The Film That Started The Question "What Makes Us Human?"

Rating: 6/10 (2 November 2019)

A 1982 Science-Fiction film set in the year 2019 Los Angeles. Here, synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on off-world colonies. When a fugitive group of Nexus-6 replicants led by Roy Batty escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard reluctantly agrees to hunt them down.
This was yet another film I had to watch for my Filmic Text class that I had never seen before. I know it's regarded as one of the "greatest science-fiction films of all time", but I'm going to argue that Ridley Scott's "Alien" is a far superior film. That's not to say "Blade Runner" was a bad film, it's not but I have my gripes with it. Let's start off with the positives though. The clear argument about humanity, more specifically what makes us human is very interesting to me. Also the replicants themselves have enough depth to them where they were interesting as well, and how it's determined if they are replicants is quite cool. The futuristic sets that mix futuristic los angeles and asian culture was a really stellar idea, though it's borders on racist at times. We really didn't need to cut to a geisha billboard throughout the film. Moving onto one of the negatives, the pacing. It felt dragged down at parts, without tension like shown in "Alien" this kind of pacing is felt amongst viewers.
Rachael's character I could relate to the most, but seeing how important her character really is to the plot she should've been present more. Also the argument of "that scene" between Deckard and Rachael in his apartment is not justified because of the year this was made. It's ironic how a film like this could have a scene like that that's supposed to be set in 2019 whereas its that year now and that would not fly in the slightest nowadays! It's way too sexual assaulty for me to be comfortable watching it, when clearly it's intended to be "romantic" by the choice of jazz music and lighting. This is the one scene that I agreed with my class that felt completely out of place and against Deckard's character thus far.
No I have not seen all versions of the film and I'm not going to. It's a little asinine to me when people claim that you "have to watch all versions" in order to grasp the full concept of the film. No I'm pretty sure I got the idea from whatever version I saw, its Harrison Ford running around being Harrison Ford. With cool visuals and relevant concept, even more so in current day than when it was released. But it has quite a few problems and I hope these were fixed in the sequel.