Frankenstein & Blade Runner: Blade Runner

"When director Ridley Scott started work on the science-fiction film Blade Runner in 1980, his 1979 film Alien had made him as hot a director as almost any in Hollywood ... "

"In 1977 a journeyman actor called Brian Kelly optioned a science-fiction novel called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The book's author, Philip K. Dick, had been writing science fiction since the early 1950s. He was 49 years old, with 30 novels behind him. He had a cult reputation, but he barely scraped a living. Kelly only paid him $2,500, but Dick was happy with this windfall ... "

"Ridley Scott's Blade Runner indicates that the only possible path for the evolution of humanity to take is a regenerative one, specifically, by renewing earlier human precedents in an Edenic America.

" ... Do Adnroids Dream? is set in the decaying megalopois of Los Angeles, AD 2020, a post-holocaust society where the human population has been decimated by the effects of radiation sickness ... "

"When science-fiction writer Peter Watts first opened Philip K. Dick’s 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a word caught his eye. It was “friendlily”. How had Dick got that past an editor? As Watts told me: “I knew at that point that Dick had to be some kind of sick genius.” ... "

"This novel is the source text for Ridley Scott's dystopian masterpiece Blade Runner, and it's to Philip K Dick's considerable credit that neither book nor film seem dated. Indeed, barely a year goes by without the arrival of some technological advance that makes the future dreamed up by Dick in 1968 seem closer ... "

Access information about the book that inspired the movie, Blade Runner. This link provides plot summary and analysis, themes, quotes, characters and more.

"It's a classic tale of failure and redemption, the kind of story Hollywood loves to tell. Fresh off his second successful movie, an up-and-coming director takes a chance on a dark tale of a 21st-century cop who hunts humanlike androids. But he runs over budget, and the financiers take control, forcing him to add a ham-fisted voice-over and an absurdly cheery ending ... "

"Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner is widely regarded as one of the best works of its genre. Loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it is hard to overstate the massive influence of Blade Runner on contemporary science fiction works ... "

" ... The influence Blade Runner had on subsequent films could be classed as a genre in itself. It’s one of four works which marked a shift in the idea of how science fiction could be presented on screen: Star Wars (1977-present), Alien (1979-present), Mad Max: Road Warrior (1981) and Blade Runner. Of course, these films didn’t spring from a vacuum. Each of the production teams were influenced by popular culture — samurai films, French comics and weird Swiss artists – taking elements from different sources and putting them together in a way which stirred the imagination ... "

"Film and other forms of popular culture place enormously powerful tools at the disposal of students of politics and society. This paper analyses an aesthetically complex, philosophically disturbing and ideologically ambivalent cinematic dystopia of a few years ago, Blade Runner ... "

"This is the fifth in a weekly series called “Under the influence”, in which we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art in their field. Here, the University of Johannesburg’s James Sey introduces Ridley Scott’s cult film, “Blade Runner”, released in 1982 ... "

"The tale of grizzled bounty hunter Rick Deckard and his mission to execute a mutinous gang of replicants – synthetic biological androids who are barely distinguishable from humans – Ridley Scott’s third film remains his most beloved and richly layered work. But does it still hold up decades later? And what can Blade Runner tell us about technology, politics, architecture, life, death and the human condition in 2015? ... "

"World War Terminus has left the Earth a radioactive wreck. Most survivors have emigrated to Mars, where the authorities promise them an easy life with android servants. Only those too poor to emigrate, or who have been genetically damaged by radiation (the chickenheads), remain on Earth ... "