Blade Runner (1982)

A poster for Blade Runner. At the top, Harrison Ford as Deckard is holding a futuristic-looking pistol and looking grim as beams of light flare out from behind his face. Around the shoulder, he fades into the smoke from a cigarette held by Sean Young as Rachel, hazing out of the poster, her eyes looking reflective like a cat’s. She then fades into the flares of light from the futuristic city super-skyscrapers at the bottom of the poster, with a flying car soaring over them. The film title is in red at the very bottom.

Vital stats:

Director: Ridley Scott. Language: English. Review on: First watch (home).

Review:

Okay a couple days late but I really wanted to marinate on this one. In some ways it comes off as cliche, but only in the way Sailor Moon does; it invented so many of the genre conventions that are commonplace now, in this case for cyberpunk. I ultimately think I prefer the read that Deckard is human, because there’s something so delicious about a man being so dehumanized by the shitty world he lives in and the shitty job he has that he has to relearn his humanity from replicants. That said, I also enjoy the read that Deckard is a replicant, because it adds an odd sort of hope to Roy’s death; the replicants can’t live longer than four years, but in that time they can inspire other replicants to take command of their own lives. There’s also an extra layer of horror in that Deckard being a replicant implies that there are replicants made specifically to hunt other replicants, and all the time are themselves being lied to and used. I think it’s a damn good film when you can read it multiple ways and each interpretation is rich in meaning, y'know?

Is it good?
I spent a lot of time just cooing over the miniatures and matte paintings. The practical effects used to creating the smoggy, hyper-technological vision of the future are truly breathtaking, and the results combined with the music and lighting really make for both a gorgeous noir flick and a striking vision of what sci-fi can be. Harrison Ford really is at the top of his game in this one, too–love the different voices he switches into when Deckard is playing different parts in his investigation. It’s just bloody frustrating that “borderline rapist” seems to be how they wrote Deckard as a romantic lead, because I found the scenes between Deckard and Rachel genuinely moving and sweet before she got anxious, started to leave… and he slammed the door on her, forced a kiss on her, and slammed her into a window. All romance immediately left the situation there, especially since there’s then an undertone that staying with Deckard is the only way for Rachel not to get retired, and therefore she actually doesn’t have much of a choice whether to be with him or not (yeah, she says she loves him. You say a lot of shit to stay safe around a violent man you depend on for your life). Shit’s gross and really damages an otherwise fantastic movie for me. Rutger Hauer fucking sparkles, though, what an incredible talent that man was. I’ve seen The Speech before because it always gets quoted and turns up in reels of best film moments/speeches, but even knowing every word of it, in context it had me in tears.
Is it fun?
I’d say overall no but with some pretty funny moments, especially Deckard’s nerdy “union inspector” persona at the strip club. On a meta level, it is very funny to watch the film in 2024 and see it set in the distant far-off future year of 2019.
Is it queer?
Rutger Hauer is very much playing Roy as a bisexual king; I don’t mean him kissing Tyrell before killing him, which seems meant to evoke some of the complex emotional intensity he has towards the creator who designed him to die, but more his and Pris’ seduction of Sebastian into helping them, which vibes very much like they’re luring him into a gothpunk threesome. There are also very obvious homoerotic vibes in his final fight with Deckard, from Roy stripping down to his tighty-whities during the fight to lines like “You’d better get it up, or I’m gonna have to kill ya!” Soft yes on this one since it does seem intentional in the “queer-coding the villain” kind of way and there is one canonical male-on-male kiss, even if it’s nonromantic.