Blade Runner

I didn't see the new Blade Runner yet.  This coming weekend looks pretty bad too.  Honestly, I'm probably OK with that.  Although I want to see it, I haven't been waiting with bated breath (not baited breath, although that common typo offers a fascinating idea for some kind of vampire trap or something) for it to come out.

As it happens, I think the original Blade Runner is one of the most over-rated films in all of science fiction.  It's really just not that interesting of a story.  The pacing is terrible, it's over-acted (especially by Hauer) and William Sanderson's character is just plain embarrassing.  There are other problems with the film, especially if you want to get really nitpicky, which I don't.  This is more my speed. (And I agree; I'd probably watch Air Force Two also.  But not Re-regarding Henry.)  For that matter, Ridley Scott is himself vastly over-rated.  Sure, Alien is a pretty cool movie.  I'll give him that one.  But with regards to Blade Runner, I often wonder sometimes if the only reason this movie is popular with the geek crowd is a combination of its visual design and the fact that it was pretty much the only cyberpunk movie ever made for years and years.

And maybe cyberpunk just isn't as compelling of a genre as we thought it was in the 80s.  Mad Max spiked barbarian post apocalyptic movies look dated too.  Now, the aesthetic of cyberpunk isn't a bad one.  Check out this collection of Star Wars figurines reimagined as cyberpunks, for instance.  And you can't go wrong with this awesome picture that made the rounds a while back.

Or this one.

And I do really like the analog-synth soundtrack of Blade Runner (by Vangelis).  I think a synthwave, purposefully retro-80s soundtrack would be entirely appropriate for AD ASTRA, for instance, even though it's a capes and lasers and swords space opera, not a cyberpunk in the least.  But AD ASTRA, like Star Wars before it, is capable and in fact designed specifically, to absorb just about any pulp or even quasi-pulpish influence.  Where Star Wars had an element of cyberpunk aesthetic (or maybe it's just sci-fi noir, which is pretty much indistinguishable) in the lower levels of Coruscant, for instance, AD ASTRA's urban blight ecumenopoli will have a similar vibe.  I'm perfectly fine with coopting the aesthetic of cyberpunk, at least sometimes, but I'm pretty distinterested in the themes of cyberpunk.  Back when they were written, they prefigured a lot of the same themes that artists like Ballard had already suggested (or for that matter, artists like John Foxx and Gary Numan—who could possibly tell me that the song "Are Friends Electric?" isn't a proto-cyberpunk song?)—the problem is that the reality has mostly come true (barring cyborgs—we just carry our smartphones around with us instead of having them installed directly in to our bodies) and if it has been dystopian, it seems nobody much cares after all.

By the way, that action figure guy has lots of Star Wars interpretations.  My favorites are probably, along with the cyberpunk one I linked to above, a basic Revision, and one more overtly in the Republic Serial vein.  I also notice that in his various reinterpretations of Star Wars, his Boba Fett analog is usually a lieutenant to his Darth Vader analog, and there's rarely an Emperor analog; Darth Vader is just the big bad guy.  In other words, Darth Vader is the Emperor, and Boba Fett is Darth Vader, rather than an intriguing hired gun who represents a kind of off-grid power.