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blade runner:
Distance 'Runner' The sci-fi noir Blade Runner opened June 25, 1982, redefining the way the movies look at the future. - Encore Column (June 25, 1999)
FOREVER YOUNG
- Filmography (February 7, 1992)
REGARDING HARRISON
THE ACTOR LOOKS BACK AT SOME PIVOTAL ROLES - Sidebar (June 12, 1992)
Crime and Again
Film noir has been many things to many great directors. But with crafty, finely crafted L.A. Confidential, noir takes its purest form yet. - Video Full Review (April 17, 1998)
BLADE RUNNER
- Multimedia Capsule Review (January 9, 1998)
BLADE RUNNER 2: THE EDGE OF HUMAN
- Books Capsule Review (November 17, 1995)
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June 25, 1999
Encore
DISTANCE 'RUNNER'
The sci-fi noir Blade Runner opened June 25,
1982, redefining the way the movies look at the future.
by
Mike Flaherty
On June 25, 1982, moviegoers across America saw the future---and
thought "Bummer." Despite the respective cachet of director
Ridley Scott (hot off his 1979 science-fiction smash Alien) and
star Harrison Ford (at the peak of his matinee-idoldom, after
Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark), the debut of Blade
Runner--a gorgeous, lugubrious sci-fi adventure--left audiences
cold. They weren't the only ones. Critical reaction was decidely mixed.
The New York Times called it "muddled yet mesmerizing"; TIME
said that the film, "like its setting, is a beautiful, deadly
organism that devours life"; and the Los Angeles Times hissed,
"Blade crawler might be more like it." The much-tweaked adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep? posited Ford as Rick Deckard, a
detective on the hunt for renegade "replicants"--man-made
constructs all the more dangerous for their deceiving "more human
than human" appearance--in the dank, percolating urban sprawl of
Los Angeles circa 2019. According to Paul M. Sammon, author of Future Noir: The Making of
Blade Runner, the combination of Scott's oppressive gloom and the
moral ambiguity of Ford's character proved too heady for a
Reagan-era viewership accustomed to more wholesomely wrought
derring-do. "The audience was so primed to see Indiana Jones or
Han Solo, the adventurous, dashing role model, and they encounter
this antihero who's got a drinking problem and is not disinclined
to shoot women in the back," says Sammon. "It subverted audience
expectations to such a degree that they were baffled by it." That bafflement--and the fact that the $25 million film opened
against the substantially more zeitgeist-friendly E.T.--led to a
paltry opening weekend take of $6 million and an overall gross of
$14 million for its initial run. It's only in the intervening years that, thanks to the advent of
the laserdisc--and the much-ballyhooed 1992 release of Scott's
director's cut (which dispensed with Ford's monotone voice-over
and the out-of-place happy ending)--Runner has evolved into the
quintessential cult classic, as well as the most aesthetically
influential sci-fi flick of modern times. Its vision of the
future--represented by a technology-soaked, soul-crushing
metropolis--has since been echoed in Paul Verhoeven's Total
Recall, Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, even Matt Groening's
animated TV dystopia Futurama. "In some respects it's still ahead of its time," says Sammon.
"Being able to take a big budget, Hollywood A-list production
like that and insert all these very interesting emotional and
intellectual subtexts is something that we still need to see a
lot more of." Hear, hear.
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