The "Casablanca" of Science Fiction Films: Maybe the Deepest of SF Cinema that Birthed the Cyber SF Era

Rating: 10/10 (1 June 2010)

When "Blade Runner" was released in the Summer of 1982, mainstream audiences were not quite ready for this very different vision of the future. And I will even admit, I was among them at the time. I didn't understand the depth of "Blade Runner" until I had had subsequent multiple experiences of it. I don't know if you really see Blade Runner as much as become absorbed into it. Although Blade Runner was a box office disappointment upon its release, it had stiff competition in 1982. Spielberg's "ET", the sentimental science fiction film, had broken all box office records; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, was the favorite for pure good guy versus bad guy SF; and other films outside the genre were much more uplifting and linear, such as "Tootsie" and "An Officer and a Gentleman". (The other under-appreciated masterpiece of that year was "Sophie's Choice", although Meryl Streep did deservedly win for Best Actress.)
Despite its mixed critical reception, including a very ambivalent review by Roger Ebert who called it a "failure as a story", "Blade Runner" has emerged as one the three best films of 1982, the other two being "Ghandhi" and "Sophie's Choice". My revised list of Best Picture nominees in alphabetical order for 1982: "Blade Runner", "E.T." "Ghandhi", "Missing", "Sophie's Choice". I would still give top award nods to Ghandhi but only by the slimmest of margins. Blade Runner would be my very close second choice. ("The Verdict" and "Tootsie" are good films but not exactly masterpieces.)
The story concerns relatively new technology: the producing of humanoid cyborgs which have become dangerously close to human life. They are called "Replicants". The latest models appear to have feelings and emotions like humans. Now, some renegade Replicants who feel they were treated as slaves on a labor planet have sprung from their "slavery" and returned to earth. They wish to confront their creators. Richard "Rick" Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a "blade runner", a kind of detective/police officer who finds and exterminates renegade Replicants. One of his tools is a series of questions offered a suspected Replicant designed to create responses which tip-off the questioner as to whether or not the participant is human. But then Decker falls for a female Replicant, Rachel (Sean Young) who seems all too human.
In the 1950's and 1960's, a very select group of eclectic readers absorbed and appreciated the work of a somewhat lesser-known science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick. Dick was a maverick of the SF genre, essentially immersing readers into a world much more reminiscent of the works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett than Gene Roddenbery or George Lucas. Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade could navigate Blade Runner's darkened and misty streets much more effectively than either James T. Kirk or Luke Skywalker. While the most popular writers of the SF genre were still getting into rocket ships and flying to planets for high adventure, Dick was painting on an entirely new canvas, where urban noir meets future technology. Flying taxis and large plasma screens reside along with overpopulation and dirty streets. And he was writing in the 1950's and 1960's! However, even by 1982, audiences were still craving the likes of heroic science fiction such as Star Trek and Star Wars. Typical audience sensibility was still far behind "Blade Runner".
What made "Blade Runner" tough on audiences at the time of its release and so appreciated today is that it challenges viewers' perceptions of not only the future but the nature of modern reality itself. Unlike Star Wars and Star Trek, "Blade Runner" is a cautionary tale, an updated version of "Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus" and therefore, everything presented in its world is at the very least disconcerting and at the worst quite horrifying. SF has been predominantly about Utopias. "Blade Runner" is a story set in a "Dystopia". SF most often distinguishes between right and wrong, good and bad. "Blade Runner" is about the blurry shades between ethics and justice, where the ones with which we most empathize are outlaws. SF endings are often neat and tidy. "Blade Runner" offers a very ambiguous and contemplative ending (and I am not referring to the final coda of the original theatrical release). "Blade Runner" deals with themes concerning the larger questions of life and meaning, very uncommon in SF cinema as a whole. And that's why "Blade Runner" has become not only an iconic classic of the SF genre, it is one of the reasons that cinema has continued to be a captivating medium. "Blade Runner" is in the same company as "Ghandhi", "Citizen Kane", and "Casablanca". Know that SF can sometimes transcend its own genre, and BR inspired a new wave of films, such as "The Matrix" and "Dark City". "Blade Runner" was and is one of the finest examples of watershed ground-breaking cinema.