Blade Runner (1982)

Director:

Ridley Scott

Writers:

Hampton Fancher (screenplay) and
David Webb Peoples (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

25 June 1982 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

A Futuristic Vision Perfected [2007 Final Cut]

Plot:

Deckard, a blade runner, has to track down and terminate 4 replicants who hijacked a ship in space and have returned to earth seeking their maker.

Plot Keywords:

Future | Police | Cyberpunk | Ledge | Murder

Awards:

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 9 wins & 14 nominations

Cast

Harrison Ford	...	Rick Deckard
Rutger Hauer	...	Roy Batty
Sean Young	...	Rachael
Edward James Olmos	...	Gaff
M. Emmet Walsh	...	Bryant
Daryl Hannah	...	Pris
William Sanderson	...	J.F. Sebastian
Brion James	...	Leon Kowalski
Joe Turkel	...	Dr. Eldon Tyrell
Joanna Cassidy	...	Zhora
James Hong	...	Hannibal Chew
Morgan Paull	...	Holden
Kevin Thompson	...	Bear
John Edward Allen	...	Kaiser
Hy Pyke	...	Taffey Lewis

Also Known As:

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (International: English title) (recut version)

MPAA:

Rated R for violence and brief nudity (definitive cut); Rated R for violence. (1991 version)

Runtime:

117 min

Country:

USA | Hong Kong

Language:

English | German | Cantonese | Japanese | Hungarian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Dolby (35 mm prints)

Certification:

Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | Italy:T | USA:R (Definitive Cut) | Germany:12 (re-rating) (2007) | Brazil:14 | West Germany:16 (f) | Portugal:M/12 | Ireland:15A | New Zealand:M | Denmark:15 (original rating) | Spain:13 | UK:15 (video rating) (1986) | Argentina:16 | Australia:M | Chile:18 | Finland:K-16 | France:-12 | Ireland:15 | Israel:PG | Japan:R-15 (director's cut) | Netherlands:16 (director's cut) | Norway:15 | Peru:18 | Singapore:NC-16 | South Korea:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:AA (original rating) | USA:R | Norway:16 (original rating) | Iceland:16

Filming Locations:

2nd Street Tunnel, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Ladd Company, The

Trivia:

The first screenplay based on 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' was not written by Hampton Fancher as is often claimed, but by Robert Jaffe, whose company, Herb Jaffe Associates, had purchased the rights to the novel. According to author Philip K. Dick, Jaffe turned the novel into a comedy spoof, which Dick absolutely detested. Herb Jaffe Associates' option ran out in 1977, which is when Fancher became involved. Fancher had wanted to do an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch', but the deal fell through, and he turned to 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Deckard is talking to the snake vendor. You can see through the glass that each characters dialog does not match their mouth movements. This is true in all versions of the film, except the Workprint. Even in 2007 "Final Cut", the obviousness of the error has been reduced, but if you look closely, you can still see that the audio doesn't quite match the visual.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Female announcer over intercom: Next subject: Kowalski, Leon. Engineer, waste disposal. File section: New employee, six days.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Drillbit Taylor (2008)

Soundtrack:

LOVE THEME

An incredibly beautiful-looking film as one would expect with director Ridley Scott…

But it's almost like an art movie, the first science-fiction art film… It's a futuristic film beautifully put together… It's really impeccably made by one of the great visionary directors… And you really saw a future that looked very different from the future you had seen before… A future that looked very believable like the visual-effects shots of the flying car going over a futuristic city… The fight sequence doesn't prepare you for the traumatic emotional side that there is in the film, it leaves you sort of broken…

There is a beautiful, delicate emotional great scene that I remember when I first saw the movie… I'm in the theater and I'm so drawn in what Rutger Hauer's doing… I'm so drawn in by what the theme of the movie has brought us to… The magnificent moment where he is letting go of life… And in those last moments of letting go of life he's really learned to appreciate life to the point where he spares Deckard's life, and where he's even holding a white dove because he just wants to have something that's alive in his hands… It's an amazing sort of crescendo that's going and there's Rutger saying: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. All these moments will be lost in time like tears in rain." Hauer puts all the things that are so amazing about people: sense of poetry, sense of humor, sense of sexuality, sense of the kid, sense of soul…

Scott brought out the best qualities in his performers… He coaxed and very gently manipulated performances from his actors that in some instances I think they've rarely topped… You feel the story, you feel the emotions of the characters and you will be lost in the middle of this wild world, you know, it's so rich and it's painful… I mean it's a very bluesy, dark story and told very compassionately…

The overpopulation, the sort of crowd scenes is so rich and varied and there's such an extreme detail designing the magazine covers, designing the look of the punks, the Hare Krishnas, the biological salesman, everything is designed… You have just Piccadilly Circus punks walking by… You have a sense of layers in that society… That is one of those things that you see again and again… The city landscape with the big billboards à la Kyoto or Tokyo… Scott was able to create the look based on what goes on in various cities all over the world… Whether it is Tokyo, Kyoto or Beijing or Hong Kong or whatever, you're right in "Blade Runner" country…

"Blade Runner," to me, embodies the elegance, the power, and the uniqueness of a film experience… It's the most classical, beautiful, purest movie-making writing and then the film-making itself is… The images and the sound and the music, it's pure cinema… Ridley came out with an amazing, brilliantly executed future of an absolute dystopia… The intensity of his perfectionism on "Blade Runner" made the movie… This is a master at his best…