Blade Runner changed my view of science fiction. When I saw it for the first time I hadn't read Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner yet, but a few years later I was stunned by how different the book was to the movie.
Another few years later, when I read Neuromancer I couldn't help thinking that Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was visually far more similar to Gibson's idea of the future than to Philip K. Dick's novel.
Sean Young's Rachel isn't much of a role model for feminism, especially considering how times have changed, but as a ten or eleven year old I thought her great-she wasn't just there to make the hero look good-she held a gun at some point and saved the hero's life, she got enough lines to be a person and I felt sympathetic towards her, for not knowing what or who she was, and/or for realising she perhaps knew it all along.
The duel between Deckard and Roy Batty-that last act of Batty made me cry. It changed my notion of villains. (Or it fulfilled a secret wish I had harboured since when I saw Snow White as a child-that the Evil Queen gets a chance to defend herself and not be evil.)
Also, if some character traits are programmed into us-then can we be blamed for acting on them?
Later when the Director's Cut came out, all sorts of theories were tossed out and I loved that I was right about Deckard being a replicant but disappointed that the whole confusion about the missing replicant was just a continuity error by Ridley Scott.
Alien I liked for Sigourney Weaver-I firmly thought the captain was the hero of the movie and would be the only one to survive, because that's what we learned about movie reality prior to 1990 I think. I was thrilled that he was killed off-pretty much everyone was killed off, and Sigourney Weaver was the one fighting and confronting the Alien. Also her entire development throughout the series was fascinating-she is different in every movie-every director has a different spin on her.
I read a very long essay once about the mother-idea in the Alien movies but being childless myself it went over my head (except for the very obvious scenes, like the confrontation between the big alien queen and her in Cameron's Aliens and tha entire Alien Resurrection movie.)
Of course now I see the cheesiness of the movies as well-the spectacularly bad decisions that the "scientists" make for example, the bad clichés and so on, but when I was twelve or thirteen I had clearly other criteria :P
Weren't the 1960s not all about women's liberation? I sometimes think we take a lot of things for granted while a lot of these women were stronger than my generation. Like Jane Fonda for example-a very outspoken woman. I read once she verbally attacked Michael Cimino about his movie The Deerhunter.
Another few years later, when I read Neuromancer I couldn't help thinking that Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was visually far more similar to Gibson's idea of the future than to Philip K. Dick's novel.
Sean Young's Rachel isn't much of a role model for feminism, especially considering how times have changed, but as a ten or eleven year old I thought her great-she wasn't just there to make the hero look good-she held a gun at some point and saved the hero's life, she got enough lines to be a person and I felt sympathetic towards her, for not knowing what or who she was, and/or for realising she perhaps knew it all along.
The duel between Deckard and Roy Batty-that last act of Batty made me cry. It changed my notion of villains. (Or it fulfilled a secret wish I had harboured since when I saw Snow White as a child-that the Evil Queen gets a chance to defend herself and not be evil.)
Also, if some character traits are programmed into us-then can we be blamed for acting on them?
Later when the Director's Cut came out, all sorts of theories were tossed out and I loved that I was right about Deckard being a replicant but disappointed that the whole confusion about the missing replicant was just a continuity error by Ridley Scott.
Alien I liked for Sigourney Weaver-I firmly thought the captain was the hero of the movie and would be the only one to survive, because that's what we learned about movie reality prior to 1990 I think. I was thrilled that he was killed off-pretty much everyone was killed off, and Sigourney Weaver was the one fighting and confronting the Alien. Also her entire development throughout the series was fascinating-she is different in every movie-every director has a different spin on her.
I read a very long essay once about the mother-idea in the Alien movies but being childless myself it went over my head (except for the very obvious scenes, like the confrontation between the big alien queen and her in Cameron's Aliens and tha entire Alien Resurrection movie.)
Of course now I see the cheesiness of the movies as well-the spectacularly bad decisions that the "scientists" make for example, the bad clichés and so on, but when I was twelve or thirteen I had clearly other criteria :P
Weren't the 1960s not all about women's liberation? I sometimes think we take a lot of things for granted while a lot of these women were stronger than my generation. Like Jane Fonda for example-a very outspoken woman. I read once she verbally attacked Michael Cimino about his movie The Deerhunter.
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