Analysis of Blade Runner by Ridley Scott

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Analysis of Blade Runner by Ridley Scott

Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and based on Philip K. Dick's

novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is a Sci-fi slash Noir film

about a policeman named Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) in a decrepit

2019 Los Angeles whose job it is to "retire" four genetically

engineered cyborgs, known as "Replicants". The four fugitives, Pris

(Daryl Hannah), Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), Leon (Brian James), and their

leader, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), have escaped from an off-world

colony in order to find their creator and bully him into expanding

their pre-determined four-year life span. This film originally flopped

when it came out in 1982, but since has become a widely acclaimed cult

classic with a director's cut to boot. A large part of the success

that this movie has received can be attributed to its ability to

operate on many different levels.

Blade Runner focuses around the adventures of Rick Deckard, a bounty

hunter, whose prey are the replicants, androids who are virtually

indistinguishable from humans. The story is set in downtown Los

Angeles, in the year 2019. This is a post nuclear holocaust world,

where the sun is darkened by the fallout and acid rain continually

falls. Six replicants of the Nexus 6 generation, the most advanced,

have escaped from their off-world colony, where they were being used

as slave labor. The leader of the replicants, Roy Batty, is on a

mission to find more life for himself and the others, for they only

have a four year life span and are on the verge of death. Roy is a

military style replicant, so he has killed many people in

inter-galactic wars and continues to ki...

... middle of paper ...

...s out. "Should the replicants kill to

gain moral life? Should Harrison Ford be killing them simply because

they want to exist? These questions begin to tangle up Deckard's

thinking…especially when he becomes involved with a female replicant

himself."

The ultimate relevance of Blade Runner lies in its challenge of what

it must mean to be human. It raises the eternal gnawing doubt as to

our own humanity or lack of it. These are the same issues raised by

the great religions and philosophies of the past. And it goes to how

we respond to the pain of those around us. Do we reach for the one

downed by the crushing perplexity of modernity or do we merely pass

by, forgetting about that grizzled human lying on the sidewalk who is

drowning in the gutter created by the disintegrating and dehumanising

post-modern existence?

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