Bigger Connections Blade Runner

In Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade runner the story takes place in a claustrophobic 2019 Los Angeles. At the time of filming these large assumptions made throughout the film about the future may have seemed plausible, but how do they hold up today? To start off one of the easiest elements to pick up is the bright neon lighting scattered throughout the duration of the movie. In fact there seems to be too much lighting overwhelming the contents of the scenes themselves. If this trait wasn’t already true in Los Angeles in 1982 it definitely would hold true today. With all this light currently being emitted by today’s world, light pollution is seen throughout the country. With Blade Runner depicting no visible stars in the sky along with the consistent smoggy look, it is definitely comparable to the conditions of some cities today. The lighting in both the movie and real-world convey how people have taken one of the simpler technologies and have stretched it so far that it clashes with nature and overtakes it.

The next element, definitely the most notable having to do with the actual plot of the film is technological advancements. In Blade Runner, it is apparent that technology holds a large role in everyday life, the first being transportation. Transportation in the movie greatly overestimated what we currently use today, where they have flying cars we instead have self-driving ones. While vehicles have definitely improved since the movie was created it puts into perspective the values of people back then and now. In the current day flying cars, while they would be an amazing feat, would most likely cause more harm than good. In movies such as this they are displayed as convenient and trustworthy but with there still being issues with our modern cars how would flying cars go? As of now, there aren’t any large leaps to commercialize this effort but there would definitely be some form of vehicle in the future to further test upcoming technology.

Building off of tech the use of androids, or replicants, in the film was crucial for expansion in the movie. With their bodies being designed for handling more labor-intensive duties they would take the jobs of people, assistants of the human race. Today we rely so heavily on technological assistants to help us with everyday problems ranging from something as basic as our phones to specialized robots for specific functions. In Blade Runner, these replicants were created for a specific purpose for human usage just as any other device today or back then. The question that arises as the technology continues to evolve and take on forms to better interact with humans is, is there a line that has to be drawn? Today people are already working on robots to imitate human behavior including facial expressions and to some degree the ability to think. While the movie has heavily built itself on the idea of sentient androids would it be wrong to overwork, exploit, and use them? They’re only machines, right?