Robot Love and Ham Contests: Blade Runner, 25 Years On (Long)

Karen and I were late and scarfing down Vietnamese food in her kitchen. “I’m not missing the giant eyeball,” I said. “I won’t be late for the giant eyeball, let’s go.”

Karen’s roommate wandered by. “What giant eyeball?” she asked.

“Oh, we’re going to see the new version of Blade Runner.”

“What’s Blade Runner?”

Huh? Karen and I looked at each other. To us, this was like not having ever heard of the Godfather. Or Jaws. Her roommate is 32, hmmm, but she’s from Alabama. Maybe she’s just an isolated case, I thought. Her friend, though, in his late twenties, had never heard of it either. I explained to them that it was probably one of the top three science fiction movies of all time.

“Is it better than Transformers?” he asked.

My jaw dropped. “Uh, yes!”

“Have you seen Transformers?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t need to see Transformers to know that Blade Runner is better. That goes without saying.”

“Yeah, but how can you make that judgment if you haven’t seen Transformers?”

I stared at Karen. Who were these people? It wasn’t like we were so much older than them. How could a film be so seminal and important to an entire generation and yet non-existent to the next? I recalled that Middlebrow got the same kind of nonplussed response from students at the SLCC, both before viewing and after.

“Maybe the film has really aged poorly,” I thought. Nah.



We missed the giant eyeball and we were seated way up front so we exchanged our tickets for the 10:30pm show and waited it out. Now there would be no excuses. If Blade Runner—one of the films that convinced me I wanted to make movies in the first place—really sucked, then it wasn’t going to be because I was late and seated in front row. I was going to be in the back third, with the screen at eye level, with an emptier theater and fewer chewing sounds in the air.

Well, it didn’t suck. And it is still a visionary film. And although it is dated like all older sci-fi is dated, it wasn’t that bad. At all. The worst was some of the wardrobe, actually, especially a violet and turquoise shirt that Harrison Ford pulls off before he puts the robot moves on the robot Sean Young.



But it was slow. Really slow. I learned that some reviewer called it “Blade Crawler” when it first came out. That’s about right. Although I’m sure it feels like MTV when placed next to 2001, which feels like MTV when placed next to Tarkovski’s Solaris. So it’s all relative. But it is interesting to note that people thought it was slow even back in 1982, back when movies were often more than 90 minutes.

And it was empty. It is really a soulless, unemotional movie. Sure, this can happen when you’re making a movie about robots. Robot love isn’t always as fiery as you’d like it to be. Sean Young is about as fiery as you can get in real life, but this is a movie about robots, goddamn it. Tone it down. You too, Harrison.



And nothing too much happens. Although it still looks and sounds exquisite, it proceeds in the typical noir mode—detective going from place to place, looking for clues—with some campy hardboiled dialogue, a hard drinking antihero, chiaroscuro lighting, and moody sax theme laid in from time to time.

And the final speech by Rutger Hauer—a scene I’ve seen probably fifty times—was hammy this time around. Kind of bad. And he just launches it to it. The hand of the author and the director and the actor and the composer are all over that scene. It’s like a big Ham Contest. Rutger’s trying to live up to the writtenness the scene and Vangeles is plinking his new-age synths and booms in the background and the dialogue is the most scripted sounding stuff I’ve ever heard. And Rutger has a nail through his hand and a dove in the other.

Kind of laying it on with a trowel, as WS would put it.



But hey, Blade Runner is still brilliant, even though it’s emotionally void. Probably because Dick’s source material is so smart. And an exercise in production and art design, it’s still the model that sci-fi films aspire to. Seeing it big is totally different than seeing it on TV. That dirty, rainy production design goes deep deep into frame. Never did I get the sense that the reality of the movie stopped just at the edge of frame and beyond it was a craft service table and reality. There’s extras in the deep background and neon and trash and it keeps going. It’s actually kind of insane, how dense and exact the production design is. Bravo!

And most of the effects still hold up today. There are some clunky looking matte paintings and spaceships in the middle, but the opening flyovers are unstoppable, probably because they still used models back then instead of just doing all of your effects work at home in your computer.



As far as changes? It feels like a cross between the original international release and the 1992 Director’s Cut. Not a lot of new material. One interesting change was the line Batty (Rutger Hauer) delivers to Tyrell before he gives him the skull-crush and eye-gouge, which used to be “I want more life, fucker.”

Now it’s “I want more life, Father.” Which is from the original workprint version of the film, actually, and much much stronger (although I still love the aggressive comedy of a robot really using the vernacular to good effect).

The Wikipedia article has a ton of info on this new version and how it differs from previous versions. Lots of good stuff [HERE].

I suppose the next false god to go down will be Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Mike Leigh’s Naked, or Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. And how I will weep when that happens.