The Essay: 2019 - The Year of Blade Runner

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Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

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The Essay: Blade Runner at 40

The Essay: Blade Runner at 40: Fiery the Angels Fell - David Thomson

Fiery the Angels Fell - David Thomson

Blade Runner at 40

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Blade Runner at 40, Fiery the Angels Fell - David Thomson

Film critic and historian David Thomson stares back at Ridley Scott's puzzling future.

Exploring Blade Runner's lasting impact, legendary film critic and historian David Thomson stares back at Ridley Scott's puzzling future.

Blade Runner's future is now 40 years old. 5 writers explore the impact and legacy Ridley Scott's 1982 classic film where replicants escape to a retrofitted Earth only to meet their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner played by Harrison Ford. Adapted from Philip K. Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon coated, West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. 
Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing A.I., all powerful corporations and extreme divides between rich and poor
The legendary writer on film, David Thomson, takes a long hard look back at Ridley Scott's rain soaked mash up of existential noir and artificial souls.
"Maybe you’ve never seen Blade Runner – but you think you have.  It’s one of those films in our dreams and feeble memory.  I used to think it was what it claimed to be, the story of a sour bounty hunter charged to eliminate or retire some dangerous escapees from the old scheme of how the universe was run. "

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The Essay explores the dystopian world of Ridley Scott's classic film Blade Runner.

Forty years ago, the future came into focus in Ridley Scott's classic film Blade Runner. All this week, The Essay explores the dystopian world of the film.

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