Do Androids Dream...

I found an interesting article in Wikipedia on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? on which the movie Blade Runner is based. It provides a very detailed breakdown of the differences and similarities between the book and the movie.

Some brief thoughts:

The book is a very different animal from the movie, but the two complement each other well.

I do not remember if I saw the movie first and then read the book, or vice versa. This is a mystery. The movie came out in 1982, so I would have been 15. My parents did not often let me go to movies by myself or with others, and rated-R movies were strictly forbidden. Yet I distinctly remember seeing this movie for the first time in a theatre by myself. (Or was there someone with me? Hmmm.) I remember being very excited about it, because it was a science fiction movie and it had Harrison Ford in it. I also distinctly remember purchasing the book. It did not have the cover pictured here, but used the movie poster instead. Usually, if there was a movie my parents didn't want me to see, I would just read the book. So it would make sense that I would have read the book first... except I remember going to the movie...

The movie did not achieve instant critical acclaim. A lot of critics hated it, said it was too slow. Even George Lucas was quoted as saying that many times directors of fantasy/sci-fi films get so caught up in this world they've created that they spend too much time on the background details and forget to move the story along (He should have taken his own advice years later when he went back to film the Star Wars prequels). However, I think Blade Runner is one of those films that just gets better with age. The technical aspects stand up remarkably well and the story is just phenomenal. Even as a teen I appreciated the subtle comments Deckard's partner made with the origami and the wonderful machine Deckard used to examine the photographs. The whole film noir aspect was not lost on me either. (And I'm still trying to figure out how Rachel does her hair--I've nearly got it a couple of times).

I like the Director's Cut better. Yeah, yeah, I know, we can definitely do without the whole unicorn dream scene, but the rest is really good. The first time I watched it, I missed Ford's voiceover narration, but now when I go back to the original his narrative just sounds clunky. It was a bad day in the recording studio, I guess. The narrative distracts from the mood and is mostly redundant.

I need to go back and read the book again because my memory is playing tricks on me. There is a scene where the androids discover a spider in their room. I remember an android taking the spider outside and releasing it, but the Wikipedia article says they pull the spider's legs off. Also, the article says that the film more than the book leaves ambiguous whether or not Deckard is also a replicant. I have not ever had this impression from either book or movie. Where are they getting this? There may be some kind of metaphorical device indicating that Deckard is behaving more like a robot than a human, but I do not ever think his actual physical existence as a human was ever in question.

Oh, and the soundtrack by Vangelis is brilliant; one of my absolute favorites. I listen to it often.

In closing I have to quote once again from my favorite Sci Fi radio show, Ruby: The Galactic Gumshoe. In it, a caller asks The Android Sisters, "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" Click HERE for an absolutely fabulous animation of the Android Sisters' routine. (Gawd, I *love* the internet!)

16 Days til Lift-Off