Written by Emily Jackman

Originally released in 1982, Blade Runner is set in a dystopian 2019 Los Angeles. Evoking the image of a destructed world from the opening shot of the city on fire, it is made clear that this is nobody’s first choice for a place to live, following the opening crawl, explaining that colonisation of other planets is now common practice. To inhabit and work on these planets, a ‘more human than human’ species of robot labelled replicants are used as slave labour until their 4-year lifespan is up, unless they are found on earth, in which case they are ‘retired’ by a special unit of detectives termed ‘Blade Runners’. Working for Tyrell, the head of the company that creates these replicants, Rick Deckard is in pursuit of an escaped group of replicants who made it to earth. Making his way through the overcrowded and polluted city in which he lives, ‘retiring’ replicants as he goes, we see his emotional journey, evaluating the moral ambiguity of his actions when it comes to having to kill these ‘robots’ and ultimately where he draws the line of humanity.  

The time in which this film is released speaks a great deal to some of the themes presented by the film. The first of which being technophobia as evidenced by the harm brought upon by the use of unnecessarily complicated technology, the use of tech in places that it doesn’t need to be and most importantly, the replacing of both animals and humans with lifelike tech in the form of replicants. The second major theme is the fear of East Asia overtaking the United States as a global superpower following growth in worldwide consumerism. This is overtly shown by the prominent Coca-Cola advert at the beginning of the film featuring an East Asian woman dressed in traditional Japanese geisha clothes added to the majority use of clearly East Asian languages in what is labelled as Los Angeles. These fears are two significant markers of American society in the 1980s and would’ve evoked a sense of panic into specifically ignorant American audiences at the time who believed that this could be what Los Angeles would come to look like in 2019, and that fact was scary to them.  

The production of this film was rocky, involving a large divide of British and American crews practising filmmaking differently, however, the problems did not end with its release the well-documented story of the seven different versions of this film has been the basis of widespread debate over the involvement of studios interference with the film and the level to which directors have artistic license. Following the release of the Final cut in 2007, a three-and-a-half-hour documentary ‘Dangerous Days: The Making of Blade Runner’ was produced to show off just how tumultuous the shoot had been.  

As a result of these contexts the films created all have shared themes, but different overall effects, specifically the difference narratively between the original cut and the directors and final cuts. The inclusion of a few key scenes that were cut from the original leaves the audience pondering the question of whether or not Deckard himself is a replicant, the thing as a Blade Runner his life revolves around destroying. In terms of plot and entertainment, this is an interesting question to have raised and goes well with the fears at the time the film makes apparent. It makes Deckard and by extension the audience who align with him as a character question whether they are the very thing they’re sworn to destroy, that being a replicant for him and scared of the future for the audience. By taking that away in the original cut, with the ‘happy ending’ and the exploratory voiceovers, it becomes arguably a more two-dimensional story. This making clear that while it took nearly 25 years to get the film to where Ridley Scott wanted it to be, it was worth the wait for the messages of the film to be communicated accurately.