BLADE RUNNER: "TEARS IN RAIN"

Blade Runner, one of the best sci-fi movies ever

It´s time for science-fiction in our blog. We are talking about one of the most famous films within this genre: Blade Runner. This American film was released in 1982 by Ridley Scott starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and Sean Young. The screenplay was loosely based on Philip K. Dick´s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?


The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in 2019. A dystopia is a society, usually fictional, that is in some important way undesirable or frightening. It is the opposite of a utopia. In Blade Runner, the action centres on a series of genetically engineered organic robots called Replicants (they are visually indistinguishable from humans). These replicants are banned on Earth and used only for dangerous work on off-world colonies.

Harrison Ford is a "blade runner"

Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and killed by special police operatives called "blade runners". In the film, one of these blade runners, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), agrees to hunt down a brutal group of recently escaped replicants hiding in Los Angeles.





While not initially a success with American audiences, the film was popular internationally and soon became a cult film. It has been recognised as the best science-fiction film of all time by several specialised magazines and its influence can be seen in many subsequent science-fiction films, anime, video games and television programmes.

Well, if you haven´t seen the film and you like science-fiction, don´t wait any longer! This is a film that you will never forget.

The Replicants return to Earth

 

Among the sequences you can see here stands out the final monologue of the replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), during a rain downpour moments before his own death. It has been described as "perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history:

"I´ve seen things that you people wouldn´t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."