I’m ashamed to say that I had never, before Friday, seen Blade Runner. A fact that I had always felt put my nerd cred in jeopardy of being completely null and void.
A group of friends were over at my place Friday night and didn’t know what to do. We wanted to watch a movie but Cleveland was getting hit by what became record breaking snow and leaving to go to a Blockbuster was out of the question.
We scanned through the movie selection on my 360 as a way of finding out what movies were out there. We laughed as we flipped through the catalogue joking about how stupid someone would have to be to pay four whole dollars for a rental that only lasts 24 hours.
We stumbled upon Blade Runner: The Final Cut, and a consensus swelled that that movie was the one we had to watch. But how could we obtain it. One person owned a copy of it, but unnecessary driving was probably not very safe, we were warm inside and the weather was getting worse. We tried various means of getting that darn movie on to the TV, but all failed, no amount of remote desktop networking and phone calls could procure us a copy.
I began to get irritated of over and hour of wasted time and pulled the trigger on the XBL copy of the movie and it started downloading. We entertained ourselves with JellyCar for a while and then the notice popped up that the movie was ready to be played (at 10% downloaded no less). Needless to say we were skeptical, but what happened next, looking back on it, should have been easy to predict…
The movie was brilliant to say the least. It wasn’t the kind of movie you should watch late at night. Several cans of pop and energy drinks were needed to get to the end of the movie. The story was front loaded and the action occurred all within the last 10 minutes of the movie. Which makes sense when you view the film as a noir flick and not a sci-fi.
We joked and laughed through the movie that night, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. On second viewing the next day, I found the film to be more than I remembered the night before.
The acting seemed to hit this perfect film noir vibe, the cool suaveness of Deckard, the breathless damsel, flighty femme-fatale and the psychotic yet insightful villain were calling cards to the films true genre. I was amazed that the film was so well written, a single viewing would lead you to believe it was shallow. But there’s an amazing amount of depth there.
Blade Runner also manages to look as good as, if not better than, some of the high tech CG in today’s sci-fi blockbusters. A testament to the simple elegance of hand crafted models and innovative filming techniques.
As I deleted the file from the tiny 20gb hard drive I realized something. Something I should have known all along.
Digital distribution is the future…believe.
