Blade Runner

("Robby the Robot #1." Here. Flickr. 28 March, 2010.)

Q:Blade Runner is best known for its cyberpunk mise en scene (design aspects of the film): the incredibly dense texture of its shots. Watch very carefully and describe the 2020 culture the movie suggests visually.
R:I believe the dense cyberpunk like background shown throughout the movie is to give the viewer a sense of how close everything has become. Cities are normally cramped yet the future city given in Blade Runner is a kind of closeness unseen in the modern day. Beside the overly close nature of the future, there is a sense of darkness unnatural as the buildings creating it. The sun is rarely ever seen in the movie and onlt when above the streets and high in the sky. Rain is one of the greatest elements when it comes to weather. It is a wonder the city wasn't washed away by the possibly man made floods from above. As for the cyberpunk side of the backround, there was a great deal of (or perhaps I should say lack of) future buildings. Evenything has wires and pipes wrapping it in a futureistic shell missing any real kind of creativity when built. The metal coloured walls warped by time, have whole pieces missing. The ceilings look to be ready to drop at any moment as cracks begin at the floor and crawl like vines up to the roof itself. If any building were to look as such in any age, it's owner would be a poor soul indeed.

Q:A moral message of the movie is that it was wrong to enslave the replicants and use them as forced labor since they were so human-like in both appearance and thought process. What would need to be different about replicants in order for us to feel that it was OK to use them for labor?
R:In order for mankind to be able to "enslave" the replicants, the replicants would have to be something not human; something overly lessened. The replicants are refered to as "more human than human" as they not only look like humans, but can over time learn and form emotions just as a true human has. The replicants in simplest form are still human and there for not enslave-able. A mule is a creature to be enslaved in the right that it is lessened from man far enough. Is enslavement the right word to use? Perhaps not. Would it not be more fitting then to look at a metal monster closer to the replicants such as the robotic fleets we have today? No emotion, no thought other than given. These are what the replicants were before the future took hold and although science has jumped great bounds, moral ideals seem to be far in the dust. As the replicants took on emotions and thoughts of their own, humans seem to not have given the replicants any real thought. They are seen by humans still as simple tools which work much like a car or computer; the problems of rebeling replicants similar to a failure of the car's gears or the computer's main frame. If ever the replicants were to be truely enslaved, they would have to thoughtless, emotionless and most of all soulless. The replicants of Blade Runner will never remain enslaved much like Roy and the other's.