Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Blade Runner (1982): Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) is a replicant, a bioengineered, biorobotic android, who is being hunted by Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford), a Blade Runner cop who's job is to retire rogue "skin-jobs." The year is 2019, a future in which our science is pushing back against it's creators. In the final moments of the film, perched atop the canopy of a post-apocalyptic urban landscape, Deckard has his final moments with his prey turned hunter...

Roy Batty: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die." [exeunt]

Richard Deckard: "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life... anybody's life... my life. All he'd wanted was the same answers the rest of us want. Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do is sit there and watch him die."

Neo-Noir Cinema: I fell in love with cyberpunk when I graduated from middle school to the time of disenfranchised angst that is adolescence. I am not sure when I first saw it, but Blade Runner rained down upon my imagination like futuristic nuclear rain and drowned me in a love of the dark sci-fi that would come later, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, Gattaca, 12 Monkeys, Dark City, City of Lost Children, and so many more. Although I was moderately tantalized and intimidated by Pris' (Daryl Hannah) thigh crushing fight with Deckard, and terrified by the sheer maniacal taunting and power by Roy, it was the repeated use of the extreme close ups and close ups of eyes that for 35 years has been what I cherish most about the film...

Proverbs 30:17: "The eye is the window to the soul":  Perception / reality, android soul, lens vs. mirror, intimacy and coldness; the eye is the object theme that Ridley Scott returns to scene after scene. Whether reflecting the urban landscape, being used as a test of humanity, or bringing us to the intimacy of emotion in a sea of indifference and coldness, Scott uses eyes in this film that way Tarantino uses the F-bomb and bullets, frequently and without mercy. The dark grey & black sets lit by hazy sunsets or neon lighting make many characters eyes pop in almost inhuman ways, and makes one wonder if it is intentional when occasionally certain characters eyes are allowed to languish in dull shadow. The eyes in this film haunt me and I have been thinking about whether androids dream of electric sheep ever since. On October 6 producer, Ridley Scott returns with Blade Runner 2049! I cannot wait...