Blade Runner (Dan Elie Terry Hubert)

Blade Runner (1982)

117 minutes run-time

Directed by Ridley Scott

Lead Actors: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young

 Film Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eogpIG53Cis 

 

Summary And Analysis

Summary: In the futuristic setting in Los Angeles, in the year of 2019, humans created “Replicants”, robots for slave labor. Those robots became a threat and are now banned on earth. To assure this ban, there was a creation of a special Ops called “Blade Runners”. Rick Deckard, who is played by Harrison Ford, is called back on the job to help kill (retire) some Replicants. His former boss, Bryant, explains to him that 6 replicants have hijacked a ship and have illegally came to earth. During Deckard’s search for the replicants, he develops a romantic feeling for a replicant called Rachael. Deckard puts his skills back to test to hunt the four remaining fugitives, while these four androids are trying to locate their maker and force him to extend their lifespan. In this quest, Decker realizes how sophisticated these Replicants can actually become.

In Blade Runner, there are various cinematic techniques that the director used to enhance the viewer's experience and level of immersion. We will focus on the framing, the music and sound, the lighting, the sets and props, the characters, the acting, the costumes, and other interesting techniques, such as special effects and flashbacks, of the film.

For the framing, to give us a better image and feeling of the atmosphere of this world, they are sometimes a long shot of the city. By doing so, the spectators are able to get a glance of the world that technology promises, such as giant buildings, screens, and flying vehicles. Bottom-up shots of the City, illuminated with all the screens and neon lights shows the level technology has taken over humanity. An example of long shots vs close up is that they would range from as close to an actor’s pupil to as far as the view of the whole city, filled with Coca-Cola ads.

For the sound, when Deckard is examining Rachael, she smokes a cigarette and the sound of her inhalation becomes emphasized, to drag the viewer’s attention towards it, perhaps to trick the audience into thinking she is as flawed as human beings. Furthermore, Deckard is pretending is to be a member of the American federation of variety artists and approaches Zhora. During this encounter, he focuses a lot on the snake she carries around. The snake is fake, but the hissing makes it sound more real and alive. At one point of the movie, Deckard is standing alone in his kitchen and through his window, we can see and hear the sound of raindrops hitting the pavement. Moreover, it is constantly raining in the film. This creates a gloomy ambiance and it sheds light on how technology may not be good as most believed it to be. This provokes a gloomy and bleak reaction in the viewers. In the film, the directors didn’t bother taking out the unnecessary sounds on set, such as chair squeaks, shuffling and other ambient sounds. This creates a more authentic atmosphere for the viewers. Additionally, another great presence in the movie is the eerie music. This music makes the setting spooky, which is synthetic. It creates a futuristic vibe and makes the ambiance very unsettling, creating a sense of upcoming danger.

The lighting of the movie is very dark. It gives off a depressing, yet mysterious atmosphere for the spectators. This tells us a lot about the future world. For instance, being too dependent on technology can enlarge the gap between those in possession of the technology and those whose daily activities dependent on it. Also, according to an insight on Blade Runner, "the opening scene of Blade Runner is terrifying. Fire explodes upward from an endless sea of lights into an eternal nighttime sky. Massive smokestacks belch pollution and neon lights burn coldly in the darkness. This revelation of Los Angeles in the year 2019 appears more like Hell than earth. The film's universe as a post-apocalyptic vision on excessive capitalism and technology run amok manifests itself in the images of buildings resembling cancerous growths and the different angles in which the cinematography presents this vision." (https://br-insight.com/library/city-eyes-and-christ/). So, we can say that the future world is represented as a scary time because people are often afraid of the future. On the other hand, the street lights and store signs are probably the only sources of light in the outdoors. They represent the spot lights of the movie.

The streets sets were very crowded and claustrophobic. Whenever the characters were outside, we could see the large crowd of people moving around. In addition, when Deckard is at the bar, he makes a phone call and he barely has any privacy since there’s so many people. This suggest that there was no sense of privacy. As technology advances, a sense of privacy and personal freedom dissipate. This last statement is also represented in the film metaphorically since surveillance lights and police vehicles are above the population. This suggests that the people are literally governed by authorities who stay right above their heads, taking away the sense of freedom. Judging by the vast discrepancies between buildings and architecture, we can see how technology created mass levels of inequality and that technocratic capitalism reigns in Blade Runner. A perfect example is Tyrell Corporations since their building is phenomenal compared to the others filmed in the city of Los Angeles.

The costumes weren’t any noticeably different between the replicants and the humans. We can assume that the director was attempting to minimise the dichotomy between robots and humans so as to maintain that both were similar. The style of the clothes was very casual. Nobody was wearing any fancy outfits such as suits, except for Tyrell . His gave off a feeling of wealth inequality. Only the rich and important people would wear nicer and expensive clothes, while the rest would wear more casual and poorer clothes. Rachel also wore better looking clothes and could be explained by the fact that she was one of the Tyrell’s proudest accomplishments and working side by side would require an outfit of higher value.

There are many themes present all throughout the movie. Ideas like whether personhood should be granted to A.I. and what type of "self" do they possess, if at all. Most of the themes allude to deeper moral and ethical questions concerning everything from the potential degradation of the environment, massive wealth and, consequently, social inequality which may lead to civil unrest. This also ties into economic models and how they must shift in order to accommodate those displaced by automation. Needless to say, times are changing, and Blade Runner, as most futuristic technocratic films, foreshadow what's to come.

1105 words

Rating

We give this movie 4.5 out of 5 stars overall.

Main review and critique

In general, the main idea of the movie was very interesting since it had many strong  ideas concerning the future.  However, some weaknesses were found amongst the editing of the series of images. For starters, the darkness of sets played a major role in setting the atmosphere and the tone that the movie took. This helped enhance viewers’ focus on the story and to show a sense of cruelty and sad environment in this futuristic world. Actually, the idea of dimming the lights was intelligent and is one of the movie’s strengths; but, it would turn into a weakness when the brightness sometimes happened to be too low which conflicted with the viewing and clear understanding of the characters’ actions and movements.

However, the framing was well thought of and contributed to the film’s many strong characteristics. For example, the shots focusing only on the eyes provided important information to the audience in terms of comprehending the situation when blade runners would use a device during the interrogation of a potential replicant. This segment made the public understand the intentions of the interviewer and the device’s utility which was to read the reactions of the pupils caused by questions deemed sensitive to these advanced human robots. 

Class Connections

Artificial Intelligence plays a definitive and intricate role in the world of Blade Runner. These robots are essentially genetically engineered androids, known as Replicants, that live to serve the human race, or at least that’s what they were programmed to do. Naturally, as Hollywood and science fiction literature have warned us for decades, the A.I. develops a consciousness of their own, or at least it seems, becomes aware of itself and it’s limited life span, and decides to meet their maker. This was parallel to the theme we’ve explored with the Matrix. The idea that the same robots that humans created to facilitate life have, paradoxically enough, became so advanced that they decide to use humans to facilitate their own lives. 

One of the pivotal aspects of the film is a question that we human beings have begun and will continually ask ourselves, and that is, can and will we be able to distinguish between artificial intelligence and “natural” or human intelligence? This is a question that we’ve discussed at length in our Humanities course, and have, in some sense, immersed ourselves in while watching the Black Mirror episode titled “Be Right Back” (S2E1). Our conclusion was, in some regards, that there are different levels of “self” and consciousness. There are automatons, which are beings that perform the primary tasks to survive such as breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, and reproduction, but are not conscious of they’re doing so. In other words, their cognition is profoundly inferior, not to say anything of metacognition. They do not exhibit any sort of “insightful problem solving” like the elephant and/or do not appear to be aware of themselves like the dolphins as shown in the “Mysteries of the Animal Mind” video by the CBC. 

The topic of “self” is very important when it comes A.I. since it ties into the concept of personhood. The latter is the legal recognition of an entity as intrinsically valuable, equal and should be granted all rights human beings enjoy. Therefore, viewing Replicants as subordinate to human beings and thus, only there to serve us wouldn’t be an ethical practice and would be reminiscent of an ideology common amongst humans known as anthropocentrism.

Questions

1. Should we create artificial Intelligence that will be indistinguishable from humans?

2. At what point in technological development should a robot be granted personhood?

3. In Blade Runner, Roy, the head replicant, kills Tyrell. Why would Replicants destroy their own creators, even if this man gave them their existance? 

Web References

MIRI is a website designed for AI reaserch. On this site they explain what AI is, where it is and where it is going. They have papers and research that can help us understand and see what is currently going on in this domain. This website gives us an opinionated view on AI. Should they be given personhood? Why? Why not? Very interesting read. (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/04/ai-machines-things-not-persons)

Link: https://intelligence.org/gclid=CjwKEAjwq5LHBRCN0YLf9GyywYSJAAhOw6miu9GDyVqEu5iqmxxKQR04N-8Aj9C4wJoWZ93T2VDxRoC52Lw_wcB

https://br-insight.com/library/city-eyes-and-christ/

The link above mentions many observations made on the movie Blade Runner.

MLA Citations

"Artificial Intelligence @ MIRI." Machine Intelligence Research Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2017.

"Blade Runner (1982)." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017.

"Blade Runner Insight." Blade Runner Insight - The City, Eyes and Christ. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017.

Smith, Wesley J. "AI Machines: Things Not Persons | Wesley J. Smith." First Things. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2017.