Product Description

color illus Blade Runner has proved to be one of the most enduring and influential films of the 1980s. In his innovative reading, Scott Bukatman details the making of the film and its steadily improving fortunes after its initial release. He situates the film in terms of the debates about post modernism that have informed the large body of criticism devoted to it. Although Blade Runner explores the tensions fundamental to a postmodern era of bewildering technological change, Bukatman argues, it derives from the quintessentially twentieth-century, modernist experience of the city-the experience of a space both imprisoning and liberating.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #599036 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-26
• Released on: 2008-01-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Scott Bukatman is Professor of Media Arts at the University of New Mexico.

Customer Reviews

Cursory Overview
This is indeed an excellently written "little" book on Blade Runner. I do feel, however, that the material on the film's inception is too drawn-out and that the rather more "interesting" exposition and analysis of the film remains far too cursory. BR deals with a myriad of themes and tropes, such as the recurring EYE theme. Bukatman mentions many instances where EYES occur and mentions a possible significance, but does explore it (or many other themes) in depth, eg. its relation to SCOPOPHILIA or SPECTATORSHIP, etc. Admittedly, it is small pocket-sized book, and it is worth the money, but if you desire an in-depth analysis of the film, this is not the book to purchase IMHO.

Dreaming of Electric Sheep
Like many movies reviewed in the British Film Institute series, Blade Runner did not start off strong at the box office. Coming on the heels of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blade Runner offered movie goers a much bleaker view than they had complacently grown accustomed to in the few years preceding its release. Instead of cute aliens and a disco-inspired cantina, we got rebellious androids who kill humans and bounty hunters who hunt them down in the street of a Los Angeles that looks like the earth split open and vomitted upward.

Although this dark vision of the near future might not have resonated with viewers at the time, Blade Runner gained its audience over time as people saw through the surface and started asking some deeper questions. This volume by Scott Bukatman addresses some of these issues as well.

This book is broken down into three parts, the first of which is a general overview of the making of the movie. It is the next two sections, however, that are more interesting, although Bukatman has a tendency to digress into typical movie analysis babble that will probably be offputting to most potential readers. Fortunately, this does not undermine the better parts of this book.

The second section discusses the role that cities themselves have played in cinema and how Blade Runner taps into and contributes to that history. For much of science fiction, cities were places of potential utopia in the perfected world of the future. Of course, darker versions existed and Blade Runner itself is a return to a more dystopian vision.

The best is saved for last as the third section discusses replicants (the androids in the movie) and addresses the issue of what really makes humans human. This is a topic with tremendous potential to devolve into the absurd and laughable at the drop of a sentence. Thankfully, Bukatman's take is more intelligent and accessible. If the rest of the book had been this good, my rating would have been higher and I would recommend this book based on this section alone.

I have read enough of the BFI monographs to have seen the gamut, with some being exceptional and others being ridiculous. BLADE RUNNER may not be as good as the best ones in the series I have read. But for fans of the movie, it is certainly worthwhile.

Very interesting book
Blade Runner is my favorite movie, and this is one of the best books on a film I've ever read. The comparisons with other sci-fi films and post-modernism are very interesting. There is also a lot of information on how the film was made.