Blade Runner
It seems like movie versions of books are never as good as the books, with the exception of Phillip K. Dick books. “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” is not nearly as good as Total Recall, the “Minority Report” is weak compared to Minority Report, and “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” is not as good as Blade Runner. Phillip K. Dick was a paranoid person, and he often wondered if life was just an intricate scam. He’d have enjoyed The Matrix, although both he and I would have come up with a better reason for the robots to keep alive millions of people. He already wrote several stories which have ideas that would have been more interesting than batteries. Anyway.
Blade Runner is not an “It’s a Wonderful Death” film. I’ve heard arguments from people, including quotes from the director of this film, that Decker a replicant. But since posting these pages, several people have made very compelling arguments that Decker is not a replicant. For one, the replicants are very strong and can handle the extreme elements, and Decker spends the movie getting the snot beaten out of him by them.
The Director’s cut does not have the lame voice-overs, nor the dumb happy ending. Maybe the happy ending is what caused Phillip K. Dick to die the same year it was released. An excellent film.