty himself, slaves. “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.” The replicants are used to do the dirty work and are terminated after their jobs are done. Without a thank you for services rendered.

BLADE RUNNER questions what it is to be human, but also what this means in relation to cyborgs and replicants. Created in human’s likeness, but by no means treated humanely. In addition, BLADE RUNNER shows why life is so precious. The audience watches a dystopian neo noir future the way Ridley Scott had imagined it, delivered as a visually exceptional sci-fi masterpiece, that only deepens with time.