BLADE RUNNER Frequently Asked Questions - Part 4 Taken from Compiled by Murray Chapman (muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au), from sources too numerous to mention. Thank-you one and all. @~Continued from issue 58 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHESS GAME? Sebastian's chess pieces are birds (he makes animals), Tyrell's are people (he makes "people"). The chess game between Tyrell and Sebastian uses the conclusion of a game played between Anderssen and Kieseritzky, in London in 1851. This is one of the most famous and brilliant games ever played, and is universally known as "The Immortal Game". The concept of immortality has obvious associations in the ensuing confrontation between Tyrell and Batty. The Immortal Game, in algebraic notation, is as follows: Anderssen - Kieseritzky, London 1851 1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Bc4 Qh4+ 4 Kf1 b5 5 Bxb5 Nf6 6 Nf3 Qh6 7 d3 Nh5 8 Nh4 Qg5 9 Nf5 c6 10 Rg1 cxb5 11 g4 Nf6 12 h4 Qg6 13 h5 Qg5 14 Qf3 Ng8 15 Bxf4 Qf6 16 Nc3 Bc5 17 Nd5 Qxb2 18 Bd6 Qxa1+ 19 Ke2 Bxg1 20 e5 Na6 21 Nxg7+ Kd8 22 Qf6+ Nxf6 23 Be7 Checkmate. Note that the chess boards in the film are not arranged as they would be if they were following the Immortal Game, and that Sebastian's board does not match Tyrell's. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 11. PROBLEMS IN BLADE RUNNER Plot ---- Why did Holden need to VK Leon, if the police already knew what he looked like? Bryant first tells Deckard that there were six replicants, three male, three female. Obviously, Roy and Leon are two of the males, and Pris and Zhora are two of the females. Bryant also says that "one of them got fried trying to get into the Tyrell building", but doesn't specify the sex. That leaves one replicant, either male or female. It has been hypothesized that Deckard was the sixth replicant, but there is ample evidence that this is not the case: Some versions of the script include "Mary" as the sixth replicant, which means that the one that got fried was male, and Deckard can't be the sixth replicant. How did word of Rachael's escape get out so quickly, and how could Tyrell tell that she had gone for good? Remember that Deckard called Rachael at home while he was still at the nightclub. It could not have been more than a couple hours before he gave chase to Zhora. (How long could she "take the pleasure from the serpent"?) Was that enough time for Rachael to run away, be gone long enough for Tyrell to call the police about a missing replicant, and have them tell Bryant to put Deckard onto it? Why is it so difficult to tell a replicant from a human, when replicants can put their hands in boiling/freezing liquids without damage? Surely a tissue sample would suffice? How did Roy get into Tyrell's office so easily? Did Tyrell trust Sebastian enough to give him the option of bringing anyone/anything up in the lift? Supposedly an earlier version of the script had the Tyrell we see as a replicant, and Roy picking up on this because of the lift letting him in. (Supposedly the lift was programmed to accept only people that it knew... meaning that it couldn't detect Roy. This, however leads to a problem in that the lift would be a better replicant identifier than the VK test.) In that version, the real Tyrell was dead in a "cryocrypt", for sketches of which see "The Blade Runner Sketchbook". Supposedly (after Roy kills Sebastian) he finds the crypt and kills Tyrell; this would also allude to "UBIK". Technical --------- Norwegian subtites translate "Sushi... my ex-wife used to call me that... cold fish" into "Sushi, my wife, used to call me a cold fish." Swedish subtitles spell Roy's name "Beatty", translate Deckard's license number from 260354 to 26354, "C-beams" to "seabeams". In the very first shot of Batty, we see his hand clenching up. If you look carefully as he turns his hand just before the shot changes, you can see the nail sticking through the back of his hand. He doesn't actually insert that nail until later in the film (The nail is easily spotted on the Criterion CAV laserdisc: frames C-07 37124 and 37125). Also, in the same scene, though Roy is supposedly alone (in a phone booth) you see someone's hand on his shoulder. This is actually a later scene with Tyrell, shown in mirror image. During the VK test, Leon says "My mother... let me tell you about my mother", but when Deckard runs over this on his way to his apartment, Leon's voice says "I'll tell you about my mother!". This may just be Scott trifling with the audience's memory, they way that Tyrell may be trifling with Deckard's. The snake tattoo on Zhora only appears after the Esper machine has stopped zooming, and when it produces a hard copy, Zhora's face is at a different angle to that on the screen. This scene was filmed twice. [Source: "Cinefex" No 9, 1982] When the Cambodian woman puts the snake scale into the electron microscope, she doesn't take it out of the plastic bag. We should be looking at a picture of a plastic bag. The serial number that she gives Deckard is not the same as the one in the image. Additionally, the image is not a snake scale, but a female marijuana leaf. When Deckard goes to Ben Hassan's (the snake dealer), their lip movements do not match the dialog. This scene remains the same in BRDC, which means that Scott intended it to be there, or it was one of the sacrifices he was forced to make in meeting the BRDC deadline. When Zhora goes crashing through those plate-glass windows, the stunt double looks nothing like the actress, and her wounds disappear and appear several times. The sounds of the bullets hitting her doesn't correspond to when she is visibly hit. Also, you can see her holding the trigger-ball and tube for the bloodbags she is carrying. When Leon throws Deckard into the car window, the window was already broken. Not necessarily a goof, but could be. In all versions of the film, events occur in this sequence: Deckard kills Zhora, and then buys a bottle of Tsing Tao. Gaff grabs him, and takes him to Bryant. Deckard then chases Rachael, but gets beaten up by Leon. When the film included Mary, the story ran as follows: Deckard killed Zhora, and then saw Rachael. He chased Rachael, only to be beaten up by Leon. After Rachael killed Leon, Deckard THEN bought his bottle of Tsing Tao, and met with Bryant, who told him that there were "four to go" (Roy, Pris, Mary, and Rachael). When they cut Mary from the film, they had a problem: Bryant should say that there were "three to go" (Roy, Pris, and Rachael). Instead of reshooting this scene, they moved it (and the scene of Deckard buying Tsing Tao, because Gaff walks up to him and says "Bryant") to before Leon's death, so that the "four to go" would be Roy, Pris, LEON (not Mary), and Rachael. They nearly got away with this, but are now a few problems: 1) When Deckard is talking to Bryant, he shows wounds from his fight with Leon, although he hasn't had the fight yet. 2) Since he now buys his bottle before he fights Leon, it should be there while he's chasing Rachael and fighting Leon (it's not). The bottle mysteriously reappears when he gets back to his flat. 3) Bryant's dialog as he steps out of the spinner is dubbed. This error is also evident when Bryant tells Deckard at the beginning: "I've got four skin jobs walking the streets", and then proceeds to tell him that SIX replicants came to earth, and ONE had been fried (leaving five, not four). The song Rachael plays on the piano does not match the music she is looking at. When Pris steps out of Sebastian's elevator, her hair is dry, but when she is in the apartment proper, it's wet again. The cuckoo clock in Sebastian's apartment strikes six twice. Sebastian's and Tyrell's chess boards don't match. Pris is wearing a ballerina's outfit when she is pretending to be a mannekin while Deckard searches Sebastian's apartment. When she starts to beat up Deckard, she is wearing a pink leotard. In the Deckard/Batty confrontation, after Deckard has been given his gun back and stalks off, you can see (in letterboxed / widescreen versions) the shadow of the cameraman and camera on the wall. Support cables are visible whenever you see a closeup of a spinner floating above a city street. The cable is really visible when Gaff takes-off with Deckard in the beginning of the movie. There is a close-up left profile shot (front of spinner on left side of the screen) of a spinner rising through the rain, and the line is very visible. Later when a cop floats down to Deckard sitting in his car and asks his business, you can see the cable if you look closely. When Batty is holding onto Deckard's arm, Deckard's shirt is untucked. When he is thrown down, the shirt is tucked in. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 12. TRIVIA / WHAT MAKES BLADE RUNNER POPULAR/SPECIAL? Trivia ------ The following characters smoke cigarettes: Holden, Bryant, Rachael, Pris, lady on video screen. Pris' incept date is Valentine's Day. "Deckard" is similar in pronunciation and spelling to "(Rene) Descartes", a famous 17th century French philosopher. Descartes (like Deckard) was fascinated by the question "What does it mean to be human". Descartes was the man who said "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am): exactly what Pris tells Sebastian when he asks what she can do. Some people claim that Holden's eyes glow after explaining to Leon that the questions were written down for him. Deckard kills only women. Gaff's origami taunts Deckard: when Deckard tries to leave Bryant's office without taking the job, Gaff makes a chicken. Gaff makes a man with a huge erection to tease Deckard about either being attracted to Rachael, or getting so involved/excited by the job (when he didn't want it in the first place). Gaff might have felt that Deckard searching Leon's room was just "jacking off". The origami evolves: Chicken --> Man --> Unicorn (replicant?) Eye symbolism is rampant: - The eye in the opening shots - Replicants' eyes glow - Tyrell has huge glasses to make his eyes bigger - glasses like Tyrell's were used in DADoES for fallout protection - Eyes are used in the VK test - Chew's Eye World - "Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!" - Leon goes to stick his fingers in Deckard's eyes, just before he is shot - Batty plays with the glass-encased eyes in Sebastian's apartment - Batty sticks his thumbs in Tyrell's eyes - Pris rolls her eyes to show only the whites. The owl in Tyrell's office does similar. - surrounding the top of the Bradbury building are large, bright blue, lighted half-orbs, which resemble eyes. - "I've SEEN things you people wouldn't believe" [more?] The Japanese woman taking pills on the giant screen might be a homage to Philip K Dick's book "UBIK". Rachael's hairstyle: as a replicant, it is perfect, rigid, machine like, and cold. As a human, it's soft, curly, and messed up. Rachael's picture comes to life momentarily, and the soundtrack has the sound of children playing. The term "Blade Runner" suggests running along a thin edge (blade) one side being human, the other replicant; it's a fine line between being human and a replicant. Blade Runner won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1983 (beating out E.T.). In a poll of members of the 1992 World Science Fiction Convention, Blade Runner was named as the third most favorite SF film of all time (behind Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey). Blade Runner was released the same month as _ET: The Extra Terrestrial_, which might account for its poor reception. From: BLADE RUNNER Production Notes (from the 1982 Presskit) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Actors Rutger Hauer, Brion James and James Hong worked for two days amid icicles at U.S. Growers Cold Storage, Inc. The "Blade Runner" company also filmed at two of L.A.'s most beautiful architectural landmarks. The front of the Ennis Brown house in the Los Feliz area was designed in 1924 by Frank Lloyd Wright in a Mayan block motif. The building, the most monumental of Wright's western experimental work, is seen in the film as the entrance to Harrison Ford's apartment building, a huge condominium complex, hundreds of stories high. The Bradbury Building, built in 1893 and recently threatened with architectural corruption by municipal safety modifications, was preserved on film by "Blade Runner." In one scene, Ford traces Hauer to the ornate edifice for the final showdown. In another, industrial designer J. F. Sebastian (William J. Sanderson) discovers street waif Pris (Daryl Hannah) and takes her into his apartment. Other locations included the downtown Pan Am Building, where Deckard and Gaff search Leon's hotel room for clues. Sebastian's apartment is full of bastardised creatures, part man, part machine, and part animal. There is a stuffed unicorn on Sebastian's work table (screen right, as the mice scurry over scattered paraphernalia while Sebastian sleeps). Each character is associated with an animal: Leon = Turtle Roy = Dove Zhora = Snake Rachael = Spider Tyrell = Owl Sebastian = Bear Pris = Raccoon Deckard = Sushi (raw fish) or Unicorn "Ethyl methanesulfonate as an alkylating agent" is a mutagen, and the subsequent debate between Batty and Tyrell correctly explores the problems associated with changing a cell's DNA. When Gaff picks up Deckard, the launch sequence on the computer is exactly the same as in Scott's _Alien_, when the escape pod seperates from the Mother ship. When Deckard enters his apartment at the end, the background hum is the same distinctive hum as in parts of _Alien_. Notice that both _Alien_ and BR have "artificial persons", and there is ambiguity as to who is/was a real human. _Alien_ and BR are perfectly compatible, the only problem being that Ash should have been a replicant, as opposed to a robot. RELIGIOUS/PHILOSOPHICAL PARALLELS: ---------------------------------- The replicants are fallen angels (fell from the heavens/outer space), with Roy as Lucifer. Tyrell lives in a giant pyramid (like a Pharaoh), which looks like a cathedral inside, whereas Sebastian lives in an abandoned apartment with a "toilet bowl plunger" on his head. Tyrell creates. He builds his creations imperfect. One of his creations resents the inbuilt imperfection (since the creator had no reason apart from fear to inhibit his creations), and returns to the creator to undo him. Batty is the creator's son. He returns to earth, and is persecuted by the agents of society. Deckard takes the role of Pilate, asking "What is reality?" (on the roof of the Bradbury Building). In John 18:38, Pilate asks "What is truth?", which echoes the same sentiment (In German, both of these questions could be phrased "Was ist Wahreit?"). Pilate/Deckard subsequently realize that they have done wrong in the course of upholding the law. By rescuing Deckard, Batty shows a last act of forgiveness against those who would have killed him, as did Christ during his crucifixion. Tyrell's huge bed, pedestaled and canopied, is modeled after the bed of Pope John Paul II. Roy: "Fiery the angels fell, Deep thunder roll'd around their shores, Burning with the fires of Orc." This is a paraphrase of William Blake's _America: A Prophesy_: "Fiery the angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc." When Roy finally confronts Tyrell, he calls him his "maker," and "the god of biomechanics." In the light of the parallels this film draws between the plight of the replicants and that of all human being -- four years against fourscore -- this scene has strange reverberations. If Roy can condemn his creator for determining his life span at four years, why can we not condemn our Creator (if we choose to believe in one) for placing us under a death sentence at birth. Can we sit in judgment of God? In so far as he creates artificial life and is killed by it, Tyrell is another Dr. Frankenstein; but there the similarity ends. He is punished not for breaking God's law, but for wronging his creations. And Roy -- robot, child, monster, demigod -- is not an obscenity to be returned to oblivion as soon as possible. Roy puts a nail through his palm, a symbol of Christian crucifixion. When Batty dies, he is released from torment as he releases the dove. Only shot of blue sky. (The laserdisc notes say that they couldn't get the dove to fly off into the rain.) Deckard's voiceover after Roy's death muses "He wanted the answers that all of us wanted. Where did we come from? Where are we going? How long do I have?". According to an essay in _Retrofitting Blade Runner_, these three questions are very similar, if not almost exactly like those scribbled by the painter Gauguin on the back of one of his paintings during one of his more suicidal phases. @~To be concluded next issue - o -