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Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a film adapted from the novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ The novel explores how it is to be human. The androids in this case possess no empathetic intelligence (Kerman 4). Deckard, the main character, embarks on a journey to haunt the androids. In his conquest, he faces tough times like arrest, love wrangles and the problem of retiring some androids. In comparison, the film, Blade Runner uses the term ‘replicas’ for the androids. They are made in a way that they are identical to humans, but are agile, have superior strength and variable intelligence. The film has been described as an intense, intimate and anything-but-glamorous inside account of how the work of Science Fiction’s most uncompromising author was transformed into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic (Sammon 56).
Blade Runner is a touching drama about the importance of making the most on what we have and about the value of life. The plot centers more or less on the question of humanity, something that humans take for granted. The Artificial Human is a book that gives an insight on how artificial humans live amongst us and how they strive to be like humans. They fear death, for they cherish their memories consequently, what they want is a longer life, more experiences and feel more like humans. Scientists always invent supermodels that are designed to function better than humans do (Urbančič and Bratko 45). Once the machines are smarter, they might steer the future and in the end, the human world would be lost. Moreover, self-improvement takes place with time and the replicas pose a danger to humanity hence a need to kill them. Accordingly, a blade runner is developed into the future amazingly with a touch of an absolute dystopia whose aim is to retire the replicas who pose dangers to the human life (Kerman 7).
According to Carter B. Horsley’s top 500 films blade runner is ranked 17th best films because it presents a dreary future world in which fundamental metaphysical questions are secondary to emotions. The emotions are stronger in some replicas than humans are. This proves to be a very powerful and intriguing twist. Blade runner spurns the technicality promises of powerful replicas while narrowing in the psychological harms of man’s inventions. The film is a thriller and not a horror movie according to the reviewer. The storyline is about four replicas who are programmed to live for only four years yet permeated with memories of a non-existent childhood, youth and adulthood. The reviewer concludes that the film’s soundtrack stands near the very top in its beauty and atmospheric setting therefore a haunting experience future noir (Sammon 391).
Bukatman details the making of Blade Runner and its steadily improving fortunes following its release in 1982. He situates the film in terms of debates about postmodernism, which have informed much of the criticism devoted to it. Moreover, he argues that its tensions derive also from the quintessentially twentieth-century modernist experience of the city – as a space both imprisoning and liberating (34). According to Bukatman, Blade Runner visual complexity allows the film to express modernity and successfully translate a world of high definition (9). The futuristic city created by the film imagines a place of oppression and transgressions in which disorders can erupt. This fiction portrays the urban life. The scenes graced by stunning sets, photography, costumes and lighting, blade runner succeed in creating a world unfamiliar and new (Scott 89).
Works Cited
Bukatman, Scott. Blade Runner. London: British Film Institute, 1997. Print.
Kerman, Judith. Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1997. Print.
Urbančič, Tanja, and Ivan Bratko. “Reconstructing Human Skill with Machine Learning.” Ecai 94. 2004: 498-502. Print.
Sammon, Paul M. Future Noir: The Making of “Blade Runner”. London: Gollancz, 2007. Print.
Scott, Ridley. Blade Runner. Sydney, N.S.W: Showtime Action, 2010. Film.