Bladerunner: Time to Die

 

1.      Bladerunner was made in 1982 but set in 2019 Los Angeles.

2.      The scenario is Japan won WWII not the US. That is why we see the Japanese images spread across LA.

3.      I asked you look for Japanese images in the film.

4.      The movie is a science fiction dystopia. There are film noir ideas, but we can think about that later.

5.      What does the unicorn represent in mythology? Purity, innocence and power. I was taught the unicorn represents uniqueness, one of a kind ability, rare talent.  

6.      Why is the unicorn a Japanese image in Bladerunner? How does the director twist it and why?

7.      Notice the old pictures probably of old family members on the piano. Decker is a cold man with not much emotion. Why does he have them? Androids steal their memories from pictures. Remember they only live four years.

8.      Misogyny: hatred (violence) for women. That is the third scene that is violent toward women.

9.     

10.   “The flame that burns Twice as bright burns half as long.”

People that die young are often the greatest. Old people just burn out.

11. Ray Bradbury is a great science fiction writer. Paying homage to.

In Good Will Hunting, the shrink says “It’s not your fault.” When an adult hits a child, the adult is always wrong. Adults should not hit children for so many reasons. Yet, children think they deserve to be hit because they were bad, naughty, lazy, got bad grades, etc.

Psychologist can’t prescribe medicine.

Psychiatrist can prescribe medicine.

Now we can use a narrator to do a voice over in the movie to explain what is going on. Before we had movies and went to the theater, if we needed a narrator, the actor would stop acting and start talking to the audience to explain what was going on. This is called a soliloquy. In the studio version, there is a narrator. Actually the director did not want a narrator as he believes the film, if it is good, would explain itself. In the director’s cut, the narrator is removed. But Ridley Scott used a soliloquy.  

He has his own memories. He has experiences that humans could not imagine. That makes him kind of human. I think the dove (metaphor) is his soul. There are some cultures that believe birds take your soul up.

Two Biblical ideas here. The nail in the hand. Jesus also died unfairly. But some movement came after Jesus died called Christianity. It is raining the whole movie. The flood that came to end the world when Noah took the animals on the ark.

How can the director make the unicorn, a very Western idea, Japanese? Origami.

Movies are divided by scenes.

Play (performances) by acts. Shakespeare usually used five acts in a play.

Books are separated by chapters. Some people say the Coen Brothers wanted to show early Pulp Fiction with cowboys and the west of America. They used stories by Jack London.

Genres

1.      Horror

2.      Comedy

3.      Coming of age / drama

4.      western and musical

5.      Gangster

Western: Europe and America

western:  cowboy

1.      Misanthrope: someone (usually smart) who hates most people

2.      Shakespearean plot. The story is Shakespearean, it means you can understand the conclusion in ten different ways.

Dead Man’s hand: two black aces and two black eights

Buster has a good hand, but he does not want to play it because it is unlucky. He is superstitious. That is the hand that Wild Bill Hickock had when someone shot him in the back of the head.

This is before there were trains in America. So people had to use a chuckwagon. It is really dangerous because the Indians. They have to go together for protection. It’s called a wagon train. They finished the train east to west in the 1870s.