Why I'm readingIt’s a scifi classic! I actually borrowed it a little while ago and never got around to watching it, until it was mentioned in Ready Player One.
Where I got the movie
Greenwich Library.
Expectations
Action-adventure, with a dose of existential confusion over what it means to be human. The movie is old enough that I’ve acquired a vague idea of the ending scene, albeit with zero context. Other than that, any expectations have been obscured by my long-standing confusion between this and Blade. Like, Wesley Snipes hunting vampires Blade. ……… ಠ_ಠ
So how was it?
The plot itself is fairly skeletal: Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a blade runner, responsible for hunting down and “retiring” Replicants -- lab-grown (or built?) creatures that are nearly indistinguishable from humans, used as slave labor off-world and banned on Earth itself. A small group of Replicants makes it back to Earth, and Rick agrees to take the assignment.
The movie was very loosely based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, so I’ll probably pick that up sometime soon. It also clearly influenced Fifth Element and the later scenes of Cloud Atlas, just off the top of my head.
Recommendation
Sci-fi fans (of course). Fans of film noir might get a kick out of it, too.
Feels
Our media center gave this movie genres like existentialism and neo-noir... More accurate words could not have been chosen. It has themes of mortality, identity, and what it means to be human… but it never gets preachy or concrete on anything. The filmography and special effects were characters in their own right, with sweeping sci-fi matte painting backgrounds, elaborate noir lighting, and grungy dieselpunk Chinese street scenes.
Favorites
The movie has lots of little details that it doesn’t feel the need to shove down your throat, adding a lot of depth to the characters. Of course, the downside of that is a lot of random shit that doesn’t make sense -- like, say, the unicorn hallucination.
I also like the ending. We know what happened (this isn’t Inception) … but… was it a victory? or a tragedy?
Least favorites
Ummm how about the date rape scene? I'll go with the date rape scene. I can’t call it anything else. I don’t know if it was supposed to be romantic or what, but when you kiss someone and they run for the door, and you follow them, grab their wrist to physically prevent them from leaving, push them up against a wall, and demand that they say ‘kiss me’, and ‘I want you’ multiple times… that’s not romantic. That’s pretty much a script for date rape. Literally the only thing that keeps this from ruining the movie for me is that I’m not sure if they even meant for it to be romantic.
Aside from that, I really wish we got some glimpse into Pris (Daryl Hannah). Her character was just as interesting as the two other (male) Replicants, but we got zero insight into what made her tick. Leon got about the same amount of screen time, but had several lines that made you think about his motivations and see him in an almost-human light. She just seemed arbitrarily evil and manic.
Cinematography
...was gorgeous. Old school matte paintings and real physical models, and filmed with this great noir feeling. With that said, it got a little clunky ; very often the camera (and the action) just ground to a halt so we could appreciate the scene’s setup, lighting, costuming, etc. Not that I don’t appreciate those scenes -- they were beautiful -- but it felt a little forced.
So what did I really think?
Click "read more"... massive spoilers ahead!
Sigh.. I know it’s a scifi classic. And I really did enjoy it. But good lord, I had to keep reminding myself not to interrupt the movie...
Voight-Kampff machines. There are so, so, so many ways they could test replicants, but they go with some convoluted eye dilation questionnaire combo. First of all, how the hell does it track their eye dilation while they’re moving around, blinking, and smoking the smokiest cigarettes that ever existed? And yet the room being ‘too bright’ (i.e. brighter than noir lighting) is a problem?
And why use the machine at all… why eyes instead of, say, brain scans or hormone detection? DNA testing? You could argue that this is an alternate reality with steampunk style technology, but I’m pretty sure if you can build a four year death sentence into their DNA, you can oh, I don’t know, detect that in their DNA? Or add some kind of marker, genetic or otherwise? Or test whether they can stick their hands in boiling/freezing water without being injured (okay, okay, I get it, those were special Replicants).
Rick’s long, long, long series of bad decisions at the end, when running from Roy. Dropped my gun? Oh well, no reason to go back for it. Trying to escape? Better go UP. To the roof. Where there is no escape route. Via a slippery ledge and an outcrop of masonry. In a rainstorm. With two broken fingers. Where my opponent will easily find me because he saw me go up there. And when he does, clearly the answer is to jump off the roof with no preparation, just barely catching the ledge on another roof again with broken fingers, and oh did I mention my opponent is physically super-human and can make that jump easily? Jee. Sus.
Rachel. I loved the idea of a Replicant who doesn’t know she’s not human, but -- and I hate to say this -- Mary Sean Young‘s performance left me underwhelmed. It’s clear from the start that she’s a Replicant. She walked into the room and I thought oh, clearly fake. She took the test, and, being so used to twists, I though maybe she’s … human, I guess? Because it’s too obvious that she’s acting like a replicant. Nope. just a replicant. If she had just a little bit of sass or defiance, she could have come off as a headstrong noir heroine… she didn’t, and she just came off as robotic. And I don’t know if she was supposed to become more human as the movie went on, but the “dramatic letting down of her hair” scene did nothing for me on that front.
And some of the little stuff…I hate when scifi just changes the laws of how pictures work. I’ll accept you can zoom into infinitesimal detail on a reflection in a mirror, sure. But photographs don’t allow parallax. And why does a “basic pleasure model” have the same A level strength as the two soldier models?
Okay, okay, there was also a lot I really loved about this -- the little things, and the characters.
First of all, a very standard reading of Rick -- reluctant to do his job, alcoholism, sort of avoidant personality -- suggests that he might have a problem killing Replicants. After all, the whole point is that they’re very close to human… and as we find out, they’re getting even closer.
But Rick is even more interesting. Fairly standard burnt-out alcoholic ex-detective character, right? The movie gives us no reason to think otherwise… or does it? None of his injuries leave bruises. He keeps old photographs, just like two of the renegade Replicants. He never really expresses emotions, and when he does, they just seem… off, somehow, although of course that could be the burnt-out alcoholic ex-detective persona. And why is he on Earth, anyway? Multiple shots of the Geisha Blimp remind us that off-world is the place to be, and most people left on Earth are old, injured, or otherwise unfit. J.P. Sebastian, for example, was left behind because of his genetic disability. Rick’s cop-buddy, the one with the origami fetish, even has a limp. And the kicker is Rachel’s question : “have you ever taken the test yourself?” Basically, Rick could be a Replicant created to hunt other Replicants.
I don’t know what the hell that unicorn hallucination was about, though.
Leon. So interesting, despite the lack of screen time. He clings to memories with his photographs. We see him becoming upset, the way you’d expect a human would feel when faced with false memories and a shelf life... but the way he feels them is just somehow not quite right. Psychotic, uncomprehending, draping-eyeballs-on-your-victim’s-shoulders not quite right. Fantastic performance.
The photographs themselves -- the purpose for which they were used -- is really interesting. Who we are is made up of a collection of memories, but can we really trust them? When Rachel begins to question that her memories are false, she clings to a photograph… a real, hard, solid physical memory. But… is it really?
J.P. Sebastian was really, really, really interesting. Yeah, whatever, with the awkwardness and the genetic disorder… what caught my eye were his “friends.” He makes dolls and toys to amuse himself. They’re his friends. Some of ‘em are creepy, some are funny. But… some of them have real human faces. What’s up with that? The goofy miniature soldiers are clearly alive, and one of them quietly freaks out when he sees the two replicants approach his… friend? owner? master? His eyes are wide and shift back forth between them and J.P., and he’s shaking, but he does nothing. Is he afraid of the replicants? Is he afraid of J.P.? Is he excited about what the Replicants are about to do?
And of course, Roy. Arguably the tragic hero of this story : escaped slave, noble Other, seeking to save his own life and the lives of his compatriots, taking revenge against his cruel creator, letting his anger lead him into doing bad things, eventually atoning… very much a Khan Noonien Singh character, except more crazy than asshole.
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