Blade Runner, which is directed by Ridley Scott and is based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is a Sci-fi Noir film about a policeman named Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) in 2019 Los Angeles who was contracted to retire four genetically engineered replicants. The four fugitives, Pris (played by Daryl Hannah), Zhora (played by Joanna Cassidy), Leon (played by Brion James), where led by Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer) and have escaped from an off-world colony in order to find their creator and oblige him into expanding their pre-determined four year life span. A part of the success that this feature has received can be attributed to the film’s ability to operate on many different levels.
In this essay I will discuss the way in which the generic marker ‘The visual surface of Science Fiction presents us with a confrontation between those images to which we respond as “alien” and those we know to be familiar’ can be applied to Blade Runner and to what end.
Following the release of Blade Runner in 1982, film critics gave high remarks to the beautiful visual images of the city. Director Ridley Scott crafted the future vision of Los Angeles starting with a couple of buildings which were left in their original place. From that starting point, he built a towering, restricted Los Angeles set in 2019. Los Angeles presents itself in the opening sequence as a widespread industrial landscape with stacks of chemical plants, refineries throwing flames halfway to the sky and huge mega-structures that dominate the city centre. Hidden behind the city’s mega-structures, a technological world lights up the city through glittering neons and huge advertising screens and upon closer inspection, is an overwhelming...
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...olitical repression might bring in the future. Although most dystopias express fears of technology and depersonalisation, Blade Runner attempts to describe the mediation point between technology and human values. Deckard says "Replicants are like any other machine. They can be a benefit or a hazard.”
As a conclusion, it must be said that the generic marker ‘The visual surface of Science Fiction presents us with a confrontation between those images to which we respond as “alien” and those we know to be familiar’ can be applied to Blade Runner when judging the movie from an aesthetic point of view as well as from an ideological point of view. As it was mentioned earlier in the essay, the film is constructed from images which society nowadays find as alien (such as images of the city, interiors and social interactions) and also from more familiar images
Films are designed for numerous purposes, some entertain, frighten, enlighten, educate, inspire, and most make us think about the world we live in. This paper will be focused on the cinematic interpretation of the film "Stepping Razor Red X", the Peter Tosh Story. The makers of a film from the writer, director, cinematographer and the art director, design, and conceptualize what they want the viewer to see.
Literature and film have always held a strange relationship with the idea of technological progress. On one hand, with the advent of the printing press and the refinements of motion picture technology that are continuing to this day, both literature and film owe a great deal of their success to the technological advancements that bring them to widespread audiences. Yet certain films and works of literature have also never shied away from portraying the dangers that a lust for such progress can bring with it. The modern output of science-fiction novels and films found its genesis in speculative ponderings on the effect such progress could hold for the every day population, and just as often as not those speculations were damning. Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis are two such works that hold great importance in the overall canon of science-fiction in that they are both seen as the first of their kind. It is often said that Mary Shelley, with her authorship of Frankenstein, gave birth to the science-fiction novel, breathing it into life as Frankenstein does his monster, and Lang's Metropolis is certainly a candidate for the first genuine science-fiction film (though a case can be made for Georges Méliès' 1902 film Le Voyage Dans la Lune, his film was barely fifteen minutes long whereas Lang's film, with its near three-hour original length and its blending of both ideas and stunning visuals, is much closer to what we now consider a modern science-fiction film). Yet though both works are separated by the medium with which they're presented, not to mention a period of over two-hundred years between their respective releases, they present a shared warning about the dangers that man's need fo...
Many people who grew up in 1960s and 70s with watching the Japanese animated television series by Tatsuo Yoshida would be very familiar with Speed Racer by Andy and Larry Wachowski in 2008 (American Film Institute Catalog, 2008). As a big hit in the summer of 2008, Speed Racer was considered as a box office bomb because it failed to break even at the box office and received generally negative reviews from film critics such as A.O. Scott and Jim Emerson. The Wachowski brothers were criticized in the conventional sense of cinema; however, it did succeed in its technological innovation and digital novelty (Emerson, 2008). As the rise of subculture in the American popular culture, Speed Racer did appear to satisfy and entertain the certain group of people who enthusiastic about the film including fans of Wachowski and gamers. Therefore, this refers to the reading of a film. Different approaches to read a film will result in different perceptions and conclusions. The French New Wave director Francois Truffaut argued that the authorship should be presented in the works of the best filmmakers. Nonetheless, this essay will focus on why the semiotic approach to read a film offers a better way to understand the American popular culture than the auteur theory even the semiotic theory may contain bias sometimes.
The plot of the movie “Blade Runner” becomes unrevealed till the end of the movie. Many assumptions about the plot and the final of the movie appear in the spectator’s mind, but not one of these assumptions lasts long. Numerous deceptions in the plot grip the interest of the audience and contribute for the continuing interest to the movie eighteen years after its creation. The main character in the movie is Deckard- the Blade Runner. He is called for a special mission after his retirement, to “air up” four replicants who have shown flaws and have killed people. There are many arguments and deceptions in the plot that reveal the possibility Deckard to be a replicant. Roy is the other leading character of the movie. He appears to be the leader of the replicants- the strongest and the smartest. Roy kills his creator Tyrell. The effect of his actions fulfils the expectation of the spectator for a ruthless machine.
Duckworth, A.R. (2008). Blade Runner and the Postmodern use of Mise-en-scene. Available: http://ardfilmjournal.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/blade-runner-and-the-postmodern-use-of-mise-en-scene/ Last accessed 21st Dec 2013.
As a whole, science fiction utilises mise-en-scene to establish many SF codes and conventions (as mentioned above). As seen in Blade Runner, the most significant elements of mise-en-scene that help construct SF codes and conventions include the use of cinematography, lighting, editing, music, props and costumes. Blade Runner is incredibly unique for it is the first SF film to contain film noir and be categorised as cyberpunk; a subgenre of SF that showcases advanced technology in an urban, dystopian future (Callaghan 2017). As such, Blade Runner has established numerous codes and conventions for later cyberpunk films (E.g. 1984’s The Terminator). In one scene in Blade Runner, inside of a meeting room in a Tyrell Corporate building, the protagonist,
Will Brooker. “Reel Toads and Imaginary Cites: Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner and the Contemporary Science Fiction Movie. (London: Wallflower Press. 2005)
Another aspect of the movie “Bladerunner” is of those that broke away from the system. The “Nexus 6” were androids that developed emotions and escaped from slavery, because they wanted to live longer. Roy and Priss are good examples of androids showing that they have emotions. They were manipulative, passionate for what they wanted, and even had loving sides. Roy was the leader of the “Nexus 6” and Priss was his girlfriend
Blade Runner. Dir. James Riddley-Scott. Perf. Harrison Ford, Joe Turkel, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Joanna Cassidy, Brion James, William Sanderson, M. Emmett Walsh, Edward James Olmos, Morgan Paull, Columbia Tri-Star, 1982
...be, as the Tyrell Corporation advertises, “more human than human.” Ridley Scott uses eye imagery to juxtapose the tremendous emotion of the replicants with the soullessness of the future’s humans. By doing so, Scott demonstrates that our emotions and yearning for life are the characteristics that fundamentally make us human, and that in his vision of our dystopian future, we will lose these distinctly human characteristics. We are ultimately losing the emotion and will to live that makes us human, consequently making us the mechanistic, soulless creatures of Scott’s dystopia. Blade Runner’s eye motif helps us understand the loss of humanness that our society is heading towards. In addition, the motif represents Ridley Scott’s call to action for us to hold onto our fundamental human characteristics in order to prevent the emergence of the film’s dystopian future.
The culture and philosophy of Ridley Scott (pp. 231-243. United States: Lexington Books, Inc. Pramaggiore, M., & Wallis, T. (2005). Film: A critical introduction to the film.
The Maze Runner shows great representation of futuristic technology. All of the teenage boys who have now adapted to their lives outside of the maze which they call the glade the young boy
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
Star Wars (1977) is one of the world’s most successful films of all time. It has made a terrific impact on popular culture since its release. Furthermore, Star Wars changed the narrative and aesthetic style of future Hollywood films. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, illustrates how cinema has evolved since Fred Ott’s Sneeze (1894). Ultimately, this essay will explain the set up of Star Wars and how it connects to cinema history, in the point of views of the: narrative and cinematic style, genre, auteur theory and the global film industry.
How do we know that we are human and, if we are human, what does it mean to be human? These two philosophical inquiries are explored in great depth in Ridley Scott's film "Blade Runner", and of course the text of Philip K. Dick's wonderful novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? on which the film is based. Most would agree that these themes exist in the novel, but a handful of critics and academics have some doubt as to their presence in the film. If one examines both the film and the text, one will realize that they both serve to support the same motifs, but do so in different fashions. Many critics argue that the awesome visuals overwhelm the contents of the plot and theme, but I argue that the visuals depicting Los Angeles in the year 2019 help to advance the themes. Viewers often miss the human side of the story or lack there of, and may object to the strong visuals for this reason. It can be argued that the visuals serve to portray a dehumanized world where only subtle signs of humanity's existence are dispersed throughout, where existentialist notions such as what being human is and what being human means are not easily answered.