"Blade Runner" was the code name of Harrison Ford's character in the reportedly budgeted $30 million 1982 motion picture, also called 'Blade Runner'. Sean Young recounted, "The film shot from March 9 1981, until around July 15." It was noted the special effects work for 'Blade Runner' began in August 1980. Sean continued, "They tried to make the June 30 deadline for the possible directors' strike and kept on working while the Director's Guild of America was deciding whether to strike or not, and luckily they didn't. Not a whole lot over. It was a long shoot, though. It took 4 months to shoot that movie."
Based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', 'Blade Runner' took moviegoers on a journey some 40 years into the future, to the year 2019. "Blade Runner" was hired to track down 6 artificial human beings called "replicants" who were created to send to Mars as part of a colonization program. However the replicants turned against their creators, fled Mars and returned back to Earth to live as normal human beings.
Rutger Hauer told 'Starlog', "It's genetically-designed human being which is rather ironic because of the fact that they would ever get that far so as to fake people. Everything that's original is very expensive, so why not buy a copy – whether it’s a car or art … it's a thought that’s already spreading like hell. That’s something in the film that I like very much because there’s nothing that’s like the original – that's us – and you may think that we’re not doing too well, but we’re still really the specific specimen of humanity."
Sean Young added, "I play an android, a replicant, named Rachel. She’s not human, but when you think of the possibilities of being artificial, it’s not quite so impossible. I mean people get eye transplants, mechanical hearts, skin grafts, putting hands back on people. When you really sit down and think about it, it’s not so impossible to be artificial by the year 2020 as fast as our medicine is improving.
"It was this fact that made me think that it could be a possible reality, and that’s the one thing that really comes to a head in the movie. You begin to realize that it’s actually possible, and this is a person, Rachel, who has never doubted the fact that she’s human and then suddenly realizes that she’s not. You see her go through this whole thing of, ‘My God, I’m not human!'
"But replicants have proven differences from humans, and that’s what makes it possible for her to accept the fact of what she is. Harrison tells it to her and then falls in love with her at the same time, but he doesn’t want to fall in love with her because he doesn’t want to fall in love with a machine. So there’s a great conflict in emotions there."
Rutger Hauer stated, "I am not really into science fiction at all because I tend to think that it’s just another sort of game with the brain. The subject is the future, which is fun to think about, but it doesn’t really attract me. I don’t know why. I’m not afraid of the future. My interests are different, but I was very pleased with the way that 'Runner' approaches science fiction because it’s within sight. Of course if you don’t like it, that’s another story. Then it doesn’t really matter."
Sean Young conceded, "I don’t even like to read science-fiction books that much although I like to see science-fiction movies like 'Star Wars' or special-effects movies that are exciting and based on a thrilling plot. I don’t care too much for things like '(Battlestar) Galactica', though 'Blade Runner' is science fiction but it's a lot more than that, too. It's not just science fiction. It has a whole love story in there, and a chase story and social comment. It can appeal to many, many people.
"My idea of a good science fiction based on something I’ve read is Colin Wilson’s 'The Mind Parasites' (1967). That kind of stuff appeals to me like crazy. I like stories that involve how people feel. That’s the real important part of the story. I think that 'Blade Runner' is going to be very shocking to some people in the sense that it’ll be totally believable. It will really look like it is in 2020 because you’ll look at all the detail put into the film and all the effects put into it and it’ll really look possible."
Rutger Hauer believed, "I think science fiction is … if you play a part that goes back to the medieval, or even 10 years, just the 1970s, that's science fiction to me. It’s exactly the same thing, it only goes backwards instead of forwards. But I don’t think there is much of a difference in there because it’s all fiction anyway, and it’s all just a different point of view, and that’s what film is about. It’s always just a point of view of some people who approach a subject, and that’s what I really like about it very much because it’s so subjective."
Ed Blank, drama editor of 'The Pittsburgh Press' remarked, "Dubbed 'film noir' by French critics, such pictures have to do with disillusioned, cynical, fatalistic loners who are scarred by the past and who make up, or mingle with, the underworld. The settings characteriscally are dark and rainy, the pervading mood one of doom. Performers such as Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd, Joan Crawford, John Garfield and Edward G. Robinson prototypically inhabited such durable examples as 'Casablanca', 'This Gun for Hire', 'Mildred Pierce', 'Body and Soul' and 'Double Indemnity.' Film noir commonly took the form of a private-eye drama, often narrated in a flat voice by a hero who invariably hid battered feelings behind cigarette smoke screens."
Rutger Hauer reasoned, "I think that’s all we do in films is science fiction. It’s less familiar in something like 'Blade Runner' because we haven’t seen it before. But as soon as we start dressing up like people that behave normally, people think, 'Oh, this is contemporary. That's good. That’s comfortable.' And if it’s history, they think that they’re learning history, visual history. But as soon as it goes into the future, people get scared because if it’s unpleasant they don’t really want to deal with it, which is funny."
Rutger also made the observation, "'Blade Runner' is really an American film, even though the director is British (Ridley Scott of 'Alien'). You would not be able to make this film in Europe. In Europe we don’t have the tools to be able to do this sort of film. You can’t even create the idea of wanting to make a film like this there because you won’t be able to do it in Europe just because of the technical stuff. It's a great achievement after 'King Kong' (Dino De Laurentiis in 1976) that you can make a film like this."
Ed Blank, drama editor of 'The Pittsburgh Press' remarked, "Dubbed 'film noir' by French critics, such pictures have to do with disillusioned, cynical, fatalistic loners who are scarred by the past and who make up, or mingle with, the underworld. The settings characteriscally are dark and rainy, the pervading mood one of doom. Performers such as Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd, Joan Crawford, John Garfield and Edward G. Robinson prototypically inhabited such durable examples as 'Casablanca', 'This Gun for Hire', 'Mildred Pierce', 'Body and Soul' and 'Double Indemnity.' Film noir commonly took the form of a private-eye drama, often narrated in a flat voice by a hero who invariably hid battered feelings behind cigarette smoke screens."
Rutger Hauer reasoned, "I think that’s all we do in films is science fiction. It’s less familiar in something like 'Blade Runner' because we haven’t seen it before. But as soon as we start dressing up like people that behave normally, people think, 'Oh, this is contemporary. That's good. That’s comfortable.' And if it’s history, they think that they’re learning history, visual history. But as soon as it goes into the future, people get scared because if it’s unpleasant they don’t really want to deal with it, which is funny."
Rutger also made the observation, "'Blade Runner' is really an American film, even though the director is British (Ridley Scott of 'Alien'). You would not be able to make this film in Europe. In Europe we don’t have the tools to be able to do this sort of film. You can’t even create the idea of wanting to make a film like this there because you won’t be able to do it in Europe just because of the technical stuff. It's a great achievement after 'King Kong' (Dino De Laurentiis in 1976) that you can make a film like this."
