I don't really like Blade Runner, but I do have to appreciate it.

Okay, so I just got back from Blade Runner: The Final Cut in Oakland. There’s something that bugs me about the movie, but I think I understand the conceptual filmmaking enough to adequately do commentary on it.

Harrison Ford’s character is unlike anything he’s otherwise known for. Han Solo and Indiana Jones, or the President in Air Force One are essentially superheroes. They’re not as much characters as they are character types. Deckard is something entirely different. He’s weak. Extremely weak, it seems. Both emotionally and physically, he is inferior to the replicants. He asserts himself as almost a rapist. Deckard kills two “people” in over the course of the film, both women (in form). He shoots one in the back as she’s running away and sucker-punches the other. The others were blind luck. He never triumphs over Rutger Hauer, and ultimately this makes his victory seem kind of empty. In fact, I’d hardly call his end a victory. Our expectation would be that Deckard ultimately grows a pair and overcomes his superior opponents or conversely rejects his assignment and exposes the great injustices of the human society, but he never does either. He just gets beat up and frightened while Hauer questions existence, and to that end, the movie can’t be completely satisfying, even if Deckard is a villain.

I feel that the point of the movie is that the movie is unsatisfying.

There’s a certain amount of discomfort in the design element present throughout the movie. If this is intentional, then it does exactly what it’s supposed to. It’s indescribable; almost a grotesque. I’d say that I hate the design, but it works well to reinforce the film’s thematic complexity, so I must admire it.

The interesting thing about Blade Runner is it doesn’t fall into the traditional caveats of sci-fi action as a genre. As much as the Matrix or Robocop talk about the nature of ambiguity and philosophize about truth, they still boil down to three words-- might makes right. Might doesn’t make right in Blade Runner. The nature of heroism is extremely gray, and even more ambiguous by the end of the movie. It kind of slaps you around with questions and never really answers them. If it does speak to anything it is that the replicants are humans and humans are scum. All the replicants want is to live normally among the humans, and to not be slaves. They act logically given their situation, and with emotion.

Many people call the movie a masterpiece. I say it comes close to greatness, but misses it slightly. As I reflect on it, it’s better to talk about than it is to watch. It’s definitely a good movie and it’s definitely a commentary on genre, film, humanity and our insignificance.