Help me understand why Blade Runner i held in such high praises, please. I watched it recently and there are a few points that I question "why would someone even consider this to be good?". Overall, it seems like a decent movie but I can't see anything there to make it stand the test of time at all, other than possibly having little competition in it's particular genre.
On the contrary, I actually got irked by a lot of details in it's world and how the story was told, the kind of details I'd expect fans of cyberpunk to really have a problem with.
I've been told that, in terms of cinematography it's a very well shot movie and the visuals are amazing for it's characterization of the world and the characters. I'll agree here and this is definitely a good enough reason to see the movie, but this doesn't make up for these 2 problems:
1-Replicants make no sense in any way
Replicants seem to be biological to a great degree, considering they can bleed and the whole "rapid degradation" part of the plot, plus their need to eat or drink.
But this places them closer to synthetic humans than machines, despite being treated by the movie was androids. The ethics here are entirely different but the distinction isn't ever made properly.
Machines can indeed be treated as machines, they lack actual sentience.
Clones or synthetic humans are indeed humans and it's morally and ethically wrong to handle them like machines.
And yet, despite refering to Replicants as machines the whole movie, it seems that the idea is to think of them like synthetic humans instead, which makes little to no sense.
Even if they were handled as cyborgs, that's still an enhanced human and therefore still can't be handled as a machine.
Then there's the "implanted memory" bits. If there's the ability to implant fake memories in Replicants, what does this mean for their brain? Is it organic or synthetic? If its organic, the same technology could be used to implant memories in humans but this doesn't seem to be even considered in the movie, but if their brains are synthetic, then how do they interfacePost too long. Click here to view the full text.