Blade Runner is officially set in the past!

mrcheez

Didn't see this mentioned anywhere, but this is (un)officially Blade Runner month




Somewhere a Blade Runner is noshing into a bowl of noodles about to get a tap on the shoulder...

Manach

I miss the oportunity to head to the off-world colonies, a golden land of opportunity and adventure.

pixelburp

You think that's bad, in 1999 we were supposed to have been in the middle of the Eugenics Wars, one of the catastrophes that prefaced the forming of Star Trek's Federation

I never understood SciFi authors doing that; takes bold confidence to set your outlandish story within your, or your children's, lifetime!

TheValeyard

mrcheez wrote: »

Didn't see this mentioned anywhere, but this is (un)officially Blade Runner month




Somewhere a Blade Runner is noshing into a bowl of noodles about to get a tap on the shoulder...

We may not have flying cars or space colonisation, but at least world is in a better shape than the Blade Runner world.

Harry Palmr

Designing the future is so hard, not even mobile phones in Blade Runner despite them existing long before 1982.

pixelburp wrote: »

You think that's bad, in 1999 we were supposed to have been in the middle of the Eugenics Wars, one of the catastrophes that prefaced the forming of Star Trek's Federation

I never understood SciFi authors doing that; takes bold confidence to set your outlandish story within your, or your children's, lifetime!

and the moon should long since be past Pluto by now according to Space 1999.

gozunda

We are Bladerunner ...

mrcheez

My Roomba is running around the house downstairs... I wonder if it's plotting my demise

nix

Are you serious? That cant be.. is that pic even from Blade Runner?

"Enhance 2 24 to 1 76"

"Enhance"

"Enhance!"

"Enhance!!!"

Still waiting for this voice command picture enhancing software tbh, never mind replicants :pac::p

cdgalwegian

https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test

"The Voight-Kampff test was a test used as of 2019 by the LAPD's Blade Runners to assist in the testing of an individual to see whether they were a replicant or not. It measured bodily functions such as respiration, heart rate, blushing and eye movement in response to emotionally provocative questions. It typically took twenty to thirty cross-referenced questions to distinguish a Nexus-6 replicant."

I could never understand why they couldn't get people to take an x-ray of them. A lot easier.:pac:

branie2

The adverts know who you are in the film

Peatys

Sorry about the shítty screen grab

Stark

pixelburp wrote: »

You think that's bad, in 1999 we were supposed to have been in the middle of the Eugenics Wars, one of the catastrophes that prefaced the forming of Star Trek's Federation

I never understood SciFi authors doing that; takes bold confidence to set your outlandish story within your, or your children's, lifetime!

I remember each installment in the Terminator franchise except T2 having to shift judgement day forward a few years every time as the previous date was in the new film's past every time.

Tammy!

And Back to the Future is all in the past too.

Where are the hoverboards?

mrcheez

Tammy! wrote: »

Where are the hoverboards?

There used to be loads of them until the batteries started exploding.

Also the general public are idiots as it is, could we really trust them with hoverboards crossing the road while staring at their phones?

Tammy!

mrcheez wrote: »

There used to be loads of them until the batteries started exploding.

Also the general public are idiots as it is, could we really trust them with hoverboards crossing the road while staring at their phones?

It was a rhetorical question.

Stop trying to ruin my unrealisitic hopes for a Back to the Future style hoverboard, thanks.

mrcheez

Tammy! wrote: »

It was a rhetorical question.

Stop trying to ruin my unrealisitic hopes for a Back to the Future style hoverboard, thanks.

Some things are best not implemented due to irresponsible humans.

Blade Runners on the other hand, running around shooting people on hoverboards... that's what I'd like to see

turnfan

cdgalwegian wrote: »

https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test

"The Voight-Kampff test was a test used as of 2019 by the LAPD's Blade Runners to assist in the testing of an individual to see whether they were a replicant or not. It measured bodily functions such as respiration, heart rate, blushing and eye movement in response to emotionally provocative questions. It typically took twenty to thirty cross-referenced questions to distinguish a Nexus-6 replicant."

I could never understand why they couldn't get people to take an x-ray of them. A lot easier.:pac:

I thought replicants are like clones, essentially identical to humans on a biological level?

pixelburp

Yup, I think they're meant to effectively be clones, with only electron microscopes being able to spot the copyright branding on gene sequences & cells. IIRC, Blade Runner 2049 went further and made them more pliant and subservient.

CatFromHue

They seemed to not be exactly sure themselves when making the first one.

Remember the red glow that the replicants sometimes had in their eyes!

cdgalwegian

turnfan wrote: »

I thought replicants are like clones, essentially identical to humans on a biological level?

In truth, i had always assumed there was some parts of a replicant that were mechanical, and AI enhanced, which made them 'superhuman'; but in my younger days I never had the information superhighway, and now that I have, I never bothered to check before I posted. So I checked it out; it initially looks like a replicant was bio-engineered, but then it becomes ambiguous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicant

I guess I had the title of the book it was based on in my head from the start "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep", and just assumed there was some android component to it.
If the fictionality of it varies, but it is accepted as fully bio-engineered, then -instead of the V-K test - bearing in mind they are engineered not to have emotion, why not have a simple blood test to test for the absent biochemicals, or failing that, to test for the DNA stamp? I mean this is really important!:D The replicants are among us now! And all we have is the psychopath test. Science is failing us people.

Tony EH

This has always been a problem with sci-fi, especially sci-fi made in the 60's, 70's and 80's. The watershed of the year 2000 was always used as a benchmark for "the future", when the reality was that a few decades away from those time periods was never really going to fit.

There have, of course, been great leaps forward, especially in the case of microtechnology, but there's still an awful lot that has remained quite similar and will do for some time yet.

In hindsight, of course, 'Blade Runner' should have been set closer to 2099, rather than the 2019 date that was chosen for the story.

pixelburp

What I will say in defence of the future visions of the 50s and 60s: that if you looked at the breakneck technological acceleration of NASA and Roscosmos during that period, I could understand how SciFi authors might get sucked into the belief that we were only a decade or so from interstellar travel.

Sputnik to the Apollo Landing was a mere 12 years, and this was new & truly frontier smashing technology; in a single decade humanity went from flinging a soccer-ball into orbit to landing on the moon, so it was (falsely) presumed that that development would mirror Moore's Law and just exponentially grow. In hindsight of course, people like Gene Rodenberry or Arthur C. Clarke got it wrong.

73bc61lyohr0mu

Tammy! wrote: »

And Back to the Future is all in the past too.

Where are the hoverboards?

I got into a fight in a pub in Christchurch New Zealand over an argument about the year Back to the Future 2 was set in. I was saying 2015, he said 2016. I was obviously right but he didn't take it well. Gas when I think back on that now..

Tony EH

pixelburp wrote: »

What I will say in defence of the future visions of the 50s and 60s: that if you looked at the breakneck technological acceleration of NASA and Roscosmos during that period, I could understand how SciFi authors might get sucked into the belief that we were only a decade or so from interstellar travel.

Well, you could go back a little further to the war and look at the great leaps in technology that was made between 1940 and 1945 too. But certainly, it can be somewhat forgivable if writers, screen & book, thought that that momentum would continue.

But, even by the early 70's it was becoming apparent that that wasn't really the case.

It's hilarious to look at something like 'Space 1999' now and see just how wrong their projections were in many cases. Not all, mind you. But, yeh, made in 1978 and contemplating such incredible changes in just 20 years was hopeful foresight, to say the least.

pixelburp wrote: »

Sputnik to the Apollo Landing was a mere 12 years,

Sure, but it was the ground work done in rocketry during in the war years that gave those NASA programs its base to work from, so the means of propulsion was already laid down and vehicular design and space survival were really the factors that concentrated the minds of NASA. "Sputnik to Apollo may be just 12 years, but astronaut work was ongoing since the end of the war.

But, yeh, even at that, 1949 (Bell X-1) to 1969 (man on the moon) is just 20 years I suppose.

Which reminds me, I really have to watch 'The Right Stuff' again soon.

pixelburp

Tony EH wrote: »

It's hilarious to look at something like 'Space 1999' now and see just how wrong their projections were in many cases. Not all, mind you. But, yeh, made in 1978 and contemplating such incredible changes in just 20 years was hopeful foresight, to say the least.

The other big factor with SciFi of yore worth considering is that it's only relatively recently Science Fiction has been considered a serious genre, one worth spending time and research. The Golden Age of Comics is emblematic of that, utter nonsensical garbage written as Pulp Fiction for children. The Clarkes, K. Dicks et al were not necessarily the rule in the genre.

Tony EH wrote: »

Sure, but it was the ground work done in rocketry during in the war years that gave those NASA programs its base to work from, so the means of propulsion was already laid down and vehicular design and space survival were really the factors that concentrated the minds of NASA. "Sputnik to Apollo may be just 12 years, but astronaut work was ongoing since the end of the war.

I get that, but I'm meaning from the perspective of the public & pop culture, where to read newspapers, it would seem like technology was rushing at an unstoppable pace in a mere decade. Not sure if the exploits of Chuck Yaegar n' all would have been classified or not, but certainly the big moments like Sputnik were worldwide news. The public domain suggested infinite horizons and I daresay writers jumped on that - however naively.

Tony EH

pixelburp wrote: »

I get that, but I'm meaning from the perspective of the public & pop culture, where to read newspapers, it would seem like technology was rushing at an unstoppable pace in a mere decade. Not sure if the exploits of Chuck Yaegar n' all would have been classified or not, but certainly the big moments like Sputnik were worldwide news. The public domain suggested infinite horizons and I daresay writers jumped on that - however naively.

The Bell X-1 flight was classified, like all the X planes, but by the early 50's rockets and space travel were very much on the consciences of the public. Well, at least the American public and the Cold War space race had no end of responsibility for keeping front and centre.

Although it's very difficult to gauge just how prevalent names were during a specific period. I can't imagine that Chuck Yeager's name was a household one, though, in the same way that Neil Armstrong became, despite him formerly being trumpeted as an "ace in a day" during the war.

Certainly, things like Sputnik charged the minds of everyone. My old man used to tell me about listening the that being reported on the wireless.

cdgalwegian

https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/11/dystopian-cities-science-fiction-blade-runner-books-movies/598624/
Films often reflect current issues, hopes and fears. Blade Runner reflected fears not just of science, but also rampant capitalism. In Blade Runner the obvious economic powerhouse was Japan, and was reflected as such; if it was made now as a reboot, it would be probably be Chinese. Blade Runner 2049 however may reflect other issues though:
https://www.slashfilm.com/blade-runner-2049-asian-culture/

Spon Farmer

Manach wrote: »

I miss the oportunity to head to the off-world colonies, a golden land of opportunity and adventure.

How times does that dialogue get used in the movie?

Sometimes it drives me mental but the words in my head now make want to watch it right now. Holding out until I get my 4K TV at Christmas though.

Spon Farmer

Also Blade Runner makes me not give a **** about the environment and climate change because the world of Blade Runner looks so cool.

mrcheez

Spon Farmer wrote: »

How times does that dialogue get used in the movie?

Sometimes it drives me mental but the words in my head now make want to watch it right now. Holding out until I get my 4K TV at Christmas though.

The 4K version of Blade Runner is supposed to be amazing!

Relikk

Hard to fathom that it's Sean Young's 60th birthday today. She would have been around 21 or 22 during filming.