Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, starring Harrison Ford. It is set in a dystopian future of 2019 where human-like replicants have been created by the Tyrell Corporation to work on off-world colonies. Replicants are considered dangerous by humans if they disobey or live longer than their predetermined lifespan of 4 years. Special police officers called "Blade Runners" hunt down replicants that escape. The film questions what it means to be human when the distinction between humans and replicants becomes unclear. It also depicts a postmodern vision of a dystopian Los Angeles future where advertising dominates and people escape to more virtual realities.

1. BY CIARA, ROSS, SAMMIE AND LAYLA

2. Blade Runner is a science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring
Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos which
was released in 1982. It is about a future dystopia (set in 2019) where human
cyborgs called ‘replicants’ have been invented but they become too
intelligent over time and are considered dangerous, so the humans only let
them have a 4 year life span and hunt them down when they escape. The
people who hunt them are called ‘blade runners’.
Blade Runner did not do very well at the box office when it was first
released, but has since become a huge critical success and is now considered
a 'classic' piece of dystopian science fiction. It is a very famous postmodern
film and has been described as ‘the epitome of a postmodern film because it
can be viewed as postmodern in style, in its reception and in its subject
matter’.

3. Blade Runner is said to have a postmodern aesthetic, mixing textual
references and images. The film-noir voice-over of the original release
is juxtaposed with the futuristic, dystopian images, but at the same
time the shadows and constant rain fit with the film-noir style resulting
in a 'neo-noir' visual style and thematic range. This ‘neo-noir’ style
contributes as a large postmodern factor by itself, this is due to two
reasons. Firstly, ‘neo’ in the title means ‘new’ in Latin therefore the
introduction of the new complies with idea of progression. And
secondly, when in hand with an old style, such as ‘film-noir’ the
concept of the old is relived and regenerated, almost adding to the idea
of nostalgia and a celebration of old film genre that has had such a vast
impact on the media in general in the modern today.

4. The futuristic set of Blade Runner is actually made up of 1940s clothes and
offices, punk rock hairstyles, pop Egyptian style and oriental culture even though
it is supposedly set in LA. The city is in itself a pastiche of our ideas of the East,
the West and the future. The population is very multicultural and the language
they speak is mix of English, Japanese, German and Spanish. The film mixes
cultures and boundaries and styles of art. The film plays with time, through the
various types of clothes, and culture and genre by mixing them all together to
create the world in the film. The fusion of the film
noir characteristics and science-fiction is another
example of the film deconstructing cinema and
genre. This is a postmodern tendency to break
boundaries and mix genres.

5. The dystopian atmosphere throughout the entire film engulfs the
postmodern style. The elements of fragmentation and challenge that are
involved within the postmodern theory are very much so incorporated in
the film, for example, even seen through the opening scene it’s shown
that this society is somewhat damaged or wrecked. This may be an
extreme comparison, however, it shows that this place has been
developed for the worst, much like some of the views that
postmodernism is detrimental to the real world non-fictional society we
live in.

6. In this movie, science, technology and progress are all questioned and shown to have 'failed‘ in
some way . One of the key themes of the film is the 'blurring' of the differences between the real
and the artificial, between the humans and the replicants. Increasingly it is no longer possible to be
clear about what it means to be 'human'. The questions that the film poses are to do with the
meaning of humanity in the postmodern age, where the distinction between the human and the
machines is unclear. The movie questions whether emotions can be programmed or if humanity can
be manufactured. These are the same questions asked by the postmodern philosophers about the
hyperreal, and how we cope with a world where the image overrides the individual.
The futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner has been discussed as
a vision of the postmodern city - huge advertising images
promoting an off-world colony and the idea that everyone who
can has fled the 'real world' for a more attractive virtual
equivalent.