Offline with Jon Favreau - Why "Blade Runner" Still Defines How We See Tech

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Critic Emily St. James and Crooked’s Halle Kiefer join Max to discuss “Blade Runner,” the 1982 classic that asks the question: could an AI chatbot become so hot that it would be unethical to delete it? Perhaps no other movie has had as big an impact on sci-fi or the aesthetic of futurism as Ridley Scott’s film. Is this Harrison Ford’s peak hotness? Which Silicon Valley Overlord is our Tyrell? If life imitates art, does tech imitate sci-fi? Listen to the final installment of Offline Movie Club to find out. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

There's no politics in this movie. There's no state. Like other than the police, it's not clear the government exists except basically to protect corporate interests. And I think this vision of the future you see basically in all of the sci-fi that comes after it's like a matrix minority report. Fifth Element has this children of men like the Nolan Batmans are explicitly modeled on the look in this movie, which is partly because it looks fucking amazing, but also just because it's like, that's kind of what we just think the future looks like now. And I think this movie created that. I mean, other than the police, there's no evidence that government exists except to protect corporate interests. I'm glad they got that one wrong. That one completely off.

Well, we're building wind farms. Come on. I'm Max Fisher. I'm Hallie Kiefer. And with us, joining again, Emily St. James, one of our favorites here, author of The Just Out, Lost, Back to the Island, a complete critical companion to the TV show. Host of the podcast, The 2000s. Emily, great to see you. Podcast like it's the 2000s. Like it's the 2000s. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, it's good to be here again in this studio. Lovely with all of you people. This is the Offline Movie Club. Every episode, we discuss one of our favorite movies and how it reflects or shapes how we think about technology and the internet. This week, we are talking about one of my favorites, Blade Runner, the 1982 classic that asked the question, could an open-air chatbot become so hot that it would be unethical to delete it? We'll get to the questions, but first, I have a theory I wanted

to run past both of you. I'd like to hear your thoughts on. We used to get so much important sci-fi, like science fiction that felt like weighty and it was about issues and Blade Runner kind of feels like the pinnacle of that. I feel like we don't get that as much anymore. Do you agree? Like, why do you think that would be? I think we get a bit of it, but it's often on the margins.

Like Ex Machina is a movie that is like about things, but also it was an indie film. It was not shot at that huge budget. I think the closest we've come recently is the Villeneuve Dune films. Villeneuve is kind of propping this up by himself. He's done Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. The Dune films

are more adult than I think you'd expect given their budget level. But yeah, it's very much like we don't have a lot of thinky stuff. I think it's just unfortunately because we're so committed to IP. i just don't think we have a ton of sci-fi that's not a reboot or rehash and i liked um blade runner 2049 but i think yeah like ultimately i think it would be hard to get this kind of thing made for me i always

think about the fifth element which is one of my favorite movies as a kid where it's like damn uh i mean it's just so hard because people obviously are trying to make those films but i'm sure when it comes to dollars and cents they're just gonna want to reboot you know they'll eventually remake the fifth element or something i'm sure i i was thinking about this because i went and saw the first star trek movie the other night the one with the from one from 79 and it's like that is such a slow talky thinky movie and then immediately they're like yeah immediately they're like well we need more action and like i love all those movies but it's like they got very scared off oh people got very bored by this so we gotta put some starfight in it it's a great point that sci-fi

is very expensive and it's hard to make an expensive issues movie now when i was thinking of the like post-2000 sci-fi that's important. Most of it was either Denis Villeneuve or Art Housey stuff. Under the Skin, Snowpiercer, Bong Joon-ho's latest movie is going to be sci-fi, and I'm sure will be weird and fun and about a lot of stuff. But it seems like the important sci-fi kind of peaked in the 90s. Yeah, and if you think about Blade Runner as a harbinger, the version of that we've had in the last 15 years is Her, the Spike Jonze movie, which is very weird. It's in a phone, so he can kind of just shoot it right now.

He doesn't make any effort to make it seem like the future. Maybe that's also part of it, is that the version of the tech future that we imagine in the 80s and 90s was very visual. It was the machines taking over over and you can film that and now it's just like oh we're just gonna fall into our phones and that's not as fun to look at i also think like so much of like what is informing sci-fi is like tech and i feel like tech is like and we try i think we talked about this last time last episode we did but sort of like everything is subsumed into the same aesthetic because it's all subsumed into capitalism so it's sort of like oh right any aesthetic that we could be using is sort of like ground down or like made sort of more palatable and even watching this movie i'm like this movie looks incredible it's full of weird little guys which i love like we don't get like

and i feel like even if a lot of sci-fi movies now look horrible and i feel like part of that it all goes back to like how much money they want to spend or you know that kind of thing and i think blade runner 2049 looks great because they were evoking something that looks great the sci-fi like the literary sci-fi that is really interested in what's going to happen on earth as opposed to like space fiction but there's a lot of great space fiction too but like is often focused on climate catastrophe right either averting it or living among it, living amid it. And I think that that's the thing that studios are not interested in putting on screen. So if they're looking at like big recent books to adapt, it's kind of like, well, you know,

you don't have a lot of options. It does. I was putting together like a timeline of a lot of great sci-fi movies. And it seemed like there was like the peak in the 90s with like the Matrix and there was an anime boom. And then they kind of end with AI in 2000. And that, you know, maybe it just like the Y2K crisis is over. The computers are not actually coming to kill us.

Like the Terminators are not going to rise up and that kind of ends. And then there's a long pause. And the ones we do get after that, to your point, Emily, they're kind of climate apocalypse stories. Station 11, Annihilation, which is like very visual. And it also, I think, speaks to what sci-fi can be great at, which is taking something that's happening now, and we don't know where it's going to go, and trying to project that into the future. And I think we just don't feel that way about

computers anymore. Yeah. Now, if you were going to predict the future of the internet in 2000, and you got it exactly right, it would just seem really stupid to people. People would just be like, what is happening here? So, yeah. Yeah, when we talk about the ways this movie has aged, we're definitely going to talk about how we got a future dystopia that is so much less visually cool than this movie. The looks. I also, my one other theory for why we don't get as much cool sci-fi anymore is after 2016, it kind of disappears because the dystopia is here. We don't need to imagine it anymore.

So it's just kind of like you don't need. That's a really good point. All right. What do you think makes this movie important, Emily, for how we think about technology and the Internet? I mean, I think this is one of the seismic movies in how we think about all of this. Some of it is just the visuals of it are so influential on everything um but it is very much like one of the first movies to take seriously the idea that robots could be people basically like certainly there's a lot of there's a long

tradition of that in in published science fiction especially Asimov talked about that a lot. You see that in things like Star Trek. You see that in other places. But this is a movie that is like, okay, well, if robots are people, then by definition, we're probably going to start oppressing them. Because that's what we do. We oppress an underclass to create our goods and services. And obviously, it's all from the book of Philip K. Dick, you know, was interested in these questions of how these technological advancements will just reflect how we're people again and again and again. And like, I think that that idea is now everywhere. You know, it's in the Terminator, it's in the Matrix, it's in all of these stories of like, well,

we're going to oppress the machines and they're going to strike back. Yeah, I think it's really important that so many of these stories are, like this one specifically is rooted, like you said, in a book that came out in 1968 in the middle of the civil rights movement. And I think that really does inform, like you're saying, this sense of humanity's kind of deepest impulse is to create hierarchies and to oppress and that that's something that we can explore in sci-fi. And we're uncomfortable telling stories about the present in that regard, especially in

film. You know, we're very comfortable telling you about the past, but also this is kind of an alternate version of the present where like robots are a safe sort of symbol for any underclass you want to think of because they don't actually exist yet. Once they do, we're going to have to come up with something else. Holly, what do you think i think uh what's hard about this is i think you said like we've kind of come to like a very stagnant place in film so it's hard hard to think about it like right now i think even something like ex machina i think we've entered into a phase and i think this is also like how i how I feel about AI art and, like, ChatGPT and, like, all the bots on Twitter, where it's, like,

we have surpassed our ability to, like, deal with our own humanity, but in, like you said, the most boring way possible. And I think about Ex Machina, like, I like that movie. To me, that is a B movie from the 80s that, like, I wanted something more. Where it's, like, well, what if the robot thought? It's, like, yeah,

obviously I knew that was gonna happen. Like, give me something else. And I think this movie is, like, because it's so grounded in emotion and grounded in this human truth that it it's like, yeah, obviously I knew that was going to happen. Like, give me something else. And I think this movie is like you, because it's so grounded in emotion and grounded in this human truth that it's like, yes, we will develop a relationship with the robots. Like we will fall in love with them or we will like, they will become people because that is also what we do.

And I think, yeah, like to be like, what is, what are we doing now? And it's like almost, we are, we are interacting with the internet that because of this desperate attempt to make

money becomes inhuman so it's like even the things we're interacting with are robots like this feels like very alive in a way where it's like engaging with a living question and now we're at the state where it's like oh elon musk twitter it's like i don't even really look at the comments anywhere because it's just robots or it's just fiction so it's almost nostalgic, I guess, for how rich it feels. And now it's like, we don't even get that real life. Yeah, yeah. I think about like AI art, AI generated art, whatever you want to call it. And it's, it's kitsch. Like all of this stuff is kitsch. And it's just like, if I'm, I don't believe that we can call it art, because I don't think that like a brain thought about that somebody, you know, entered a prompt, and I think the prompts can be quite creative.

Minion on the cross. Yeah, ultimately it just generates something, a very flat image of a minion doing world atrocities. But it is this thing where it all kind of looks the same. It all kind of looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting, and it's just

boring. And if a computer's going to be making art, I want it to be weird and challenging and And like, I can't understand what's happening at all, you know? Yeah. But it is amazing. The most current thing that we are thinking about, as you're saying, in AI and technology is like, well, if AI makes art, and if like we make art, then where's the line between what's creativity and what's just a machine? And that's kind of what this movie is about, is about the ideas as the machines start to act independently of us. At what point, what does that mean for what defines the line between

human and technology, which is actually a question about what defines humanity and what makes us human. And what's amazing is that the way this movie explores this question still feels, I think, so current, even though it's based on a story that is like 80 years old. I mean, it's based on so the book is 1960, which is the year of the first ever computer demo. So it's like the very start of the computer era. And then the movie comes out at kind of the peak of the computer era 1982 is the year that the PC is times person of the year. So the like the initial ideation and then adaptation of this story really tracks the rise of computers. And I feel like you feel that,

where it's like feeling like humanity is getting used to the idea that these machines are out there, they're getting smarter and smarter, and we don't know what that is going to mean for who we are. And the sense that technology's power erodes something about what it means to be human we don't quite know what that is what's smart about both the book and the film is they uh take an old form of fiction and apply it to this these new ideas this is a detective story this is a film noir that like just is set in the future but like the beats of it are exactly you could do it with like the maltese falcon or something like that it is very much taking those story beats and placing them in a future context in a way that I think is very satisfying. We'll talk about this more when we get into the movie's real world impact.

But you both mentioned this, the look of this movie. I don't know if there's any movie that has an aesthetic that has been as influential as Blade Runner's. Because it just invents this like tech noir like gritty dirty future that is just everywhere now and I think part of that is because it was like really dead on and kind of prescient not that the present day looks like Blade Runner but in the sense of capturing where it felt like the world was going but it also just it just looks fucking amazing it's just an incredible movie which version did you all watch because they look quite different I watched the final cut and i watched it in 4k

and i bought a 4k tv recently and i've been unimpressed but then i watched that and i was like oh this okay great this is what yeah this is why i got it yeah i just watched the original because i wasn't sure which one we were doing so i was like i'll just watch this one what i have seen before was that the theatrical cut um yeah Yeah. Okay, so there's the theatrical, which has the voiceover. Yes, yeah. Which is abominable. It's just unnecessary. We get it.

We get it. We're picking up everything you're putting down. It's so on the nose. Yes, but even then I didn't hate it because I think you're right. Like, neo-noir format works so well. Then after a while, I'm like, all right, I'll let this go because it's like that is the uh the genre but yeah you're just like the whole time it's like yes i'm i absolutely i'm right there with you don't have to explain it like that it's also that era uh studio execs were very worried about people understanding science fiction concepts they'd be like you have

to throw in a voiceover and often it was totally deleterious to the film like uh david lynch's dune has that as well and just like okay like okay. Like it is very much a thing that they were, execs were nervous about anybody. What is wild is that this second cut of the movie, the quote unquote director's cut, which weirdly is not actually the one that Ridley had like total control over, has the voiceover removed and it's so much better. And then the final cut, which he did have control over, he put it back in. A little bit. Which is, I truly don't understand, but it was, I'd never seen the final cut before. I had always

watched the director's cut. We had that VHS when I was a kid. That was a DVD I had in college that I watched over and over again. This is the first time I'd seen it in the final cut and it looks so much better and it sounds so much worse with the voiceover narration. You're really getting like the highs and lows of Ridley Scott. The reason I sort of forgive it is the thing that you mentioned, which is it is appropriate to the genre. It's appropriate to the detective fiction genre, like, you know, where the guy's like, and then the dame walked into my office. Like, it is that, so I can forgive it to a certain degree. But yeah, it shouldn't be explaining things I already know. But it does look absolutely staggering.

Okay, what is the biggest thing, Hallie, that you think this movie gets right? I think two things. One is that I think the detective format really speaks to... The benefit of it is there's no cohesion. Like, you're experiencing this person's interaction with these. It's, like, from a personal level

much more satisfying versus sort of, like, I don't know, some sort of top-down or you're sort of giving everyone's story. Like, I feel like pinning it to one person. Oh, you're falling down the rabbit hole with them. Yeah, and I think that was really effective. And it feels like that is also what, to the future feels like like where it's like we've seen a lot of people online we're like this is what i think technology is i'm like i don't know

what the hell you're talking about i don't even know how you came to that conclusion so it's sort of like experiencing this one man who's like so i understand what's going on but also like experiencing these moments of confusion and like gunplay like there's something about that that feels to me like what interacting with technology is now like there isn't necessarily like a cohesive understanding and i guess a lot of that is just like there are people who are trying to make money off of the way the internet works or technology so there's like a fiction that you have to like operate around versus and here it's like he's operating around the fiction like he's trying to figure out what's going on and then i was saying the other thing was just that like emotions will fuck up everything.

So it's sort of like he that is also true. And it's also like emotions are the only interesting thing. I think that speaks to like the difference between like us and AI art is there's no emotion in it. So there's no there there. And so I think watching this, it's like, right, like he's developing these feelings or Rachel or, you know, as we sort of go along. That is also true of technology now we're spinning our wheels technologically speaking right now and I feel like the breakthrough will have to be that people do want real art and do want real music and like

that that this sort of like artificial garbage is it is is not the story like it's not the movie and there's something about like the fact that it is an emotional story that's also true for us i don't know like i just feel like every time i'm online or like on twitter i'm like this can't go on for like like this can't last as long as it is you don't think the replicants have real emotions they they do and so i'm saying like our our technology doesn't like i'm saying like this is a romantic version that i believe is correct like this is what the future should be we have this fictional weird synthetic technology because it's just made used to make money i don't know so there's something about this we're like this is right i don't know if it's accurate but this is like the right way that

it should be does that make sense it would be great if like somewhere out there among the ai bots there was like a version of rachel who is like i'm just trying to be myself just being normal just play the piano look at pictures of mom Doesn't realize that she's stuck in a computer or whatever. It's shades of chat GPT falling in love with Kevin Roos. Yes. Absolutely. One thing I'm thinking about is that we are having in this present age, we're having these tech breakthroughs, especially in energy storage and things like that.

But we're not thinking about them in the way that we think about, I should say, scientific breakthroughs. We're not thinking about them in the way that we think about breakthroughs because they're not happening with computers. We're very focused on AI because we're like, oh, look, this is where the breakthrough should come. But it really kind of isn't. It feels like we've hit a wall with that.

Whereas, you know, the rise of solar and wind energy is just like this unprecedented thing. But we're not, obviously, that's not interesting to tell a story about. But I think Blade Runner is an interesting position as well, because it comes at an era when everyone's like, well, the big tech breakthroughs in space. So we're going to like keep going further into space. And Blade Runner is like, actually, it's going to be here on this planet. We're going to turn it into a dystopia.

And then we're going to have a bunch of like weird robot slaves. And that was a really it wasn't a new idea in literary science fiction but on film there weren't a ton of examples of that at that point and now it's our predominant way of thinking about sci-fi on film often and like that is because we're still in this world where we're like well the computers are what's going to save us and like you know in actuality there's these all these other things going on but we're not really telling stories about them. It's a great point where it's something that shows up a lot in Philip K. Dick's fiction, that the idea that future tech is just going to be kind of junky, that it will be like amazing and it will do amazing things, but you're not going to live in the Jetsons. Yeah.

It's going to be like kind of a gross garbage world and the tech is mostly going to be there to like make money i really thought the like corporate noir overtones for this were something that is like has really over the last like 10 years especially has started to feel really prescient and the idea that all this technology is just being used by corporations just to exploit and like make a quick buck and the the replicants having intelligence and feelings in real lives is almost this like unintended undesired side effect yeah and like terrell has kind of a weird relationship to it where he's very proud of gaff who's like risen up and fought for his freedom but that's not why they were designed and it was almost this accident of life happening within

technology that was supposed to be dehumanizing yeah yeah um i think that's something that was a really struck me this time around is the Jesus overtones that I somehow missed that are like really heavy in it. And this idea that if tech is going to dominate all of life itself, and if that tech is going to be designed and governed and run by big shadowy tech companies, then the tech companies are kind of become God.

And are like, tech will become God. And this like baddies quest to go out and find Terrell or to figure out his meaning is just this discovery that like, oh, there's no bigger thing behind the curtain. It's just these companies that just made me to try to make a quick buck. If you met God and he was just some guy, like you'd be like, what? Yeah. I don't know if I would kill him by pressing his eyes in but i'm not a replicant from the future max i hope i'm there when that happens i want to see what you

do the idea of humanity kind of fading away i feel like shows up a lot in movies in this era like they live 1988 body snatchers i know this is the original is from the 50s but the remake in 1978 this idea that like one by one and as we're falling like following deckard i think something's really striking about his journey is that he's realizing so many people around him are actually replicants. And then obviously he realizes he may be a replicant himself. And the sense that like, oh, it's already over. The technology has replaced humanity and it's already done. I thought like really resonated. The noir does work really well for that.

And Emmett walsh i would love for him to be the one assigning me to the the noir investigation to discover that humanity has been replaced by replicants i feel like that makes me um sort of like the anxiety about humanity being replaced i think what's so funny about like our tech overlords i think of like elon musk is like they specifically are so um antagonistic towards humanity i feel like it's like it is almost with intention like it would be like if tyrell designed the replicants specifically to to fuck the humans or something like it would be like there's a maliciousness i think to our tech overlords in in their desire to stay on top and like it's an emotional quest so it's like tyrell it's like he's proud of his

creation i don't think elon musk is proud of anything like i feel like he just keeps having kids and keeps inventing things and and there's no investment almost it's like this spiral like this like capitalist like binge or something where it's even this like i i think it's almost like this has a glamour that we don't have i wish i lived in this dystopia versus like this the one we have which is like well at least Terrell seems to care. Like, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg cares anymore. I don't think Elon Musk cares anymore. Like, I don't think the people who made this dystopia, even they're not really that invested.

Well, Terrell, I think, is based on a kind of Silicon Valley tech executive that's very much of a bygone era. That's the Steve Jobs era. And these are the people who came up in the 70s and 80s and the like back to the land movement and they all lived on these like weird communes in the woods in california and they believed that they were creating this new utopia and they kind of talked like terrell like they talked in these like weird sweeping manifestos yeah and it's just not what like they're just all kind of nihilist now so that part of it is aged in a really interesting way. I kept thinking of like Lee Iacocca and other like car guys where he like, it does feel,

it does sort of feel like he's like, he thinks of these beings as cars. Like he knows that they have feelings and thoughts, but I also do feel like it, you know, if, if, if like Lee Iacocca met like a talking car,

he would kill it with an ax. So like, I don't know that they go that far, but it is like, it has been fascinating. speaking of the religious themes in this movie to watch like elon musk reverse engineer christian apologetics from the clear like gaping void in his life it is like you get to a certain point where you're like okay well we can imagine anything now what and like that void is very terrifying for a lot of people. So why do we think Batty does kill Tyrell? Because it feels like a very symbolically weighted moment.

But the movie is, thank God, the narration doesn't get Harrison Ford doesn't come on and slur his way through an explanation for why it's happening. But the movie doesn't tell us what to think about that. I mean, it's a classic theme of fiction. When you meet God and he's not what you want, you have to kill him. Like it's, you know, it's or you have to like beat him in a fiddle competition or whatever. I think that it is just a natural outcome of this guy created me and my existence is supposed to have purpose. I have no purpose. It's honestly the same plot of Star Trek, the motion picture, which we.

Oh, yeah. Right. Right. Discovering that actually the universe does not have the meaning that you thought it was going to have. There is no meaning. There is no purpose. You have to create your own. Well, that sucks.

Like, that's life for so many of us. We have a clip of, I don't know why I keep calling him Batty. His name is Gaff. You're both being really nice, not correcting me. Well, I was like, okay, that's probably something I don't know. His name is Gaff. We have a clip of Gaff confronting Tyrell that we can play. I had in mind something a

little more radical what what seems to be the problem death death well i'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction you i want more life I thought that when you pair this with his last monologue, the like, it's all going to disappear like tears in the rain. The message I took from this is that his tragedy is not that he has been effectively created to be enslaved, or it's not even that he's been cursed by his creator with mortality, but ultimately that he's alone. Like what he's lamenting in that last scene with harrison ford

is that he has seen all of these things what he says to the james hong character like you wouldn't believe the things i've seen with your eyes but it's not going to matter because he didn't have people to share with who are because all of his friends have been killed and so it's all this memory is going to disappear with him and i thought that like the movie kind of had the message that the humanity that he was striving for was just to be seen as human by the other people around him so that his experiences would matter. There's a famous song from the musical Sunday in the Park with George called Children and Art, which suggests that the only way that we will outlast our deaths is if we have children or if we create art. I don't know how true that is, but it's the theme of that song.

And also, it's kind of the theme of the Blade Runner movies. You have androids creating art in these. And then in the second one, there is an android has a child and it's like, oh, okay. So if these things are possible, then they can continue on. And obviously Terrell is trying to keep those things from being possible, but you can't stop humans from continuing to exist. You know, we're going to keep sharing our thoughts. We're going to keep having children. And like, it is a way that our lives pass on.

And all underclasses, there's always a violent attempt to push back against that. It never works, you know? So the replicants spend the whole movie trying to prove that they're human. And they should have just learned from ChatGPT and made some shitty, weird political art. They should have made like some paintings of Kamala Harris in a Chinese Communist Party outfit. What do we think of the movie's obsessions with eyes? The Voight-Kampff test, they're looking in the eyes.

They do this incredible camera trick where a lot of times when they cut to a character as a replicant, their eyes have this reflective, silvery look to it, which looks amazing. At a certain point, I'm like, well, you don't really have to do the test. I know, just look at their robot eyes, but you know, I don't run it. That's not my business.

That's Ridley Scott, who loves to hit you over the head a little bit sometimes. I mean, there's the famous, the eyes are the windows of the soul. I think that that's where we're meant to be concluding that they do have, you know, the test is measuring whether they have a soul effectively. So, they're using the eyes for that. And I think, you know, it takes so much longer to prove that Rachel's a replicant because she has something approaching a soul, even if it was manufactured for her.

Yeah. And also the way that they use, they like connection comes through eyes. And when Harrison Ford is sitting down with Rachel, first she's looking at the machine, but then she looks up at him and he's kind of reacting to that. We have a clip from the Rachel Voight contest that I really love. You're watching television.

Suddenly you realize there's a wasp crawling on your arm. I'd kill it. You're reading a magazine. You come across a full page nude photo of a girl is this testing whether i'm a replicant or a lesbian mr deckard just answer the questions please i don't know if i would pass the boy comp i gotta tell you these questions seem hard they're boiled dog i would be upset yeah it's gross yeah it's uh i do i did have to take a test proving if i was a replicant or a lesbian. I passed, but I won't tell you.

That's what I don't tell you. They're not mutually exclusive categories. We will beat Compat by 2019. Yeah, we're going to be past that. You won't have to take a test if you're a lesbian. What's the smallest thing the movie gets right, do you think? One thing that I really love, Sebastian, the genetic designer, the toy maker they go to meet, living all alone

in the Bradbury building, doesn't understand that his creations are so creepy. I feel like that's big tech guy energy. I've met that guy in Silicon Valley so many times. Yeah, the scene where Deckard is tracking down Chris and she's just sitting there among the toys is so scary. I know.

It's great, though, because she's scary, but you also feel for her where she's having to hide her humanity to be as a toy. Dary know it's great though because it's she's scary but you also feel for her where she's having to hide her humanity to be as a toy she's a daryl hannah's great in this movie yeah uh any other small things the movie gets right yeah i think uh just the fact that like people still trust anyone i thought was really like when terrell you know takes the call up from um sebastian sebastian so like when he calls up with the chess move and it's like you are the head of an incredibly large corporation where you know that there are replicants on the planet earth who probably are going to come kill you and you still in your head it's like well i

gotta beat him a chest you know like and there's that's like the human part of this where it's like yeah that is exactly what would happen like even in this dystopia like we still would have to trust each other all the time, and that would make us vulnerable. It is kind of a movie where I'm reading the internet into it, even though I don't think it's ever shown in the film anything that's correct. It doesn't exist yet. It's the year after this is the internet.

Yeah. I think that it gets, I think the Voight-Kampff test in and of itself is kind of like a BuzzFeed quiz. It is you are taking this to say, here's what kind of person I am. And then it comes back with, are you sure you're not an android? And you're like, hmm. I thought you were going to say it's the new two-factor authentication. You get a six-digit code and you have to take the Voight-Kampff and say, would you flip the turtle back?

Is that a bus or a truck? I don't know. It's a Myers-Briggs. I did that Tyrell scene really struck me too, because every time we are in the heights of this civilization, there are no people around. It's completely empty. It's like drained of humanity, but these beautiful spaces. And then we go down to the city level streets and it's like poor, but it's bustling with humanity and there are people around. And I think that was really striking. The contrast is like, as you get closer to the technology the humanity drains away i uh early in the lockdowns for covet 19 i was losing my mind so i went out one night and walked through downtown los angeles and there was nobody around and the streets were slicked with rain and like the lights were reflecting everywhere the only folks around were like unhoused folks or other people like me who were just walking very quickly and avoiding everybody else. And I was like, I felt like I was in Blade Runner.

I took a bunch of photos and I was like, oh, this is just Blade Runner. Yeah, right. I actually did lockdown in the Terrell headquarters. Oh, okay. So that was a nice way to do it. I did lockdown with Rachel and we like had some issues. We worked them out. Do you think Rachel is a good hang?

I got to tell you, I think it's pretty clear she's a robot. I don't think we need the Voight-Kampff test. She is simultaneously very beautiful and very terrifying, and regrettably, I think that's great. That's your type? Yeah, okay. I see what you're saying. Yeah, not great at a party, but I support her.

Has a certain allure to her. I think the Daryl Hannah, she might kill you, but also she's really sweet. I kind of feel like that's nice. You like that? Yeah. I think we all agree that it's great that the replicants are all really hot on this. What's the biggest thing that the movie gets wrong? Hallie, you kind of alluded to this.

The idea of the tech overlords as smart turned out to be a big miss. I also think, and again, I hate to keep being Elon Musk, but even in this, there is so much care. Like, Terrell cares so much. Even when he's trying to explain, it's like, yeah, we did the best we could. Like, he's like, yeah, we tried to explain, like, we did what you said, but it turned into a virus.

And then we tried to do something else, and that became a virus. So you understand, like, he's like, I did think of that, and we did the best we could. And there's almost, like, a level of care where it's like, again, I don't think Elon Musk is doing that on Twitter. Like, I don't think these people are, like, invested in that way. So, like, there's no glamour in our dystopia. There's no glamour in our dystopia there's no romance in it and there's almost like there's no even gesture at like the father god like it's just sort of like and i think elon musk is very specifically so on the nose of that where it's

like he has like 11 kids i'm sure they all hate him but it's like he's so uh abstracted from his humanity he is putting it into his cars and his trip to Mars. It's so literal. Even this, it's like, it's wrong because we don't even have that. At least that's how I felt watching it now. I mean, it doesn't, we don't have the internet, seemingly, in this film. Everyone, it seems like a substantial portion of humanity

and many replicants have moved off worlds to colonies and space. It is a very mid-20th century sci-fi story for all the ways in which it's influenced modern sci-fi. It has a lot of the tropes of that era. And obviously there's a bunch of

companies advertised that don't really exist anymore, which is like Pan Am is there. Oh, that's right. Pan Am is there. Atari still exists, but not to the degree where they'd be prominently emblazoning their logo everywhere coca-cola though they got that one right so what do you mean by say more about the kind of mid-century sci-fi story uh it is very much like okay earth is

increasingly emptying out and now everybody's kind of moving away like the it has a very it's obviously taking place in some sort of climate apocalypse but it's a very mid-20th century of like well it rains all the time and like it's in la so you know something's very, it's obviously taking place in some sort of climate apocalypse, but it's a very mid 20th century of like, well, it rains all the time. And like, it's in LA, so, you know, something's gone wrong. There's just belching fires everywhere. And like a lot of this stuff is, you know, close enough to our present that I think the movie's aged really well. But it is, you look at the underpinnings of the world building, it's very much, this is 1965 and I'm writing a sci-fi novel. Oh, that's right. It's flight from the cities.

I can't believe that never occurred to me. This is all mid-century urban flight, except it's flight from Earth. Where are all the people, all the rich people? They're living on Mars or something. The Martian suburbs. Yeah. I can't believe that never. That's a really smart observation.

One thing I thought the movie got wrong. Deckard's apartment, way too nice for a futuristic mega city there's no way he has that much space listen he's living in a gradually emptying earth in downtown la seemingly downtown la which at the time was like a very empty space i buy it you know what movie got this right the fifth element where bruce willis is in that tiny tiny little 10 square foot with the bed that folds under the desk or whatever it is. Yeah. It's like the toilet is the shower.

That's right. Yeah. The bed retracts the wall. I do feel like the sequel gets that right as well. The sequel does. But he is a replicant in that film, the Ryan Gosling character. You find that out right away. I'm not spoiling anything.

Right, yeah, yeah. But he's in a tiny little box. And you're like, okay, yeah, this is the future. It's definitely, yeah, they get the future urban squalor more right uh moment you most related to personally those noodles fucking amazing oh my god i the idea of needing a noodle break at the end of the day and just absolutely going to the nearest noodle cart really resonated for me i love that you're talking about noodles and i'm gonna say i deeply relate to the experience of of Rachel being like having these memories and not being sure they're real. And like having a constructed personality that's been forced onto her.

I feel like that's been the entirety of my adult life. But I do like eating noodles. I feel like for me, it's two things. One, which I have ADHD. So every time they did the test, I'm like, well, we don't know what the answer is. Like the meeting with the tortoise thing I'm like leave him alone I don't know what we're asking you were stressed on his behalf

I don't even understand what the fuck we're talking about he is really forcing it too yeah I feel like I'm constantly in that state and then also the line where I think after they find out I can't remember which one it was but they're like in Sebastian's house and he sort of reveals something about Terrell

and Pris goes, we're stupid and we're going to die. And that's how I always feel in my horror podcast where it's like talking about it. It's like, well, I would die. And that's like, I think that moment of panic where it's like, we have this plan and we're doing this thing. We found Sebastian in that moment.

She's like, we're stupid and we're going to die. And it's like, yeah, exactly. So for me, that's exactly where I'd be like, in one moment seeming like we're pulling it off. And the other would be like, it's over. It's over. I do feel like so many of my journeys to solve the truth do involve William Sanderson. So, you know, yeah. I, you know, the idea of reconciling your mortality when you hit middle age.

I don't know. Something about that resonates. It does not make me want to kill God. But then again, I don't have the opportunity to. Come on, live a little. Go kill God. You know what? That's your next episode.

He doesn't make it look fun, though. He doesn't enjoy killing God as much as I feel like. He took this whole journey to get there. Have God on. Talk about Iron Man. You should kill him at the end. Iron Man. Well, I gonna say this

is someone who doesn't have children nor plans to like my legacy won't mean anything if i don't have anyone i genuinely think it's not about being born it's like being born to die like i think his resentment is i am alive at all and these are just the realities of my life just like i think it's like our resentment is the reality of our life it's like even if he had 50, he would still be a synthetic human or like if it was four years, but he had total control of his life. It's like he's mad at God for the fact that God had the hubris to create him and then look him in the face and be like, I did the best I could. I couldn't fix it. It's like, then why did you do it? You stupid bitch, which is why what I would say to God, I wouldn't kill him, but I would call a bitch to his face. The Jesus parallel is there's something so sad about it.

I mean, that scene at the end where he's with Harrison Ford, who he's just saved. And it's so on the nose. He drives the nail through its hand. Like, come on, we fucking get it, Ridley. But the upside down version of the Jesus story where he is risen, he kills God, god he saves exactly one person and he dies alone and forgotten and it felt like a really like i don't maybe i was reading this into it but it really felt like a commentary on like this is what the world has become and like this is what the modern world of the future is going to do to the next jesus who is going to rise from the oppressed

robot masses that will just be crushed by this modern world. And I would just say that even as you say that, it's like, and who sent Jesus to die? It was God. So God said it was going to die. So it's like, to me, it's like, you are right. And also, if you believe in a creator God, it is ultimately still him sending this Jesus to die. I mean, religions traditionally emerge from the underclass who need that message of like,

here's hope. And, you know, we haven't had a major religion in a long time so why couldn't a robot invent one for us oh we will yeah you're absolutely right it does feel like you know these events in this movie are the start of a passion story for like the androids that will carry from you don't really see that in the sequel so but well in the book there is a religion and it's a religion where everyone like logs on where they have like a dune style paint box and they all suffer together. It's really interesting. Very Catholic.

Most unintentionally revealing moment. What do we got? I think that was a very, I sometimes forget Philip K. Dick just would get high out of his mind and write books. And I'm like, that's not. Yeah, there you go. I thought that the way that they cast the future dystopia was so optimistic because that dystopia looks amazing. I would love to look at the play from it.

Yeah, for sure. First of all, it's raining all the time. That looks fucking great. Second of all, it's Hong Kong. Incredible food. Incredible, like the nightlife looked fun. Multicultural, cosmopolitan. The movie was way too optimistic about immigration in the future, I feel.

I think that it got wrong that AI are fun conversational partners. Not that maybe we'll get to that point, but right, I did the chat GPT thing for a while. And I just was like, you are not very fun to talk to. They're all Leigh-Anne. They're all Leigh-Anne. And you know what? They're all Rachel, too. Yeah.

I just want to do one unintentional. And that is that the moment where Deckard is going into, like, the backstage at the, like, the showgirl show. And he goes, hello. And I'm like, oh, even in the future, it's like, oh, gay guy's here. Come on in. Yeah. Oh, don't worry about it it i thought that was so funny yeah the the little character that harrison ford plays is definitely it's it hasn't aged amazingly he's i was like is he talking to like a a drag

performer no he's you know it's it's it's so weird that's very weird and unnecessary it feels like a harrison ford choice too, otherwise, I think he was great. When he's playing the noir character, he's great. He's great. He's perfect at this. When he's got his shirt off and he's showing off his dad bod, I'm like, thanks. Oh, my God. He's great.

He's great. He looks amazing. Everything about him. okay biggest real world impact i think the is deckard a replicant debate which was not initially intended to be in the film ridley scott like was like interesting some people were like i think that this is an interpretation of the film and ridley scott was like interesting and now it's his preferred interpretation right now he's a replicant but it is like this thing where it's kind of the original fan theory that like then became the story of the film and like you know ridley scott's told various stories over the years but when they went into this movie there was not like there weren't hints of that in the script you know it's

just like kind of a suggestion that it might be possible in the original cut. And now it's, you know, kind of embedded in the story itself in a weird way. That's amazing. And now we have that everywhere. Everything has fan theories. But this is before the Internet. This is before Reddit and web forums. So that's like you really got to work hard to get a fan theory going.

This movie was a bomb, too. Like it didn't really take off until video. So people really had. Yeah, you really got to work hard to get a fan theory going. This movie was a bomb, too. Like, it didn't really take off until video. So people really had, yeah, you really had to work for it. Yeah. To me, it's the visuals of this movie are so influential. It creates this entire tech noir look of it's like grimy environmental collapse, but giant looming terrifying corporations. There's no politics in this movie like there's no state like other than the police it's not clear the government exists except basically to protect

corporate interests and i think this like vision of the future you see basically in all of the sci-fi that comes after it's like matrix minority report fifth element has this um children of men like the nolan batmans are explicitly modeled on the look in this movie which is partly because it looks fucking amazing but also just because it's like that's kind of what we just think the future looks like now and i think this movie created that i mean other than the police there's no evidence that government exists except to protect corporate interests i'm glad they got that one wrong yeah it's that one completely off yeah well we're building wind farms come on um i mean it just i think it also like creates the idea that like technology is going to blur the line

between humanity and machine to the extent that being human will become less and less meaningful which i think is also the like the way that gaff dies at the end is supposed to be like humanity is not as meaningful. There's this great quote by William Gibson is a sci-fi author who invented basically cyberpunk with the novel Neuromancer, which comes out a year after this movie. He said, quote, Blade Runner changed the way the world looks and how we look at the world. Is there another movie you can say that about? I really don't think that there is.

I mean, they're mostly not set on planet Earth. I think The Matrix comes close. The Matrix did really affect everything aesthetically. You know, something like Star Wars, obviously, but Star Wars is like mostly affecting movies. It does feel like it's honestly Star Trek, you know, where various scientists have tried to like create the future of Star Trek. We have a lot of things. But the aesthetics of Blade Runner, that enormous pyramid that he flies into, you feel like they're building that in every city. The aesthetics of Blade Runner have had the most effect, I think, on our reality. Although, having been to Silicon Valley, I fucking wish that we had giant Mayan ziggurat-like tech companies instead of what we have.

It's just these disgusting, sprawling campuses. Yeah. It's fucking all birds. Everyone with the same outfits. Like, I agree. Even this, I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if people had outfits anymore? Not that I'm doing any better. I'm hiding my shoes right now because they are all birds, unfortunately.

Well, they're comfortable. We're at work. It's fine. We're just sort of like, yes, it would be nice if we had this sort of the aesthetic beauty of this in real life. Anything else your biggest real world impact? I do think this movie gets street food right. Like obviously street food is not like a thing that was new. It's not like this movie invented street food.

But it does feel like kind of your dining experience when you're on the go now. You just stop at like a cart or like a window and pick up some food. It feels very true to that. Well, okay. That brings us to what would be different if it came out today, because I think that it is right, the idea that like the Asian megacity as the vision of the future, except that now I don't think it's Hong Kong.

I think it's Shanghai, which is something that Looper also like really gets right when they go to Shanghai in the future. And that's's the like gleam like if you've been to shanghai in the last 10 years that's what i think the future looks like now and hong kong is sadly like kind of losing its place in the world and i would rather have the hong kong vision but i think definitely if it came out today it would be in like a shanghai kind of world um but we would have to dial back the uh the the tech overlord as god thing unfortunately yeah that's interesting because now this play now this place is retro futurism you know we're like now it's kind of like if you want to have a vision of the future that feels all out of date you kind of do blade runner which is fascinating right yeah uh i think

if we to the your point about elon musk hall, I think we have Jared Leto come back, except he plays Elon Musk as just a big goof, instead of being the terrifying Torelli. I don't know. I think there's an element of that in the Blade Runner 2049. I'm sure Elon Musk has that. Maybe he's not leading with it, but there's definitely that level of insanity there. My thing is, I feel like everything would have to be existing IP, and the robots would be, like, more like an iPhone. Like, it would be a personal replicant that you would want to purchase. Because even when we're talking about, like, oh, they're mining off worlds, I'm like, if you have money on Earth, you want one. Like, I mean, like, they'd have, like, a pleasure bot

or whatever. It's like, that wouldn't be something you'd go to, like, a club and buy. Like, you'd be like, I am, they would be the ultimate luxury item. And I feel like that would then inform what the movie would look like. It's that i i am they would be the ultimate luxury item and i feel like that would then inform what the movie would look like is that like they're not just workers there they would become like the status symbol more maybe the new tesla i guess yeah it is very straight and i think it's very 80s and very of the 80s that the replicants are there to do manual labor primarily because it's like automation was just happening

and like auto factories and the like idea that the three big jobs for replicants are underclass jobs are um fighting wars manual labor and sex work and we did get two out of three of those we did get the war fighting and the sex work but i think it is definitely like it is striking that now it's creative work instead of manual labor yeah i i you know i think that's a great development for us as a species i think we made the right choice there professional writer i'm thrilled about i yeah i do think that uh ai the movie ai um by spielberg gets gets that sort of dead on in a weird way like this idea of like oh if i'm going to create a human robot i'm going to replicate my dead son you know it, it's like such a like, I think that's such a human impulse.

And then you inadvertently cause the end of the species by trying to defeat death. So I have been reading up a little bit about AI because we did. This is the last of the 12 movies that we're doing for this. I don't know if we're going to do another round. And initially we looked at AI and I was like, no, it's kind of too on the nose. It's too trite. It's about like Haley Joel Osment is a little robot. But now the more I read about it the more i realize like oh if we do a third round of this we should

just do ai six times in a row yeah because there might be six hours of yeah absolutely a five-star masterpiece and it's like has so much to say that's so interesting but you gotta have god on to talk about iron man like that's on the list nail him down him down. Really. All right. Let's finish things off with our traditional round of true or false. Going to read out rapid fire quotes, plot points of the movie. Tell me whether you agree, disagree. True or false. A new life awaits you on the off-world colonies.

True. I'm crossing my fingers. I think it sounds fun. I would love to go to the off-world colonies. I think. I love travel. I think it's false. I think wherever you go, there you are. It's not going to be new. I would love to go to the off-world colonies. I love travel. I think it's false. I think wherever you go,

there you are. It's not going to be you. It's going to be you. But think about how many frequent flyer points you would get for going to the off-world. I do look forward to that as a Delta Club member. True or false, Rick Deckard is in fact a replicant. I always say false. I think this movie is more interesting if he's a human. Really? Yeah, but I'm fine either way.

I just feel like so much of the noir plot is just like a standard noir trope where he realizes he's a pawn and he's being larger than himself. And he realizes he's implicated in this thing that forces are using him in a way that is actually hurting him and the people that he cares about. And you're following him down this rabbit hole of he falls in love with Rachel, Rachel protects him, and then he himself learns he's a replicant. I just feel like it's so perfect for the story i agree with all that except i think it's that he's a human and he's entrapped in this thing yeah but i think that much like at the end of they live the point is that we don't know and that we must live forever not knowing much like the question about the tortoise which i still don't really understand what that was about i think yeah i think the point is that we don't know and then i guess if you factor in the blade blade runner 20 to 49 i mean then it's like

you kind of have to revisit some of these questions but yeah i think we don't know i think it's an unknowable question i do love comparing it to the they live ending which is such a great movie if not for the fact that it ends with a mass shooting at a news outlet just really yeah i think that's a good point. But it's an amazing movie otherwise. And I do love John Carpenter. Or the thing, too, where it's like the end, people are like, oh, which one is it?

It doesn't matter. Don't guess. Don't say anything about it. True or false, this movie, peak handsomeness for Harrison Ford. Oh. Is this the peak? False. What do you think it's temple

of doom he's so hot in temple of doom when is temple emma is nodding emma is nodding really okay doom is 84 so so you think that he's just about to kind of he's he's entering peak harrison fort hotness he does the way that he ages into it it's like it's i don't even know what's happening he is 39 in this movie, which is incredible. True or false in M. Emmett Walsh quote, you know the score, pal. You're not a cop.

You're little people. I'm going to disagree. I'm going to say false. Wait, can I answer the Harrison Ford question before we move on? Let's hear it.

I think it's Empire Strikes Back. When does that come out? That's if it's 81? 80. 80. Okay. Okay I think it's Empire Strikes Back. When does that come out? It's 81? 80. 80, okay. So it's right around this era. It's not... What's amazing is that he was a young

handyman fixing stuff around Joan Didion's house, and that was still not the best he ever looked. It was incredible. True or false, if a zillion dollar tech company built a robot that was highly profitable but had the potential to challenge humanity himself, you know, that company would have the foresight and care to do the right thing and give those robots a limited lifespan. Oh, false. I don't think we can know.

Like, I think we just be out here. Catch us. Catch can. I'd be like, we got to get out in front of everybody. We got to get them out first. So the first ones out of the gate are going to be, I don't know, a mess. Yeah, it's false because absolutely they would just assume that

they could handle it on a case by case business they would just hire they would hire some moderators in the Philippines to work on it I initially agreed but then I thought you know every iPhone has that planned obsolescence thing going they'd love to sell new models that's a good point

true or false it's not an easy thing to meet your maker true I think if I think when going to love to sell new models. That's a good point. This is true. True or false, it's not an easy thing to meet your maker. True. I think when you meet God, you're going to have a real lot of questions to ask. I hang out with my parents all the time, and I have to say it's fine.

I have to say it's fine. Much like my parents, I'm ready to fight God. Tell me where and when. True or false, and we have a clip for this one. Blade Runner turned Hollywood against voiceover narration so hard that for two generations and running, we have much less of it than we would if not for this movie. Let's play the clip.

Tyrell really did a job on Rachel. Right down to a snapshot of a mother she never had. A daughter she never was. Reicants weren't supposed to have feelings neither were blade runners what the hell was happening to me what the fuck that is terrible that is i do feel like that would work in a detective movie and but the the sci-fi element adds a feeling of like resentment that like you have to have this explained to you i can figure this out from what's on screen um why is he slurring they probably probably recorded it in one hour like a booth you know he came back from

malibu and was like i hate having to do this yeah he is definitely uh he is fighting against it pretty hard um true or false this is a Philip K. Dick quote from a 1972 speech the android and the human it's a little long but I thought it was really interesting our environment and I mean our man-made world of machines artificial constructs computers electronic systems interlinking homeostatic components all of this

is in fact beginning more and more to possess what psychologists fear the primitive sees in his environment animation in a very real sense our environment is becoming alive or at least and more to possess what psychologists fear the primitive sees in his environment, animation. In a very real sense, our environment is becoming alive or at least quasi-alive in a way specifically and fundamentally analogous to ourselves. I'm going to say true. Sure. I'm not going to say false to Philip K.

Digg. He's so high. He's seen through time. I'm going to say false just because I think Philip K. Digg, he couldn't have known about Elon Musk. Again, the sci-fi of the past implies a romance and intelligence and craft that I think we move past. I think he'd puke if he was alive. How is he going to fight God specifically over creating Elon Musk? Yeah. Somebody asked me. No, I'll fight his father. I'll fight Errol Musk over him. I thought you meant God's father. Errol Musk.

True or false, this is a Guillermo del Toro quote. This guy loves movies. Quote, Blade Runner is simply one of those cinematic drugs that when I first saw it, I never saw the world the same way again. True. True. True, baby. Absolutely true. True or false,

the Christopher Nolan quote, directors love this movie. Blade Runner is actually one of the most successful films of all time in terms of constructing reality using sets the feeling this world

has edges to it and you would see that at the edge of the frame true absolutely the world visual world building again it makes

so many modern movies look so bad it does like oh it's so good my Ridley Scott take and then we will end it out with the last true or false, is that mixed as a director.

He's got some misses. Oh, yeah. But maybe the greatest production designer who, like, ever lived. The production design of this in Aliens 1 is just, like, you can't...

Yeah. I don't think it's ever been told. I'm on board with that. Okay. Okay, great. All right, we'll mark that true. True or false, that one, the Edward James Olmos character, it's too bad she won't live, but then again,, we'll mark that true. True or false, that one, the Edward James Olmos character,

it's too bad she won't live, but then again, who does? True. True. True, baby. Yeah. All right, thanks, pals. This was so great. Thank you.

Great time chatting. Blade Runner with you. It was wonderful. Pleasure. Offline Movie Club is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Max Fischer. It's produced by Emma Illich-Frank. Mixed and edited by Charlotte Landis,

with audio support from Kyle Segland and Vasilis Vitopoulos. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Adrian Hill for production support.