By Govindini Murty. Reports surfaced earlier this year that plans were underway for a new Blade Runner film. Blade Runner is one of our favorite films here at Libertas, so we heard the news with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. After all, like its great predecessor Metropolis (1927), Blade Runner is one of the seminal films of the modern age – a film that has literally shaped our concepts of how the future will look. It was inevitable I suppose that someone would want to turn it into a franchise. THR’s Heat Vision blog now reports that a new Blade Runner film with Ridley Scott attached is moving forward, with Alcon Entertainment producing the film and planning to release it through Warner Brothers:
“While the new movie is being described as a “follow-up” to the first film, the filmmakers have not yet disclosed whether it will function as a prequel or a sequel to the original. One thing it won’t be, though, is a re-make, Alcon co-head Andrew Kosove said. “We [sic] very fortunate that Ridley Scott has decided to come back to one of his seminal movies,” he added. “And with Ridley, I can tell you it will be fresh and original.” … Kosove declined to say what direction the project would go it, but did say he didn’t expect Harrison Ford, who starred in the original movie as a retired cop who hunts down replicants, to be involved.”
Sean Young in "Blade Runner."
Alcon Entertainment is the company behind The Blind Side, The Book of Eli, and a number of other films with generally humanistic values. My hope is that any new Blade Runner film will espouse the life-affirming themes of the original and not be repurposed to support some contemporary political agenda (a problem that has plagued too many of Ridley Scott’s recent films). As we’ve discussed before here at Libertas, sci-fi works best when it explores timeless human questions – when it functions like a new mythology, inspiring the human mind through metaphor to explore new horizons – not when it bludgeons one over the head with a propaganda point.
The original Blade Runner (1982) was a film that worked precisely because of its sense of mystery and its resistance to easy answers. The film’s seductive blend of ’40s film noir and ’70s dystopian science-fiction captivated the imagination and lead it to a romantic engagement with the world and with human life. One can consider Blade Runner the reverse of Avatar or Planet of the Apes, two recent films that featured ‘heroic’ protagonists who reject humanity. The android replicants in Blade Runner want to experience life as human beings, but tragically, they cannot. They are like the angels who come to earth and who wish to become human in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, or like the angels who visit humanity and exclaim over the marvels of earthly life in Milton’s Paradise Lost. As the fallen angel Satan enviously describes the goodness of earthly existence in Paradise Lost:
“O earth, how like to heaven, if not preferr’d
More justly, seat worthier of gods …
Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth
Of creatures animate with gradual life
Of growth, sense, reason, all summ’d up in man.
With what delight could I have walked thee round”
(Paradise Lost, Book IX, lines 99-100, 110-113)
The tragedy of the humanoid replicants in Blade Runner is that they wish to live longer than their allotted brief time, not realizing that their code is so engineered that it cannot be extended. The replicants are doomed to live only four short years, but they experience those years in a heightened, more vivid manner. In the pivotal scene of Blade Runner, the leader of the rebellious replicants, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) confronts Tyrell, the head of the shadowy corporation that created him, and insists that he alter his technology to extend his life. Tyrell tells him that this is impossible, and urges Batty to enjoy the time he has instead and live life to the fullest. Batty cannot accept this, but later, when he saves the life of detective Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), Batty poignantly describes to him the beauty of what he has experienced in his short life:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe: Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I’ve watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.”
Blade Runner’s concern with the paradoxical briefness and richness of human life reminds me of the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca’s wise essay On the Shortness of Life. Addressing his essay to his friend Paulinus, Seneca wrote:
“Most human beings, Paulinus, complain about the meanness of nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, and because this spell of time that has been given to us rushes by so swiftly and rapidly that with very few exceptions life ceases for the rest of us just when we are getting ready for it. …
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied, but wasteful of it. … ”
Because we have no control over the future and can only really take charge of what is in the present, Seneca advises that one should seize life and “live immediately.”
(Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, trans. C.D.N. Costa).
Thus, at the end of Blade Runner, Harrison Ford’s human cop Rick Deckard chooses to love the replicant Rachael, even though he knows she may have only a few short years of life. Rick and Rachael seize the time that they have and decide to live it together. It’s a heroic, intensely humanistic message. I hope the new Blade Runner film will live up to it.
Posted on August 19th, 2011 at 6:28am.
“Blade Runner ” — like the Star Wars films — have grown with me as I’ve grown … and that’s rare. I dragged my dad to see “Blade Runner” when I was eight because I read the Marvel Comics adaptation, and it had the guy who played Indiana Jones and Han Solo.
I didn’t know what I was watching, but it still mesmerized me. Like Star Wars, there’s an aesthetic that can’t be ignored. Then, as I got older, I found myself being drawn to the film over and over again, and each viewing awarded me with a different experience. As I developed as a person, I started seeing the themes, and even the creative elements of the film. It also opened the door to film noir, sci-fi, and westerns, so it is an important film in the development of my palate.
I love that piece, Govindini. The adherence to the freedom and individuality narrative here is unique and extremely important on a large scale, but personally I find great value in the ability you and Jason (and the contributors) have shown to expand your thesis into other facets of art and culture.
It’s really enlightening — I love it when I can see something a different way. Now, when I watch “Blade Runner” again, it will be another unique experience. Thank you.
Vince – thanks so much for your kind comment. “Blade Runner” is one of those films that seems to have spontaneously emerged from the subconscious of the culture. I say this because although Ridley Scott’s films since “Blade Runner” have continued to convey his distinctive visual style, none of them have had “Blade Runner”’s thematic complexity. The same goes for the countless sci-fi dystopia films that have followed from other directors – they might be able to copy the style, but none of them have been able to articulate the doomed romanticism and complex humanistic themes of the original.
I’m glad that movies like “Blade Runner” have played such a role in your life, Vince. I always enjoy hearing from people who are inspired by film or art to look at things in different ways, and if Libertas can play any role in helping spark that, then we’ve done our job.
Agree completely. I am terrified of what Scott is going to do, not only with this but with the Alien prequel.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Hollywood is capable of making films like the original Alien and Blade Runner anymore. The Japanese and the Koreans are, however, and allowing directors of the caliber of Kiyoshi Kurosawa or Kim Jee-Woon (whose recent “I Saw The Devil” is a film of rich moral reflection and shifting moods close to the level of Blade Runner) to take a crack at these films, with smaller budgets and bigger ideas, would to my mind be ideal. I simply don’t think Ridley Scott is capable of making the kinds of movies he once did, and I don’t think Hollywood is capable of producing them.
Granted, I may be too cynical, but I can’t help but think that films like Alien and Blade Runner were the product of a hungry, inspired young director taking risks and paying meticulous attention to detail. That director is now a stale old fogey who relies on pseudo-profound messaging, bloated budgets, and cheap spectacle to express whatever vision he has left.
We don’t need a “Sphinx 2″ or a “Parthenon: Prequel.” Alien and Blade Runner are among the wonders of the film world. I wish we could just leave a few of them alone.
SeeSaw – you’ve made a great point:
“We don’t need a “Sphinx 2″ or a “Parthenon: Prequel.” Alien and Blade Runner are among the wonders of the film world. I wish we could just leave a few of them alone.”
Very true! The ancients who created those marvels moved on and did other things! Call what has happened to Hollywood what generally happens to industries and cultures that are in a late, mature stage and have ceased to innovate. I can go on forever about the problems of a Hollywood that makes films by committee, ruins potential good scripts through endless development hell, puts people with no experience in charge of large projects, etc. etc. but the basic problem is that original inspiration has fled, and nothing will change that until an entirely new group of people is able to enter the culture as creators with a radically new vision.
As for the new “Blade Runner” film, all I hope is that they don’t botch it so badly that it ruins my memories of the original. If they just avoid overt politics, and keep it to a kind of noirish-action thriller that generally affirms individual humanity, then that’s fine. I’m not looking for genius – simple competence will do. We’ll see what happens.
“If they just avoid overt politics, and keep it to a kind of noirish-action thriller that generally affirms individual humanity, then that’s fine. I’m not looking for genius – simple competence will do.”
That seems reasonable to me. The most important thing is what you said: In the name of all that is holy, please do not ruin our experience of the original.
Great piece, by the way.
“Thus, at the end of Blade Runner, Harrison Ford’s human cop Rick Deckard chooses to love the replicant Rachael, even though he knows she may have only a few short years of life.”
Deckard was a replicant as well. There were several clues hinting at it in the film. The most obvious clue is Gaff letting Deckard know he dreamed of unicorns by leaving the origami unicorn for him to find. Gaff knew Deckard’s dreams like Deckard knew Rachael’s memories.
Yes and no. Scott made it clear in his commentary on the definitive-final-seriously-this-is-the-last- director’s-cut-version that he thought Deckard was a replicant. On the other hand, in the original theatrical version – to which, if I remember correctly, Jason is partial – it is strongly suggested that Deckard is a human.
Personally I never thought it was to the point whether or not Deckard was a replicant. What’s of interest is roughly the same notion as captured in the recent (and very good) film based on Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go.” That is to say, the replicants, like the unlucky kids in NLMG, teach us something important about what it is to be alive and human – to feel constricted by the thread of time tightening like a noose, to love life most when it’s slipping away, to be pressed by reflection upon our “built-in lifespan” to “want more life,” to cherish memories in whatever form we can get them, and above all, to seek to be a witness to another’s being while also being so witnessed.
I’m fairly sure Blade Runner was the first film to reduce me to tears – and I was nine years old when I first saw it. Evidently it tapped into something deep, something that the human core of me just innately recognized. Govindini is, I think, pointing to that aspect of the film: it’s focused intensely on what it is to be human. Replicants are a narrative device to that end.
Essentially the device presents us with a grand irony: Batty loves Priss and loves his memories and yearns for freedom and life and witness; Deckard does the same, and if he is not human, he nonetheless thinks he is human, he experiences himself as human. The unicorn accordingly doesn’t so much reveal Deckard as a replicant as pull together the higher things of the mind and spirit that we’ve witnessed in the past two hours: We think we’re human too, after all, and as we sympathize with Deckard throughout the film, his realization should be our own. We fully actualize our humanity by exercising our distinctive faculties, and the “twist” is meant to shake us loose from what we take for granted, so as to experience the familiar as what it is: marvelous.
“It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again who does?” says Gaff. Batty’s anger at his “father” and his patricide is something, God knows, we’ve all played out in some way or another. And Deckard and everyone else feels just as enchained by this cruel inscrutable fate of “expiration.” Some turn cynical. Some give up. Some make toys. Some retain hope. As with the Replicants so with the humans. Scott, back then, was actually capable of understatement and he left it up to us to ruminate on our relation to “the Father,” and how it is that we should reconcile ourselves to our melancholy condition. Are we all slaves yearning for freedom? Is God a tyrant? Is life just a tragedy? Can life, on the other hand, really be sweet without an expiration date?
It is extremely difficult to make a film – to make any work of art – that deals with such huge themes in a sufficiently rich and emotionally potent fashion. If Scott were like M. Night Shyamalan, then Blade Runner probably would have revolved around a twist at the end. Thankfully he wasn’t, and the twist instead revolved around the larger themes of the film.
Well said Seesaw! You put this really well:
“It is extremely difficult to make a film – to make any work of art – that deals with such huge themes in a sufficiently rich and emotionally potent fashion. If Scott were like M. Night Shyamalan, then Blade Runner probably would have revolved around a twist at the end. Thankfully he wasn’t, and the twist instead revolved around the larger themes of the film.”
I completely agree – the twist ending doesn’t change the meaning of the film, because the film is concerned about larger philosophical issues. The whole debate over “Is Deckard a replicant” only began after the film’s original release in the innumerable different cuts that have been released over the years since. It’s in later versions that the symbolism of the unicorn is made more overt in order to suggest that Deckard is a replicant, and that’s only because Ridley Scott can’t stop tinkering with his own work …
In general, I think the twist ending is an over-rated device that is used in way too many sci-fi/thriller films nowadays. It’s the O. Henry/ “Twilight Zone” ending that everyone feels they have to tack on to make the film ‘more interesting.’ It’s like adding at the end of a film – “Oh by the way, it was all a dream” or doing some other such cheap thing to pull the rug out from under people at the last minute. Sometimes it works, but mostly it feels like a gimmick. The whole “Deckard is a replicant” issue has taken over all discussion of the film over the years, which is a shame because the film is about so much more – as SeeSaw has wonderfully articulated here.
I’m a fan of BR and own two of the versions. That being said, one of the necessary characteristics for an artist is to know when to stop. Scott’s continual dithering with the film strikes me as a sign he is insecure in his mastery of the craft. He’s like an artist for whom serendipity strikes. He captures lightening in a bottle and produces a near masterpiece, and then spends the rest of his career attempting to perfect it. The remake is the sign that he’s given up and will start again on the same subject from scratch.
Another thing that fascinated me about this film is that it is one of the few flims that is better than the source material. I read “Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep” and was sorely dissapointed. The themes of the shortness and beauty of life and “can machines ever have souls?” are not covered in the book at all. The book ruminated on the myth of Sisyphus, who was compelled to forever roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again. Basically, life is meaningless. Also, the Replicants in the book are cought out because they commit the crime of “gasp” eating meat, when animals are explained to be rare and precious in the future world of the book.