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
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 follow this thread

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1925

Metropolis

Thea von Harbou

Weimar Republic. Germany. Written in German.

Von Harbou's novel of the divided future city, written alongside her screenplay for her husband Fritz Lang's film. It contains the inventor Rotwang and his machine-woman.

What it handed down

To Metropolis (1927)

Direct source, well documented.

Von Harbou wrote the novel and co-wrote the screenplay with Lang, and the film follows her plot of Freder, Maria, Joh Fredersen and Rotwang. The novel was serialized as the film was in production.

Where it came from

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The Future EveAuguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

1886

The Future Eve (L'Ève future)

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

French Decadence. France. Written in French.

A fictionalized Thomas Edison builds Hadaly, an electric android woman, as a perfect copy of a beautiful but shallow singer for a lovesick English lord. It popularized the word 'android'.

What it handed down

To Metropolis (1925)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Villiers's inventor builds an electric woman and gives her the exact appearance of a real one, as Rotwang gives his machine Maria's face. Both works treat the android double as a seductive substitute that confuses love and power.

Where it came from

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1816

The Sandman (Der Sandmann)

E. T. A. Hoffmann

German Romanticism. Germany. Written in German.

A student falls in love with Olympia, who turns out to be a lifelike automaton, and is driven to madness. A founding tale of the uncanny artificial woman.

What it handed down

To The Future Eve (L'Ève future) (1886)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Hoffmann's Olympia, the automaton a young man mistakes for a living woman and falls in love with, is the chief precedent for Villiers's Hadaly. Villiers turned Hoffmann's uncanny tale into a long dialogue on whether an artificial woman could be preferable to a real one.

Where it came from

The line stops here: hoffmann's automaton draws on eighteenth-century mechanical exhibits rather than a traceable literary source.

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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 Metropolis (1925)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Future Eve (L'Ève future) (1886)

Where it came from

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