The Look of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner

Intricate Visual Details Speak Louder Than Words

Aug 12, 2009

Though more than twenty-five years have passed since its initial theatrical release, Ridley Scott's science fiction masterpiece continues to reveal layers of meaning.

Analysis of Blade Runner has been extensive, but the film's timelessness makes repeat viewings rewarding. Nuanced layers continue to reveal themselves with each screening, and over the years, Blade Runner's large, varied audience has interpreted the film an equal variety of ways.

"...if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes," said the Blade Runner character Roy Batty (a genetic designer). The words also ring true for Blade Runner viewers enchanted with Ridley Scott's impeccably crafted vision of the future. Through Scott's eyes, viewers have experienced a meticulously detailed world as thought-provoking as it is visually stunning.

Blade Runner, a loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is set in a polluted future metropolis, the predicted Los Angeles of 2019. There, a team of genetically engineered beings called replicants have abandoned their off-world slave labor duties and taken to the city streets in search of their creator. Their demand: a life span longer than the four years they've been allocated.

Since they will stop at nothing to extend their lives, Blade Runner cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is dispatched to hunt and kill the replicants. As stated in the film's prologue, "This was not called execution. It was called retirement."

In the documentary Dangerous Days: The Making of Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott shares his philosophy on the importance of a film's set: "I never chuck away the set or the proscenium or the landscape. The set is the landscape. And to me in all my work the landscape and the proscenium is a character. Sometimes to the irritation of some actors and always to the irritation of critics who'd tear me apart for many movies before I realized, 'You know what? I have a real advantage. I can actually conceive a world, a universe and carry it out so it's real.'"

Blade Runner's visual team consisted of Production Designer Lawrence G. Paull, Art Director David L. Snyder, Visual Futurist Syd Mead, and Assistant Art Director Stephen Dane, among others. However, Ridley Scott, a perfectionist with extensive experience in the visual realm, from painting to art direction to graphic design, guided the translation of the film's look from concept to screen, determined to carry out each well-planned detail of his artistic vision.

Scott knew exactly what he wanted, which emphasizes the significance of each creative choice. Rather than being a decadent distraction from plot and character development, as some critics claimed at the time of Blade Runner's release, the film's rich visual world reveals valuable information about the characters and moral questions at hand.

Darkness, Smoke and Rain

Blade Runner's landscape is filled with overpopulated streets, pollution, rain and smoke. The exact reasons for the condition of this future world are not revealed, but advertisements for the "Off-World Colonies" suggest that environmentally oppressive conditions have prompted Earth's residents to seek a more pleasant existence on other planets.

In Dangerous Days, Ridley Scott describes the use of rain, smoke and darkness as a budget-efficient approach to bringing his Blade Runner set to life. This set was created by retrofitting Warner Bros. Studios' New York Street backlot with piping, neon signs and other industrial flourishes. Scott's visual choices became essential to Blade Runner's look, accurately depicting the flaws of the film's future society and opening a world of interpretation and added meaning.

Not only is the film's futuristic metropolis in a state of physical and environmental decline, but the Tyrell Corporation's creation of virtually human replicants to perform slave labor indicates a potential moral decline that parallels the deteriorating state of the city. Although labeled villains, the replicants become targets in a world that is anything but humane, a world in which it is acceptable to kill human-like beings on the street in front of a crowd.

Replicant or Human?

The replicants' physical perfection serves as a powerful contrast to their blighted surroundings, which makes their inevitable degeneration seem all the more tragic. The fact that they have such a strong desire to live, especially in a world so foul, adds meaning and power to their plight.

The film's dense visuals provide yet another crucial function. To effectively disguise themselves, the replicants must blend into the rotting Los Angeles environment, including the overpopulated streets. Hunting for replicants in the thick crowds proves to be challenging, which reinforces their resemblance to human beings, adding another dimension of cruelty to the executions and raising important moral questions.

If it's so hard to tell replicants from human beings, should they be methodically assassinated? Furthermore, one can't help but wonder whether human police officers should be given the logistically and morally difficult responsibility of killing them.

Depictions of Emotion

The film's look conveys meaning even through contrast, as replicant emotion is illustrated through focused close-ups that strikingly stand out against the film's numerous shots of a packed metropolis.

The tearful face of replicant Rachael (Sean Young) encompasses the screen when she realizes that all of her memories are false constructions, and the face of replicant leader Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) is the prevalent image as he affirms the significance of his life during his "tears in rain" monologue at the end of the film.

These visually poignant, uncluttered depictions of suffering,so starkly different from the packed streets of earlier scenes, are key in revealing the replicants' human qualities, reinforcing the moral questions sparked by their termination.

Ridley Scott's Visual Masterpiece

Through its gritty aesthetic of crowded city streets, Blade Runner creates a believable dystopia, the visual details of which play a crucial role in raising questions about what it means to be human, cleverly suggesting that without caution humanity could deteriorate like the streets of the film's futurescape.

Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner. Dir. Charles de Lauzirika. Blade Runner Partnership, Warner Home Video, 2007.

Sammon, Paul M. Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1996.

The copyright of the article The Look of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Films is owned by Kate Simmons. Permission to republish The Look of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.