This article notes that Blade Runner is set in Los Angeles, November 2019.

It talks about surface details like flying cars and fashion trends, but it is interesting how much of the movie is simply premature.

We don't have offworld colonies, but we can see them from here.

LA isn't a climate catastrophe, but parts of China aren't far off.

On the other hand, it is getting pretty clear that sophisticated AI isn't anthropomorphic, even if the concept is alive and well in fiction.

It might be possible to build humanoid robots, but they are not used for work, because they're inefficient.

And nobody is building biological androids, though there is a lot of work on 3D printing organs and tissues.

I'm not sure if we already had this discussion in the cyberpunk threads, apologies if so.

The article comes right out and admits the weakness of comparing real tech to Blade Runner.

QuoteBut if we're going to play the game where we pretend the main job of science fiction is to predict the future, rather than to tell thought-provoking stories, what else did the film get wrong ? And what did it get right?

But goddamn, LA in Blade Runner is rainy not because of "climate change" (But what weather isn't blamed on climate change nowadays?) but because IT'S A NOIR TROPE!

Wait? Blade Runner wasn't set in Minnesota? :eek:

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1112959But goddamn, LA in Blade Runner is rainy not because of "climate change" (But what weather isn't blamed on climate change nowadays?) but because IT'S A NOIR TROPE!

Good point. Also, those cool umbrellas with the fluorescent tubes for stems? I got an LED-powered copy from ThinkGeek a couple years back. Completely useless. It's like shining a flashlight straight into your own face.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1112959But goddamn, LA in Blade Runner is rainy not because of "climate change" (But what weather isn't blamed on climate change nowadays?) but because IT'S A NOIR TROPE!

Those two aren't incompatible -- it could be a noir trope that is justified by in-world explanation. The film doesn't use the explicit words "climate change" -- but it does allude that the Earth is going to shit, which is reinforced by blaring advertisements to live on the Martian colonies, for example, and the extreme rarity of living animals.

Quote from: jhkim;1113032Those two aren't incompatible -- it could be a noir trope that is justified by in-world explanation. The film doesn't use the explicit words "climate change" -- but it does allude that the Earth is going to shit, which is reinforced by blaring advertisements to live on the Martian colonies, for example, and the extreme rarity of living animals.

I'm going with Occam's Razor on this one. I seriously doubt rain was meant to convey anything beyond... hell, pun intended... atmosphere.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1113035I'm going with Occam's Razor on this one. I seriously doubt rain was meant to convey anything beyond... hell, pun intended... atmosphere.

Since long before the current climate change debate, it's been a common theme in science fiction that the world is going to crap -- including the ecosystem and/or climate. Philip K. Dick's book was written in 1968, when such dark futures were mostly based on pollution plus possible nuclear war/nuclear winter. The book definitely had a worldwide breakdown, including most natural animals dying off -- artificial animals were a bigger issue in the book than in the movie. It seems to me that the 1982 movie riffed off those themes, even though it didn't follow the plot of book.

Quote from: jhkim;1113046Since long before the current climate change debate, it's been a common theme in science fiction that the world is going to crap -- including the ecosystem and/or climate. Philip K. Dick's book was written in 1968, when such dark futures were mostly based on pollution plus possible nuclear war/nuclear winter. The book definitely had a worldwide breakdown, including most natural animals dying off -- artificial animals were a bigger issue in the book than in the movie. It seems to me that the 1982 movie riffed off those themes, even though it didn't follow the plot of book.

Ok? None of that leads me to think the rain was intended to convey anything except a Noir tone.
I think the smog and buildings belching fire are much more indicative of pollution in the film.

Quote from: jhkim;1113046The book definitely had a worldwide breakdown, including most natural animals dying off -- artificial animals were a bigger issue in the book than in the movie. It seems to me that the 1982 movie riffed off those themes, even though it didn't follow the plot of book.

Right, it cherry picked a few things and thats it. Pretty common for Hollywood really.

They were filming on a back lot, and the rain obscured the hills in the background.  Take that fact from Ridley Scott and the fact that the “Tears in Rain” speech was totally ad-libbed by Rutger Hauer, and you realize there was no True Meaning to the rain in Blade Runner, despite what college kids and film critics have been going on about for 30 years.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1113462They were filming on a back lot, and the rain obscured the hills in the background.  Take that fact from Ridley Scott and the fact that the "Tears in Rain" speech was totally ad-libbed by Rutger Hauer, and you realize there was no True Meaning to the rain in Blade Runner, despite what college kids and film critics have been going on about for 30 years.

How is the speech being ad-libbed relevant to True Meaning? I think the "Tears in Rain" speech is one of the best parts of Blade Runner, and totally relevant to its meaning regardless of whether it was ad-libbed or not. (And Rutger Hauer ad-libbing it shows how he's awesome!)

Film is a visual, performed medium. The meaning is what's shown on screen, not what's in the shooting script.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1113462They were filming on a back lot, and the rain obscured the hills in the background.  Take that fact from Ridley Scott and the fact that the "Tears in Rain" speech was totally ad-libbed by Rutger Hauer, and you realize there was no True Meaning to the rain in Blade Runner, despite what college kids and film critics have been going on about for 30 years.

This actually proves their point! See its like this. The hills represent the innocent oppressededed masses and the rain represents the evil corporations. And Tears in the rain is really Hauer's plea to Hollywood to treat their workers better.

Clear as rain. :cool:

The rain looked cool, that's all. Which is a big deal for a visual medium like film, of course. The look of the film was incredibly influential... they basically bolted sci-fi onto film noir and made something new. Kind of like Mad Max was post-apocalyptic sci-fi plus Westerns.