Production stills from Blade Runner 1982 / Director: Ridley Scott / Images courtesy: Roadshow Entertainment
Just a few weeks ago on January 8th 2016 it was replicant Roy Batty’s birthday. The future, according to Blade Runner 1982, is here.
One of Blade Runner’s central characters Roy Batty, who is an android activated on 8th January, is illegally on earth. Batty has made his way to the dystopian, rain-soaked Los Angeles attempting to extend his limited life span of only four years and escape his fate as a slave. Batty and a number of humanoid replicants are locked in a deadly engagement with Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a policeman charged with ‘retiring’ the replicants.
The conflict between humans who are emotionless and androids who have developed so fully that they’ve surpassed their intended function as useful tools and now desperately desire to live comes to full culmination in Roy Batty’s ‘Tears in Rain’ monologue. A much loved, moving soliloquy delivered by Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, this was rewritten by Hauer from Ridley Scott’s original screenplay. It’s rumoured the film crew clapped and cried after he delivered it.
One of cinema’s most influential science fiction films, Blade Runner [The Final Cut] will screen as part of the ‘Mind vs Machine: What Makes Us Human?’ film program – a selection of films that consider humanity’s relationship to artificial intelligence. The films investigate what it means to be human in counterpoint to humanoid technologies, focussing on the moral implications of creating sentient machines and the consequences of artificial intelligence that gains independence.
*Spoiler alert* this is the final scene of Blade Runner 1982. See Rutger Hauer’s amazing monologue
Mind vs Machine: What Makes Us Human? is screening at the Gallery of Modern Art’s Australian Cinématheque from 9 – 13 March 2016. Ticketed, purchase online through qtix or at the GOMA Box Office from one hour prior to film screenings.
Ex Machina 2015 MA15+ | 6pm Wednesday 9 March
The Matrix 1999 M | 8pm Wednesday 9 March
eXistenZ 1999 M | 6pm Friday 11 March
Her 2013 MA15+ | 7.45pm Friday 11 March
Blade Runner [The Final Cut] 1982 M | 3pm Sunday 13 March
Presented as part of the inaugural World Science Festival Brisbane
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