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Blade Runner

Patreon Preview: Blade Runner

Note: This is a preview of “From Electric Sheep to the Final Cut: The Evolution of a Blade Runner”, my 2007 essay on the evolution of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel across twenty-five years of cinematic re-edits. To read the full essay, please join my Patreon account at the $5 “It Came from the Morgue…” level.

Cover art by Harry Sehring.

Like many cinematic adaptations of Philip K. Dick’s literary output, Blade Runner takes its hook from the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but uses the book as a starting point to develop the ideas in a new direction. Blade Runner, as adapted by writers Hampton Fancher and David Peoples and realized by director Ridley Scott, inverts much of the novel’s intent by altering the nature of the story’s protagonist and the audience’s viewpoint on the world where he lives.

Written in 1966 and published two years later, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? told the story of bounty hunter Rick Deckard and his pursuit of renegade androids in a feel-good consumer culture occupying a dying Earth of 1992. Dick’s book presented a society wherein citizens flaunted their empathy by caring for an ever-decreasing supply of live animals, or pretending to do so, in the case of the eponymous electric sheep. The depleted state of livestock was the result of a radioactive cloud that constantly eroded the genetic code of those who remained on Earth rather than emigrating to its prosperous off-world colonies.

If the prospect of eventually being classified as “a special”—too gene-damaged to reproduce or hold down a worthwhile job—wasn’t reason enough to leave Earth, the deal was sweetened by a free custom-designed android for every colonist, but these slaves were illegal on Earth. It was Deckard’s job to “retire”—a euphemism for “kill”—any that make their way to the homeworld.

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JASON DAVIS
Freelance Writer

Rain

Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in The X-Files Pilot (1993).

Rain appeals to my melancholic inclination, and makes me think of many things I love: seeking refuge from the storm in The Old Dark House; sheltering at the Rashōmon city gate to stay dry; the debate on the Declaration of Independence in 1776; seeking refuge from a different storm in The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Roy Batty’s last words in Blade Runner; Billy Kinetta’s revelation in “Paladin of the Last Hour”; Claudia comforting Lisa in the aptly titled “A Rainy Night”; the smell of a Labrador having shaken the rain off her fur; Rob McKenna in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; the pelting of Collinwood (and/or the Old House) in Dark Shadows; Mulder and Scully at any given moment in the first five years of The X-Files; Charles and Tommy’s talk in Four Weddings and a Funeral; Andy Dufresne’s freedom in The Shawshank Redemption; my first two rain-soaked short stories, “After the Fall” and “Last Night”; Billy Shipton’s last hour in “Blink”; and others that aren’t coming to mind.

Charles (Hugh Grant) and Tom (James Fleet) in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).

I used to love the rain, and it saddened me that I lived in place where it doesn’t happen as frequently as I’d like. But now, when it does happen—as it’s happening right now—I worry about something completely out of my hands, a vestigial obligation of friendship that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. The once-pleasant melancholy inclines to inescapable despondency, and I wonder if a favorite has slipped away…

Blade Runner

The Criterion Collection #69.

I received my Laserdisc player as an early birthday present in November 1994. At least, that’s how I remember it.

Are memories to be trusted?

Are they real?

Circa 1987, Criterion released the international theatrical cut of Blade Runner on Laserdisc, a version without any unicorn dreams or nagging ambiguity.

Because I bought the LaserDisc the week of Christmas, Blade Runner (1982) became my Christmas Eve movie. The DVD of the Director’s Cut supplanted the LaserDisc at the turn of the millennium and was succeeded by the Final Cut on Blu-ray and 4K. I missed a few years early on, when family gatherings in far away places robbed me of the necessary technology, but there’ve been no years without Deckard since I left home.

Rachael (Sean Young) in Blade Runner (1982).

It’s probably weird to spend Christmas Eve questioning the nature of humanity, or maybe not.

“It’s too bad she won’t live. But then again, who does?”
Gaff

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