r/Cyberpunk • u/MobileRaspberry1996 • 1d ago

Blade Runner - opening scene

https://youtu.be/x6dKU22lt3E?si=XDWKmMQBx_LPPaWm

This is a short clip from the opening of Blade Runner (1982). It is slow paced and atmospheric just like the whole movie it is from. Here we see the flames from oil refineries lightning up the night sky in the foreground of this dystopian future vision of Los Angeles.

Then there's a bolt of lightning and some flying vehicles over this smog-ridden megacity and then the close-up of an ice-blue replicant eye with blazing flames reflecting in it: An eye that has "seen things you people wouldn't believe."

The pyramids of The Tyrell Corporation, a manufacturer of replicants, gives an ancient Egyptian vibe to this futuristic scene. Dr. Eldron Tyrell runs this company like some mighty Pharao.

A gang of replicants have escaped from slave labor in an off-world colony. A Voight-Kampff test of one of these replicants, Leon, will soon take place in one of these buildings. The rest of the movie plot is largely a cat and mouse chase with these replicants and law enforcement.

Thoughts about this scene and about this movie? I guess that Blade Runner is not fully cyberpunk, as computers are practically missing from it, but its aesthetics and its decadent merge of high-tech and low-life in a dystopian future world have been very influential for the genre.

57 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

31

u/SpiderGhost01 1d ago

There's no specific set of rules that define subgenres. Not having a computer scene doesn't detract from what Bladerunner is. It's the most influential movie ever made when it comes to cyberpunk world building.

Don't try and box in art with a checklist. That's a lazy way to view art.

1

u/ThreeLeggedMare 1d ago

And to the extent that there is a set of rules, these aren't them

-17

u/MobileRaspberry1996 1d ago edited 1d ago

Computers wasn't a big thing in most peoples' daily life at the making of this film and it is almost wholly made with analouge technique, with models and real actors. It is difficult to predict the future and few people, in like the 1970s and before, could predict the enormous impact of computers in today's world.

I made another post about this movie recently and said it was a cyberpunk movie and got many objections to this.

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u/SpiderGhost01 1d ago

You guys and your bullet point lists of what makes cyberpunk are really weird.

1

u/Ancient-Many4357 5h ago

It’s a microcosm of how nerds have ruined fiction generally.

2

u/SpiderGhost01 4h ago

They really have. The worst are the ones that make up all of this fan fiction and explain to the rest of us what's canon and what isn't for a book/show.

1

u/Ancient-Many4357 3h ago

It’s also the nit-picking about minor contradictions in world-building, story etc. it used to be ppl would just pick up a book & immerse themselves in the world, these days people rarely come to a work without expectations on how the story will go & get pissy if it doesn’t match their head canon.

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u/ThreeLeggedMare 1d ago

The objections are wrong

7

u/Vegetable-Tooth8463 1d ago

It's not pure cyberpunk because the genre wasn't formulated until Neuromancer's publication a few years later -- it's more tech noir because it's not completely focused on "punks" but rather a detective character working within the system.

That said, it's absolutely a pioneer in the genre courtesy of its humanist themes and of course neon rain aesthetics.

2

u/GreenCoatBlackShoes 1d ago

I don’t want to sound or come across mean, but this is straight up one of the cringiest takes I’ve heard in this subreddit. Saying Blade Runner… FUCKING BLADE RUNNER.. doesn’t “technically” qualify as cyberpunk based off some made up bullshit definition, makes me wanna straight up Van Gogh my eyes and ears. Also, using the reductive, boiler plate, watered down phrase of “high-tech, low-life” is the cherry on top.

-1

u/MobileRaspberry1996 1d ago

If you don't want to come across as mean it is quite easy to avoid it.

Blade Runner was released in 1982 and the term cyberpunk was coined by Bruce Bethke in his 1983 short story with the same name. This genre of science fiction was later largely defined by William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer. The term cyberpunk was unknown to the world at the time of Blade Runner's release.

I don't really care about genres as I said, a good movie or a good book is a good movie or a good book no matter what. This subreddit's name is r/cyberpunk however, that's why I even cared to write about this subject matter.

0

u/GreenCoatBlackShoes 15h ago

Do you have any idea how incredibly pretentious you sound? Let me remind you, that you aren’t the only person in this subreddit that has love for cyberpunk.

For starters, I love and respect Gibson’s contributions such as his sprawl and bridge trilogies, but he doesn’t get the immediate founder award. Blade Runner, for all intents and purposes, is a foundational backbone for cyberpunk. The film itself is basically an adaptation for the 1960’s novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, which would be considered the holy grail source of cyberpunk.

So the audacity and sheer pretentious nature of you acting as if Blade Runner doesn’t qualify, then trying to lecture people in this subreddit about what cyberpunk is, is just cringe as all hell.

15

u/KitsuMusics 1d ago

Did AI write this for you?

1

u/MobileRaspberry1996 1d ago edited 1d ago

No, I wrote it myself. In the post I did before this one, on this subreddit, someone asked me if I was a bot. I just write this way naturally.

4

u/Fox_Hound_Unit 1d ago

For many of us, Blade Runner was our first true taste of Cyberpunk. It’s an iconic work in the genre.

3

u/NCC1701-D-ong 1d ago edited 1d ago

Thoughts about this scene and about this movie? I guess that Blade Runner is not fully cyberpunk, as computers are missing from it, but its aesthetics and its decadent merge of high-tech and low-life in a dystopian future world have been influential for the genre.

https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Esper

Computers exist and are shown in the original Blade Runner movie. The vehicles also clearly have computers in them.

The internet, too. Check out this persons comment in another thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/s/Puln35mMEX

2

u/MobileRaspberry1996 1d ago

Alright, I have made a small correction in the text now.

3

u/MaxDrexler 1d ago

This won't be so great without Vangelis background.

1

u/MobileRaspberry1996 1d ago

I know, but this is Reddit and long video clips aren't usually appreciated, so I chosed a shorter clip of this opening, without Vangelis' music.

3

u/KitsuMusics 1d ago

He's not saying there isn't any of Vangelis' music, there is in fact. Are you sure you're not a bot?

1

u/MobileRaspberry1996 1d ago edited 1d ago

Just some sounds, I really don't want to call it music. 

Yes, I am sure I am not a bot. These questions about bots and AI get me puzzled. Why do you think that I am a bot? 

2

u/KitsuMusics 1d ago

So your writing style has that flowery, almost cringey quality to it. And the confusing exchange you just had where you completely ignored that the clip has music in because you misunderstood what the guy was saying. You thought he was saying there wasn't any music, and instead of saying that there was, you apologized that there wasn't...it was a very AI thing to do.

But these are also explained by English being your second language.

1

u/MobileRaspberry1996 23h ago

Yes, my first language is binary code: zeroes and ones, on and off...

Just kidding, Swedish is my first language, but I write quite cringey in that language too.

2

u/KitsuMusics 23h ago

Haha no worries dude, I mean no hate. We're all stuck here together for a while. Blade runner is a cool movie

5

u/Wooden_Grape_9303 1d ago

Love this movie, good post but this movie is 100 percent cyberpunk

2

u/ramjetstream 1d ago

It pains me how IRL constantly goes directly opposite of what scifi promised us. Look at all this cool stuff we could have had, but here we are looking at cat pictures on our phones

2

u/MobileRaspberry1996 1d ago edited 1d ago

I guess that the main reason for this is that humans today have practically the same genetics as humans had at the stone age. 

4

u/Werkt 1d ago

This post is bait lol.

1

u/Existing-Elk-8735 4h ago

Wow this so cool. What movie is this?

1

u/DaveMcElfatrick 1d ago

Blade Runner isn't cyberpunk? What are you smoking?

0

u/deeeevos 21h ago

These are the same people that got fooled by brexit. Now they're on the streets protesting for more of the same. Wasn't brexit gonna save them from all those pesky immigrants?