For one of the first memorable times in my life, I had to actually consider character motivation and the inner conflict of that individual. No, the hero here was a man who was very conflicted about what he did for a living.
#DARK RUNNER COUNTER CRACK#
The hero didn't crack wise like one would if they'd tossed a knife through a guy in the jungle. There was action, but not like the kind I'd seen in my favorite Schwarzenegger movies - the violence had an outcome. I'd never seen him as a jaded detective/assassin assigned to hunt and kill these very human-looking robots. Up to that point, I'd only seen Harrison Ford flying around space, cracking whips while punching Nazis, and help some friendly Amish people raise a barn. Given the heady complicated stories and that it's been 25 years since that fateful evening, my first memories of both films are kind of a blur. Now, I honestly can't remember which one we watched first. Before I knew it, he had two tapes in his hand and the search for evening entertainment was over with the simple phrase "you're gonna love these."
#DARK RUNNER COUNTER MOVIE#
While I ran around looking at new releases and the shop's expansive horror movie collection, my dad got stuck in the science fiction section. Not only this one but 2001: A Space Odyssey in the same night! I can't remember the circumstances that led to both my mom and my sister not being home on a Friday night, but it was just me and my dad, some pizza, a bunch of junk food, and a trip to our local VideoWatch (before they were bought by Hollywood Video). In the fall of 1992 after I'd turned 10 that summer, not long after the Director's Cut release on home video, my dad introduced me to Blade Runner. It's because of this Director's Cut release on VHS that I learned what Blade Runner even was, let alone come to appreciate it as one of my favorite films. When Warner Brothers released what was to be dubbed the "Director's Cut," folks all of a sudden started giving this film another look and reassessing its position in the science-fiction genre. Thankfully, home video switched that around. It was a movie that few people saw in theaters during its initial run and even fewer thought much about it afterward. It's been discussed, dissected, and digested leaving little room for me to add anything to the conversation beyond what it has meant for me in developing my appreciation of film.īlade Runner, alongside John Carpenter's The Thing, was a box office and critical bomb when it hit movie theaters a scant two weeks after the phenom that was E.T. In those years, audiences have been witness to multiple releases, various versions of the film, as well as a fairly definitive restoration effort. Over the last 35 years, Blade Runner has run the gauntlet of being considered an expensive indulgent failure to being one of the highest-regarded films in science fiction filmmaking. I face that conundrum again with Ridley Scott's 1982 film, Blade Runner. In my review for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, I opened by discussing the difficulties of discussing a classic piece of cinema.
"A new life awaits you on the off-world colonies…"
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