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Don't rate Blade Runner
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18-09-2008 3:53pm#1
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Some people like vanilla ice cream, others like hugely artistic, boundless sci fi chocolate chip ice cream. Who cares? Everyone has an opinion and is entitled to it. There must be some reason it has stood the test of time as a cinematic masterpiece though?
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OP I recently watched it again, having had the same experiences as you've had.
I watched it in total darkness with no phone or door to interrupt.
It made perfect sense then and I really enjoyed it, so I'd suggest this might be the way to go.
It is a great film but the plot is not really where's its strengths lie.
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Yeah, maybe that's the issue here. Maybe the OP would be happier with Independence Day or Deep Impact!
There's no accounting for taste I suppose.
Just because someone doesn't rate a film, doesn't mean they have poor taste - it's all a matter of opinion.
Oh and Independence Day was cool for what it is - a leave your brain at the door action/comedy sci-fi blockbuster and on those terms it delivers everything it promises Deep Impact was the thinking man's Armageddon and wasn't bad either.
I think some people look for too much meaning from certain films whist forgetting that (especially nowadays) the aim is to sell as many tickets at the box office as possible with everything else secondary to that.0 -
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It was HUGE in it's time (1982) Harrison Ford Rutger Hauer Daryl Hannah plus the sound track plus the visionary & future insight & the entire concept made this movie a legend when it was released...now we are so far beyond this in every way that only people who saw it first time round can really appreciate it's "genius" for want of a better description. Today it's tacky in ways but in it's time I repeat LEGEND. 0
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Does that stuff make a film good though?Kaiser2000 wrote: »I think some people look for too much meaning from certain films whist forgetting that (especially nowadays) the aim is to sell as many tickets at the box office as possible with everything else secondary to that.
I daresay that the people who "look for meaning" from films are painfully aware that, as far as the industry is concerned, just about everything is secondary to box office gross, and the potential thereof.
I daresay that's the problem. That's why people look at Independence Day and say "it's trash."
You called it an "action/comedy SF blockbuster." It isn't any one thing. In fact, it's as many things as might bring in box office cash. And from my perspective, it doesn't do any one of those things very well. It sort of derives its appeal from having its thumbs in as many pies as it can. But it's a very superficial experience. I walk out of the film with an gnawing sensation of dissatisfaction, of promises not fulfilled.Oh and Independence Day was cool for what it is - a leave your brain at the door action/comedy sci-fi blockbuster and on those terms it delivers everything it promises Deep Impact was the thinking man's Armageddon and wasn't bad either.
Thing is, as an SF enthusiast myself, I wouldn't classify it as SF at all. Genre SF, in literature, tends to be much more specific. It tends to explore specific themes that can only arise in the consideration of counterfactual situations involving conjecture about the future course of history, about the possibilities presented by scientific creativity. It tends towards the philosophical and the reflective.
Cinematic SF is normally not really SF at all. It derives mostly from the pulp industry - the exploitative use of motifs and ideas from SF in order to cater to the LCD. An action movie that has aliens, spaceships and laser beams in it isn't automatically SF, by traditional standards. That's just an action movie that has some SF elements in it, to cater to an audience that has an arbitrary taste for aliens, spaceships and laser beams.
Star Wars is perhaps to blame for this. It's that sort of movie. It's great - it's great entertainment. I like the (original) Star Wars movies. But they are better thought of as Western/epic fantasy movies transposed into an SF setting. The extent of the science fictional element within them is as a thin veneer enabling the spectacle of "otherworldliness" and providing an excuse for special effects. There is very little scientific about Star Wars. Most SF takes some liberties with science, but Star Wars doesn't concern itself with science at all. It just uses a "high-tech" setting.
Star Wars has exerted its influence. Most "SF" movies these days tend to be this sort of thing. Independence Day, The Fifth Element, Pitch Black, Armageddon, Deep Impact, Battlefield Earth, AVP, Predator, etc.
I'm not impugning this sort of movie. Some of these movies can be good. I'm just saying that they're not really SF at all.
(Interestingly, Star Trek tends not to be SF at all, but from another direction. Roddenberrian Star Trek tends to be predominantly literary-minded, and philosophical in its content. Roddenberry loved moral dilemmae, and flighty humanism, and this influence persists after his death even into DS9. But it's absurdly unscientific, and most of the moral dilemmae (but not all of them) tend to derive not from science but from blunt fantasy or supernaturalism with, again, the thin, inadequate shrug of "science" veneered over them. It's more like moral fantasy with an SF setting. But it's still good.
But you can see Star Trek gradually developing away from this vision, and relying more and more on other elements - technofetishism, conflict-as-entertainment, action and soap-operatic drama. It's gone from one form of not-quite-SF to the other - the form more like what I was talking about with Star Wars.)
But Blade Runner isn't like this. It isn't, as someone said, a completely faithful rendering of the novella, but it still meditates on the philosophical implications of artificial life, on the nature of identity, etc. It's a concise and beautifully simple meditation on these themes, actually, and its aesthetic fiat makes it both gratifying to just gawk at, but also pushes you into that philosophical territory while you're at it. If you're going to watch Blade Runner, you oughtn't to expect it to be like most cinematic so called "SF." It's the more genuine kind - and you've to look in the right places to see why it's well regarded.
And if you look around, you'll see a steady-enough stream of similarly more substantive cinematic SF, which, though it may incorporate some of the concessions to mass audiences of the above films, also tries to do something more. Alien is one such. It works perfectly just as a horror movie. It's aesthetically sublime, too. But it's also an evocative monograph on the anthropology of alien life - on xeno-shock.
I can think of many such films. Pre-Star Wars, this was the predominant form of noteworthy film SF. Post Star Wars, we've seen a definite sway towards the pulp side of things. But even some mainstream hits, like ET and Close Encounters, work at the high end just as well as at the low end. And then you have stuff like Carpenter's The Thing, Solaris, Ghost in the Shell, which, perhaps, do more at the high end than cater to the low end. For people who like their SF films to have some SF in them, these sorts of movies seem to have a lot more going on in them than the more regular stream of action/comedy SF blockbusters.
I'd agree with that to a certain extent. But I do think there is something to be said for a refinement of taste. People who are used to films, or used to a specific genre of films, often know how to enjoy a larger variety of films than those who don't concern themselves with refining their taste overmuch.Just because someone doesn't rate a film, doesn't mean they have poor taste - it's all a matter of opinion.
For instance, I can watch Star Wars as a superlative piece of trashy space opera, and really really enjoy it, and also be able to talk about why I don't think the prequels succeeded in being nearly as good examples of that sort of trashy space opera. But I can also appreciate Blade Runner as a completely different sort of film that has more substantive SF aspirations than any Lucas film. Whereas, there are people who don't take things nearly as seriously, and will watch Independence Day, and enjoy it for its spectacle and how effectively it diverted their attention, and will then switch it off, and not really worry about it very much afterwards. The problem comes when such a person watches Blade Runner expecting it to do the same thing as ID, and when it doesn't, decides it's crap. As someone who knows how best to differently appreciate both ID and BR, I do feel as if I have something to say about that judgment - I do feel as if I can say that that person just doesn't have a refinement of taste appropriate for the appreciation of BR. And as someone who can appreciate a bit of trash, and who can also watch and love BR, I also feel as if, ultimately, BR does more as a film than just titillating my action receptors, or showing me some great explosions - I feel as if, in terms of films, BR is something more significant, something greater, than the mere exploitative fun of ID.
There can be argument on this point, of course, but I do feel as if there's something concrete to be said here. It's not just a case of "it's all opinion." At some point, intersubjective judgments of relative goodness by seasoned consumers of cinema tend to converge in a more than random manner. I do think that counts for something.0 -
It was HUGE in it's time (1982) Harrison Ford Rutger Hauer Daryl Hannah plus the sound track plus the visionary & future insight & the entire concept made this movie a legend when it was released...now we are so far beyond this in every way that only people who saw it first time round can really appreciate it's "genius" for want of a better description. Today it's tacky in ways but in it's time I repeat LEGEND.The thing is many of the things which were evloutionary about Blade runner have been over the years copied and used in other films so to those who did not see it with in I'd say a decade of it's release will not undersand the impact the film has had.
I disagree with that. You may be right in a sense, since the special effects of Blade Runner do account for some of the splash it made when it opened.
But I still think that the SFX of BR are actually better, more aesthetically noteworthy, than most of the CG work that passes muster today. They are valuable in terms of photographic and cinematic aesthetics - they don't just look nice.
And nothing has dated about the content of the film - which isn't to be disregarded. It's still a towering behemoth of respectable SF, for anyone who has a taste for respectable SF.
And beyond all of that, what I feel is the most inherently noteworthy thing about BR is its holistic perfection. If you take it as a whole, aesthetics, themes, execution, acting, music, directorial discretion - the whole vision of the thing, and how it achieves exactly what it set out to do is stunning.
I think Alien is comparable on this front. They are just systematically great movies. Everything comes together.
So I do feel as if this film is still great. I don't think it requires that we think ourselves into the mindset of the early 80s to enjoy it. I think we can enjoy it as early 21st century moviegoers quite as much as audiences did when it opened, if only we knew how it ought to be appreciated - what it's doing and why, and where to look within it for its virtues.0 -
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Can I disagree?
I actually discern something rather sinister, and very interesting in the dynamic of their involvement. Something that forces us to think. I'll explain.
Rachel visits his apartment in a state of disarray. She's frightened. She's discovered she may not be human. She's not sure about anything anymore. She doesn't know what's real. She's also attracted to Deckard, but she doesn't really know what to do about it.`She feels impulsive, in the face of so much uncertainty. She fixes her hair, makes herself attractive to him, flirts with him... But when he goes to kiss her, she tries to leave.
He restrains her, and forcibly kisses her. She doesn't want it. He forces her. It's actually quite violent. He pushes her back against the wall, and tells her to say "I want you" and to say "Kiss me." She protests. He responds :"Just say it."
All of this happens in the knowledge that Rachel is a replicant. It's as if he doesn't think that dominating her, and forcing her is wrong. After all, she's not real. His conduct in this scene is a male rape fantasy. She's a beautiful artificial woman, as lifelike as anyone could want, and she becomes for him in that moment no more than a sex doll. He will take her, and her own will in the face of this is irrelevant - a mere simulation of resistance on the part of an extremely lifelike simulacrum. He'll even make her pretend she wants him. It doesn't matter if she doesn't.
Her reaction in the face of this is interesting. He's going to have sex with her whether she wants to or not. But there's the context to consider: He forces on her one certainty amidst a dwindling few in her now completely uncertain life. Her memories are not her own - they belong to Tyrell's niece. But this is hers, even if it is undignified - pitiful really - a borderline rape by a forceful man in a dingy apartment in a run-down city on the now-weary Earth, her life in ruins, and nothing to trust anymore. But it's hers. And so she takes it. He forces her to say "I want you" and she does, and he's all she's got, and she realizes she means it. She does want him. She needs him. She takes hold of him, and holds on to him for dear life, because he's the only tangible piece of reality she can take hold of.
From his perspective, it's sinister really. It's watching a man faced with the opportunity to realize his desires without need for regard of the woman - because she's a robot, we are to suppose, her perfect body does not have a soul to harm. There is no crime. No sin. No wrongdoing. But we're compromised, because we sense she is real. We're asked to decide whether she, a replicant, is ethically significant - is a person.
And of course, the whole thing is done with such delicate balance, because Rachel does melt, and this means he doesn't eventually rape her. But there's something uneasy about the whole thing. It's a delicate balance.
And the coolest thing about the scene is that you don't have to watch it this way. You can watch the whole thing as a topos of the classic (and chauvinistic) cinematic romances of the Bogart era - a woman playing hard to get, and a strong man who'll tell her what she wants, and force her to acknowledge her own womanhood.
But that other interpretation is there, under it all. (And what sort of interpretation does it throw back at the Bogart era topoi?) She's a replicant. She's beautiful. He's got her in his apartment. She's just a robot. He feels the lust rising, and what's to stop him? And for all of us watching, it feels wrong because we empathize with her. We're forced to wonder what it is that makes a thing ethically significant. Can a replicant be raped? Why it is that we feel something is wrong with the scenario?
Here's the scene:
Later on, he seems to have responded to her acceptance of him with genuine feeling. His own life has been thrown into question too, and no former certainty is entirely trustworthy. He has just witnessed, with the death of Roy Batty, the genuine, exuberant memories of that replicant, each a timeless vital moment onto itself - the artifacts of a life lived - lost, like tears in rain. He has gnawing doubts about his own identity (as should we all). His world is a kaleidescope, the present moment vivid and bright. Both he and Rachel are thrust into the moment; they are forced to live in the present, and they become the most important thing to each other. They will escape together, live out their scant remaining time together in anonymity. They have so little time. She won't live. But then again, who does?
I really think it's a very interesting study. I wonder what you think of that interpretation?0 -
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