Thomas Potter
Dr. Hall
English 232
1/19/16
Blade Runner: A Glorious Adaptation
The 1982 film Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott, is a fantastic motion picture adaptation of Philip Dick’s sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which is a great example of how change may be necessary and very beneficial when transforming a work of literature into screenplay. How the screenplay is performed on stage or on film is also a very important factor that can reflect how well the adaptation is done. Though Blade Runner loosely resembles Dick’s novel, it is great recreation because it removes a decent amount of small details, which in the novel, are necessary in developing the plot and understanding the moral dilemma the book presents. This is clear evidence that proves that a novel and its film adaptation can both persuade the same message, as well as both generating the same emotions, but without being mirror copies of each other. Both the Blade Runner and the Dick’s novel raise the ethical issue of whether killing androids (intelligent, mirror reconstructions of humans) is acceptable because they were built by humans, lack empathy, and only live a short 4 years, therefore expendable and replaceable, or if their lives, though artificial and fake, should be perceived as equals, because they portray emotion and individuality identical to humans. Blade Runner & Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are a great example of how change is questionably necessary when reconstructing a fantastic novel into an equally fantastic motion picture.
Both journeys begin with the protagonist Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter/blade runner living a post nuclear wasteland, who is hired to hunt rouge androids that killed their owners and have come from colonized Mars seeking to live past their 4 year life span, but that’s where most similarities end. In the book Rick lives in a society where people follow the “Mercerism” religion, “Mercerism works through an electronic...