The summer of 1982 was a pretty good one for sci-fi movies. In addition to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, there was John Carpenter’s The Thing, E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (the latter two an . . . interesting pairing), and, of course, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Underappreciated in its initial release (thanks in part to the version seen by most audiences at the time, which includes some rather amusing voiceover narrations from star Harrison Ford and a different ending), Blade Runner has grown in stature over the years. Its neo-noir atmosphere, enhanced by an indelible Vangelis score (R.I.P.) and dominated by giant cities, soulless mega-corporations, and synthetic humanoids, endures as a pop-culture landmark to the present day. Its influence can be seen in countless creations in a variety of media since (including a pretty good sequel directed by Dune director Denis Villeneuve and released in 2017).
As it came out 40 years ago this month, the retrospectives are now circulating. In Esquire, Tom Ward argues that Blade Runner “arguably defined not just 1980s science fiction, but in the forty years since its initial release, sci-fi films in general”:
Famously, the film was a critical and commercial flop in the U.S. with VHS sales and endless re-edits eventually leading to its cult status. (In 2004, it was even voted as the best science fiction film of all time by a panel of global scientists). Today, it’s difficult to picture a sci-fi film that doesn’t play homage. Would HBO’s Westworld have updated its 1973 film version so successfully and stylishly without Blade Runner paving the way both visually and in terms of its musings on free will? And, decades before Elon Musk looked set to take over the world, Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corporation (and indeed, Alien’s Weyland-Yutani) was inspiring evil empires from Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation to RoboCop’s Omni Consumer Products and The Terminator’s Cyberdyne Systems.
Meanwhile, at the Hollywood Reporter, Ryan Parker resurrects an old interview with co-star Rutger Hauer, in which Hauer claims that Roy Batty, the rogue android Ford’s Rick Deckard is tasked with exterminating (with extreme prejudice?), is not, in fact, a villain:
In an interview for the film’s 1982 release, the Netherlands-born Hauer, while being flattered by a journalist about his good looks, was asked why he would want to play a “villain” in the film when he was handsome enough to be the hero. A polite Hauer responded that he did not see his character, Roy Batty, in the same light.
“I don’t think this is a villain,” he began. “What is wrong with a man — from the point where they start chasing him, he just wants to live a little longer. He hasn’t done so much harm. You don’t see him do any harm, and then they start chasing him down. He has to fight once in a while because that’s survival.”
Whatever you think of Hauer’s ambiguity on this question — not even the most famous ambiguity about the film — Batty’s final moments are undoubtedly some of the finest in science fiction. The character’s dying monologue, written in collaboration with Hauer, achieved the immortality he himself cannot, and helped the film to do the same:
