Posted on 02/03/2019 5:52:57 AM PST by Carriage Hill
Welcome to the future.
Two classic science-fiction films — “Blade Runner” and “The Running Man” — are both set in 2019, and although the films envisioned a few details that aren’t a reality right now, many of their themes nailed current modern life in America.
“I call science fiction ‘reality ahead of schedule,’” Syd Mead, the celebrated designer behind “Blade Runner,” tells The Post.
Watch these films now, and you can see many parallels between their fictional worlds and the real one we’re living in this very year.
Ridley Scott’s 1982 film “Blade Runner” told the story of a detective (Harrison Ford) tasked with hunting rogue humanoids known as “replicants,” played by Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer. “The Running Man,” which hit theaters in 1987, concerned a police officer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) falsely imprisoned by the totalitarian state and made to perform on a top-rated game show, which forces convicts to run from heavily armed pursuers through a dystopian maze.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
American is still operating those freighters carrying the bio-domes, though.
I’ll take omega Man or West World.
The dude literally looks exactly like the NPC meme
and Children of Men better still
What does it mean to be human?
I think that replicant was...
“The next kill will be made by... Ben Richards!”
Heh heh!
Nailed it, RWC!
Off to the Gulag with you...
“Never let a Replicant put in your contact lenses.
“Not with the thumbs!“
Wake up,
It’s time to die!
“...That the writer and all the persons quoted make no mention of the book that’s the basis for the movie, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’, shows their colossal ignorance. Indeed, the story was about what it means to be human.” [Flick Lives, post 7]
“Blade Runner is based on the book, Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep and it’s clear the dolt writing this article didn’t bother to read the book.” [Rashputin, post 10]
Philip K Dick wrote _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_, and _We Can Remember it for you Wholesale_, on which the film _Total Recall_ was based.
Neither film adaptation follows the written works well, as forum members have pointed out. The filmmakers may or may not have read the books: creating a salable film treatment that accurately and honestly follows a book is difficult. Especially in science fiction: social/cultural situations that might come to pass in some future time are typically the products of unusual (sometimes unruly) imaginations of authors, and it can take a mighty long leap on the part of readers to understand such. Moviegoers - as a group, more passive and less intellectually curious than readers - are usually less interested in figuring things out or speculating how stuff will affect humanity generations hence.
Philip K Dick was said to be interested in exploring what makes an authentic human being, the nature of identity, the authenticity of memory, and a number of philosophical concepts. He won a Hugo Award in 1963 for _The Man in the High Castle_, which was recently adapted for television.
Dick worked at length with screenwriters on the original _Bladerunner_, but wasn’t satisfied with any version until Ridley Scott joined the project. Ironically Scott never did read the original book, but when Dick saw special-effects artwork depicting Los Angeles in the future, he proclaimed it was just as he’d imagined it himself, and did a complete turnaround, backing the film with the declaration that it “justified and completed” his life and writings. A further irony was that Dick died mere months before the film was released.
Infamously, the film crew & stars that made the film adaptation of _Starship Troopers_ did read Robert Heinlein’s original novel beforehand, but publicly rejected Heinlein’s ideas and themes, then went ahead and made the militaristic version that was released, chock full of neo-Nazi overtones.
I get a kick at how some of these reporters over-analyze movies.
When "Night of the Living Dead" made such a splash, they all marveled about different aspects (some were accurate).
The one that got me was how many swooned at Romero's "terse and compact approach, creating this gem in only two reels."
When Romero was asked why he didn't do the conventional three-reeler, he said, "Because we didn't have enough money for a third."
I just saw an Article about Flying Cars on a Tech Site. Wish I would have saved the link.
The guy who wrote it managed to insert his TDS into it. He commented on the Racist Wall and how Trump wouldn’t allow the Technology to proceed.
Of course, he had that 100% wrong. It’s the Swamp that stifles innovation, not a Businessman.
As many others have written, the theme of the movie is the question of what makes us human. How close can an artificial being get to being human and still be considered artificial? Neither the film nor the book were trying to predict certain technologies.
Nor mention of the author, Philip K. Dick, as I recall.
No author, no book. No book, no movie.
Similarly, Peter Jackson gets too much credit for TLotR movies.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s genius was far the greater. And Jackson watered down the implicit monotheistic element, and the personal morality, of key characters. Typical Hollywood.
Bingo.
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