Well, I thought that I’d talk about Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece “Blade Runner” today Whilst “Blade Runner” wasn’t the first piece of cyberpunk media (Bruce Bethke… technically… got there two years earlier, but the short story he wrote in 1980 wasn’t published until 1983), this intelligent and slow-paced sci-fi film is credited with inspiring the entire “look” of the cyberpunk genre
Seriously, as well as being a masterpiece of storytelling, it’s also a visual masterpiece as well.
This article may contain SPOILERS.
But, whilst taking visual inspiration from “Blade Runner” is often done by artists, game designers and/or film-makers to create a feeling of a “retro future” these days, I suddenly remembered something very interesting about the film. Technically speaking, it was already “retro sci-fi” when it was released in the early 1980s.
In modern terms, it would be the equivalent of someone today – in 2024 – making a film based on a book from 2010, filling it with people dressed in 1980s fashions, adding a few pieces of 1980s-style music and maybe a few hints of both ancient and prehistoric times too.
If you’re puzzled by this, “Blade Runner” was released in 1982 – but loosely-based on a Philip K. Dick novel from 1968, the costume design is often heavily inspired by 1940s fashions, some of Vangelis’ sublime score for the film (such as “One More Kiss, Dear“) is based on 1940s music and there are also a few hints of the prehistoric era – such as Rachel’s fur coat, Deckard’s cave-like apartment, Roy howling like a wolf etc… as well. I’ll talk about the “ancient” elements later.
Of course, all of this was an intentional creative choice. Not only was the film’s grim and morally-ambiguous storyline heavily inspired by old “film noir” movies and hardboiled novels, but so was a lot of the film’s gloomy lighting design as well – albeit with lots of cool neon lighting as well Deckard even wears a trench-coat, like an old gumshoe. His futuristic blaster pistol looks a lot like an old 1930s-50s revolver as well. When we first see Deckard, he is also reading an old-fashioned paper newspaper (rather than a futuristic info-screen or whatever).
And, given some of the film’s themes – such as how humanity’s flaws (eg: exploitation, violence, discrimination etc…) have persisted into the future – the inclusion of “old” elements in the film’s beautiful futuristic setting makes perfect sense on a narrative level. It’s a cynical comment about how timeless some of the worst elements of humanity are.
This also emphasised by the inclusion of a large pyramid/ziggurat-style building – the headquarters of the Tyrell corporation – which is evocative of ancient Egyptian burials, Aztec human sacrifices etc… And, in keeping with this, the wall tiles of Deckard’s apartment have an Aztec/Maya-style design to them. Given that the film is one about people creating artificial humans, exploiting them, killing them if they break the rules and also deliberately shortening their lifespans to four years as well, these visual hints of ancient human sacrifice make perfect sense in context.
All of this “old” stuff also adds more realistic world-building to the film since, if you look around these days, you’ll still see lots of “old” things in the present day. The typical modern everyday outfit – jeans and T-shirt – is pretty much unchanged since at least the 1970s (in a similar way to how men during the first half or so of the 20th century almost always wore suits).
People still listen to radio these days. The “save” icon in most computer programs is based on obsolete 1980s-1990s floppy disks. The QWERTY keyboard layout is from the 19th century (and the icon on the “Enter” key is also based on old typewriters too...).
Many of the most popular websites – Youtube, Facebook, Twitter/”X”, Netflix etc… – got their start in about 2004-7, almost two decades ago etc… Both Google and Amazon are more than twenty years old. Smartphones have existed for at least seventeen years. The past lingers into the future. And the film perfectly captures this.
Of course, although there are a lot of intelligent narrative reasons for the inclusion of all of this “old” stuff in the film, it also adds a lot of interesting and memorable visual contrast to the film. “Retro sci-fi” is inherently interesting on a visual level because of the contrast between opposites, between the past and the future.
And, yes, it’s also just hilariously ironic that people were making “Retro sci-fi” more than forty years ago, during a time that modern “Retro sci-fi” often looks back on…
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting