The influences behind Blade Runner

1982

Blade Runner

Film by Ridley Scott

1980s Hollywood. United States. In English.

Ridley Scott's 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel follows Rick Deckard, an ex-cop hired to hunt down four escaped replicants in a rain-soaked Los Angeles of 2019. It joins the hardboiled detective film to the old story of the made creature who confronts its maker.

Where it came from

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1927

Metropolis

Film by Fritz Lang

Weimar cinema. Germany. Silent.

In a vertical city of the future, a ruling class lives above while workers toil underground. An inventor builds a machine-woman in the likeness of the saintly Maria to incite the workers.

What it handed down

To Blade Runner (1982)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Scott and his designers drew on Lang's vertical city of towers, aerial traffic and an underclass at street level. The Tyrell Corporation's pyramid rising over the city echoes the ruler's New Tower of Babel. The man-made woman who passes as human is a shared device.

Where it came from

Metropolis, Thea von Harbou 1925 follow this thread
Book of Revelation, John of Patmos c. 95 CE follow this thread
Genesis, Anonymous c. 6th century BCE follow this thread
When the Sleeper Wakes, H. G. Wells 1899

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When the Sleeper WakesH. G. Wells

1899

When the Sleeper Wakes

H. G. Wells

Late Victorian. England. Written in English.

A man wakes after two centuries of sleep to find himself nominal owner of a vast, layered London where a laboring underclass lives beneath a pleasure-seeking elite.

What it handed down

To Metropolis (1927)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Wells's novel imagines a layered future city with a laboring underclass beneath an elite, aerial transport and a popular uprising. Reviewing Metropolis in the New York Times in 1927, Wells complained that it drew on his own early work.

Where it came from

Looking Backward: 2000-1887, Edward Bellamy 1888

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1888

Looking Backward: 2000-1887

Edward Bellamy

Gilded Age. United States. Written in English.

A Bostonian sleeps from 1887 to 2000 and wakes in a peaceful socialist utopia. The novel was a best-seller and set off a wave of utopian and anti-utopian answers.

What it handed down

To When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Wells borrowed Bellamy's device of a sleeper who wakes in the future, but turned Bellamy's orderly utopia into a dystopia of monopoly capital. The book is commonly read as a deliberate reply to Looking Backward.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch; Bellamy's sources are chiefly political and economic writing.

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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Blade Runner (1982)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Metropolis (1927)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)

Where it came from

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