Analysis of Blade Runner by Ridley Scott Essay -- Papers

Analysis of Blade Runner by Ridley Scott Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and based on Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is a Sci-fi slash Noir film about a policeman named Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) in a decrepit 2019 Los Angeles whose job it is to "retire" four genetically engineered cyborgs, known as "Replicants". The four fugitives, Pris (Daryl Hannah), Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), Leon (Brian James), and their leader, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), have escaped from an off-world colony in order to find their creator and bully him into expanding their pre-determined four-year life span. This film originally flopped when it came out in 1982, but since has become a widely acclaimed cult classic with a director's cut to boot. A large part of the success that this movie has received can be attributed to its ability to operate on many different levels. Blade Runner focuses around the adventures of Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter, whose prey are the replicants, androids who are virtually indistinguishable from humans. The story is set in downtown Los Angeles, in the year 2019. This is a post nuclear holocaust world, where the sun is darkened by the fallout and acid rain continually falls. Six replicants of the Nexus 6 generation, the most advanced, have escaped from their off-world colony, where they were being used as slave labor. The leader of the replicants, Roy Batty, is on a mission to find more life for himself and the others, for they only have a four year life span and are on the verge of death. Roy is a military style replicant, so he has killed many people in inter-galactic wars and continues to ki... ...s out. "Should the replicants kill to gain moral life? Should Harrison Ford be killing them simply because they want to exist? These questions begin to tangle up Deckard's thinkingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦especially when he becomes involved with a female replicant himself." The ultimate relevance of Blade Runner lies in its challenge of what it must mean to be human. It raises the eternal gnawing doubt as to our own humanity or lack of it. These are the same issues raised by the great religions and philosophies of the past. And it goes to how we respond to the pain of those around us. Do we reach for the one downed by the crushing perplexity of modernity or do we merely pass by, forgetting about that grizzled human lying on the sidewalk who is drowning in the gutter created by the disintegrating and dehumanising post-modern existence?