Early in the 21st century, the Tyrell Corporation, advanced robot evolution into the nexus phase – a being virtually identical to a human – known as a replicant. These replicants had superior strength and quality, they were used off-world as slave labour in a colonization of other planets. However they still only have a four year life span and have no feelings and emotions. They were treated almost like robots and “coffee making machines, as they were slaves.” After a bloody mutiny in an off world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth, under the penalty of death. Special police squads known as Blade Runner Units had the job to kill any trespassing replicants.
Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford), ex-cop, ex-Blade Runner, and ex-killer, is forced by the police boss to return to his former profession of Replicant Hunter (Blade Runner.) He is assigned to eliminate four Replicants who fled the slavery of the colonies and came to Earth. Before starting the job Deckard visits the Tyrell Corporation where he meets Rachel, a “Replicant” girl created as an experiment, with whom he falls in love with.
After some investigations, he is able to discover the first of the four Replicants, Zhora. There starts a relentless pursuit through the streets of the Metropolis in which Deckard succeeds in eliminating Zhora but is himself attacked by another of the replicants, Leon. Just as Deckard is about to be killed, Rachel intervenes and shoots the Replicant, saving Deckard’s life. There are still two Replicants remaining, Pris and Roy. Roy is their leader and the most advanced Replicant of all. They fight it out in a concluding battle.
Director, Ridley Scott put in $25 million to the Burbank, California made film. This storyline of the film is actually based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? It took a whole sixteen weeks to shoot the whole film. When the film first came out it was very poorly received in terms of Critical Response and media. This was a surprise as it was meant to be a new improved version of the former 1982 version. This new Blade Runner: Director’s Cut was released in 1992, one major change was the extra fifteen seconds “unicorn running through woods” scene.
Misen Sc�ne is a word borrowed from the French theatre. It is actually everything on screen including scenery and the props used. The setting, costumes and lighting are also essential in an opening scene. It is essential in all films, as so much of the appearance and audience’s attention goes directly there. Scott has also used Film Noir which implies to the film, set forty years hence and made in the styles of forty years ago.
The film has a Cyber Punk genre, cyber being all the electronic things and gizmos and punk being the disruptive, rebellious street level. This subgenre was very popular in the early 1980’s. It emphasises on the urban decay, anger of global corporations and also Disopia (equal society) from the word Utopia. In the opening scene of Blade Runner, they show Los Angeles as a place of dirt, a falling city, with industry but also explosions. It was inspired by Port Talbot, and oil refinery in Wales. It is almost like “Hell” and a place where no one would ever want to live. It is nothing like what people would expect of the world in 2019. The colours are definitely not natural; there is always an orange, brown, musky and pollution type colour. Most of the filming is done at night, so it is very dark throughout. The
buildings stand out a lot, they look like tall, like corporate dominations, almost like pillars in the darkness. In Blade Runner there are two sets of levels, the city level and street level. The city level/high level has many layers. There are monolithic buildings, all quite closely crowded together. There are also very huge advertising products, one of the main advertisements is one of a Japanese women advertising sweet meat. These adverts look like they are from the future as they are all video clips and the graphics are very modern. There are also cigarette adverts and mobile adverts. This almost makes all the people feel alienated from the area. These buildings create an obvious alienating atmosphere and the graphical, modern adverts create a futuristic composition.
The street level/ground level is quite similar but also different to the high level. It is a busy area filled and crowded with people. There is a lot of artificial light from shops, flickering televisions and advertisements. The place looks unclean, reeking, run down, horrible and garbage filled environment. There is constant garbage everywhere and people can always be seen walking around it. Throughout the film, the audience would be able to hear various different languages such as English, Japanese and German. There is a whole place filled with Chinese people, just like China Town, this is because of all the Chinese migrant workers and factories like Chew’s laboratory.
It is a rather good example of how the world could be compared to how it is now. In addition to this there is a lot of holy priests walking around (this has not changed much.) This shows how cultural the world has become in Blade Runner terms. I have also noticed the speech of little children, siren and shots which is repeated many times in the film; the director has probably added these things to tell the audience that there have been a lot of technical robots and races created.
Old and new technology is mixed as well, including old telegraphic poles and all the new technology from neon shop lights and adverts. Retrofitting is used in the film at street level like the robotic things and additional sounds and places, this clearly shows how new technology has been added to the ancient. The place also has smoke regularly coming out, which shows that it is polluted and can cause a lot of damage to the environment; it is clearly not a stable environment to live in.
