# Blader Runner : Explain to me why this is so good **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 6, 2018, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093 "2018-03-06T02:17:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/21 "2018-03-07T02:14:59Z")
There are several reasons why Blade Runner is “so good”: -The dark, almost dystopian vision of the future -The neo-noir style -Various themes on humanity and what it means to be “human” -Roy Batty’s soliloquy -Flying cars ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/22 "2018-03-07T03:04:33Z")
I can certainly imagine the plot for a kinky porn parody called _Bladder Runner_. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/23 "2018-03-07T03:47:33Z")
Roy did not stick his hand into the liquid nitrogen, it was Leon did that. And I got the impression that what Pris pulled out of the water was a potato, not an egg. One of the things about the new movie is that it addresses the question of whether Deckard was a replicant, which was based on the “director’s cut” with the unicorn dream or something. _Bladerunner 2049_ is a very long and slow movie with extended sequences where not much happens. It is sort of pretty to look at, as it tries to capture atmosphere of the original (and does a yeoman’s job of it), but by comparison, it makes the original look very tight in pace and structure. It is not a bad movie, but you could probably cut nearly an hour out of the aggregate segues without affecting the content. I watched it on a disc, so it got split into two sessions. ---
**Author:** ![Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/channing_idaho_banks/32/250_2.png) [@Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Channing_Idaho_Banks)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/24 "2018-03-07T04:20:13Z")
There was something special at the time about Ford being Han Solo and then the Blade Runner. ---
**Author:** ![Dobbs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Dobbs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dobbs)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/25 "2018-03-07T06:36:52Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > There are several reasons why Blade Runner is “so good”: > -The dark, almost dystopian vision of the future > -The neo-noir style > -Various themes on humanity and what it means to be “human” > -Roy Batty’s soliloquy > -Flying cars You forgot the sound track. There’s better sound tracks out there, but not many, and none I can think of at this moment. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/26 "2018-03-07T06:44:00Z")
Pause either movie at almost any point and you’ll be looking at a beautiful picture. Denis Villeneuve is brilliant, I can’t wait for _Dune_. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/27 "2018-03-07T12:46:23Z")
Thanks to everyone who clarified my recollection. I had a feeling it wasn’t quite right. Also, SamuelA was talking about the new movie, which I didn’t realise. > [@eschereal](#): > > _Bladerunner 2049_ is a very long and slow movie with extended sequences where not much happens. It is sort of pretty to look at, as it tries to capture atmosphere of the original (and does a yeoman’s job of it), **but by comparison, it makes the original look very tight in pace and structure**. It is not a bad movie, but you could probably cut nearly an hour out of the aggregate segues without affecting the content. I watched it on a disc, so it got split into two sessions. (my bold) That’s pretty damning. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/28 "2018-03-07T13:10:10Z")
> [@Dobbs](#): > > You forgot the sound track. There’s better sound tracks out there, but not many, and none I can think of at this moment. _For All Mankind_ ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/29 "2018-03-07T14:28:15Z")
> [@Dobbs](#): > > You forgot the sound track. There’s better sound tracks out there, but not many, and none I can think of at this moment. > [@eschereal](#): > > _For All Mankind_ Flash Gordon ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/30 "2018-03-07T20:03:00Z")
> [@Weedy](#): > > That’s pretty damning. BR2049 is over 8 reels long. Most movies these days are under 6. They apparently wanted to show their love to the original – the question of whether it fully consented is difficult to resolve. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/31 "2018-03-07T20:57:06Z")
I had a bad attitude gong into the original Blade Runner (I’m an Alan E. Nourse fan and I was pissed that they had the rights to his book _Blade Runner_ and were burning those rights on the title alone, just to attach it to what was really _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ …which meant there’d probably never be a movie based on Nourse’s book) and it made me unfairly and unduly critical. In retrospect I’ll admit the movie was eerily precognizant about personally tailored advertising and that it was a great noir work. But yeah, I never understood the central plot of the movie. So there are replicants, fine, why are we all about killing them? Because they’re android robots? Yeah so? It may have been tangentially explained but it sure wasn’t well-developed and made clear. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/32 "2018-03-07T21:13:08Z")
Where was the “personally tailored advertising” in the original _Blade Runner_? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/33 "2018-03-07T21:16:55Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Where was the “personally tailored advertising” in the original _Blade Runner_? Weren’t the giant ads all specifically tailored to the person viewing them? Or were they just intrusive and large? ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/34 "2018-03-07T21:23:08Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > There are several reasons why Blade Runner is “so good”: > -The dark, almost dystopian vision of the future > -The neo-noir style > -Various themes on humanity and what it means to be “human” > -Roy Batty’s soliloquy > -Flying cars It is greater than the sum of its parts. Sure other films look that good or sound that good or feel that coherent or pose those questions or stage those set-pieces etc. etc. but few put them all together quite so well. And count me in as a fan of the score as well, Vangelis at the top of his game. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/35 "2018-03-07T21:24:05Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Weren’t the giant ads all specifically tailored to the person viewing them? Or were they just intrusive and large? It’s been years since I saw the original, but my recollection is that they were just intrusive and large. _Minority Report_, on the other hand (also based on a Dick story), extensively showed personalized ads. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/36 "2018-03-07T22:12:14Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > Pause either movie at almost any point and you’ll be looking at a beautiful picture. Denis Villeneuve is brilliant, I can’t wait for _Dune_. Indeed. And while BR2049 was far longer, it really didn’t feel like its length of 2hrs 45mins. I was so mesmerized by the plot and cinematography that it flew by. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/37 "2018-03-07T23:44:04Z")
The premise of the original Blade Runner is that the Earth has been wrecked. The climate is ruined, it’s polluted, it’s a disaster. Everyone who can is moving offworld. That’s why Sebastian lives alone in a deserted ruined apartment building by himself. The population on Earth is crashing. But they’ve also made it illegal to have replicants on Earth, for some reason. Replicants are restricted to the offworld colonies. Any replicants on Earth get killed, because the public hates and fears replicants. And of course, it’s a corporate-ruled dystopia, so the cops can kill whoever they like. When you see a cop shoot somebody in cold blood on the street, you don’t stop to ask if they were a replicant, you quickly find somewhere else to be. The “replicants are OK offworld, but not on Earth” thing mirrors historical treatment of slavery during the colonial era. Lots of times in a colonial empire slavery was restricted to the colonies. You could own thousands of slaves on Saint-Domingue to work on the sugar plantations, but you couldn’t bring those slaves to the Metropole. So there’s a similar setup in Blade Runner. Yeah, it doesn’t make much actual sense given the setting, but it’s just a cut and paste from real historical parallels. As for having to do a psychological test to tell a replicant from a human, well, of course it doesn’t make sense. However in 1968 when “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” the idea of a DNA test wasn’t as obvious as it would be to us today. Or you could just genetically engineer a serial number onto every replicant’s forehead, “Fondly Fahrenheit” style. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/38 "2018-03-07T23:48:47Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Or you could just genetically engineer a serial number onto every replicant’s forehead, “Fondly Fahrenheit” style. Or an unnatural skin color, like the blue androids in Dan Simmons’ _Hyperion_ books. (Of course, either could potentially be covered by makeup.) ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/39 "2018-03-07T23:54:03Z")
Or make all androids unable to use contractions. Or unable to say “shibboleth”. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093/40 "2018-03-07T23:54:34Z")
Even if you can’t genetically engineer a marking onto them, just tattoo them before they leave the factory. Of course, then you’d get replicants who cover over the serial-number tattoos with skin-color tattoo ink, and who thus look human until they get excited and you see the white tattoo against a red background, so they have to be very careful to stay calm all of the time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blader-runner-explain-to-me-why-this-is-so-good/810093.md?page=3)