Blade Runner (1982)

USA 116m, Colour
Director: Ridley Scott: Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah

Blade Runner is an influential science-fiction film noir set in a near dystopian future which is threatened by genetically engineered replicants who are in a state of rebellion.  Scott’s dark vision of the future stands in stark contrast to cinema’s previously most influential science fiction film – Kubrick’s 2001. Despite the aesthetic differences between these two films, Scott’s use of atmospheric music, and extended visual sequences of exterior sets is remarkably similar to 2001. As inspiration for later science fiction projects, Blade Runner is most notably influential, both visually and technologically, to the new Battlestar Galactica television series, in which the cylons, like the replicants, are virtually indistinguishable from their human creators. This ambiguity between man and machine provides the basis for a moral dilemma which underlies the success of this now-classic science fiction film (Klaus Ming April 2010).