Heavy Metal June 1982 - Blade Runner

7/31/2019 Heavy Metal June 1982 - Blade Runner

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I'~ almost uupossibh- ()write an obuuarv (or ~1J1llt-'lme\'011 1';11',' .rbout deeply withoutsoundinu tu..rudhnlv ~t'1I11Illenlal.hu-vitahlv. Iht' hr~1 Ih(]u,~hIS to~tn:,(' ;tl"(' ~I-Ii ish, an d lilt.:, pa inrippin,l! ill \'1 III l"


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Productionpaintings bySyd Mead oftwo citystreets fromBladeRunner.

THIS ISTHE CITV

AlthoughMead wasoriginallyasked todesign justvehicles forthe film. hissubsequentworkincluded notonly thevehicles. butthe streetenvironment.as weu.After RidleyScott sawthe initialpaintings.hehad Sydelaborate onthe designsof the entirecityscapeand urbanlifestyle.


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Harrison Ford as Deckard-a hard-boiled detective ofe year 2019 whose specialty is tracking down renegade

replicants (genetically engineered people) who haveinfiltrated the city.

THERE ARE106,000,000

STORIESINTHIS

NAKEDCITY-ANDBLADERUNNER IS

ONE OF THEM.Iyou're still in the dark, B La de R un ner isthis coming summer's main contender. Based

on the late Philip K. Dick's D o A n dro ids D rea mof E lectric S heep ", directed by Ridley Scott(Alien), with production art by S yd Mead (S en -tineli , special effects by Douglas Trumbull(CE3K, 2001), and starring Harrison Ford.Ford plays Rick Deckard, an ex-police detec-

tive, late of the Rep-Detect Division-streetmoniker, Blade Runner. Before he quit, Deck-ard was the top Blade Runner in the city,charged with the highly sensitive task of track-ing down and eliminating escaped replicants-manufactured people you can't distinguish fromthe real thing. These genetically engineered"humans" were developed for combat and spacecolonization-man-made labor, they like to callthem-but occasionally some manage to getback down to Earth, The problem is, they gotno feelings, no remorse, no guilt. They'll doanything to stay free, and that's why the BladeRunners were formed. They're the only copstrained to tell the difference between reps andreal people.

Harrison Ford and director Ridley Scott


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Deckard and pollee Lt. Gaff (Edward Olmos-Zoot Suit and Wolfen) in the Spinner cockpit.

B lade Runner is not just another hardwaremovie. It's not one of those gadget-filled pictureswhere the actors are there only to givescale to the sets andspecial effects.Blade Runner takes place about forty years

from now in a major American megalopolis thatlooks like one of today's cities gone mad. All t.hestreet signs are in several languages. the park-ing meters give off lethal jolts if tampered with.the phone booths have tv's and so do the trafficintersections. Most animals are extinct. but youcan buy artificial pets down at Anarnoid Row (ifyou got the bucks) and the only fresh meat isfish-the age of junk-food sushi. The sky isyellow with poisonous pollution and the acid-

rainfall is constant. The cars and buildingsare fitted with whatever it takes to keep them inworking order: but decent folk don't live belowforty stories-most fashionable apartmentbuildings climb up to 400 tloors. And if you're acop or some high-society politico. you get todrive a Spinner. the state-of-the-art flying car.capable of vertical lift -off. hovering. normalstreet driving and soaring through the canvonsof the city and on out to the industrial waste-lands surrounding it.


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Top: Deckard tries to locate a suspect from atop Syd Mead's taxi of thefuture.Bollom: Deckard in a rooftop chase. several hundred stories above the

street.

come very difficult-mechanical fixtures, auto-mobiles, buildings-the whole urban plant hadbecome like a trap. Starting with cleanly de-signed concepts, we layered on details, fix-tures, repairs, and extra equipment to achievethis accumulated fix-it-because-it-won't-run-and-it -has-to-run visual flavor. ..Ridley Scott elaborates, "Think of New York

or Chicago right now. how impossible it is toactually maintain many of the buildings. Thinkhow expensive it would be to tear down theEmpire State Building. Eventually they'll justhave to 'retro-fit' things on the face of buildingsinstead of being able to rebuild or renovate. ""And the street level will become like the

sewers or underside of the city," S yd Meadcontinues. "Being trapped on the street will be athoroughly nasty way to spend your life. Thestreets will be nothing more than a service ac-cess to the city's mega-structures. and thosewho can't afford to move up will simply beforced to live in this left-over society."


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However. all th s dire I- picric lS asid .Scott insists that Blade RIII'II/er is not doom-saying. "This lilm is very simply (J t hriller set ill::;Iightly futuristic terms." he savs. "It's not , Iwarmru: III an~' sense.As Sycl Mead likes to point out after paintingthis bleak picture. "I think life fony years fn 1 1 1n ow will be tab ulous , O v I' 90 perc ru of all Ilwscientists who ever lived ar aliv right now.Our technology is abl to process informat iona nd con struc t a l te rn at iv es faster than ever. Ifwe let tc.:ciliiologv do what iis supposed to do. Ithink well .gO back to a very humanistic.pe rsonal-scale lifestyle that's nice enough soI'OU can think about other Ihin.gs than justsurv iv al. "And in (Teating the first hard-boiled. science-Iution detective suspense thrill r. Ridlev . ottassures us that Blade Icunner is "rneaui to begood fun, a kind of comic strip. The films thatha v e (a srin at c I I1Ie mos t over the last few veal'sar those rha: have derived from comic strips

.. and some of th - gr at comi ~ strips havebe n the first to spot emerging truth ~ and en-large upon them. That's the dir ction I'vechosen to go ill with IIIV film s .. . Iot . or broadstrokes. Ia st . bold anion. and v e ry .olorlulcharuct ers .'

Anotherstreetcar by

Syd Mead.Thepillars arearecurring

architecturalimage. as is thesecond-story

level ofboutiquedisplay

windows.

-CI~ucle RathboneZhora (Joanna Cassidy). a suspected replicanl. Iries 10elude Deckard in

Ihe teeming streets. Note that in Ihis view ot the fulure. Ala"; conlinues 10Ihrive.

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Heavy Metal June 1982 - Blade Runner