Blade Runner

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is a quintessential movie viewing experience for anyone who wants to understand modern story building in movie or television. Scott cemented himself as a hard hitter 15 years into his career when he directed Alien, showing his talent for creating worlds with history built inside of them. Blade Runner was no exception. Scott was able to create a snippet of a memory, showing the viewer a world that had moved on from the past with the future being bankrolled by big corporations and smothered in the weathering of a golden age.

The setting perfectly captures a techno noir, the gritty and dirty streets with the melding of technology. It's like if the internet where to pop into existence, the claustrophobia would cause you to melt into the background while the vibrancy and electricity would pop things to life. Scott accomplishes making an incredibly detailed surrounding by reaching back to the past and using whats in front of him at the same time. The darkness of the noir setting and the burgeoning emergence of the 80's economy and how big corporations were becoming more and more their own entities fueled the aesthetic of Deckard's reality. Not to mention with Japan becoming a larger trading partner with the west and the jumps in tech that were being made, everything in the movie aside from the giant megaliths of apartment buildings, seem believable.

Deckard is definitely an Replicant. The story of Blade Runner is one of a power trip gone wrong. Throughout the movie, Deckard is treated with odd glances and hesitance by people that claim to have known him from his last "job". Bryant, the commissioner, always seems to show up at every scene before it even has time to wrap up, reading all of Deckard's emotions as he reacts to retiring one of the rouge replicants. I think Deckard and Rachel were Tyrell's first success at creating an product that was truly "more human than human". Deckard being followed closely by the real Deckard in persona'd as Gaff (credit to Chris Alvarado). While Rachel is revealed to Deckard by Tyrell that she is a Replicant, Tyrell watches him in amazement as he and Rachel interact in his office. Tyrell plays Creator to his version of Adam and Eve, and you can see the joy flicker across his coke bottle glasses as the two meet for the first time and neither know they're an start to a new chapter. That's when the experiment begins. Deckard plays through many frames of Gaff's life, which is why he can manifest the Origami from chapter to chapter, and even produces imagery from Deckard's dreams.  I think in the end Gaff feels sorry for Deckard, and perhaps even had some kind of past relationship that egged him on to let Deckard go, Just as Deckard said he wouldn't chase Rachel if she headed north.

I haven't seen the new movie yet, but I'm hoping that the years of  crazy obsession pay off.