1982's Blade Runner was a movie ahead of its time. Just as people in the eye of the storm often can't see what's going on in the wind, the audience and critics at the time, and even the creators themselves, failed to properly measure its value. From a technology standpoint, it is on the eve of digital transformation. Despite having a relatively large special effects team and budget, Blade Runner's special effects are traditional, using models, scenery, lighting and smoke, supplemented by special effects photography such as double exposure, to create a visually impeccable future world. Interestingly, one of the futuristic tech devices in the film ironically refers to the digital medium in a parody. The device, called the esper, has the ability to scan a photo and magnify it at an incredibly large magnification. It is through this device that the protagonist Deckard gets the photo of the android Zhora. However, as Roy's actor Rutger Hauer puts it, the plot is rather ironic. Because the enlarged photo is so blurry that it is impossible to distinguish between men and women, how can it help Blade Runner to hunt down the androids? The only explanation is that it doesn't matter whether the image reflects the truth itself, it's just a tool, use it well and you can get what you want.
From the content point of view, "Blade Runner", together with other sci-fi films of the same era, opened the era of science fiction films in Hollywood, and more importantly, "Blade Runner" opened up cyberpunk The beginning of a subculture. After 1982, many sci-fi movies and TV series followed its visual design style. Even many science fiction novels have adopted "Blade Runner"'s description of the sociological level of the future world, and continue to explore metaphysical issues such as cyborg emotions, souls, and their relationship with humans. However, before 1982, the word "cyberpunk" had not been invented, and many of the film's creators were not even science fiction fans, having read the works of Philip Dick, the author of the original novel. Although it is the originator of cyberpunk, it is difficult to say that its style is purely cyberpunk. The film oscillates in many ways between 1940s Hollywood film noir and futuristic sci-fi film of the new century. You can see the familiar and unfamiliar vehicles in the sky like flying saucers, and you can also see the white lights of film noir through the shutters. Iconic shot that casts shadows on a character's face in the dark.
In 1982, "Blade Runner" suffered a double failure at the box office and word of mouth. Audiences didn't like how dark and obscure it was, though the producers went against director Ridley Scott's intentions by adding intelligible narration and an inexplicably comedic ending; critics criticized the introduction for Scott for committing his own The old problem - only pay attention to the scene design, the visual presentation of the picture, the character's personality and motivation are obscure. Later, with the release of versions more in line with the creator's intent and the popularity of videotapes, more viewers saw Blade Runner, and many even became ardent fans. Today, in the selection and rankings of major science fiction films, you can see the name "Blade Runner" in the top few. The time for this movie has finally arrived. But that doesn't mean the criticism it received in 1982 was rubbish. If we really love this movie, it is necessary to seriously respond to the doubts 35 years ago.
The new habit of repeating movies at home on videotape was inextricably linked to the subsequent success of Blade Runner. This viewing habit means that movies are taken more seriously and seriously. Like the classics of literature, people are willing to watch movies over and over again, searching for details and feeling the impact of images and music. Movies are no longer a fast-moving consumer product that sees winners and losers at the box office in the first week. "Blade Runner" has a lot of rich visual details and profound lines, and only through repeated viewing can you appreciate its beauty and depth. So, after watching Blade Runner countless times, how do we respond to the "form over content" critique?
Director Ridley Scott is a rare all-rounder in the Hollywood industry. He is a design and painting professional, and is extremely good at scene design. His literary quality is also quite high. Not only did he dedicate the vital plot relay of "snake scales" to the script of "Blade Runner", but he inserted William Blake's poetry into Roy's lines, giving the film a dreamlike quality, its polysemous Sex and symbolism make it as long-lasting as a good literary work. According to the crew of "Blade Runner", Ridley Scott was a workaholic. In addition to visual design and script polishing, he did everything from photography to special effects and post-production. It's hard to imagine that such a person would lose sight of one thing and another, and downgrade himself from a film director to a visual effects supervisor.
So, what did Scott himself say? He famously said: Good scene design is as important as story and performance. And his consistent scene design style is the details, the layers of the layered cake are generally the details. In Blade Runner, Scott, who has a bigger budget, takes this style to the extreme. With a long focal length lens, the space between the foreground and background is compressed, making them appear to be almost sticking together. The result is a richer picture, which means more detail. We might as well recall the 2019 Los Angeles street scene in the movie. This old New York street is presented in the film as a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic world: Hong Kong's Kowloon City, Tokyo's Ginza District, Milan's Commercial Street, Chinatown and London Circus are integrated in the new century Los Angeles. Cars fly like flying saucers in the sky, and the ground is crowded with people and wet garbage. Soldiers, policemen, religious believers, punk youth and gangsters in different languages move slowly. Over their heads flashing neon, billboards dazzled. The pipes snaked, clinging to the decaying walls. Loudspeakers overlooking the city harassed everyone's eardrums - flattery promoting space colonies on the one hand, cold indicating public transport on the other. Los Angeles, which should have been sunny, was shrouded in continuous rain.
A good scene speaks for itself. The reason for compressing so many details into the picture is not just to attract the audience as a visual spectacle, but more importantly, with a lot of details, the scene will become real, which is especially important in "Blade Runner" . Compared to Ridley Scott's Alien, Blade Runner is far more detailed. On the one hand, because of the budget, on the other hand, as Scott himself said, "Alien" shows a spaceship, which is an overhead world separated from the audience's life field, and the living pyrotechnics are neither necessary nor necessary here. should. But Blade Runner takes place on Earth, in the not-so-distant future for the audience at the time, so its visual design should be more lifelike. If there are not so many details, the focus of the picture will be occupied by the cliche in science fiction movies, arousing the curiosity and attention of the audience. "authentic, not speculative" is Scott's expectation for the "Blade Runner" scene design. He also said that this is not a hardcore sci-fi movie. In other words, science fiction is just its shell, and the changes brought about by technological progress are bound to attract the attention of the audience, but it is only a part of the world in 2019. The director hopes that the audience can pay attention to the whole living world and the living conditions of people in it, not Those things that fly in the sky.
To this end, Scott took the approach of retrofitting, which is to put a layer of decoration on the old object that has never been before. For character costumes, makeup, vehicles to the exterior and interior of buildings are all retrofitting. This deliberately old-fashioned approach balances the futuristic sense of sci-fi well, making it easier for the audience to enter and empathize. This also means that these future things can't be too high-end. The sci-fi element of the film is strictly limited to the level of everyday life. And every seemingly inconspicuous little object is closely related to the surrounding living world. Take umbrellas, for example. On the streets of Los Angeles in 2019, many people held umbrellas with laser lights. This umbrella is certainly not technically advanced, but it reveals a lot of other information. Umbrellas are used to shelter from the rain, and lasers are used to illuminate the road. Their combination meant that it was always rainy and rainy in Los Angeles at the time, and pedestrians needed both, so the Laser Umbrella came along. Of course, there is more to ponder behind this little umbrella. Why is it always raining in Los Angeles? Why doesn't the government set up street lights? Serious environmental pollution and the decline of public power are self-evident. Even completely fictitious human-detection instruments serve the purpose of atmosphere and characterization. On the side of this machine is a constantly moving air pump. Although the movie does not state it clearly, we can imagine that it also has its own function, which is likely to detect the concentration of sweat around the subject and so on. But on a symbolic level, this air pump reminds us of the breathing movement of life, and then thinks of a living machine, which forms an intertext with the tested bionic person, and also points more subtly to the person who uses the machine - indifference A ruthless, machine-like police officer Deckard who executes murderous characters.
The overall scene design focuses more on the expression at the sociological level. In the opening scene of the ramen stall, the audience saw the diners of the three religions and nine-class diners eating hastily on the side of the road, which was cluttered and crowded and stretched to the center of the road, while the surrounding pedestrians moved slowly due to traffic jams. A society with rigid classes and no vitality is about to emerge. Contrast this with the monopoly Tyrell building. Its pyramid-like shape is reminiscent of the power and money of the Egyptian pharaohs. The openness and cleanliness of the interior contrasts with the streets, implying social polarization and monopoly capital covering the sky. Gothic-style columns point directly to the sky, indicating its ambition to conquer outer space.
It is against this background that the characters appear one by one, and the story gradually unfolds. It is these rich visual details that allow us to understand that society, and thus the numbness and mechanics of Deckard's character. The characterization of Blade Runner is by no means a simple adaptation of a certain genre. And Tyrell's relevant scene information allows us to have a reasonable guess about the cosmic colony, so as to understand the motives of the androids coming to Earth. Whether Deckard is a android or not, in short, this is not a simple story of a wolf falling in love with a sheep, or of a wolf discovering that it turns out to be a sheep. It is the strong desire of androids for life that makes humans on earth (including us) suddenly realize that life is a gift. Only philosophical speculation about life can be targeted.
references:
Future Noir by Paul M. Sammon published by Harper Paperbacks
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