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The visual language Bladerunner invented has virtually defined SciFi for the past 40 years. If you enjoy it's worth digging into the work Syd Mead - the film's

• shaftoe444 4y ago
  These links are excellent and I hadn't heard of Syd Mead despite being a long time fan of this film. Thank you for posting.
• nico 4y ago
  There is also the failed attempt of Jodorowsky to make a Dune movie: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky's_Dune https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky's_Dune https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)#Early_stalled_attempts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)#Early_stalled_a... The documentary is pretty fascinating. Jodorowsky managed to put together a stellar team, among them H.R. Giger, Dalí and the script writer who would later write Alien.
  • CyanBird 4y ago
    Yeah, it is thanks to these two movies that modern scifi and its visual development side of things exists basically
    • Retric 4y ago
      They popularized these styles but they existed in other mediums. What’s fascinating is looking at all the different styles Dune the dune book covers had over time to see how various mediums influenced things. https://www.biblio.com/dune-by-herbert-frank/work/3104 https://www.biblio.com/dune-by-herbert-frank/work/3104
      • CyanBird 4y ago
        That's a good angle But that's the thing, jodos dune came as an aggregate of "non-movie" mediums, because jodorowsky was not a cinematographer by trade he was an avant garde theater person, giger, Dali, moebius, Foss, neither of them "were part" of the "movies" medium, they all and the rest of the crew were painters or writers or musicians, comic book artists, not cinematographers per se, in that sense what jodorowsky set to do was not even a movie as we might think of one today, but an agglomeration of different types and styles of art with all their own individual Influences mixed in I think today, it would be nearly impossible for "works" to exist and not have been inspired themselves in some degree by the downstream effects and inspiration that jodorowskys movie had, just think that starwars itself is inspired by it But anyhow, it is a quite interesting food for thought If anyone knows of some niche modern scifi books or works which might not be influenced by this failed dune movie let me know, I love this stuff
        • atwood22 4y ago
          Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake seems to derive very little from classic science fiction. Perhaps this is because she’s a woman, and thus less drawn to teenage male fantasies like those found in Dune.
        • Wildgoose 4y ago
          Star Wars. No, seriously. Jodorowksy's concept was widely circulated in Hollywood but nobody would take the risk. Enter George Lucas, just riffing on the original idea.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • rastignack 4y ago
    Don’t forget moebius
    • smoldesu 4y ago
      Does this mean that theaters should prepare for the Moebius Sweep?
    • miki_tyler 4y ago
      Moebius and Giger were the Wozniaks, Jodorowsky was a mere Steve Jobs.
  • walrus01 4y ago
    > Jodorowsky I recently got a copy of this and could only come to the conclusion that they were doing a lot of drugs in the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Mountain_(1973_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Mountain_(1973_film)
    • GekkePrutser 4y ago
      I think that was pretty widely accepted? Not sure if total drug use was higher than it is now but especially hallucinogenic drugs were much more popular than they are today. I don't think the colourful styles of the 60s/70s were a coincidence either, no :)
    • pmoriarty 4y ago
      If you think Jodorowsky's Dune was weird, you should see his Holy Mountain[1] Also, millions of people did a lot of drugs in that time, but there is only one Jodorowsky. Drugs alone can not explain his vision. [1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qmR0vi0ifzE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qmR0vi0ifzE
      • anders_p 4y ago
        Yes. That's the movie the comment you responded to was talking about. Did you even read the comment before responding?
        • SlickNixon 4y ago
          I see this kind of the comment--legible, complete sentences, no grammatical errors, but otherwise totally missing some basic element in what they're replying to--from time to time, generally only on HN, and I wonder if they're edge cases from some kind of bot school.
        • coldtea 4y ago
          Did you have to be rude about it? Parent obviously read the comment (which doesn't mention any particular movie in its text), but didn't follow the link, assuming it was about Dune (which was the context that started the subthread).
  • rajman187 4y ago
    It must be crazy for Jodorowsky to see how his concept art defined so much of space sci fi , at least this was the angle presented in the documentary. But imagine the treasure trove George Lucas must have come across
    • brtkdotse 4y ago
      Jodorowskys Dune is the Xerox Parc of movies.
      • rajman187 4y ago
        Most underrated comment
  • sandworm101 4y ago
    Dune is unmakable. Always will be. It is the definitive book that is too big for the screen. The story and themes are too vast. Adaptations can be good, be entertaining, but every one is a shallow attempt at the impossible.
    • thefringthing 4y ago
      I think the TV mini-series is very good.
    • jdmoreira 4y ago
      You should read BotNS That's an unmakable book. Also one of the best experiences of my life for sure. But I did it by following an podcast chapter by chapter analysis (Alzabo Soup)
• mattmanser 4y ago
  From the wiki page: The visual style of the movie is influenced by the work of futurist Italian architect Antonio Sant'Elia.[51] Scott hired Syd Mead as his concept artist; like Scott, he was influenced by Métal Hurlant So, err, no. Métal Hurlant was 1974, cyberpunk itself started in the 1960s. It's based on a book from 1968 after all. Judge Dredd first came out in 1977. It didn't come up with the aesthetic, it popularized it.
  • PhasmaFelis 4y ago
    I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you're saying "Blade Runner wasn't an enormous influence on 40 years of sci-fi, because it also had influences and we should credit those instead." I don't think that's how it works. At worst, Blade Runner took an aesthetic that had been the domain of some relatively obscure (if excellent) comics and brought it crashing into the forefront of global pop culture. Also, "cyberpunk itself started in the 1960s" is...pretty questionable. It was certainly heavily influenced and rooted in New Wave sci-fi of the '60s and '70s, but cyberpunk as a literary movement is very much a thing of the '80s. In any case, New Wave sci-fi and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? were very much textual media. They were a huge influence on the themes and stories of what would become cyberpunk, not so much on the visual aesthetic.
• asiachick 4y ago
  also inspiration from Metropolis https://www.google.com/search?q=metropolis&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=metropolis&tbm=isch and also Things to Come https://www.google.com/search?q=Things+to+Come&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=Things+to+Come&tbm=isch
• candiddevmike 4y ago
  Can anyone recommend some music that has the same vibe as Blade Runner's synth stuff?
  • sonofhans 4y ago
    The Hans Zimmer soundtrack to Blade Runner 2049 is quite good. It plays homage to the original, but is definitely its own creation.
    • NoGravitas 4y ago
      My experience of Blade Runner 2049's music was that the only memorable bit was the explicit use of "Tears in Rain" from the original. Everything else seemed very generic and ephemeral.
  • lk1d 4y ago
    Arovane's Gestalt (Spotify). Eno's Apollo maybe?
  • layer8 4y ago
    Not exactly, but you may like https://youtu.be/QYVmZ0pEPdo https://youtu.be/QYVmZ0pEPdo.
  • crispyambulance 4y ago
    Yeah, Isao Tomita and Tangerine Dream come to mind. Contemporaries of Vangelis (the composer of the soundtrack of Blade Runner) from the 70's. Very similar vibe. Jean Michel Jarre as well, though he had more of a beat. I like Morton Subotnick and the seminal album "Silver Apples of the Moon" it's more out there and experimental but it definitely it had a similar texture.
    • keithnz 4y ago
      I was going to suggest jean J.M Jarre, but hard to get the ambience of Bladerunner as its quite curated. But as an aside, there was these synthesizer compilations in the late 80s / early 90s that introduced to my to a bunch of Synth artists. Most of them have quite a range of styles they do on synth, some quite bladerunnerish (including Vangelis). Anyways, the albums are "Synthesizer Greatest 1,2 and 3". Spotify has them as a playlists, as do most other music providers. EDIT: also The prime thanatos streaming on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P23oE6ekwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P23oE6ekwQ
• dev_tty01 4y ago
  Great stuff. Thanks. Gotta love the data tape reels on the "home" computer.
• pmoriarty 4y ago
  There's an interesting interview with Syd Mead about his work on Blade Runner here: [1] Mead also worked on Tron (among other films) and George Lucas made the AT-AT based on Mead's art.[2] [1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6VPT-Ug-gF4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6VPT-Ug-gF4 [2] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Mead https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Mead
• cgriswald 4y ago
  I especially like how his cityscapes tend to show a skyline that would be familiar to anyone living in the last century, and then absolutely dwarf that skyline with megastructures, which themselves don't look particularly alien, just beyond our abilities. It's not hard to imagine those structures existing with (sci-fi level) advances in materials and construction techniques.
• mhh__ 4y ago
  I will likely never have the talent to do so, unless I retire early, but assuming I do retire (the way the UK is going you never know eh, maybe by 77) or just have some spare time and money I'd love to have some reconstructed miniatures of scenes from blade runner. I guess someone has probably done this already, but I've never been able to find anything with first-order googling at least.
• majormajor 4y ago
  Even without leaving Scott, Alien seems to have been at least as visually influential as Blade Runner. Plus of course Star Wars and Star Trek... Blade Runner is fairly distinctive even today (outside of Cyberpunk, most other post-82 sci fi that I can think of is definitely more influenced by other things) which IMO is a sign that it isn't as universally influential as other 70s/80s sci-fi films. Off the top of my head, do any of BSG, Babylon 5, Mass Effect, Jurassic Park, Inception, Terminator, The Expanse, Interstellar, Independence Day, or The Matrix have particularly strong ties to Blade Runner's aesthetic compared to their ties to other early film sci-fi?
  • jahnu 4y ago
    And of course Alien got a few things from Dark Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film) https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/looking-back-at-john-carpenters-dark-star/ https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/looking-back-at-john-carpen...
    • WalterBright 4y ago
      Dolittle: What is your purpose? Bomb: To explode, of course! Great dialog trumps expensive special effects every time.
      • jahnu 4y ago
        Totally! And one of the few English language films I’ve seen that retains the humour perfectly dubbed in German. In fact the bomb is possibly even funnier in German :) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XetTVNtzTW8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XetTVNtzTW8
    • TremendousJudge 4y ago
      And from Jodorowsky's Dune, where O'Bannon also worked
      • porbelm 4y ago
• cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  I tried to impress my 11 year old with the opening sequence; flames belching over LA, Vangelis, etc. -- which I've always found aesthetically stunning. He was not impressed. This made me sad.
  • mlyle 4y ago
    That's the caveat of groundbreaking works. They may hold up over time and still be strong works. But the things they did that were new and jaw-dropping end up riffed upon and will no longer be as surprising to new audiences.
  • bofh23 4y ago
    Enjoy this awesome cinemagraph from that opening scene (not my work): “Los Angeles, November 2019” Blade Runner (1982) IWDRM https://iwdrm.tumblr.com/post/2927811283 https://iwdrm.tumblr.com/post/2927811283
  • phlakaton 4y ago
    Give him 7 to 10 years. It bounced right off me as a kid too. It's one of my desert island films now.
  • blarg1 4y ago
    I was very unimpressed when I watched it as a kid, blown away when I was older.
  • PedroBatista 4y ago
    The Kinks, Michael Jackson’s music sound “ok” and familiar today. That’s the price of success and being “trend setting”.
• heavenlyblue 4y ago
  It's pretty well-known that the french sci-fi comic Metal Hurlant inspired Bladerunner.
  • mistertester 4y ago
    Heavy Metal also inspired the 5th element