Blade Runner: Can Somebody Turn a Lamp On?
Guess how many times I use the word “dark” in this post. There is no prize.
This week’s AFI film #97, Blade Runner (1982) takes place in a time more miserable than now, which is hard to imagine but at least we still have sunlight in 2020. There is nothing but darkness from the moment the film opens on the Los Angeles night skyline. Towers menacingly shoot fire into the sky as if to warn us that this is not the L.A. where you tour movie sets and take pictures of palm trees. This is a dark place where dark things happen.
We learn right away that the human race 38 years in the future does not get kinder with age. The Tyrell Corporation has figured out how to make robots called Replicants that look almost exactly like humans. They build them stronger, faster and just as intelligent as people and send them off-world to work as slaves.
Then, as a design upgrade that defies all logic, they also give some of the Replicants memories. It would be like going to an Amazon warehouse and giving the robots that pick products some memories of a free and happy childhood and also the physical ability to kill their operators.
So the darkness is everywhere. In the humans, in the Replicants, in the air. It surrounds our hero Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) in the…
