"Is this testing whether I'm a replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?"
A better question for purveyors of the third edition of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner might be: "How many more?" But truthfully, it hardly matters. If the new Final Cut is anything to measure by, this is one of those masterpieces that only get better the more they tinker.
Twenty-five years after its original 1982 release, we still find Harrison Ford's Deckard disheveled, lonely, and with an itchy trigger finger. His world remains one of global commercialism and sponsorship, overrun with advertisements for a better life away from Earth. With our planet dangerously overpopulated and polluted, humans have colonized space. Human-resembling, android slaves, "replicants," are outlawed and executed due to their self-aware, violent uprising on remote off-world colonies. Their creation is one of science-fiction staple - made in their masters' image, with all their strengths, and none of the flawed emotion, for a four-year life of servitude.
Los Angeles, 2019: Deckard, a former replicant-hunter - a Blade Runner - is forced out of retirement for one last job. Rutger Hauer's Roy (a NEXUS-6 model replicant) has returned to Earth with a vengeance and four like-minded outlaws. They aim to meet, quite literally, their maker: an aged genius by the name of Tyrell, whose corporate headquarters reside amid a monolithic pyramid structure. Only in passing does the film's conception resemble Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep, the story upon which it is based. It forcefully submerges the viewer in a bleak and wholly oppressed view of globalization, amid a culture of fused neglect. Brands rule recognition, not individuality. The American city Deckard owes more to foreboding Coca-Cola and Asian drug billboard ads than to any national identity. There is little vegetation, and no wildlife. Only the superrich can afford genetically manufactured animals, and the only plant that seems readily available is tobacco - and plenty of it.
2008 Woodie Awards
