I watched the movie myself. I got some special edition thingy, and I must say however that I don't quite see what makes this movie great? Someone mind explaining?
Blade Runner is widely considered to be one of the best sci-fi films ever made. Let me explain why.
For starters, the film's visuals were well ahead of their time. Ridley Scott deftly combined elements of extremely advanced technology with a decaying backdrop of crumbling infrastructure in what he calls a "worn future." The effect is striking when seen in high-res and stands up well to today's best movies. Both the story and Scott's visuals strongly suggest mankind has essentially destroyed the Earth and there are hints that ecological catastrophe is a major problem. Earth's ecology has been devastated by pollution and overpopulation, thus animals are now virtually extinct and worth vast sums of money. Some people credit Scott's vision as predating contemporary conceptions of global warming by some twenty years.
The acting in Blade Runner is top notch, and without exception every character in the film is necessary and interesting. There is almost no wasted dialog or energy. Everything advances the story.
Like all good sci-fi, Blade Runner isn't ultimately about technology or dystopian futures, however fascinating that stuff might be. Instead, it asks much deeper and more interesting questions, questions that we all ask ourselves: Where do I come from? Where I am going? How much time have I got? The story is purposely ambiguous about the answers. The film's ending suggests these are things we simply cannot know, thus all we can do is live to the fullest within whatever time we have.
Rutger's Hauer's emotional scene in the film's climax is Oscar-worthy. Hauer's character, faced with his impending death, explains to his adversary that he has seen incredible things, things that no human has ever witnessed. Sadly, all these memories will now be lost, like "tears in rain." Did Roy Batty really experience these epic battles and witness celestial events in the deeps of space, or were these just more of Dr. Tyrell's memory implants? Is perception the same thing as reality? The viewer is left to wonder about that mystery as well as whether Deckard himself might also be a replicant.
Blade Runner is listed by the American Film Institute as the 97th greatest film of all time and has been voted into the Library of Congress as "culturally significant."
