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The Typography of Blade Runner (2016)
- slowhand09 7y agoIf you watched it in the past, it was set in the future. If you watch it tomorrow, it is set in the past. Is today the future you imagined? Is tomorrow the past you remember?
- buboard 7y agothey promised us flying cars. but at least people dont smoke anymore
- smabie 7y agoNah reality is even more cyberpunk. They are machine cigarettes (commonly called brainsticks) produced by the Tetsuto-Osaka Heavy Industries Corporation, one of the biggest and more powerful mega-corps with interests spanning cyborgs, neuronal interfaces, and blazing fast matrix holo-decks. The founder, Rin Tetsuto founded the company over 200 years ago. And while no one has seen him in over 75 years, it is rumored that he still helms the megacorp, if true, making him over 240 years old. But anyways, and maybe it’s just because I’m a smoker, I love the cigarettes. The mix of high-life and low-life is the definition of cyberpunk: and nothing represents that more than a hazy smoke filled room of salarymen smoking and watching VR porn. In fact, my interest in cyberpunk made me start smoking (and other stuff) because my 16 year olds self wanted to be like Case and his dope hexogonal dex pills! Unfortunately my implants got fried by a neuro-virus and never managed to jack in and see the beauty of the matrix. One day... (in the off chance I’m still alive)
- Loughla 7y agoBut for real - I was having a conversation with a colleague, and the reality of 2020 being about a month away really set in. I'm not sure why, but 2020 was always 'the future' when I was a kid. And it's here. And seemingly the same as it was in the 80's just with more fun games and lower interest rates.
- bluejekyll 7y agoWatch some of the cartoons from the 40’s and 50’s. They predicted flying cars by the 80’s.
- goatinaboat 7y agoBoomers were promised flying cars. Gen X were promised a cyberpunk dystopia.
- cr0sh 7y agoI think Gen X (from my perspective, since I'm a part of that gen) did get their "cyberpunk dystopia"... ...it's just less Neuromancer/BR/etc and more David Brin's "Earth".
- Apocryphon 7y agoDavid Brin's "Earth": Complete with online flamewars and spam emails!
- zelly 7y agoIf you covered up all the screens in America, it still looks like 1989.
- wool_gather 7y agoCars have changed a lot too. Less boxy these days.
- CWuestefeld 7y agoNot just in looks. Back in the 80s, we were happy when a car lasted beyond 100K miles. Today, I'd be annoyed if my car needed anything beyond regular scheduled maintenance in that period. They're vastly more dependable, safer, better performing, and more comfortable.
- 7y ago
- ajay-d 7y agoObligatory wiki post List of stories set in a future now past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_set_in_a_future_now_past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_set_in_a_futur...
- mlacks 7y agoI traveled to Hong Kong a few years ago. That city has a certain vibe that evokes the lore of sci fi movies. I always felt I had one foot in the past, one foot in the future during my stay
- Apocryphon 7y agoIndeed, HK was the main inspiration for a classic cyberpunk scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARTLckN9e7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARTLckN9e7I
- krtkush 7y agoA very good analysis of the said scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw&t=228s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw&t=228s
- peterwwillis 7y agoIt's more like sci fi evokes the lore of Hong Kong: https://medium.com/@ray.zhu/bridging-the-gap-sci-fi-cinema-and-depictions-of-hong-kong-sar-b15800678c29 https://medium.com/@ray.zhu/bridging-the-gap-sci-fi-cinema-a...
- pks016 7y agoFew days back I stumbled upon this article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538866 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240846 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240846
- malvosenior 7y agoThe 1980s was such a great time for imagining the future. That feels all but lost now. Are there any contemporary visions of the future that are as forward thinking as the cyberpunk universe imagined in the 80s? It feels like all we're left with is retro-futurism to get our fix.
- habnds 7y agoInterstellar?
- buboard 7y agoanother end-of-the-world movie (they all are nowadays). Fatalist, not cyberpunk or dystopian
- friendlybus 7y agoHe saves the world by transmitting data to his daughter who they figures out how to solve the problem, he then meets his old daughter who instructs him to go live with his new woman on a planet together. It doesn't end fatalist.
- buboard 7y ago> It doesn't end fatalist. it begins, though. love the movie otherwise
- dmarlow 7y agoOur visions of the future are filled with apocalyptic zombie outcomes.
- arethuza 7y agoWell, if you like drug taking communists in space, complete with snarky drones, there is always the Culture.... I really hope the Amazon version of Consider Phlebas works out OK, even though its protagonist is fighting against the statistically demonstrated good guys.
- mzs 7y agoPost is an article about fonts and aesthetics from 2016. We only know it's today cause of the sequel: https://twitter.com/bkMethod/status/1183784913209905152 https://twitter.com/bkMethod/status/1183784913209905152 The original only stated it was this month: https://gfycat.com/determinedenchantinggreatargus https://gfycat.com/determinedenchantinggreatargus
- djsumdog 7y agohuh .. interesting. So in the original, they chose a date far in the future (2019) and it was Sci-Fi, but the sequel keeping with that timeline, kinda changes it out to alternative-history. That is a strong attention to detail/continuity. Kudos to the script supervisor.
- Barrin92 7y ago> but the sequel keeping with that timeline, kinda changes it out to alternative-history I think this is a huge problem with the cyberpunk aesthetic today. What defined it was the fact how transgressive and original it was when it was first introduced. When I saw 2049 and how close it stuck to the original, it didn't seem futuristic but retro, including one scene with a CCCP advertisement which obviously made sense as a vision for the future in the early 80s but seems counterfactual now. I think the movie would have benefitted from taking many more liberties with the setting to avoid this retro-futurism.
- toyg 7y agoThe second movie? Nah. The first Blade Runner is a view of a dystopic future that raises a number of philosophical themes. The second Blade Runner is a love letter to the first that also expands on some themes and further adds to the original myth. It’s kids playing in their dad’s sandbox once more. If you started reworking the original BR environment, it would not work. The whole point is to throw you right back to the original, warts and all. You have to anchor it firmly, so that then you can take some liberties elsewhere (nuked Vegas etc).
- CharlesColeman 7y agoIt's a nice reminder not to believe the technohype. Most of the world changing-technology that's being hyped today isn't going to happen, and the world-changing technology that does happen isn't going to be what we expected.
- riffraff 7y agoI'd say, not to believe in the current trends and ideas to last, in general. For example, Blade Runner has iconic Japanese cultural domination themes (ads, company names etc) because Japan was overtaking the US economically in the '80s. Nobody expected decades of Japanese stagnation.
- moomin 7y agoI'd argue science fiction fundamentally isn't about futurology, it's always about today. "The Space Merchants" still feels relevant because it's about the rise of multinationals, and they're still around. (England Made Me is about the same thing, but isn't science fiction.) "Rebel in Time" is about contemporary racism. "Grass", well, Grass is about a lot of things and it's hard to summarize but "Sideshow" is about our attitudes to religion and "the other". Equally, for all of the 80s hairdos, Blade Runner is about the classic science fiction question of who gets to be human. And so I'd argue it hasn't really dated at all.
- the_af 7y ago> Blade Runner is about the classic science fiction question of who gets to be human. And so I'd argue it hasn't really dated at all. Agreed! Like much of Philip Dick's fiction actually. And it hasn't aged at all. The writing style maybe, but the themes are still compelling.
- smogcutter 7y agoNothing dates itself faster than science fiction. But the date shouldn’t be taken so seriously as “this is what the world will look like in 2019.” For stories made last century, any date after the millennium was “the future” in a symbolic way that let you do pretty much anything you wanted.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- turk73 7y agoI'll take a Joy, I guess. Oh, wait, that was 2049. What really baked my brain is that I showed Back to the Future to my 9 year old son this week and realized that 2019 is already more than 30 years from 1985 and in the movie, Marty went back in time 30 years to 1955. Damn.
- zipwitch 7y agoI'm in my 40s. My childhood was closer to WWII than to the present day.
- buboard 7y agoActually it was yesterday, 19/11. jwz.net explains more there s interesting fan work on reproducing Deckard's newspaper https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e6uSgoZAerk/Wph9oqO_PwI/AAAAAAAAH5E/dtHty0OF3RsUXIoc7fBMQZogPqllD71_QCLcBGAs/s1600/Blade_Runner_White_Dragon_005.jpg https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e6uSgoZAerk/Wph9oqO_PwI/AAAAAAAAH...
- mzs 7y agoThe date on that replica prop newspaper* can't be right then: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/11/blade-runner-day/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/11/blade-runner-day/ * https://www.replicantprophunter.com/2018/03/white-dragon-noodle-bar-collection.html https://www.replicantprophunter.com/2018/03/white-dragon-noo...
- slowhand09 7y agoSending a Terminator back to change the story date isn't cool. He'll be back in the sequel: Replicant vs Terminator.
- abledon 7y agowhoa! that makes the cybertruck reveal tomorrow make much more sense
- MisterOctober 7y agoThere's a lot of bad things in the way society and technology have unfolded since the movie [and even more so, the book] was originally released, but one thing I'm happy about that contrasts with the story's vision is that, although we do have serious environmental and ecological problems, wildlife and especially owls are still plentiful.
- kingkawn 7y agoFor a little longer
- mixmastamyk 7y agoLos Angeles, November 2019. Have this intro title clip as my background on Facebook this month. And it is actually raining in LA today, for the first time in six months. Blade Runner is playing Saturday at the Vista near Silverlake to commemorate.
- 205guy 7y agoThere is still time for a creative person to enact (not re-enact) the "Tears in the rain" scene on a Los Angeles rooftop tomorrow night. Just so the two timelines share a special moment.
- as1mov 7y agoKinda OT, but I feel Philip K. Dicks' A Scanner Darkly is a much more realistic depiction of today (even for the year it's set in - 2006), especially the situation surrounding the mass surveillance issue. I'll highly recommend the movie adaptation of the novel, it's one of the more faithful ones. It seems to get lost among all the big-budget blockbusters that the other adaptations were.
- caiocaiocaio 7y agoI'm kind of surprised the movie isn't more famous, considering the high quality and the powerhouse cast.
- typon 7y agoBecause a lot of people find the animation style weird. I love that movie though
- js2 7y agoThe style is known as rotoscoping: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping A Scanner Darkly was made by Richard Linklater. He used the same technique in Waking Life. Recently, it's also used in the Undone Amazon Prime series (recommended).
- twic 7y agoIf we're talking about overlooked movies with weird animation styles based on books by titans of '70s science fiction, i'll mention The Congress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHBl43lMJY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHBl43lMJY0 It is, IMHO, better than that trailer suggests.
- Apocryphon 7y agoThe novel was set in June 1994, the movie came out in 2006. The film's setting has often been described as an America that has "lost the War on Drugs", which is depressingly apt considering the opiate epidemic.
- dang 7y agoSubmitted title was "Blade Runner was set today,2019/11/20", which broke the site guideline against editorializing. If you want to say what you think is important in an article, please do so in a comment, where your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20title%20level%20playing%20field&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- dang 7y agoSurprisingly, the title was taken from William S. Burroughs' Blade Runner: A Movie (1979) which has just been reissued: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/nov/19/ever-heard-of-blade-runner-a-movie-no-not-that-one https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/nov/19/ever... Burroughs wanted to make a movie out of The Bladerunner by Alan Nourse (what? another one? 1974) and when he realized it wouldn't happen, turned it into a novel instead. Neither book has anything to do the movie we know. They just liked the title. And both Burroughs and Nourse got paid for it.
- yarrel 7y agoDoes anyone know what font the "Los Angeles November, 2019" text is set in?
- zerocrates 7y agoI believe it's Goudy, like the "crawl" discussed in the article.