Blade Runner (1982)

outstanding science-fiction film created before CGI

Director: Ridley Scott

 

Ridley Scott’s film adaptation of a screenplay based upon Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  is 29 years old, but much of it looks fresh and contemporary.

 

The film is based in Los Angeles in the year 2019. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a retired Blade Runner whose job it was to detect and assassinate any of the genetically engineered human beings known as replicants, who have returned to earth. It is illegal for them to walk the streets.  Deckard has been contacted by his old boss because he was the best. But the replicants are mad as hell because they only have a four-year life span, and they want…life. The result is a tense science-fiction thriller.

 

He is sent to the Tyrell Corporation which builds the replicants. He takes with him a Voight-Kampff machine which is an aid to detecting them. He tries out the test on Rachel (Sean Young), whom he is told is a human. She is not, but her creator Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel) says she is beginning to suspect. Replicants are implanted with memories so they have a foundation on which to base their lives.

 

Deckard is sent after Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) who is the leader of the renegade replicants, Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) an expert in kick murder techniques, Pris (Daryl Hannah), a basic pleasure model, and Leon (Brion James) who is a worker.  Gradually he hunts the four down, but the question is: does he need to also execute Rachel?

 

It is rather amazing to watch because this was before the days of CGI. The overhead shots of the city are accomplished with models that were created by Douglas Trumbull (who had worked on Close Encounters, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Silent Running). Many of the effects shots were beautifully executed in old-fashioned ways to create a futuristic look and feel of a major metropolis.

 

Music was composed by Vangelis (Chariots of Fire)