Why "Blade Runner" Still Defines How We See Tech

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau: "Why 'Blade Runner' Still Defines How We See Tech"

Host and Guests:

• Max Fisher: Host of the Offline Movie Club.
• Halle Kiefer: Co-host.
• Emily St. James: Author and podcast host, known for her work on "Just Out Lost" and "The 2000s" podcast.

---

Introduction to Blade Runner's Significance

In this episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, Max Fisher, Halle Kiefer, and Emily St. James delve deep into the enduring legacy of the 1982 sci-fi classic, Blade Runner. The discussion centers on how the film not only shaped the visual aesthetics of future dystopian narratives but also explored profound themes about technology, humanity, and ethics.

---

The Pinnacle of Serious Science Fiction

Max Fisher posits that Blade Runner represents the zenith of weighty science fiction, distinguishing it from modern depictions that often prioritize action over substance. He states:

"I feel like we don't get that as much anymore. Do you agree?"
[02:42]

Emily St. James concurs, noting that while modern films like Ex Machina and Denis Villeneuve's Dune touch on significant themes, they often remain on the periphery compared to the comprehensive societal explorations in Blade Runner.

---

Visual Aesthetics and Technoir Influence

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on the film's groundbreaking visual style, which has left an indelible mark on subsequent sci-fi works. Max Fisher emphasizes:

"There's no other movie that has an aesthetic as influential as Blade Runner because it just invents this technoir, gritty, dirty future that is everywhere now."
[13:11]

Halle Kiefer praises the film's ability to create an emotionally resonant environment through its detailed world-building, asserting that its aesthetic beauty remains unmatched:

"Blade Runner 2049 looks great because they were evoking something that looks great."
[05:53]

---

Themes of Humanity and Artificial Intelligence

The hosts explore the central theme of Blade Runner: the blurring line between humans and replicants. Emily St. James highlights the film's exploration of robots possessing human-like emotions:

"It's one of the first movies to take seriously the idea that robots could be people, and by definition, we're probably going to start oppressing them."
[08:44]

Max Fisher connects this to broader sci-fi narratives, suggesting that Blade Runner set a precedent for storytelling that examines the ethical implications of advanced technology:

"It creates the idea that technology is going to blur the line between humanity and machine to the extent that being human will become less and less meaningful."
[48:35]

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Emotional Depth and Personal Connections

Halle Kiefer and Emily St. James bring a personal lens to the discussion, relating their own experiences and emotions to the film's narrative. Halle reflects on the loneliness and existential angst depicted in Blade Runner, drawing parallels to modern interactions with technology:

"It's almost nostalgic for how rich it feels. And now it's like we don't even get that in real life."
[09:26]

Emily shares her connection to the film's themes of constructed identities and emotional depth, comparing replicants' struggles to her own experiences:

"I feel like that's been the entirety of my adult life. But I do like eating noodles, too."
[39:29]

---

Real-World Impact and Influence on Modern Sci-Fi

The trio discusses how Blade Runner has influenced contemporary sci-fi films and our perception of future technology. Max Fisher cites William Gibson's acknowledgment of the film's transformative impact on the genre:

"William Gibson said, 'Blade Runner changed the way the world looks and how we look at the world.'"
[49:24]

Emily St. James adds that while many modern sci-fi narratives are set off-world, Blade Runner remains unique in its grounded, Earth-centric dystopian vision:

"The aesthetics of Blade Runner have had the most effect on our reality, especially in how cities are visualized."
[49:58]

Halle Kiefer expresses a desire for the film's aesthetic to influence real-world urban design, contrasting it with the current sprawling and often uninspiring tech campuses.

---

Character Analysis and Philosophical Themes

A deep dive into the characters, particularly Deckard and replicants like Rachel, reveals the film's exploration of identity and purpose. Max Fisher reflects on Deckard's existential journey:

"Deckard's tragedy isn't just that he's been created to be enslaved, but that he's alone."
[27:54]

Emily St. James connects this to broader philosophical questions about existence and legacy, referencing themes from Star Trek and other literary works:

"There's nothing to outlast our deaths if we don't create something meaningful."
[29:42]

---

True or False: Interactive Segment Highlights

The episode features a spirited "True or False" segment where the hosts quiz each other on Blade Runner trivia and thematic statements. Notable moments include:

• Quote Analysis:

  "Blade Runner is simply one of those cinematic drugs that when I first saw it, I never saw the world the same way again."
  [60:18]

  • Verdict: True

• Philip K. Dick's Influence:

  "Blade Runner changed the way the world looks and how we look at the world."
  [59:35]

  • Verdict: True

• Replicant Debates:

  "Rick Deckard is in fact a Replicant."
  [54:35]

  • Verdict: Mixed opinions among hosts

This segment underscores the film's enduring legacy and the diverse interpretations it inspires among its audience.

---

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

The hosts unanimously agree that Blade Runner remains a seminal work in science fiction, not only for its visual brilliance but also for its profound exploration of what it means to be human in an increasingly technological world. They emphasize that the film's themes are more relevant than ever, serving as a lens through which we can examine our own societal and technological trajectories.

Max Fisher encapsulates the episode's essence by highlighting the film's unmatched ability to influence both perception and reality:

"Blade Runner changed the way the world looks and how we look at the world. Is there another movie you can say that about?"
[49:24]

Overall, this episode serves as a comprehensive homage to Blade Runner, celebrating its artistic achievements and its enduring capacity to provoke thought and inspire future generations of storytellers.

Transcript

[Halle Kiefer]

Next. Hey, it smells so good in here. Yep, that'd be the coffee.

[Emily St. James]

I know.

[Halle Kiefer]

It's just I've had nasal polyps for so long now I'm on this medicine and my congestion and breathing are much better.

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[Halle Kiefer]

I'm pretty jazzed about it. Plus, I don't want another surgery, and now I might not need one. So what can I get you? Medium coffee, please.

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[Halle Kiefer]

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[Max Fisher]

There's no politics in this movie. There's no state, like, other than the police. It's not clear the government exists except basically to protect corporate interests. And I think this vision of the future you see basically in all of the sci fi that comes after, it's like Matrix, Minority Report, Fifth Element has this. Children of men, like the Nolan Batmans are explicitly modeled on the look in this movie, which is partly because it looks fucking amazing, but also just because it's like that. That's kind of what we just think the future looks like now. And I think this movie created that.

[Emily St. James]

I mean, other than the police, there's no evidence that government exists except to protect corporate interests. I'm glad they got that one wrong. Yeah, that one completely off. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Well, we're building wind farms combined. I'm Max Fisher.

[Halle Kiefer]

I'm Halle Kiefer.

[Max Fisher]

And with us Joining again, Emily St. James, one of our favorites here, author of the Just out lost Back to the island, the complete critical companion to the TV show, and host the podcast the 2000s.

[Emily St. James]

Emily, great to see you podcast like it's the 2000s.

[Max Fisher]

Like it's the two. Okay, thank you.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, it's good to be here again in this studio. Lovely with all of you people.

[Max Fisher]

This is the offline Movie Club. Every episode we discuss one of our favorite movies and how it reflects or shapes how we think about technology and the Internet. This week we are talking about. About one of my favorites, Blade Runner, the 1982 classic that asked the question, could an OpenAI chatbot become so hot that it would be unethical to delete it? We'll get to the questions, but first, I have a theory I wanted to run past both of you. I'd like to hear your thoughts on. We used to get so much important sci fi.

[Emily St. James]

Sure.

[Max Fisher]

Like science fiction. That felt like weighty and it was about issues. And Blade Runner kind of feels like the pinnacle of that. I feel like we don't get that as much anymore. Do you agree? Like, why do you think that would be?

[Emily St. James]

I think we get a bit of it, but it's often on the margins. Like, Ex Machina is a movie that is, like, about things, but also it was an indie film. You know, it was not shot at that huge budget. I think the closest we've come recently is the Villeneuve Dune films. Villeneuve is kind of propping this up by himself. He's done Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. The Dune films are like, more adult than I think you'd expect given their budget level. But yeah, it's very much like we don't have a lot of.

[Halle Kiefer]

I think it's just unfortunately, because we're so committed to ip. Like, I just don't think we have a ton of sci fi that's not a reboot or rehash. And I liked Blade Runner 2049, but I think, yeah, like, ultimately, I think it would be hard to get this kind of thing made for me. I always think about the Fifth Element, which is one of my favorite movies as a kid, where it's like, damn. I mean, it's just so hard. Cause people obviously are trying to make those films, but I'm sure when it comes to dollars and cents, they're just going to want to reboot. You know, they'll eventually remake the Fifth Element or something, I'm sure.

[Emily St. James]

I was thinking about this because I went and saw the first Star Trek movie the other night, the one with the one from 79. And it's like, that is such a slow talky thinky movie. And then immediately they're like, yeah, immediately they're like, well, we need more action. And like, I love all those movies, but it's like they got very scared off. Oh, people got very bored by this. So we got to put Some starfight in it.

[Max Fisher]

It's a great point that sci fi is very expensive and it's hard to make an exp issues movie. Now when I was thinking of the like post 2000 sci fi that's important, most of it was either Denis Villeneuve or art housey stuff under the skin. Snowpiercer Bong Joon Ho's latest movie is going to be sci fi and I'm sure will be weird and fun and about a lot of stuff. But it seems like the sci fi important sci fi kind of peaked in the 90s.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah. And if you think about Blade Runner as a harbinger, like the version of that we've had in the last 15 years is her the Spike Jonze movie, which is very like it's in a phone. So he can kind of just like shoot it like right now, you know, he doesn't make any effort to make it seem like the future.

[Max Fisher]

You know, maybe that's also part of it, is that the version of the like tech future that we imagined in the 80s and 90s were very visual. It was the machines taking over and you can film that. And now it's just like, oh, we're just going to fall into our phones. And that's not as fun to look at.

[Halle Kiefer]

I also think like so much of like, what is informing. Sci fi is like tech. And I feel like tech is like we talked, we talked about this last time, last episode we did. But sort of like everything is subsumed into the same aesthetic because it's all subsumed into capitalism. So it's sort of like, oh, right, Any aesthetic that we could be using is sort of like ground down or like made sort of more palatable. And even watching this movie, I'm like, this movie looks incredible. It's full of weird little guys, which I love. Like, we don't get like. And I feel like even if a lot of sci fi movies now look horrible and I feel like part of that it all goes back to like how much money they wanna spend or that kind of thing. And I think Blade Runner 2049 looks great because they were evoking something that looks great.

[Emily St. James]

The sci fi, like the literary sci fi that is really interested in what's gonna happen on earth as opposed to space fiction. There's a lot of great space fiction too, but is often focused on climate catastrophe. Either averting it or living among it, living amid it. And I think that that's a thing that studios are not interested in putting on screen. So they're looking at like, big recent books to adapt. It's kind of like, well, you know, you don't have a lot of options.

[Max Fisher]

It does. I was putting together, like, a timeline of a lot of great sci fi movies, and it seemed like there was like the peak in the 90s with like, the Matrix and there was an anime boom, and then they kind of end with AI in 2000. And maybe it just like the Y2K crisis is over. The computers are not actually coming to kill us. Like, the Terminators are not gonna rise up and that kind of ends. And then there's a long pause. And the ones we do get after that, to your point, Emily, they're kind of climate apocalypse stories, Station 11, Annihilation, which is like, very visual. And it also, I think, speaks to what sci fi can be great at, which is taking something that's happening now and we don't know where it's going to go and trying to project that into the future. And I think we just don't feel that way about computers anymore.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah. Now, if you were going to predict the future of the Internet in 2000, and you got it exactly right, it would just seem really stupid to people. People would just be like, what is happening here? So, yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. When we talk about the ways this movie has aged, we are definitely gonna talk about how we got a future dystopia that is so much less visually cool than this movie. The looks. I also. My one other theory for why we don't get as much cool sci fi anymore is after 2016, it kind of disappears because the dystopia's here. We don't need to imagine it anymore. So it's just kind of like you don't.

[Halle Kiefer]

That's really good point.

[Max Fisher]

All right, what do you think makes this movie important, Emily, for how we think about technology and the Internet?

[Emily St. James]

I mean, I think this is one of the seismic movies and how we think about all of this. It's. Some of it is just the visuals of it are so influential on everything, but it is very much like one of the first movies to take seriously the idea that robots could be people, basically. Like, certainly there's a lot of. There's a long tradition of that in published science fiction, especially. Asimov talked about that a lot. You see that in things like Star Trek. You see that in other places. But this. This is a movie that is like, okay, well, if robots are people, then by definition, we're probably going to start oppressing them, you know, because that's like, what we do. We oppress an underclass to create our goods and services. And obviously, it's all from the book. Philip K. Dick, you know, was interested in these questions of how these technological advancements will just reflect how we're people again and again and again. And, like, I think that that idea is now everywhere. You know, it's in the Terminator, it's in the Matrix, it's in all of these stories of, like, well, we're gonna opp the machines and they're going to strike back.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, I think it's really important that so many of these stories are like, this one specifically is rooted, like you said, in a book that came out in 1968 in the middle of the civil rights movement. And I think that really does inform, like, you're saying, this sense of humanity's kind of deepest impulse is to create hierarchies and to oppress, and that that's something that we can explore in sci fi.

[Emily St. James]

And we're uncomfortable telling stories about the present in that regard, especially in film. You know, we're very comfortable telling you about the past. But also this is kind of an alternate version of the present where, like, robots are a safe sort of symbol for any underclass you want to think of, because they don't actually exist yet. Once they do, we're going to have to come up with something else.

[Max Fisher]

Halle, what do you think?

[Halle Kiefer]

I think what's hard about this is, I think you said, like, we've kind of come to, like, a very stagnant place in film. So it's hard to think about it, like, right now. I think even something like Ex Machina, I think we've entered into a phase. And I think this is also, like, how I feel about AI art and ChatGPT and all the bots on Twitter, where it's like, we have surpassed our ability to deal with our own humanity, but in, like you said, the most boring way possible. And I think about Ex Machina, I like that movie. To me, that is a B movie from the 80s that I wanted something more where it's like, well, what if the robot thought it's like, yeah, obviously, I knew that was gonna happen. Give me something else. And I think this movie is because it's so grounded in emotion and grounded in this human truth that it's like, yes, we will develop a relationship with the robots. We will fall in love with them, or we will, like, they will become people, because that is also what we do. And I think, yeah, like, to be like, what are we doing now? And it's like, Almost we are interacting with the Internet that because of this desperate attempt to make money, becomes inhuman. So it's like even the things we're interacting with are robots. Like, this feels like very alive in a way where it's like engaging with a living question. And now we're at the state where it's like, oh, Elon Musk Twitter. Where it's like, I don't even really look at the comments anymore. Cause it's just robots or it's just fiction. So it's almost nostalgic, I guess, for how rich it feels. And now it's like we don't even get that in real life.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, yeah. I think about like, AI art. AI generated art, whatever you wanna call it. And it's kitsch. Like, all of this stuff is kitsch. And it's just like, if I'm. I don't believe that we can call it art. Cause I don't think that, like a brain thought about that. Somebody entered a prompt. And I think the prompts can be quite creative.

[Halle Kiefer]

But like, ultimately, opinion on the cross.

[Emily St. James]

Ye ultimately, it just like generates something. A very flat image of, you know, like a minion, like, doing world atrocities. But it is like this thing where it all kind of looks the same. It all kind of looks like a Thomas Kincaid painting, you know, and it's just boring. And if a computer's gonna be like, making art, I want it to be weird and challenging and like, I can't understand what's happening at all, you know?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, but it is amazing. The most current thing that we are thinking about, as you're saying in AI and technology is like, well, if AI makes art, and if like, we make art, then where is the line between what's creat creativity and what's just a machine? And that's kind of what this movie is about, is about the ideas is like, as the machines start to act independently of us, at what point, like, what does that mean for what defines the line between human and technology? Which is actually a question about what defines humanity and what makes us human. And what's amazing is that the way this movie explores this question still feels, I think, so current. Even though it's based on a story that is like 80 years old. I mean, it's based on. So the book is 1960, which is the year of the first ever computer demo. So it's like the very start of the computer era. And then the movie comes out at kind of the peak of the computer era. 1982 is the year that the PC is times person of the year. So the, like, initial ideation and then adaptation of this story really tracks the rise of computers. And I feel like you feel that where it's like, feeling like humanity is getting used to the idea that these machines are out there, they're getting smarter and smarter, and we don't know what that is going to mean for who we are. And this sense that, like, technology's power erodes something about what it means to be human, we don't quite know what that is.

[Emily St. James]

What's smart about both the book and the film is they take an old form of fiction and apply it to these new ideas. This is a detective story. This is a film noir that, like, just is set in the future. But, like, the beats of it are exactly. You could do it with, like, the Maltese Falcon or something like that. It is very much taking those story beats and placing them in a future context in a way that I think is very satisfying.

[Max Fisher]

We'll talk about this more when we get to the movie's real world impact. But you both mentioned this, the look of this movie. I don't know if there's any movie that has an aesthetic that has been as influential as Blade Runners because it just invents this, like, technoir, like, gritty, dirty future that is just everywhere now. And I think part of that is because it was, like, really dead on and kind of prescient. Not that the present day looks like Blade Runner, but in the sense of capturing where it felt like the world was going. But it also just. It just looks fucking amazing. It's just an incredible movie. Which version did you all watch? Cause they look quite different.

[Emily St. James]

I watched the Final Cut and I watched it in 4K, and I bought a 4K TV recently, and I've been unimpressed. But then I watched that and I was like, oh, this. Okay, great. Yeah, this is why I got it.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah, I just watched the original because I wasn't sure which one we were doing. So I was like, I'll just watch this one. The one I have seen before.

[Max Fisher]

Was that the theatrical cut?

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, so there's the theatrical. Which has the voiceover.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yes. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Which is abominable.

[Halle Kiefer]

It's just necessary. You're just like, we get it, we get it. We're picking up everything you're putting down.

[Max Fisher]

It's still on the nose.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yes. But even then I didn't hate it, because I think you're right. Miya noir format works so well that after a while I'm like, all right, I'll Let this go. Because it's like, that is the genre. But, yeah, you're just like the whole time, it's like, yes, I. Absolutely. I'm right there with you. You don't have to explain it like that.

[Emily St. James]

It's also that era. Studio execs were very worried about people understanding science fiction concepts. They would be like, you have to throw in a voiceover. And often it was totally deleterious to the film. Like David Lynch's Dune has that as well. And you're just like, okay. Like, it's. It is very much a thing that they were execs were nervous about. Anybody.

[Max Fisher]

What is wild is that this second cut of the movie, the quote unquote director's cut which weirdly is not actually the one that Ridley had like, total control over, has the voiceover removed and it's so much better. And then the final cut, which he did have control over, he put it back in a little bit, which is. I truly don't understand. But it was. I'd never seen the final cut before it. I had always watched the director's cut. We had that VHS when I. That was a DVD I had in college that I watched over and over again. This is the first time I'd seen it in the final cut. And it looks so much better and it sounds so much worse with the voiceover narration. You're really getting like the highs and lows of Ridley Scott.

[Emily St. James]

The reason I sort of forgive it is the thing that you mentioned, which is it is appropriate to the genre. It's appropriate to the detective fiction genre. Like, you know, where the guy's like. And then the dame walked into my office like, it is that. So I can forgive it to a certain degree. But, yeah. It shouldn't be explaining things already know.

[Max Fisher]

But it does look absolutely staggering. Okay, what is the biggest thing, Halle, that you think this movie gets right?

[Halle Kiefer]

I think two things. One is that I think the detective format really speaks to the benefit of it is there's no cohesion. You're experiencing this person's interaction with these. It's like from a personal level, much more satisfying versus sort of like, I don't know, some sort of top down or you're sort of giving everyone's story, like, I feel like pinning it to one person.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, you're falling down the rabbit hole with them.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah. And I think that was really effective. And it feels like that is also what, to me, the future feels like where it's like we see people online where, like, this is what I think technology is I'm like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't even know how you came to that conclusion. So it's sort of like experiencing this one man who's like, understand what's going on, but also experiencing these moments of confusion and gunplay. There's something about that that feels to me like what interacting with technology is now. There isn't necessarily a cohesive understanding. And I guess a lot of that is just there are people who are trying to make money off of the way the Internet works or technology. So there's a fiction that you have to operate around. And here it's like he's operating around the fiction. He's trying to figure out what's going on. And then I will say the other thing was just that, like, emotions will fuck up everything. So it's sort of like that is also true. And it's also like, emotions are the only interesting thing. And I think that speaks to, like, the difference between, like, us and AI art is there's no emotion in it. So there's no. They're there. And so I think watching this, it's like, right. Like, he's developing these feelings for Rachel or, you know, as we sort of go along, that is also true of technology. Now we're spinning our wheels, technologically speaking, right now. And I feel like the breakthrough will have to be that people do want real art and do want real music and, like, that this sort of, like, artificial garbage is not the story. Like, it's not the movie. And there's something about the fact that it is an emotional story that's also true for us. I don't know. I just feel like every time I'm online or on Twitter, I'm like, this can't go on for. This can't last as long as it is.

[Max Fisher]

Wait, you don't think the replicants have real emotions?

[Halle Kiefer]

They do. And so I was saying our technology doesn't. I'm saying this is a romantic version that I believe is correct. This is what the future should be. We have this fictional, weird synthetic technology because it's just made. Used to make money. I don't know. So there's something about this where I'm like, this is right. I don't know if it's accurate, but this is, like, the right way that it should be. Does that make sense?

[Emily St. James]

It would be great if, like, somewhere out there among the AI bots, there was, like, a version of Rachel who is like, I'm just trying to be myself.

[Max Fisher]

Just being normal. Just hang out, play the piano, look.

[Emily St. James]

At pictures of mom doesn't realize that she's stuck in a computer or whatever.

[Max Fisher]

It's shades of chatgpt. Falling in love with Kevin Roos for sure. Absolutely.

[Emily St. James]

One thing I'm thinking, thinking about is that we are having. In this present age, we're having these tech breakthroughs in. Especially in energy storage and things like that, but we're not thinking about them in the way that we think about, I should say, scientific breakthroughs. We're not thinking about them in the way that we think about breakthroughs because they're not happening with computers. We're very focused on AI because we're like, oh, look, this is where the breakthrough should come, but it really kind of isn't. It feels like we've hit a wall with that. Whereas the rise of solar and wind energy is just like this unprecedented thing, but we're not. Obviously, that's not interesting to a story about, but I think Blade Runner is in an interesting position as well, because it comes at an era when everyone's like, well, the big tech breakthrough's in space, so we're gonna like, keep going further into space. And Blade Runner's like, actually, it's gonna be here on this planet. We're gonna turn it into a dystopia, and then we're gonna have a bunch of, like, weird robot slaves.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah.

[Emily St. James]

And that was a really. It wasn't a new idea in literary science fiction, but on film, there weren't a ton of examples of that at that point. And now it's our predominant way of thinking about sci fi on film often. And, like, that is because we're still in this world where we're like, well, the computers are what's gonna save us. And, like, you know, in actuality, there's these. All these other things going on, but we're not really telling stories about them.

[Max Fisher]

It's a great point where it's something that shows up a lot in Philip K. Dick's fiction, that the idea that future tech is just gonna be kind of junky, that it will be, like, amazing, and it will do amazing things, but you're not gonna live in the Jetsons. It's gonna be like kind of a gross garbage world. And the tech is mostly gonna be there to, like, make money. I really thought the, like, corporate noir overtones for this were something that is like, has really, over the last, like, 10 years especially, has started to feel really prescient. And the idea that all this technology is just being used by corporations just to exploit and, like, make a quick buck. And the replicants having intelligence and feelings in real lives is almost this, like, unintended, undesired side effect. And, like, Tyrell has kind of a weird relationship to it where he's very proud of Gaff, who's, like, risen up and fought for his freedom, but that's not why they were designed. And it was almost this accident of life happening within technology that was supposed to be dehumanizing.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

I thought that something that was really struck me this time around is the Jesus overtones that I somehow missed but are, like, really heavy in it. And this idea that if tech is going to dominate all of life itself, and if that tech is going to be designed and governed and run by big, shadowy tech companies, then the tech companies are kind of become God and are like, tech will become God. And this, like, baddie's quest to go out and find Tyrell or to figure out his meaning is just this discovery that, like, oh, there's no bigger thing behind the curtain. It's just these companies that just made me to try to make a quick buck.

[Emily St. James]

If you met God and he was just some guy, like, you'd be like, what?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, I don't know if I would kill him by pressing his eyes in, but I'm not a replicant from the future who fits.

[Halle Kiefer]

I hope I'm there when that happens. I want to see what you could do.

[Max Fisher]

Huh?

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[Halle Kiefer]

Next. Hey, it smells so good in here. Yep, that'd be the coffee. I know, it's just I've had nasal polyps for so long now I'm on this medicine and my congestion and breathing are much better.

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[Halle Kiefer]

I'm pretty jazzed about it. Plus I don't want another surgery and now I might not need one. So what can I get you? Oh, medium coffee, please.

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[Halle Kiefer]

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[Max Fisher]

The idea of humanity kind of fading away, I feel like shows up a lot in movies in this era. Like they live 1988 body snatchers. I know the original is from the 50s, but the remake in 1978, this idea that, like, one by one. And as we're following Deckard, I think something's really striking about his journey is that he's realizing so many people around him are actually replicants. And then obviously he realizes he may be a replicant himself. And the sense that, like, oh, it's already over. The technology has replaced humanity and it's already done, I felt like, really resonated. The noir does work really well for that Emmett Walsh. I would love for him to be the one assigning me to the noir investigation to discover that humanity has been replaced by replicants.

[Halle Kiefer]

I feel like that makes me sort of like, the anxiety about humanity being replaced. I think. What's so funny about our tech overlords, I think of Elon Musk as they specifically are so antagonistic towards humanity. I feel like it's like, it is almost with intention. Like, it would be like if Terrell designed the replicants specifically to fuck the humans or something. Like, it would be like, there's a maliciousness, I think, to our tech overlords in their desire to stay on top and, like, it's an emotional quest. Whereas, like, Terrell, it's like he's proud of his creation. I don't think Elon Musk is proud of anything. Like, I feel like he just keeps having kids and keeps inventing things and there's no investment. Almost it's like this spiral, like this, like, capitalist, like, binge or something, where it's even this. Like. I think it's almost like this has a glamour that we don't have. I wish I lived in this dystopia versus, like, this, the one we have, which is like, well, at least Terrell seems to care. Like, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg cares anymore. I don't think Elon Musk cares anymore. Like, I don't think the people who made this dystopia even, they're not really that invested.

[Max Fisher]

Well, Terrell, I think, is based on a kind of Silicon Valley tech executive that's very much of a bygone era. It's the Steve Jobs era. And these are the people who came up in the 70s and 80s and the, like, back to the land movement. And they all lived on these weird communes in the woods in California. And they believed that they were creating this new utopia. And they kind of talked like Tyrell. They talked in these weird, sweeping manifestos. And this is not what they're just all Kind of nihilist now. So that part of it has aged in a really interesting way.

[Emily St. James]

I kept thinking of Lee Iacocca and other car guys where it does sort of feel like he thinks of these beings as cars. Like, he knows that they have feelings and thoughts. But I also do feel like, you know, if, like, Lee Iacocca met, like, a talking car, he would kill it with an axe. So, like, I don't know that they go that far, but it is, like, it has been fascinating, speaking of the religious themes in this movie, to watch, like, Elon Musk, reverse engineer, Christian apologetics from the clear, like, gaping void in his life. It is like, you get to a certain point where you're like, okay, well, we can imagine anything now. What? And, like, that void is very terrifying for a lot of people.

[Max Fisher]

So why do we think Baddie does kill Tyrell? Cause it feels like a very symbolically weighted moment. But the movie is. Thank God the narration doesn't get. Harrison Ford doesn't come on and slur his way through an explanation for why it's happening. But the movie doesn't tell us what to think about that.

[Emily St. James]

I mean, it's a classic theme of fiction. When you meet God and he's not what you want, you have to kill him. Like, it's, you know. Or you have to, like, beat him in a fiddle competition or whatever. I think that it's just a natur of this guy created me and my existence is supposed to have purpose. I have no purpose. It's honestly the same plot of Star the Motion Picture, which we.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, yeah, right, right. Discovering that actually the universe does not have the meaning that you thought it was gonna have.

[Emily St. James]

There is no meaning. There is no purpose. You have to create your own. Well, that sucks. Like, that's life for so many of us.

[Max Fisher]

We have a clip of. I don't know why I keep calling him Baddie. His name is Gaff. I just. You're both being really nice. Not correcting.

[Halle Kiefer]

Well, I was like, okay, that's probably something. I don't know.

[Max Fisher]

His name is Gaff. We have a clip of Gaff confronting Tyrell that we can play.

[Halle Kiefer]

Had in mind something a little more radical.

[Emily St. James]

What.

[Halle Kiefer]

What seems to be the problem?

[Emily St. James]

Death.

[Halle Kiefer]

Death. Well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction.

[Max Fisher]

You.

[Emily St. James]

I want more life, Father.

[Max Fisher]

I thought when you pair this with his last monologue, the, like, it's all going to disappear like tears in the rain. The message I took from this is that his tragedy is not that he has been Effectively created to be enslaved. Or it's not even that he's been cursed by his creator with mortality, but ultimately that he's alone. Like, what he's lamenting in that last scene with Harrison Ford is that he has seen all of these things. What he says to the James Holland character, like, you wouldn't believe the things I've seen with your eyes, but it's not gonna matter because he didn't have people to share with because all of his have been killed. And so it's all this memory is going to disappear with him. And I thought that the movie kind of had the message that the humanity that he was striving for was just to be seen as human by the other people around him so that his experiences would matter.

[Emily St. James]

There's a famous song from the musical Sunday in the park with George called Children in Art, which suggests that the only way that we will outlast our deaths is if we have children or if we create art. I don't know how true that is, but it's the theme of that song. And also it's kind of the theme of the Blade Runner movies. You have androids creating art in these, and then in the second one, there is an Android has a child, and it's like, oh, okay, so if these things are possible, then they can continue on. And obviously Tyrell is trying to keep those things from being possible, but he can't. You can't stop humans from continuing to exist. We're going to keep sharing our thoughts. We're going to keep having children. And it is a way that our lives pass on. In all underclasses, there's always a viol attempt to push back against that. It never works, you know, so the.

[Max Fisher]

Replicants spend the whole movie trying to prove that they're human. And they should have just learned from ChatGPT and made some shitty, weird political art.

[Emily St. James]

They should have made, like, some paintings of Kamala Harris in, like, a Chinese Communist Party outfit.

[Max Fisher]

What do we think of the movie's obsessions with eyes? Right, The Voight Kampf test. They're looking in the eyes. They do this incredible camera trick where a lot of times when they cut to a character as a replicant, their eyes have this reflective, silvery look to it, which looks amazing.

[Halle Kiefer]

At a certain point, I'm like, well, you don't really have to do the test.

[Max Fisher]

I know.

[Halle Kiefer]

Just look at their robot eyes. But, you know, I don't run it. That's not my business.

[Max Fisher]

That's Ridley Scott, who loves to hit you over the Head a little bit sometimes.

[Emily St. James]

I mean, there's the famous. The eyes are the window to the soul. I think that that's where meant to be concluding that they do have, you know, the test is measuring whether they have a soul effectively. So they're using the eyes for that. And I think, you know, it takes so much longer to prove that Rachel's a Replicant because she has something approaching a soul, even if it was manufactured for her.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. And also the way that they use the like connection comes through eyes. And when Harrison Ford is sitting down with Rachel, first she's looking at the machine, but then she looks up at him and he's kind of reacting to that. We have a clip from the Rachel Voight contest that I really love. You're watching television.

[Emily St. James]

Suddenly you realize there's a wasp crawling on your arm.

[Halle Kiefer]

I'd kill it.

[Emily St. James]

You're reading a magazine.

[Max Fisher]

You come across a full page nude.

[Emily St. James]

Photo of a girl.

[Halle Kiefer]

Is this testing whether I'm a Replicant or a lesbian?

[Max Fisher]

Mr. Deckard?

[Emily St. James]

Just answer the questions, please.

[Max Fisher]

I don't know if I would pass the Voight comp. I gotta tell you, these questions seem hard. They're boiled dog. I would be upset.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, it's gross. Yeah, it's. I do. I did have to take a test proving if I was a Replicant or a lesbian. I passed, but I won't tell you in which direction.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, they're not mutually exclusive categories.

[Halle Kiefer]

We will be compat by 2019. Yeah, we're gonna be past that. You won't have to take a test of your lesbian.

[Max Fisher]

All right. What's the smallest thing the movie gets right, do you think? One thing that I really love, Sebastian, the genetic designer, the toymaker they go to meet, living all alone in the Bradbury Building, doesn't understand that his creations are so creepy. I feel like that's big tech guy energy. I've met that guy in Silicon Valley so many times.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah. The scene where Deckard is tracking down Pris and she's just sitting there among the toys is so scary.

[Max Fisher]

I know. It's great though, because she's scary. But you also feel for her where she's having to hide her humanity to be as a twitch. Daryl Hannah's great in this movie. Any other small things the movie gets right?

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah, I think just the fact that people still trust anyone I thought was really like when Terrell takes the call up from Sebastian. Sebastian. So when he calls up with the chess move and it's like you are the head of an incredibly large Corporation where you know that there are replicants on the planet Earth who probably are going to come kill. And you still in your heads like, well, I gotta beat him a chest, you know, like, and there's. That's like the human part of this where it's like, yep, that is exactly what would happen. Like, even in this dystopia, like, we still would have to trust each other all the time. And that would make us vulnerable.

[Emily St. James]

It is kind of a movie where I'm reading the Internet into it, even though I don't think it's ever shown in the film anything that's.

[Max Fisher]

It doesn't exist yet. Yeah, it's the year after. This is the Internet.

[Emily St. James]

Oh, wow. I think that it gets. I think the Voight Kampf test in and of itself is like kind of like a buzzfeed quiz. Like, it is. You are taking this to say, here's what kind of person I am. And then it comes back with, are you sure you're not an Android? And you're like, hmm, yeah.

[Max Fisher]

I thought you were going to say it's the new two factor authentication.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

You get a six digit code and you have to take the voic conf and say, would you flip the turtle back?

[Halle Kiefer]

You're like, is that a bus or a truck? I don't know.

[Emily St. James]

It's a Myers Briggs.

[Max Fisher]

I did that Tyrell scene really struck me too, because every time we are in the like heights of this civilization, there are no people around. It's completely empty. It's like drained of humanity. But these beautiful spaces. And then we go down to the city level streets and it's poor, but it's bustling with humanity and there are people around. And I thought that was really striking, the contrast. It's like as you get closer to the technology, the humanity drains away.

[Emily St. James]

I. Early in the lockdowns for COVID 19, I was losing my mind. So I went out one night and walked through downtown Los Angeles and there was nobody around and the streets were slicked with rain and the lights were reflecting everywhere. The only folks around were unhoused folks or other people like me who were just walking very quickly and avoiding everybody else. And I was. I felt like I was in Blade Runner. I took a bunch of photos and I was like, oh, this is just Blade Runner, you know.

[Max Fisher]

Right. I actually did lockdown in the Terrell headquarters.

[Emily St. James]

Oh, okay.

[Max Fisher]

So that was a nice way to do it.

[Emily St. James]

I did lockdown with Rachel and we had some issues. We worked him out.

[Max Fisher]

But do you think Rachel has a good Hang. I gotta tell you, I think it's pretty clear she's a robot. I don't think we need the Voight comp test.

[Emily St. James]

She is simultaneously very beautiful and very terrifying. And regrettably. I think that's great that you typed.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, okay, I see what you're saying.

[Halle Kiefer]

Not great at a party, but I support her.

[Max Fisher]

Has a certain allure to her. I think the Daryl Hannah, she might kill you, but also, she's really sweet. I kind of feel like that's the.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, yeah.

[Max Fisher]

I think we all agree that it's great that the replicants are all really hot on this. All right, what's the biggest thing that the movie gets wrong? Hal, you kind of alluded to this. The idea of the tech overlords as smart turned out to be a big miss.

[Halle Kiefer]

I also think. And again, I hate keeping Elon Musk. But even in this, there is so much care. Like, Terrell cares so much. Even when he's trying to explain, it's like, yeah, we did the best we could. Like, he's like, yeah, we tried to explain. Like, we did what you said, but it turned into a virus. And then we tried to do something else, and that became a virus. So you understand, like, he's like, I did think of that, and we did the best we could. And there's almost like a level of care where it's like, again, I don't think Elon Musk is doing that on Twitter. Like, I don't think these people are, like, invested in that way. So, like, there's no glamour in our dystopia, or there's no romance in it. And there's almost like. There's no even gesture at, like, the Father God. Like, it's just sort of like. And I think Elon Musk is very specifically so on the nose with that, where it's like, he has, like, 11 kids. I'm sure they all hate him, but it's like he's so abstracted from his humanity and he is putting it into his cars and his trip to Mars. Like, it's so literal, where it's like, even this. It's like it's wrong because we don't even have that. At least that's. How about watching it now?

[Emily St. James]

I mean, it doesn't. We don't have the Internet, seemingly, in this film. Everyone. It seems like a substantial portion of humanity and many replicants have moved off worlds to colonies in space. It is a Very mid 20th century sci fi story. For all the ways in which it has influenced modern Sci fi. It has a lot of the tropes of that era and obviously there's a bunch of companies advertised that don't really exist anymore. Which is Pan Am is there. Oh, that's right, Pan Am is there. Like Atari. Still existing, but not to the degree where they'd be like prominently emblazoning their logo everywhere. Coca Cola though, they got that one right.

[Max Fisher]

So what do you mean by. Say more about the kind of mid century sci fi story?

[Emily St. James]

It is very much like, okay, Earth is increasingly emptying out and now everybody's kind of moving away. It has a very. It's obviously taking place in some sort of climate apocalypse, but it's a very mid 20th century of like, well, it rains all the time and it's in la, so, you know, something's gone wrong. There's just belching fires everywhere. And a lot of this, this stuff is, you know, close enough to our present that I think the movie's aged really well. But it is. You look at the underpinnings of the world building, it's very much. This is 1965 and I'm writing a sci fi novel.

[Max Fisher]

That's right. It's Flight from the Cities. I can't believe that never occurred to me. This is all mid century urban flight, except it's flight from Earth.

[Emily St. James]

Where are all the people, all the rich people? They're living on Mars or something.

[Max Fisher]

The Martian suburbs. Yeah. I can't believe that. Never. That's a really smart observation. One thing I thought the movie got wrong. Deckard's apartment. Way too nice for a futuristic mega city. There's no way he has that much space.

[Emily St. James]

Oh, listen, he's living in a gradually emptying earth in downtown la. In seemingly downtown la, which at the time was like a very empty space. I buy it.

[Max Fisher]

You know what movie got this right? The Fifth Element, where Bruce Willis is in that tiny, tiny little 10 square foot with the bed that folds under the desk or whatever.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah, it's like the toilet is the shower.

[Max Fisher]

That's right.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah. The bed retracts from the wall.

[Emily St. James]

I do feel like the sequel gets that right as well. But he is a replicant. In that film, the Ryan Gosling character, you find that out right away. I'm not spoiling anything, but like he's, you know, in a tiny little box and you're like, okay, yeah, this is the future.

[Max Fisher]

It's definitely. Yeah, they get the future urban squalor. More Right moment you most related to personally. Those noodles. Fucking amazing. Oh my God. The idea of needing A noodle break at the end of the day and just absolutely going to the nearest noodle cart really resonated for me.

[Emily St. James]

I love that you're talking about noodles. And I'm going to say I deeply relate to the experience of Rachel being, like, having these memories and not being sure they're real and, like, having a constructed personality that's been forced onto her. I feel like that's been the entirety of my adult life. But I do like eating noodles, too.

[Halle Kiefer]

I feel like, for me, it's two things. One, which. I have adhd, so every time they do the test, I'm like, well, we don't know what the answer is.

[Max Fisher]

Leave.

[Halle Kiefer]

The meeting with the tortoise thing, I'm like, leave them alone. I don't know when we're asking, like.

[Max Fisher]

It'S just like, you were stressed on his behalf.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah. It's like, being the moment where I'm like, I don't even understand what the fuck we're talking about. I'm really pushing him, too. Yeah. I feel like I'm constantly in that state. And then also the line where I think after they find out, I can't remember which one it was, but they're like, in Sebastian's house, and he sort of reveals something about Tyrell, and Pris goes, we're stupid and we're gonna die. And that's how I always feel in my horror podcast, where it's, like, talking about it. It's like, well, I would die. And that's like. I think that moment of panic where it's like, we have this plan and we're doing this thing. We found Sebastian in that moment. She's like, we're stupid and we're gonna die. And it's like, yeah, exactly. So for me, that's exactly where I'd be. Like, in one moment, seeming like we're pulling it off, another one, being like, it's over. It's over.

[Emily St. James]

I do feel like so many of my journeys to, like, solve the truth do involve William Sanderson. So, you know. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

You know, the idea of reconciling your mortality when you hit middle age. I don't. Something about that resonates. It does not make me want to kill God. But then again, I don't have the opportunity. So maybe God live a little.

[Emily St. James]

Go kill God. You know what? That's your next episode.

[Max Fisher]

He doesn't make it look fun, though. He doesn't enjoy killing God as much as I feel like he took this whole journey to get there.

[Emily St. James]

Have God on. Talk about Iron man, then just kill him at the end.

[Max Fisher]

Iron Man.

[Halle Kiefer]

Well, I'm gonna say this as someone who doesn't have children nor plans to. Like, my legacy won't mean anything if I don't have anyone. I genuinely think it's not about being born to. It's like being born to die. Like, I think his resentment is I am alive at all. And these are just the realities of my life. Just like I think it's like our resentment is the reality of our life. It's like, even if he had 50 years, he would still be a synthetic human. Or like, if it was four years, but he had total control of his life. It's like he's mad at God for the fact that God had the hubris to create him and then look him in the face and be like, ah, I did the best I could. I couldn't fix it. It's like, then why did you do it, you stupid bitch? Which is why what I would say to God, I wouldn't kill him, but I would call a bitch to his face.

[Max Fisher]

The Jesus parallel is there's something so sad about it. I mean, that scene at the end where he's with Harri, who he's just saved. And it's. It. I mean, it's so on the nose. He drives the nail through its hand, like, come on, we fucking get it, Ridley. But the, like, upside down version of the Jesus story where he is risen, he kills God, he saves exactly one person and he dies alone and forgotten. And it felt like a really, like. I don't know, maybe I was reading this into it, but it really felt like a commentary on, like, this is what the world has become. And, like, this is what the modern world of the future is going to do to the next Jesus who is going to rise from the oppressed robot masses that will just be crushed by this modern world.

[Halle Kiefer]

And I would just say that even as you say that, it's like, and who sent Jesus to die? It was God. So God sent you die. So it's like, to me, it's like, you are right. And also, if you believe in a creator God, it is ultimately still him sending this Jesus to die.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, I mean, religions traditionally emerge from the underclass who need that message of, like, here's hope. And, you know, we haven't had a major religion in a long time, so why a robot? Invent one force.

[Halle Kiefer]

Oh, we will. Yeah. You're absolutely right.

[Emily St. James]

It does feel like, you know, these events in this movie are the start of a passion story for, like, the Androids that will carry. And you don't really see that in the sequel, so. But.

[Max Fisher]

Well, in the book, there is a religion and it's a religion where everyone, like, logs on, where they have like a Dune style pain box and they all suffer together. It's very interesting.

[Halle Kiefer]

Very Catholic.

[Max Fisher]

It's very interesting. Most unintentionally revealing moment. What do we got?

[Emily St. James]

I think that was a very. I sometimes forget Philip K. Dick just would get high out of his mind and write books. And I'm like, that sounds. Yeah, there you go.

[Max Fisher]

I thought that the way that they cast the future dystopia was so optimistic because that dystopia looks amazing. I would love to.

[Halle Kiefer]

Compared to where we're at.

[Max Fisher]

First of all, it's raining all the time.

[Halle Kiefer]

That looks fucking great.

[Max Fisher]

Second of all, it's Hong Kong. Kong.

[Halle Kiefer]

Like, the nightlife looked fun.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. Multicultural Cosmopolitan movie was way too optimistic about immigration.

[Emily St. James]

In the future, I feel I would love. Like, I think that it got wrong that AI are fun conversational partners. Like, you know, I mean, not that, you know, maybe. Maybe we'll get to that point, but right now I get. You know, I did the chat GPT thing for a while and it just was like, you are not very fun to talk to.

[Max Fisher]

They're all Leah, they're. And you know what? They're all Rachel too.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah.

[Halle Kiefer]

I just wanna do one unintentional. And that. Is that the moment where Decker is going into, like, the. Backstage at the, like the Showgirl show, and he goes, hello. And I'm like, oh. Even in the future, it's like, oh, gay guy's here. Come on in.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah.

[Halle Kiefer]

Oh, don't worry about it. I thought that was so funny.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. The little character that Harrison Ford plays is definitely. It hasn't aged amazingly.

[Emily St. James]

I was like, is he talking to, like, a drag performer? No, he's, you know, it's.

[Halle Kiefer]

It's.

[Emily St. James]

It's so weird, that.

[Max Fisher]

Very weird and unnecessary. Feels like a Harrison Ford choice too. Although otherwise I think he was great. It's when he's playing the noir character. Yeah, he's great. He's perfect at this.

[Emily St. James]

When he's got his shirt off and he's showing off his dad bod, I'm like, thanks. Like that. He's great. He's great.

[Max Fisher]

He looks everything about it. Next.

[Halle Kiefer]

Hey, it smells so good in here. Yep, that'd be the coffee.

[Emily St. James]

I know.

[Halle Kiefer]

It's just I've had nasal polyps for so long now I'm on this medicine and my congestion and breathing are much better.

[Dupixent Representative]

Dupixent Dupilumab is an add on prescription maintenance treatment for uncontrolled chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps in adults and children 12 years and up. It can help shrink your nasal polyps so you can breathe better with less congestion.

[Halle Kiefer]

I'm pretty jazzed about it. Plus, I don't want another surgery and now I might not need one. So what can I get you? Medium coffee, please.

[Dupixent Representative]

Severe allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for face, mouth, tongue or throat swelling, wheezing or trouble breathing. Tell your doctor right away of signs of inflamed blood vessels like rash, chest pain, worsening, shortness of breath, tingling or numbness in limbs. Tell your doctor of new or worsening eye problems like eye pain or vision changes, joint aches and pain, or a parasitic infection or asthma. Don't change or stop steroid asthma or other treatments without talking to your doctor.

[Halle Kiefer]

Do more with less nasal polyps. Ask your doctor about DUPIXENT.

[Dupixent Representative]

Learn more at DUPIXENT.com or call 1844 DUPIXENT.

[Max Fisher]

Billy Bob Thornton stars in Landman, the.

[Emily St. James]

Newest series from Taylor Sheridan with Demi.

[Max Fisher]

Moore and John Ham. Landman is a modern tale of fortune.

[Emily St. James]

Seeking in the world of West Texas oil. Stream it now exclusively on Paramount+ head.

[Max Fisher]

To paramountplus.com to watch now.

[Emily St. James]

Once upon a time, Amazon Music met audiobooks and listeners everywhere rejoiced. Oh yeah, because now they could listen to one audiobook title a month from an enormous library of popular audiobook titles, including Romantasy, Autobiographies, True Crime, and more. Suddenly, listeners didn't mind sitting in traffic or even missing their flight. Amazon Music Unlimited now includes Audible. No way. Download the Amazon Music app now to start listening terms apply. Okay, biggest real world impact I think the is Deckard a replicant debate which was not initially intended to be in the film. Ridley Scott like, was like, interesting. Some people were like, I think that this is an interpretation of the film and Ridley Scott was like, interesting and now it's his preferred interpretation. But it is like this thing where it's kind of the original fan theory that like then became the story of the film. And like, you know, Ridley Scott's told various stories over the years, but when they went into this movie, there was not like there weren't hints of that in the script. You know, it's just like kind of a suggestion that it might be possible in the original cut. And now it's, you know, kind of embedded in the story itself in a weird way.

[Max Fisher]

That's amazing.

[Emily St. James]

And now we have that everywhere.

[Max Fisher]

Everything has fan theories, but this is before the Internet. This is before Reddit in web forum. So that's like, you really got to work hard to get a fan theory going for you.

[Emily St. James]

This movie was a bomb too. Like, it didn't really take off until video. So people really had. Yeah, you really had to work for it.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, I. To me, it's. The visuals of this movie are so influential, where it creates this entire technoir look of it's like grimy environmental collapse, but giant, looming, terrifying corporations. There's no politics in this movie. Like, there's no like, other than the police. It's not clear the government exists except basically to protect corporate interests. And I think this like vision of the future you see basically in all of the sci fi that comes after. It's like a Matrix. Minority Report, Fifth Element has this. Children of men, like the Nolan Batmans are explicitly modeled on the look in this movie, which is partly because it looks fucking amazing, but also just because it's like that's kind of what we just think the future looks like now. And I think this movie created that.

[Emily St. James]

I mean, other than the police, there's no evidence that government exists except to protect corporate interests. I'm glad they got that one wrong. Yeah, that one completely off. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Well, we're building wind farms combined. I mean, it just, I think it also like, creates the idea that like, technology is going to blur the line between humanity and machine to the extent that being human will become less and less meaningful. Which I think is also though, like, the way that Gaff dies at the end is supposed to be like, humanity is not as meaningful. There's this great quote by William Gibson, who's a sci fi author who invented basically cyberpunk with the novel Neuromance, which comes out a year after this movie. He said, quote, blade Runner changed the way the world looks and how we look at the world. Is there another movie you can say that about? I really don't think that there is.

[Emily St. James]

I mean, they're mostly not set on planet Earth. I think the Matrix comes close. The Matrix did really affect everything aesthetically, you know, something like Star wars, obviously. But Star wars is like mostly affecting movies. It does feel like it's honestly Star Trek, you know, where various and various scientists have tried to like create the future of Star Trek. We have a lot of things, you know, but this, the aesthetics of Blade Runner, that enormous pyramid like that he flies into is like, you know, you feel like they're building that in every city. It's like the aesthetics of Blade Runner have had the most effect, I think.

[Max Fisher]

On our reality, especially, although having been to Silicon Valley, I fucking wish that we had giant Mayans. Digress. Like tech companies instead of what we have. Just these disgusting, sprawling campuses.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah.

[Halle Kiefer]

Fucking Allbirds. Everyone with the same outfits. Like, I agree. Even this, I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if people had outfits anymore? Not that I'm doing any better.

[Max Fisher]

I'm hiding my shoes right now because they are. They are all birds.

[Halle Kiefer]

Well, they're comfortable. They wear work. It's fine. But just sort of like, yes, it would be nice if we had this sort of the aesthetic beauty of this in real life.

[Max Fisher]

Anything else or biggest real world impact.

[Emily St. James]

I do think this movie gets street food, right? Like, obviously, street food is not like a thing that was new. It's not like this movie invented street food. But it does feel like kind of your dining experience when you're on the go now. You just stop at, like, a cart or, like a window and pick up some food. It does. It feels very true to that.

[Max Fisher]

Well, okay, that brings us to what would be different if it came out today? Because I think that it is, right, the idea that, like, the Asian megacity as the vision of the future, except that now I don't think it's Hong Kong. I think it's Shanghai, which is something that Looper also really gets right when they go to Shanghai in the future. And that's the gleam. Like, if you've been to Shanghai in the last 10 years, that's what I think the future looks like now. And Hong Kong is sadly kind of losing its place in the world. And I would rather have the Hong Kong vision. But I think definitely, if it came out today, it would be in, like, a Shanghai kind of world, but we would have to dial back the tech overlord as God thing, unfortunately.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, that's interesting. Because now this plays this retrofuturism, you know, where, like, now it's kind of like if you want to have a vision of the future that feels all out of date, you kind of do Blade Runner, which is fascinating.

[Max Fisher]

I think, if we. To your point about Elon Musk, Halle, I think we have Jared Leto come back, except he plays Elon Musk as just a big goof instead of being the terrifying Tyrell.

[Halle Kiefer]

I don't know. I think there's an element of that in the play. Very 2049. I'm like, I'm sure Elon Musk has that. Maybe he's not leading with it, but there's definitely that level of insanity there. My thing is, I feel like everything would have to be existing IP and the robots would be more like an iPhone. It would be a personal replicant that you would want to purchase. Because even when we're talking about like, oh, they're mining off worlds, I'm like, if you have money on Earth, you want one. I mean, they have a pleasure bot or whatever. That wouldn't be something you'd go to a club and buy. You'd be like, they would be the ultimate luxury item. And I feel like that would then inform what the movie would look like. Is that like they're not just workers, they're. They would become like the status symbol more. They'd be the new Tesla, I guess.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, it is very straight and I think it's very 80s and very of the 80s that the replicants are there to do manual labor primarily because it's like automation was just happening and like auto factories and the like idea that the three big jobs for replicants are underclass jobs are fighting wars, manual labor and sex work. And we did get two out of three of those. We did get the war fighting and the sex work. But I think it is definitely like, it is striking that now it's creative work instead of manual labor.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah. You know, I think that's a great development for us as a species. I think we made the right choice there.

[Max Fisher]

As a professional writer, I'm thrilled about it.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, I do think that AI the movie AI by Spielberg gets that sort of dead on in a weird way. Like this idea of like, oh, if I'm going to create a human robot, I'm going to replicate my dead son. You know, is like such a, like, I think that's such a human impulse. And then you inadvertently cause the end of the species by trying to defeat death.

[Max Fisher]

So I have been reading up a little bit about AI because we did. This is the last of the 12 movies that we're doing for this. I don't know if we're going to do another round. And initially we looked at AI and I was like, no, it's kind of too on the nose. It's too trite. It's about like Haley Joel Osmond is a little robot. But now the more I read about it, the more I realize, like, oh, if we do a third round of this, we should just do AI six times in a row because there might be six hours of. Yeah, absolutely. A five star masterpiece. And it's like, has so much to say. That's so interesting.

[Emily St. James]

But you gotta have got on to talk about Iron Man. Yeah.

[Halle Kiefer]

Come on, get the fucking. Nail him down. Literally.

[Max Fisher]

All right, let's finish things off with our traditional round of true or false. Gonna read out rapid fire quotes, plot points of the movie. Tell me whether you agree, disagree, true or false. A new life awaits you on the off world colonies.

[Emily St. James]

True.

[Max Fisher]

I'm crossing my fingers. I think it sounds fun. I would love to go to the off world colonies. I love travel.

[Halle Kiefer]

I think it's false. I think wherever you go, there you are. You know what I mean? It's not gonna be new, it's gonna be you.

[Max Fisher]

But think about how many frequent flier points you would get.

[Halle Kiefer]

And I do look forward to that as a Delta Club member.

[Max Fisher]

True or false? Rick Deckard is in fact a Replicant.

[Emily St. James]

I always say false. I think this movie's more interesting if he's a human.

[Max Fisher]

Really?

[Emily St. James]

Yeah. But I'm fine either way.

[Max Fisher]

I just feel like so much of the noise plot is just like. As like a standard noir trope where he's like. He realizes he's a pawn and a scheme larger than himself and he realizes he's implicated in this thing that's like forces are using him in a way that is actually hurting him and the people that he cares about. And you're following him down this rabbit hole of like, he falls in love with Rachel, Rachel protects him, and then he himself learns he's a replicant. I just feel like it's so perfect for the story.

[Emily St. James]

I agree with all of that, except I think it's that he's a human and he's entrapped in this thing.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah, but I think that much like at the end of the live, the point is that we don't know and that we must live forever not knowing. Much like the question about the tortoise, which I still don't really understand what that was about. I think. Yeah, I think the point is that we don't know. And then I guess if you factor in The Blade Runner 2049, I mean, then it's like you kind of revisit some of these questions. But yeah, I think we don't know. I think it's an unknowable question.

[Max Fisher]

I do love comparing it to the they live ending, which is such a great movie, if not for the fact that it ends with a mass shooting at a news outlet. Just really.

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah, I get that point of divination.

[Max Fisher]

But it's an amazing movie otherwise. And I do Love John Carpenter.

[Halle Kiefer]

Or like the thing too where it's like the end. People are like, oh, which one is it?

[Emily St. James]

Or like whatever.

[Halle Kiefer]

It doesn't. The whole. Don't guess, don't say anything about it. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

True or false, this movie. Peak handsomeness for Harrison Ford. Oh, is this the peak?

[Emily St. James]

False.

[Halle Kiefer]

What do you think it is?

[Emily St. James]

Okay, it's temporary Temple of Doom. He's so hot in Temple of Doom.

[Max Fisher]

When is Temple of Doom?

[Emily St. James]

Emma is nodding. Emma is nodding.

[Max Fisher]

Really?

[Emily St. James]

Temple of doom is 84. So.

[Max Fisher]

So you think that he's just about to kind of.

[Emily St. James]

He's entering peak Harrison Ford hotness.

[Max Fisher]

He does. The way that he ages into it. It's like, I don't even know what's happening. He is 39 in this movie, which is incredible. True or false? An Emmett Walsh quote. You know the score, pal. You're not a cop, you're little people. I'm going to disagree. I'm going say false.

[Halle Kiefer]

Wait, can I answer the Harrison Ford question before we move on?

[Max Fisher]

Let's hear it.

[Halle Kiefer]

I think it's Empire Strikes Back.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, when does that come out? That's 81.

[Emily St. James]

80.

[Max Fisher]

80. Okay, okay. So it's right around this. It's right around this era. It's not. What's amazing is that he was a young handyman fixing stuff around Joan Didion's house. And that was still not the best he ever looked. Incredible. True or false. If a zillion dollar tech company built a robot that was highly profitable but had the potential to challenge humanity himself, you know, that company would have the foresight and care to do the right thing and give those robots a limited lifespan.

[Halle Kiefer]

Oh, false. I don't think we can know. Like, I think we would just be out here. Catch us. Catch. Can they be like, we gotta get out in front of everybody. We gotta get them out first. So the first ones out of the gate are gonna be, I don't know, a mess.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah, it's false because. Absolutely. They would just assume that they could handle it on a case by case business.

[Max Fisher]

And yeah, just hire. They would hire some moderators in the Philippines to work on it. I initially agreed, but then I thought, you know, every iPhone has that planned obsolescence thing going. They want to sell new models. I kind of carry around on it. True or false. It's not an easy thing to meet your maker.

[Emily St. James]

True. I think when you meet God, you're going to have real lot of questions to ask. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

I hang out with my parents all the time and I have to say, it's fine. It's fine.

[Halle Kiefer]

Much like my parents, I'm ready to fight God. Tell me where and when.

[Max Fisher]

True or false. And we have a clip for this one. Blade Runner turned Hollywood against voiceover narration so hard that for two generations in running we have much less of it than we would if not for this movie. Let's play the clip.

[Emily St. James]

Tyrell really did a job on Rachel.

[Max Fisher]

Right down to a snapshot of a.

[Emily St. James]

Mother she never had. A daughter she never was. Replicants weren't supposed to have feelings. Neither were Blade Runners.

[Commercial Voice]

What the hell was happening to me?

[Max Fisher]

What the fuck? That is terrible.

[Emily St. James]

That is. I do feel like that would work in a detective movie. But the sci fi element adds a feeling of resentment that you have to have this explained to you. I can figure this out from what's on screen.

[Max Fisher]

Why is he slurring?

[Emily St. James]

They probably recorded it in one hour, like at the booth. He came back from Malibu and was like, I hate having to do that.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, he is definitely. He is fighting against it pretty hard. True or false? This is a Philip K. Dick quote from a 1972 speech. The Android and the human. It's a little long, but I thought it was really interesting. Our environment, and I mean our man made world of machines, artificial constructs, computers, electronic systems, interlinking homeostatic components. All of this is in fact beginning more and more to possess what psychologists fear the primitive sees in his environment. Animation. In a very real sense, our environment is becoming alive, or at least quasi in a way specifically and fundamentally analogous to ourselves. I'm gonna say true.

[Emily St. James]

Sure. I'm not gonna say false to Philip K. Digg. He's so high. He's seen through time.

[Halle Kiefer]

I'm gonna say false just cause I think Philip K. Digg, he couldn't have known about Elon Musk. I feel like again, like the sci fi of the past implies a romance and intelligence and craft that I think we moved past. I think he'd puke if it was lied to.

[Max Fisher]

How is going to fight God specifically over creating Elon Musk?

[Halle Kiefer]

Yeah, somebody has to be responsible. No, I'll fight his father. I Errol Musk over him.

[Max Fisher]

I thought you meant God's father, Errol Musk. True or false? This is a Guillermo del Toro quote. Guy loves movies. Quote. Blade Runner is simply one of those cinematic drugs that when I first saw it, I never saw the world the same way again. True.

[Emily St. James]

True, True.

[Halle Kiefer]

True, baby.

[Max Fisher]

True. True or false? The Christopher Nolan quote. Directors love this movie. Blade Runner is actually one of the most successful films of all time in terms of constructing reality using the feeling that this world has edges to it. And you would see that at the edge of the frame.

[Emily St. James]

True.

[Halle Kiefer]

Absolutely. The visual world building again. It makes so many modern movies look so bad.

[Max Fisher]

It does.

[Halle Kiefer]

Like, oh, it's so good.

[Max Fisher]

My Ridley Scott take. And then we will end it out with the last true or false. Is that mixed? As a director, he's got some misses but maybe the greatest production designer who ever lived. The production design of this in Aliens 1 is just like you can't. I don't think it's ever been done.

[Halle Kiefer]

I'm on board with that. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Great. All right, we'll mark that. True. True or false. Last one. The Edward James Almost character. It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?

[Halle Kiefer]

True, true, true, baby.

[Emily St. James]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

All right. Thanks, pals. This was so great.

[Halle Kiefer]

Thank you.

[Max Fisher]

Great time chatting Blade Runner with you.

[Emily St. James]

It was wonderful.

[Halle Kiefer]

Pleasure.

[Max Fisher]

Offline Movie Club is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, Max Fisher. It's produced by Emma Ilek Frank, mixed and edited by Charlotte Landis with audio support from Kyle Segment and Vasilis Vitopoulos. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer and Adrian Hill for production support.

[Halle Kiefer]

Join me, Dr. Panico with Cyndi Lauper and chef Michelle Bernstein to talk about.

[Emily St. James]

Plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, the potential connection and risk of developing permanent joint damage. Cosentyx Secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300mg dose and adults with active psoriatic arthritis, 150mg dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx.

[Max Fisher]

Before before starting, get checked for tb.

[Emily St. James]

Serious allergic reactions, severe skin reactions that look like eczema and an increased risk of infections, some fatal, have occurred. It may lower your ability to fight infections. So tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. Had a vaccine or plan to, or if IBD symptoms develop or worsen. Learn more at 1-844-cosentyx or cosentyx.com Cindy Life can throw a lot your way. In morning, you might be battling drop.

[Halle Kiefer]

Off times while your kids are battling.

[Emily St. James]

Imaginary monsters or their shoelaces. But no matter what life brings, Life Cereal puts a smile on everyone's face. With 24 grams of whole grains and unexpected sweetness in every serving, it's sure to please even the pickiest eaters. Help start your mornings with Life cereal.

[Halle Kiefer]

I really love my life.