Blade Runner

Bladerunner stands, in the view of many, among the greatest science fiction films of all time, alongside such groundbreaking works as Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), Alexander Korda's Things to Come (1936), Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Wachowskis' The Matrix (1999). And yet, like them, it is sometimes accused of being more of an innovation of style than of substance, a visually gripping film encumbered with a cloudy, laborsome, noire-eque plot that never quite adds up.

But perhaps that's because, in this postmodern world, style is substance. A palette of darkly glimmering colors, a shift in movement from the horizontal to the vertical, and a constantly shifting agglomeration of retro-, punk, and pomo dress says something at the outset: the viewer is not so much ahead of time as outside of it, in a world where there is no longer any clear sense of progression. If this is a sort of substance, then it's largely the work of Syd Mead, who was hired early on as a designer for Bladerunner, and who created its overall visual feel:

The dominant strategy in designing Bladerunner's future was 'retrofitting,' which according to Mead, 'simply means upgrading old machinery or structures by slapping new add-ons to them.' The future, in other words. is a combination of the new and the very, very used, just like the present: the utopian fantasies of Things to Come, with its gleaming new Everytown, are no longer economically, ecologically, or politically supportable, even in dreams and fictions (Bukatman 21)

The comparison with Things to Come is telling; in that movie, "Everytown" (which is clearly London) is destroyed in a vast world war, and for a time its inhabitants are reduced to savage ways, under the thumb of a "boss" who goes around in Fred-Flintstone-like furs. They are saved from this fate by a man in a black, bubble-headed suit (memorably plated by Raymond Massey), who offers them a return to civilization; in the flash-forward to the next step of evolution, Massey's grandson (played by Massey) has graduated to the glittery toga-tunic, and heads a ray-gun republic studded with towers circled with saturnian rings. This is of course the world of "Progress," the world that Science Fiction once depended upon, the future as outlined in the "World of Tomorrow" at the 1939 World's Fair. The film ends, curiously, when the great rocket of progress is attacked by a sculptor and his band of futuristic Luddites, whose slogan is "An End to Progress Now!":

"What is this progress? What is the good of all this progress onward and onward? We demand a halt. We demand a rest ... an end to progress! Make an end to progress ! Make an end to this progress now! Let this be the last day of the scientific age!"

Bladerunner gives us a world in which, although technology clearly continues to make new inroads into the nature of biological life, "progress" -- at least for those at street-level in a postmodern Los Angeles where it never stops raining -- is an illusion, dashed to pieces in the glimmer of electronic signage, plastic clothes, and neon glow-stick umbrellas.

Interestingly, the main filming site for the film was Warner's venerable "New York" set, which had been in place in one form or another since 1928, and featured in many noir films. Yet again, this was adroitly supplemented with add-ons of the retrofitted kind, as with the creepy decayed version of LA's Bradbury Building. The exterior was modified with a pair of enormous spiral pillars, and the interior trashed out with leaking water and debris (amazingly, all these scenes were shot at night, and the set cleaned up so that by day it could continue to function as an office building). Through the doorway, you can even see the Million Dollar Theater across the street (though the writing on the marquee, interestingly, has varied from version to version). I've been to the Bradbury building -- a remarkable place, with its wrought-iron elevator (closed, alas, to non-tenants); here's a shot of me there with LA artist Sara Velas. It's a strange world where, even when you are "on location" there's a Titanic-sized gulf between the glitter you see, and the ruins you remember.

Ridley Scott was never totally happy with Bladerunner. According to Bukatman's book, it was at the insistence of the insurance bondholders that the Dashiell-Hammett-style voiceovers were added, cuing viewers into a plot that had left test audiences confused and disgruntled. As soon as he had the chance, he took them out, re-editing the entire film not only once but twice, the second time along with a full-scale digital restoration. The latest 5-disc version includes the European theatrical version, as well as the rough-cut print that had been thought lost.

So, as they say with cornflakes: taste them again, for the first time. Let's try that this week with Bladerunner.