Futures Past by Corina Thomas

Futures Past Science ďŹ ction cinema and architecture - our relationship to the past as explored through popular ďŹ lms

Corina Thomas 110175278 1

Special Study 2014

Contents:

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Introduction

Why Science Fiction?

Method

20th Century Science Fiction

Timeline of Ideas

between 8 and 9

Main Section - Summary - Cityscape - Transport - Buildings - Interiors - Streets

14 15 16 20 22 28 30

Conclusion: Futures Present

Bibliography and Acknowledgements

Appendix

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Introduction

This study examines the way science fiction (SF) cinema deals with the future of our cities through the treatment of elements from the past - that is, both history and the present at a film’s time of making. I began this study interested in certain ‘realistic’ predictions of city life. Often the richest, most compelling and unforgettable SF film cities are rooted firmly in a good understanding of that city’s past and present. Some of these cities are credible only until society changes and they become outdated. Others have insights to offer long after their conception. Critical speculation about the future is useful because it allows us to consider social realities and forecast in a way that could catalyse transformation. Urban science fictions are a way to ‘test the tensions, and play out the c o n t r a d i c t i o n s o f c o n c e n t r a t e d c i t i e s, spectacular societies and the continuing struggle to exist in the bright, dark spaces of the metropolis.’1

Cinematic depictions of the future can be broadly divided into either utopia or dystopia. A utopia is an imagining of an ideal future based on dissatisfaction with the direction humanity is heading. Its counterpart, the dystopia, is a

negative portrayal of the future aimed to caution people and even provoke action. The gradual shift in general thinking from a Modern to a Postmodern view in the 20th century has had a large impact on science fiction. In a way, Modernism has utopia at its heart, which is why the films Just Imagine (1930) and Things to Come (1 936) portray bright, clean futures that celebrate high rises. Postmodernism on the other hand favours the dystopia and its more pluralistic view, criticising the naivety of utopias. For the sake of this study I will distinguish the two movements by their attitude to history. In broad terms Modernism rejects what it sees as the obsolete culture of the past and strives towards the new, dismissing classical ornament and aiming to bring total cultural cohesion. Postmodernism is defined by its rejection of this totality and pushes for a deeper understanding of the past in order to deal with complexity and uncertainty. The development of these ideas is explored in the section ‘20th Century Science Fiction’ on page 8.

Iconic postmodernist ﬁlm Blade Runner is one of the most cited and referenced of a vast crosssection of SF that deals with the ideas of past, present and future. Despite this, the reason I have chosen it as the main example for this

Bukatman, Scott, and British Film Institute. Blade Runner. London: British Film Institute, 1997. page 86

Mead, Syd. Blade Runner Sketchbook / David Scroggy. San Diego, CA: Blue Dolphin Enterprises, 1982. page 3 4

Blade Runner, 1982

study is its enduring relevance in depicting future life in cities. Few other films have attempted the same breadth and depth of imagination whilst relying on sincere research. Director Ridley Scott was ‘determined to avoid the pristine, antiseptic future often seen in science fiction films,’2 instead, his vision incorporates Los Angeles’ classical-style buildings laced with service pipes (much like the ‘High Tech’ approach of Richard Rogers) and bustling neon-lit streets referenced from Tokyo. Scott never read Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, the novel the film is based on, yet many of the deep social and spiritual discussions within it have been transferred.

Blade Runner has a cult appeal that goes beyond its initially poor box ofﬁce performance; I believe because it always has more to offer. As Vivian Sobchack asserts in her essay Cities on the Edge of Time; ‘This is a city that stimulates and exhausts the eyes, a city one never wants to leave because there is always - literally - more to see.'3

what you are almost invariably left with is change.4

The ﬁlms in this study belong to SF

because some element of the world within them

that watching a ﬁlm gives us a kind of superpower over the world within:

is fundamentally different to the world we are familiar with. They explore themes relevant to architecture; social division, gender roles, waste, the environment, alienation, globalisation, political themes etc. I agree with enthusiast Eric

Why Science Fiction Cinema?

Mahleb who stated that 'For many architects, science ﬁction is an imaginative form of design, making its visualisations worth studying.’5

SF literature deals often deals with the above

Definitions for ‘science fiction’ are numerous and conflicting. James Gunn, in his essay Towards a Definition of Science Fiction, believes science fiction cannot be tied to one specific place or action : it can be combined with other genres and still be Science Fiction. But when elements not unique to the genre are removed,

themes in a more substantial way than ﬁlm, so why focus on cinema? While written narrative and descriptive elements are capable of giving strong impressions of space, their impact on the reader is largely subjective, therefore difﬁcult to analyse. Cinema, on the other hand, represents space vividly and explicitly. Carsten Thau writes

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One who sits in the audience obtains a feeling of omnipresence. He can move about freely, indeed, with a feeling of himself and without any appreciable exertions in generating that which is seen.6

Because of its visual nature, cinema has a clear parallel to the creation of architecture through drawing. While not all architectural design is based on the visual, sight is still our primary sense and the quickest way we process information. Those who have seen Blade Runner will know it abounds with references to eyes: shining red reﬂections in irises; Tyrell’s thick glasses; the essential Voight-Kampff test monitoring pupil dilation.

Sobchack, Vivian. “Cities on the Edge of Time: The Urban Science Fiction Film.” From “Special Issue on the City and Cinema.” East-West Film Journal 3, no. 1 (December 1988). page 15 3

Gunn, James E. “Towards a Deﬁnition of Science Fiction.” From James E. and Matthew Candelaria. Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Scarecrow Press, 2005. page 7 4

Mahleb, Eric. “Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema - An Irregular Blog About Cinema and Sci-ﬁ, with Some Social and Environmental Stuff Thrown in Occasionally.” Accessed November 9, 2013. http://www.yume.co.uk/architectural-representations-of-the-city-in-science-ﬁction-cinema. 5

6 Thau,

Carsten. “The Metropolis in the Darkness of the Cinema - on Film, Architecture and the Poetics of the Urban.” Skala no. 22 (1990). page 29 5

‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,’

Most relevant to this study, both architecture

asserts the antagonist Roy Batty. But sight is

and science ﬁction rely heavily on the nature of

fallible. Scott Bukatman writes that 'Seeing is

cities as microcosms of humanity to inform

everything in Blade Runner, but it guarantees

predictions. Juhani Pallasmaa writes that 'In the

We can fool the eye into

same way that buildings and cities create and

believing something false - therefore studying

preserve images of culture and a particular way

ﬁlms rather than books allows us to engage with

of life, cinema illuminates the cultural

imagined worlds that are more immediately

archaeology of both the time of its making and

convincing and elaborately uncertain.

the era that it depicts.’8 The words city and

absolutely

nothing.’7

civilisation share a common Latin root, carrying the notion that in the city we see the reﬁnement of human nature. Thus within the cinematic city is the distillation of the people that made it and the time of its making.

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I came at this research from the position of being an architectural student with a keen interest in SF ﬁlms. Before this study I had little knowledge of cinematic techniques beyond observations from watching lots of ﬁlms.

! Still from the opening of Blade Runner

This study does not aim to generate concrete answers to some of the questions it poses. I am not certain those answers can be found objectively, and ﬁlm-makers often prefer to deal in uncertainty. This study is more an exploration into possibilities and relationships, how those have changed and might continue to change.

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Method The False Mirror - Renée Magritte

and notes taken while watching can be found in the Appendix, along with synopses for the main films mentioned. The second method involves reading relevant texts in order to compare what cultural historians, architects, film-lovers and critics have observed. These texts have helped me form links between the films and explore more deeply the issues involved.

I have used two main research methods, the first involving watching key films chosen for their cultural significance and relevance to the theme of the past. Some are films I have seen before but not previously looked at in the same light,

Bukatman, Scott, and British Film Institute. Blade Runner. London: British Film Institute, 1997. page12

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Architecture of image: existential space in cinema. Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2001. page 13 6

20th Century Science Fiction As Ward Shelley’s organic diagram below shows, it is no easy task discerning the origins of the SF genre, or if it has ever truly split from other genres. Strands of writers, novelists, philosophers and ﬁlm-makers interweave to

The History of Science Fiction - Ward Shelley

create a myriad of touching alternate realities. This section will look at the progression of ideas relating to the past up to 1982, in order to establish what has inﬂuenced the themes of Blade Runner. The gradual shift from utopian

quests to more dystopian outlooks will be explored, as well as the emergence of postmodernism and cinema’s relationship to the city. The text follows key events on the fold-out timeline.

1880s-1920s At the time of the advent of cinema, the world was undergoing rapid change. Increases in mass production meant scientific management of labour and a rush of people to the cities. Janet Staiger writes that as telegraph and telephone emerged, distances shortened and ‘a culture of production gave way to one of consumption.’9 Stepping into this picture was the 1927 film Metropolis, by architect Fritz Lang. The first feature length SF film and one of the most significant of all time, Metropolis has had a huge influence on images of cities. The double-levelled city of Metropolis is incredibly visually dense, with hundreds of scenes of miniature skyscrapers, automobiles

and aeroplanes compiled against enormous crowd scenes, ambitious urban vistas and pounding machinery. Lang claims he was inspired by the Manhattan skyline, ‘Something which was completely new and near fairytale like for a European in those days,’10 and this impression gave him the ﬁrst thought of an idea for a town of the future. Here Hugh Ferriss’ skyscraper drawings and the early work of the Italian Futurists are brought to life. The romanticism and terrible beauty of the upper city has led to its later readings as the ﬁlm’s main protagonist and the enormous sets used to create it leave a strong impression of space in the viewer's mind. The importance of its attitude to history is explored in relation to Blade Runner later in this study.

The Tower of Babel, Metropolis 9

Futuristic impossibility in Metropolis

Metropolis (1927) - F ritz Lang In Metropolis, the rich inhabit dazzling skyscrapers and pleasure-gardens while workers toil at steaming, rhythmic machines underground. Freder, son of Fredersen the Master of Metropolis, has been sheltered from knowledge of the underground world and, on his first excursion there, discovers the beginnings of a revolt. He also falls in love with the beautiful Maria as she brings hope to the workers, prophesying the coming of a saviour to reconcile the two worlds of the city. Meanwhile, inventor Rotwang, who loved Freder’s mother Hel before her death, is plotting to bring her back to life in the form of a humanoid robot. Fredersen allows him on the condition that the machine be given Maria’s likeness in order to sow discord among the workers. The plan backfires when the false Maria runs loose in Metropolis’ Yoshiwara district. Under its orders, the workers destroy the Heart Machine, the central power station for Metropolis, unknowingly endangering their own children. The foreman Grot manages to show them their folly and in mad grief, not knowing that Freder and the real Maria have rescued the children, they destroy the robot. Rotwang, however, believing Maria is the woman he loved come back to life, pursues her to the cathedral before Freder fights and kills him. In the final scene, Freder fulfils his role as the prophesied mediator, the Heart, by linking the hands of the city’s Head (his father) and Hands (Grot, symbol of the workers).

Staiger, Janet. “Future Noir: Contemporary Representations of Visionary Cities” from East-West Film Journal vol 3, no. 1 (December 1988). page 25 Elsaesser, Thomas. Metropolis. London: BFI Pub., 2000. page 9 9

20s-30s High Treason (1929, synopsis on page 43) is seen by some as ‘Britain’s deﬁant response to Metropolis.’11 John T. Soister writes that despite sharing counterparts such as aeroplanes, skyscrapers, monorails and shufﬂing workers, the creators seemed ‘determined not to indulge in the architectural excesses of the earlier German epic.’12 Several commentaries took pride that this forecast of the future was imaginative yet within the bounds of possibility. Recognisable elements such as the new Charing Cross Bridge and the Thames are expanded and sit alongside the technological marvels of television in everyday use, mechanical musical instruments and double-decker streets.

London in High Treason

This London is more impressive, yet still plausible. Unlike Metropolis it does not rely on dense verticality to convey a sense of the future, and its openness gives it a positive feel. In a similar vein, the 1930 comedy Just Imagine presented audiences with solely the utopian elements of Metropolis - vertical power, vast size and delicacy. The combination of high rises and freedom of mobility through huge transport networks is an essential part of the utopian vision and has become a symbol of the hopeful future.

Corbusier’s garden city plans, Norman Bel Geddes’ airliners and Oliver Hill's avant-garde furniture. Set designer Vincent Korda used the clean slate provided by Well’s premise to envision a society free from the strictures of the past, yet to do this he collected, compiled and optimised existing design and architecture.

I.Q. Hunter however dismisses High Treason as ‘crude and naive paciﬁst propaganda, wholly lacking the power and drive of Metropolis or Things To Come,’13 and it could be argued some of the punch of the fantasy is lost when it is too safe. Things To Come (1936, synopsis on page 43) is based on the novel H.G.Wells wrote as an irritated response to Lang’s ﬁlm. Wells (who also wrote the screenplay) hated that Lang envisioned the city of the future as the ultimate capitalist society and demonised technology. In his story, a technologically adept ruling class provides the answer to humanity’s past mistakes. The ‘Everytown’ created after civilisation is all but destroyed by war and plague derives from 30s modernist design, and was inspired by Le

Soister, John T. Up from the Vault: Rare Thrillers of the 1920s and 1930s. McFarland, 2004. page 98

Soister, John T, page 100

Hunter, I. Q. British Science Fiction Cinema. London; New York: Routledge, 1999. page 25 10

Everytown, Things To Come

Ironically this is one of the reasons the ﬁlm’s aesthetic seems dated. However, given that Ko r d a ’s m u l t i - s t o r e y a t r i a h a v e ‘ f u l l y materialised, ﬁve decades later, in John Portman's gigantic hotel projects’14 , perhaps here is an architecture of innocence we long to return to.

Staiger's seven staples of utopian designs; symmetry, orderliness, clarity, value, nature, interpersonal communication, ease in transport,15 are all present in Things To Come. Yet its machine-built perfection and streamlined modernism diminish the individuality of its inhabitants, leading to the idea that even a perfect utopia may not be a good thing.16

30s-50s

Atlanta Marriott Marquis Hotel, John Portman

This pure utopian vision also did not remain popular. Hunter writes that ‘the prospect of a clean, ordered, dehumanised future has come to be viewed with horror,’17 annulling Everytown’s scientiﬁc precision; and the ecological movement has arisen to counter the effects of the kind of technological expansion Wells envisioned. It is no accident that around the Second World War, urban planning began to suffer disillusionment, with people and ﬁlms moving away from cities. Utopian aspirations

Pallasmaa, Juhani. page 17

Staiger, Janet. East-West Film Journal 3, no. 1 (December 1988) page 24

focussed on agricultural societies, and written SF cities became isolating and claustrophobic spaces, devoid of nature. Sobchack notes two main attitudes in 50s SF cinema - either the total destruction or abandonment of the city.18 Both approaches allow audiences to combat their paranoia by fantasising the death of the city. The imagination of disaster somehow poeticises the city and the inclusion of ruined icons such as the Statue of Liberty ‘names’ the urban scene effectively - a technique seen in the derelict Bradbury Building in Blade Runner and used to the point of parody in contemporary disaster films such as The Day After Tomorrow (2004). The second approach, emptying the city, is ‘nostalgic - always already fixed on an unrecoverable past rather than on a future that has not yet occurred.’19 If a city’s modernity is reflected in its vitality of movement, then the abandoned city’s architecture is coded as ‘past’ and the city fails to function.

“Utopia in Dark Times: Optimism/Pessimism and Utopia/Dystopia” - Ruth Levitas and Lucy Sargisson. From Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination. New York, NY Routledge, 2003. page 15 16

Hunter, I. Q. page 21

Sobchack, Vivian. East-West Film Journal 3, no. 1 (December 1988) pages 12-14

Sobchack, Vivian East-West Film Journal 3, no. 1 (December 1988). page 12. 19

50s -70s Perhaps it is this negative treatment of existing cities that led to the glut of fantasy comic book cities in the late 50s and early 60s. Artists such as Jean Giraud, Osamu Tezuka and Syd Mead (later artistic director of Blade Runner) drew feverish visions of dizzyingly tall, compacted cities that fill the frame with their density. Science fiction hallucinated a world where everything was under the control of one creator, much in the way Lang did. Despite the lack of concrete expressions regarding existing cities, this was a hopeful time, and the creations of this period - for example, the orbital sequences of Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - inspired the aesthetics of many a later SF film. However, with the rise of electronic culture, geography was beginning to lose its meaning, a theme explored in Jacques Tati’s satirical Playtime (1967, synopsis on page

44) where a disorientated Monsieur Hulot bumbles around a homogenous ‘Paris’ dominated by the International Style. Hulot’s repeated walking into glass doors can be read as a playful metaphor for the illusion of progression and the invisible barriers of Modernism. It seems at this time we could never quite dispense with the dream of the vibrant modern city, but were paralysed by uncertainty as how to implement it and discontented with what Modernism had offered us so far.

Overcrowded New York in Soylent Green

to emerge, with SF cities showing darkness, entropy and decay. The most famous example can be seen in Star Wars (1 977) where spaceships are for the ﬁrst time not shiny and new but dusty and in need of repair. Viewers could fantasise the possibility of such machines because of their pragmatic nature. Pretty soon, the appearance of service pipes, ducts and control panels became a mainstay of ‘realistic’ science ﬁction and explicit depiction of quite rudimentary technology became a mainstay of the later ‘cyberpunk’ sub-genre.   Travel advertisements in Playtime

In the 70s, fears of overpopulation began to dominate the public mind, and the city returned to science ﬁction, this time as a place of overcrowding. Whereas previously horizontality had been about peace, in dystopian ﬁlms such as Soylent Green (1973) it stressed the limitation of space. At this time ‘junkyard futurism’ began Space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey

A Star Wars hovercraft 12

Cyberpunk: a sub-genre of science ﬁction revolving around the negative impact of technology that emerged in the 1980s

80s - Present This ‘junking’ of space was one approach to defining SF cities in the early 80s - cities became either all centre or all margins - a vast sprawling metropolis that unusually thrives on its lowness (Blade Runner, 1982) or a landscape dominated by the automobile (Repo Man, 1984 ).20 In the former, the city is liberated from the bourgeois and left under the control of the dregs of society - the new hacker culture. As explored later, the aesthetic of the junked city is ‘retrofitting’ rather than urban renewal, allowing people to create their own city from their understanding and personal experience of its past. This is the postmodern city - its complexity defies any single interpretation. Dystopian cities offer film-makers a narrative freedom utopias cannot, feeding on collective anxieties without necessarily offering solutions.

cynical of its early utopias and their power for transformation. Ruth Levitas writes:

Utopia is not dead, but the kind of utopianism that is holistic, social, future-located, committed, and linked to the present by some identiﬁable narrative of change…is culturally problematic.21

The naivety of early utopias such as Things To Come and their unfortunate similarities to fascism have dented our trust. Levitas’s correspondent, Lucy Sargisson, is more hopeful: ‘For me, the exploration of alternatives is a transformative process in itself,’ and changing the way we think can be as important as changing conditions. However Sargisson cautions, ‘perhaps Utopia is simply dangerous… lives are affected by idealism.’ Perhaps then, idealism must be tempered with realism in the furnace of ﬁlms such as Blade Runner to test its relevance to the present.

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Since then, as we will see, cinema had not stopped looking backwards, but has become 20

Sobchack, Vivian. East-West Film Journal 3, no. 1 (December 1988) page 16

Levitas and Sargisson, 2003. Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination. page 15 13

Blade Runner Set in a 2019 LA abandoned by the bourgeois, Blade Runner is a dystopian ﬁlm about what it

develop emotions and travel to Earth to seek

means to be human. Replicants, genetically engineered androids built to perform hazardous tasks in outer space, are forbidden to travel to Earth under penalty of death. The latest model, the Nexus 6, has superior strength, agility and intelligence and is marketed under the tagline ‘more human than human.’ However, they lack the ability to experience human feelings, and have a built in life-span of 4 years to prevent the possibility. A group of Nexus 6 replicants begin to

lives. Deckard (Harrison Ford), a policeman who has retired from the ‘Blade Runner’ unit which specialises in destroying replicants on earth, is brought in to hunt down and kill the group, consisting of ‘basic pleasure model’ Pris, dancer Zhora and combat models Leon and Roy Batty. The replicants use one of Tyrell’s close friends, roboticist JF Sebastian, to get to their maker, where Batty is incensed to ﬁnd his lifespan cannot be extended and kills both Tyrell and Sebastian. Deckard has

their creator, Tyrell, in order to extend their

fallen in love with Tyrell’s ‘niece' Rachael, who is a replicant with implanted memories, and this combined with the trauma of pursuing the other replicants causes him to rediscover his own buried emotions. The ﬁlm reaches a climax with a ﬁght to the death b e t w e e n D e c k a r d a n d B a t t y, w h i c h unexpectedly ends with Batty graciously letting go of his life as he reaches the end of his lifetime. The conclusion varies between the original release and the 2007 Final Cut (which this study uses) but in both Deckard is seen beginning anew with Rachael.

Summary ‘Of all the big influential science fiction films, the ones that made a stab at predicting how life would be...this film has been the most accurate.' - Mark Romanek. Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner (2007) It could be argued that the enduring relevance of the world Ridley Scott and Syd Mead envisioned for Blade Runner owes to the scope of their ambitions. Scott called it ‘a film set forty years hence in the style of forty years ago,’22 referencing the noir detective thrillers that would underpin the futuristic setting. From the beginning, the filmmakers desired to create a vision of future life that would not date, and according to The Blade Runner Sketchbook they did this by basing the look of the film on ‘research and carefully thought-out principles r e g a r d i n g t h e f u t u r e o f a r c h i t e c t u r e, transportation, fashion, and social behaviour.’23 Scott’s near-obsessive influence on the film’s aesthetic and Mead’s expertise in picturing the shape of things to come led to a remarkable preview of modern life.

In order to unpack some of its sometimes overwhelming richness I have decided to look at Blade Runner alongside several other key films. Synopses for these have been provided alongside the main text or in the Appendix - the reader is advised to familiarise themselves with the basic narrative if they have not seen the film. This study will take aspects of the film’s urban setting and examining the techniques that have been used to transport the past (the 1940s) into the present (in 1982) into the future (2019) in a realistic manner within the following sections:

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Cityscape - the city as spectacle How the metropolis is portrayed as a complete or disparate entity through aerial overviews and panoramic shots.

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Transport - moving through the city How layers of high-speed transport convey a living city, and give the viewer a sense of presence.

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Buildings - the recognisable city How ancient symbolism, information technology and the use of existing buildings deﬁne the architecture of the future.

Quoted in Bukatman, Scott, and British Film Institute. Blade Runner. London: British Film Institute, 1997. page 19

Mead, Syd. The Blade Runner Sketchbook / David Scroggy. San Diego, CA: Blue Dolphin Enterprises, 1982. 15

Interiors - the heart of the city

What makes a discomforting future still feel like home? Exploring familiar buildings, warm spaces and continuity with the past.

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Streets - the life of the city Haste, waste, danger, social division and fastpaced life in the city.

Cityscape

suggests that historic LA was not really the main driver for the city. Neil Leach argues that it would be a mistake to see Blade Runner as

Los Angeles, 2019. The ﬁrst echoing drum beat

simply exchanging NY for LA:

and eerie notes of Vangelis’ soundtrack create a

sense of immense space before anything

‘In reality, it provides an image of a generic

appears on the screen. When the city does

world city, rather than any one particular

materialise, it is in an explosion of ﬂame from a

conurbation. With that in mind, the ﬁlm can be

chemical tower and the impression of a vast

seen to make predictions for future cities in

landscape of tiny lights. The city ﬁlls the horizon

general.’25

in bafﬂing magnitude, too big to be taken in at a

glance. But gone are the beaches, the foothills,

One of these predictions is that the essential

and the central valley - the three most

structure of cities will not change. This LA is

characteristic geographic features of LA - along

divided into districts common to world cities;

with what Reyner Banham called the ‘ecology’ of

ﬂoating within an industrial expanse is a new

freeways.24

So where are we? In an early script

‘downtown’ headquarters connected to the

the city was called San Angeles, suggesting that

global network, surrounded by refurbished

the eight hundred miles between San Francisco

industrial spaces and hives of service

and Los Angeles had been transformed into one

industries.26

huge concentration with a suburban middle section. Apparently Scott never fully committed to LA as the setting of the ﬁlm - the skyline has

The ‘Hades landscape’ from opening sequence

a very New York feel to it. Combined with the lack of sense of connecting place that is the result of moving aerially through the city it

Carper, Steve - “Subverting the Disaffected City: Cityscape in Blade Runner.” From Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Popular Press, 1991. page 185 24

Leach, Neil. The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis. Routledge, 2005. page 237

Carper, Steve, page 185. 16

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Present-day Los Angeles - from www.globeimages.net

The menacing industrial nature of the opening

introduced,’28 in a street bar (see Streets section

other cities to create a weirdly convincing near

was created using 3D models and 2D etchings of

on page 30). This incongruence suggests that

future. Code 46 has similarities to Blade Runner -

real chemical towers in forced perspective and

even when a scene shows the act of moving

the majority of its action takes place at night,

was inspired by Scott’s experiences growing up

from one district to another, if the difference is

and is partially concealed by the same kind of

in the North East of England. Douglas Trumbull,

too improbable the viewer loses faith in the

atmospheric smog. This ﬁlm offers a remarkably

visual effects coordinator, believes it is this

plausibility of that world.

fresh vision of the future as a continuation of

opening scene that ‘really establishes the whole

the present, making only small changes in order

However it seems a little at

According to Staiger one of the most immediate

odds with the dense inner city, supporting the

signiﬁers of the SF genre is ‘the representation

theory that Los Angeles itself was not as

of a known city in which readily distinguishable

important as general principles of urban

sections of today's cityscape are present but

anatomy. Steve Carper writes that Mead's

other parts are rewritten,’29 reﬂecting an

towering, restricted city is a direct contradiction

intrinsic attitude to present-day cities. In the

to the vast expanse intimated in the ﬁlm's ﬁrst

2003 ﬁlm Code 46 the cityscape of Shanghai has

sequences - ‘Much truer to the future city's

been surrounded by a vast desert and merged

image is the scene in which Deckard is

with the skylines of Dubai, Hong Kong and

look of the

ﬁlm.’27

Miniature model for opening sequence

Chemical plant at Teesside, Middlesbrough

to preserve a sense of place.   Code 46 (2003) - Michael Winterbottom A romance set in near future, Shanghai, where genetic modiﬁcation has resulted in the Code 46 law, banning humans with certain genetic matches from forming romantic relationships. Full synopsis on page 51.

Code 46’s smog-ﬁlled Shanghai

“Blade Runner: Hades Landscape | Douglas Trumbull - Immersive Media and Visual Effects.” Accessed December 3, 2013. http://douglastrumbull.com/key-fx-sequences-bladerunner-hades-landscape 27

Staiger, Janet, East-West Film Journal 3, no. 1 (December 1988). page 20 18

Another ﬁlm which transports an existing city dramatically forwards with familiar elements intact is Renaissance (2006). Animated in solid black and white, 2054 Paris is a city of transparency, with glazed walkways over roads beside a lower, sludgy River Seine and indoor forests adorning mansard roofs. Great effort is taken to not only represent the skyline as it could be but also the city’s very construction in iron, brick and glass.

It could be argued that these cities lack the impact of Blade Runner, but because of their near-future setting they may have the edge in

City drop-off - in Renaissance Paris’s streets are transformed and transported into a dark future

plausibility. The question then becomes one of

Renaissance (2006) - Christian Volckman In 2054 Paris, troubles arises in the City of Lights when a high-profile scientist named Ilona is kidnapped, and policeman Karas is assigned the task of solving the case. The film mixes Blade Runner aesthetics with stark, Sin City-style visuals, filmed using motion-capture animation with extravagant production design by Alfred Frazzani. Full synopsis on page 52.

how long that advantage will last. Geoff Manaugh wonders whether, as the skylines and iconic hotel interiors of Code 46 become visually familiar to global ﬁlmgoers, it will become much harder to edit them all into a convincing whole.30 With the rapid changes cities are currently undergoing, perhaps shooting on location will guarantee a realistic future for a shorter time than it could in 1982.

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The Monmartre Hill in Renaissance

Manaugh, Goeff.“Architecture on Film: Code 46 + Michael Winterbottom Q&A | Architecture Foundation.” Programme Notes. Accessed April 16, 2014. http:// www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/2009/architecture-on-ﬁlm/code-46-michael-winterbottom-qanda. 30

Transport

subject to disillusionment. When the camera

appears on street level, the viewer is made to

No city of the future would be complete without

model-maker remarked that the city ‘is an

its buzzing transport system. From the humble biplanes floating above congested highways in Metropolis (1927) to heaving sky streets in The Fifth Element (1 997) and building facades becoming motorways in Minority Report (2003), science fiction films have aimed to excite viewers about their urban creations through high-speed transport. The creators of Blade Runner felt flying cars were ‘pretty much the way the cities will go’31 and the fact that 2019 has been liberated of its iconic highways begins to suggest the ideal of a road-free future. The approach to the police station echoes a similar shot of the Stadtkrone Tower in Metropolis demonstrating that the flyover view of the city is a popular method for emphasising its monumentality.

feel small and vulnerable, always inside. A implicit menace all the way through’, almost organic in the way it closes in round the viewer.32 Though according to Mike Davis both are of the same ‘vista of urban gigantism,’33 comparing transport in Metropolis and Blade Runner unearths some interesting contrasts. The interconnectivity of Metropolis’s busy elevated highways between buildings is lacking in LA, only occasionally hinted at by the ‘trafﬁc corridor’ read-outs inside Gaff’s spinner. Road bridges suggest a kind of cooperation between enterprises, something missing entirely in Blade Runner. Both cities feature vast canyons between buildings to aid navigation through the urban mass, but in Blade Runner the effect is compressed and seeing the street level at the

same time as the skyscrapers is rare. The energy

However, while vertical aspects are celebrated,

and highly functional: busy roads suggest

horizontal aspects of the city have become

Metropolis’s Stadtkrone Tower - New Tower of Babel

of Metropolis’s upper city suggests it is thriving people have places to go.

Aerial approach to the police station in Blade Runner

In contrast, LA’s streets are stagnant, with large stationary trucks expelling steam and the odd lone police sedan pulling through milling pedestrians. Everything suggests that few people need to go anywhere, or can.

Rogers, Chris. “Architecture and Visual Culture.” Accessed December 3, 2013. http://www.chrismrogers.net.

Referenced by Thau, Carsten, page 34

Davis, Mike, quoted in Leach, Neil. The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis. Routledge, 2005. page 236 20

The ‘below’ in Blade Runner is separate from the

The aerial scenes are not just whimsical fancies,

A similar diligence pervaded the creation of the

‘above’ not just by class but by there being no

however: they are given an added dimension of

road vehicles; twenty-ﬁve cars adjusted with

obvious connection between their functioning.

realism by the experience of being inside of one

ﬁbreglass and wood. The creator Gene Winﬁeld

Thau writes that the trafﬁc of the metropolis

of the police ‘spinners.’ Everything, from twist-

scoured army surplus houses for aluminium

‘enliven[s] vision's infantile inclination to make

wrist hydraulic steering to an onboard computer

additions for Cadillacs, Plymouths, VWs and

itself into one with the seen, to be master over

giving read-outs of trafﬁc corridors, was made

vans. In order to turn the present into the

and to pierce through the objective world, to

from scratch. Like the layering of the rest of the

future, anything deemed suitably ‘futuristic’ was

burst reality apart.’34 In the air, this vast urban

ﬁlm, this gives the viewer presence, as they peer

added, making the vehicles appear clunky and

extrapolation tears reality wide open. On the

through the windscreen. The experience brings

excessively functional, nothing like the sleek

street, however, reality is brought grimly down

to mind the French short ﬁlm C'était un rendez-

Star Trek craft, and more evidently Earth-bound

to earth, becoming deeply sinister once the

vous (1976) depicting a high-speed dawn drive

than Star Wars’ exotic ships. In Blade Runner,

viewer touches the ground. Perhaps this

through Paris, passing its landmarks.35 Both

what makes something realistically futuristic is

ex p l a i n s D e ck a r d ’s a n x i o u s ex p r e s s i o n

ﬁlms celebrate the joy of the automobile and its

not what elegance it can be stripped back to; it

throughout the ﬂying scenes.

ability to traverse the boundaries of the city to

is whatever can be added.

discover new experiential layers.

Elevated roads in Metropolis 34

Thau, Cartsen, page 29

Lelouch, Claude. C'était un Rendez-vous (1976 ).

The inside of the spinner aircraft in Blade Runner

structures by slapping new add-ons onto

last analog science ﬁction movie made because

them.’36 The old city structures would be

we didn't have all the advantages that people

hollowed out and used as service access for

have now, and I'm glad we didn't because there

Unlike Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, Blade Runner had

megastructures above, or become surfaces for

is nothing artiﬁcial about it.”37

a relatively limited special effects budget, which

electrical conduits and air-conditioning ducts.

unexpectedly worked in its favour. Mead based

The model-makers used existing Los Angeles

the architectural look of the city on the

architecture as the basis for the miniatures, and

principle that it would eventually become too

I believe the way the setting was painstakingly

expensive simply to tear down old buildings and

created by hand as if it were a real piece of

replace them. His approach of ‘retroﬁtting’

architecture gives it its longevity. Art Director

simply meant ‘upgrading old machinery or

David Snyder says, “I look at Blade Runner as the

Buildings

Miniature buildings with service pipes

Sketch by Syd Mead of a technological addition to a building

Bukatman, Scott, and British Film Institute. Blade Runner. London: British Film Institute, 1997. p21

Snyder, David. Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner. Documentary, 2007. 22

! !

Portraying the city in a state of informal change turned out to be a surprisingly durable attitude. One prominent architect (not named) said, “When I saw Blade Runner, the evolution in the beauty of technology suddenly became very apparent - the guts on the outside.”38 Thau writes; ‘This is the technologically updated neighbourhood, more of a ruinous conglomeration of the old and hyper-new than

Megastructures and pipes in Rintaro’s Metropolis

Neo-Tokyo’s many pipes - Akira

the traditional science fiction film's typically more sterile scenery would allow.’39 The number of films following Blade Runner that took to the style is testament to its continued appeal, particularly in Japan. Animated cities in Metropolis (20011) and Akira (1988) are packed with giant pipes, and cyberpunk films like Matrix Reloaded (2003) use the style as an indicator of the terrible beauty of technology. The irony is that while since the 80s there has been an increase in retrofitted buildings, not many of them have embraced visible external services to quite the same degree. Mead’s Concept image for Zion city - Matrix Reloaded

method remains valid but its aesthetic is a niche one.

! 38

Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner. 2007.

39Carsten Thau. “The

Metropolis in the Darkness of the Cinema - on Film, Architecture and the Poetics of the Urban.” Skala no. 22 (1990). p33 23

Blade Runner reﬂects the fact it was made at a

as Tron (1982) the protagonist ﬁnds himself

time where the ‘visible machineries of the

inside a computer and the city becomes a literal

industrial age’ were giving way to ‘the invisible

container for the transfer of information, its

Not only

traversable spaces freeways for data to ﬂow

services are tagged onto LA’s buildings: within

through. In Tron, people are physically inserted

the Blade Runner universe, buildings are

into cyberspace. In Blade Runner the body is lost

animated by enormous advertisements for

in the sensory experience of the city. Deckard is

everything from Coca-Cola to PanAm. The signs

shown to be cold and unfeeling until his

recall Fritz Lang’s ﬁrst vision of New York’s

experiences with the replicants help him

elevated advertisements ‘surpassing the stars

rediscover empathy, fear and pain. Similarly, the

technologies of the information

age.’40

and were referenced from

replicants could be considered ‘simulations’ of

Tokyo’s Ginza district. Mead wanted to show the

humans, but their artiﬁciality is questioned

city’s structures as having been ‘enveloped into

when they too develop emotions. Blade Runner’s

sort of an urban machine, with people living

collision of real and virtual space predicted the

inside,’ 42

and this machine proselytises

rise of embedded technology in today’s cities,

continually with constant calls to abandon the

and the resulting estrangement of peoples who

planet and travel to the ‘off-world’ colonies. The

cannot access these technologies. As Saskia

environment's ﬂickering neon and invasive

Sassen writes, ‘These acute concentrations of

nature also brings the Blade Runner city closer to

embedded software and of connectivity

a simulated space than a real one. In the ﬁlm’s

infrastructures for digitised space make the city

cinematic overdose, our selves are absorbed into

less penetrable for the ordinary citizen.’43

with their

light,’41

Buildings become advertisements in Blade Runner

Ginza district, Tokyo, present day

the technology of the metropolis. In ﬁlms such 40

Bukatman, Scott, page 45

Bukatman, Scott, page 62

Rogers, Chris. “Architecture and Visual Culture.” Accessed December 3, 2013. http://www.chrismrogers.net.

Inhabited cyberspace in Tron

Sassen, Saskia - “Cities at the Intersection of New Histories.” From “Berlin: Towards an Urban Age | LSE Cities.” Accessed January 4, 2014. http://lsecities.net/publications/ conference-newspapers/berlin-towards-an-urban-age/. 43

As well as appropriating and commercialising

Tyrell pyramid ‘represents the global power of

Metropolis explicitly references the story of the

buildings, Blade Runner makes explicit use of

the Corporation as well as its location in Los

Tower of Babel, built by slaves but also

ancient symbolism. The most obvious examples

Angeles and the death drive which sustains it.’

destroyed by them because no common

are two towering 700-storey Mayan pyramids

Parallels can be drawn between the hypothesis

language existed between ruler and ruled. It is a

intended as a megastructure to represent the

that the Mayan’s failure to sustainably manage

twist on the Biblical story45 but the main themes

entire city: Tyrell Headquarters. With everyone

their land led to their subsequent departure

of division and language remain, as well as the

moving ‘off-world’ the city suffers from a lack of

from their capitals44 , and the abandonment of

warning against building too high. Ann Douglas

central government, and the Corporation has

LA in Blade Runner due to pollution and

writes that the division of languages of the story

taken over as the dominating source of power,

overcrowding.

reﬂects the ‘cacophony’ of skyscrapers in

especially relevant since LA is a manufacturing

rather than ﬁnancial capital. In entombing the

Additionally, the pyramids’ emphasis on Tyrell’s

Japanese animated ﬁlm Metropolis (synopsis on

grandfatherly Tyrell within a symbol of pre-

godlike status as the creator of the replicants

page 48) also takes this aspect of the 1927 ﬁlm in

Columbian architecture, Leach believes that the

brings to mind the Master of Metropolis.

its equivalent building, ‘the Ziggurat.’

Tyrell Headquarters

heterogeneous cities like New York.46 The 2001

Frederson, Master of Metropolis - view from Tower

The Ziggurat from Metropolis (2001 ﬁlm)

Stefan Lovgren. “Climate Change Killed of Maya Civilisation, Study Says.” National Geographic, March 13, 2003.

Genesis 11: 1-8

Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995. page 448. Cited by Bukatman, Scott, page 61 25

Here is once again where the elite and

study to decipher the implications of all these

privileged live. These ﬁlms use the Tower image

inclusions, however there is one that particularly

on several levels - as an exaggeration of the

applies here. Slavery, oppression and inequality

division of classes, a symbol of centralised

aside, ﬁlm-makers hark back to a time when a

power and to show the enormous scale of the city. As cities-within-cities they reﬂect a desire for a focal point within the boundless total space of the metropolis, and are perhaps the result of a desperate desire for a Haven from the dangerous outside world.

city was the whole world and humanity had total control over their environment. If the whole earth were to be encompassed in one giant city, several Babels might emerge as strongholds of absolute order within the inevitable urban chaos. Would they then be destroyed from the

inside by empowered Others, as in Blade Runner

The constant re-use of ancient architecture, in

maker’s life? History and many a SF ﬁlm seem

SF ﬁlms, in particular from Mesopotamia (the

to suggest so.

where Batty inﬁltrates the pyramid to take his

birthplace of civilisation), suggests a recurring belief that the ultimate city of the future will resemble the cities of the distant past. In Code 46 (2003) using illegal transport papers is known as ‘cheating the Sphinx’ - the Sphinx being, once again, the Corporation. The equivalent of the Tower of Babel in Elysium (2012) is a verdant space wheel modelled on Beverly Hills where only the super-rich live, explicitly referencing Greco-Roman myths of an afterlife lived in ﬁelds close to the sun. Elysium also features a powerful corporate entity capable of deciding how and where the Others (the deprived poor on Earth) must live. In the emotionless totalitarian Libria of Equilibrium (2002), Roman masonry architecture is used to symbolise perfect military control. It would take a larger

! !

The ďŹ elds in the sky - Elysium

Libriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fascist architecture - Equilibrium

greenery - a bonsai tree which goes almost

Interiors

unnoticed in the foreground.

The treatment of internal spaces in science

ﬁction ﬁlms is usually an extrapolation of ideas

Andrew Benjamin asserts that this is the perfect

about future domesticity in cities. For example,

domestic environment, making it unfair that

in Minority Report (2003, synopsis on page 49)

Deckard and Rachael have to ﬂee it.47 Pallasmaa

Anderton's cold, futuristic apartment in the city

writes, ‘Home is a place where one can dream in

has everything at the touch of a button, but it

peace, but as fear penetrates the space of home,

emphasises his loneliness when compared with

the experience of home becomes a mental

the family house’s rural warmth. Films make it

impossibility.’48 The ﬁlm harks back to a golden

clear where is ‘home’ for the human, and in

age of architecture, but because of the invasion

Blade Runner Deckard’s apartment is one such

of fear we are left uncertain if there is a home

place. Once the voice-activated lift and security

for anyone in this world. If, as Pallasmaa

check are left behind, we enter a simple room

believes, 'Modern man has abandoned his home

shot

technique

and is forever on a journey towards an

cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth used to

unobtainable utopia,’ then this ﬁlm implies that

provide contrast to the harsh neon street scenes.

our condition is to keep striving to ﬁnd

The apartment’s architecture was made from

something already lost.

soft,

hazy

warmth,

moulds of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House,

giving it a cave-like feel that at times is

This idea finds a firm footing in the film’s use of

claustrophobic but mostly feels comforting. The

two key Los Angeles buildings - Union Station,

personalising clutter varies from written records

which becomes the police headquarters, and the

and photographs (pointers to the importance of

Bradbury Hotel, where Sebastian has taken up

memory) to piano music, alcohol and books

residence.

Anderton’s apartment - Minority Report

Bonsai in foreground of Deckard’s apartment

At home in the kitchen

(objects of recreational importance.) There is Personal clutter

also the ﬁlm’s only sign of 47

Andrew Benjamin. “At Home With Replicants - The Architecture of Blade Runner.” Architectural Design 64 (1994).

Pallasmaa, Juhani, page 31 28

The station - redundant in a future where no

partly at work and policemen are going about

one comes or goes anymore - has the same

their job much as they always have. The other

jaded air as the rest of the city but is

location, the Bradbury, has changed from a

reassuringly normal, a scene that could have

plush hotel to a damp, misty wreck that looks,

existed as-is in the 80s or even now. The ofﬁce

sounds, and we can almost imagine, smells

inside it also lacks the presence of advanced

different. It is unsettling to see these familiar

technology, its fans suggesting a broken air-

buildings subject to decay and depicted in half-

conditioning unit. Benjamin writes that the

light, suggesting that the past has become

ofﬁce indicates ‘a continuity with a certain

redundant. However they offer us a tenuous link

image of the

present,’49-

technology is only

Inventor Rotwang’s ‘golem house’ - Metropolis

between our world and the future one. Similarly, when Heidi Shönemann began researching the art-historical references in Metropolis, she discovered that Rotwang’s ‘golem house,’ the oldest building in the ﬁlm, was itself based on a villa by Expressionist architect Otto Bartning.50 The roughness of the house is out of place among the smooth modernity of the city, yet its interior is one of the most convincing locations and deep at its heart is Rotwang’s laboratory, the scene of technological miracles. As we look below the surface of the new city’s image we discover its old buildings functioning still, albeit in a different way.

Union Station (in Blade Runner, top)

The Bradbury Hotel (in Blade Runner, top)

Andrew Benjamin. “At Home With Replicants - The Architecture of Blade Runner.” Architectural Design 64 (1994).

Elsaesser, Thomas, page 21 29

Streets:

The streets of Blade Runner are full of the movement of people, their convincing bustle an example of Scott’s ‘layering effect.’ The space’s actuality is strengthened by the incidental nature of the scene - steam rising from vents; a police vehicle pulling out; crowds of people passing; the constant falling rain. In the scene where Deckard is ﬁrst introduced, a hand-held camera traverses several streams of people with umbrellas passing in both directions, somehow managing to give us the impression of bodiless presence. Thau writes that this technique allows people to escape from stiﬂing places and limitation:

Street sketch by Syd Mead showing variety of costumes, vehicles and hinting at pipes on buildings

‘The city has certain localities which the ﬁlm

are believable. Vitality of movement and life is

marginalised and disenfranchised in bourgeois

comes back to time and again: railway stations,

the image of the modern city.

urban culture.’52 However, this community is

airports, hotel lobbies, bars, subways. If we...feel

given an Asian identity, reﬂecting 1980s fears

ourselves shut up inside of these places, we can

Blade Runner’s depiction of a multi-cultural

over the expanding economic inﬂuence of

ﬁlm.’51

pastiche mirrors current anxieties about migrant

Japan, but also effectively forecasting the

cultures. The streets are populated with an

emergence of Asia as a corporate and industrial

The streets are crowded and dangerous, yet it is

underclass of peddlers, small service providers

superpower.

precisely because of their congestion that they

and nomadic traders, ‘everyone previously

escape from them in

! 51

Thau, Carsten, page 30

Sobchack, Vivian, East-West Film Journal 3, no. 1 (December 1988) page 14 30

Giuliana Bruno writes that ‘the pertinence and

seems to thrive in both environments. The ﬁlm

uniqueness of architecture to speciﬁc places,

suggests that acceptance of the postmodern city

c u l t u r e s, a n d t i m e s h a s b e e n l o s t i n

means embracing its racial variety and absurdity.

postmodernism’53

and the LA that is buried

under its clutter of Asian inﬂuences has perhaps

Negative aspects are also accepted and

lost its original character. ‘Spectacle originates

aestheticised to indicate the nature of a

in the loss of unity of the world' wrote Guy

postindustrial city, most evidently in waste and

Debord in Society of the Spectacle and here is a

decay. Litter swirls around Deckard’s feet; Pris

place of inﬁnite differences - Tyrell could not

meets Sebastian after hiding in a pile of

easily be imagined walking these streets but the

rubbish, and Sebastian himself suffers from a

hawkers were born for them. Mike Davis writes

condition which causes his skin to disintegrate

that the extremes of people in Blade Runner

at an accelerated rate, an analogy for the state of

reﬂects a paradox between two trends of

the city itself.

postmodernism. One 'adjusts or appeals to the

perfection of many SF cities, but is also,

spectacular’ (Tyrell, symbolised by loftiness and

according to Bruno, an indicator that the city

splendour) while the other 'seeks to elude or

still functions as an object of capitalism - it

refuse it,’ (the recycling cultures at street level.)

produces and develops itself perpetually,

Even the use of the pidgin CitySpeak language

recycling its waste in order to produce more.54

(a mish-mash of Spanish, Japanese and German)

The city is a working ruin - still a monumental

separates the two, and while Deckard can

consumer and producer, but falling apart from

understand this language he chooses not to,

the inside. It was around the time of Blade

thus deciding not to be one of the ‘little people.’

Runner that science ﬁction ﬁlms embraced

He will not allow himself to cross the line he

showing decay in cities - an assumption of a

has set himself, choosing to be separate from

recurrent aspect of the postindustrial city.

Waste separates LA from the

this spectacle, unlike his colleague Gaff, who

‘Ridleyville’ - the altered New York Street Set

Punks, monks and neon umbrellas

Bruno, Giuliana. “Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner.” October, no. 41 (1987) page 66

Bruno, Giuliana, page 64 31

Similarly, crime is standard fare in 2019, as the street furniture suggests. The fire hydrants, parking meters, and traffic signs and were specifically designed to look brutal, implying the violence of street life in the future city.55 The production of the film as a piece of architecture highlights its makers sincerity towards the certainty of human interaction with the city, culminating in the design of the ‘sidewalk diner.’ Engineered to parasitically leech from a power pole, measured to fit human proportions and bolted down to prevent vandalism, the design of the diner does not question what is right or wrong. The postindustrial city simply does what it has to to continue to function.

Designs for the sidewalk diner

Mead, Syd. Blade Runner Sketchbook / David Scroggy. San Diego, CA: Blue Dolphin Enterprises, 1982. page 93 32

Conclusion: Futures Present

Washington sky road - Minority Report

To summarise: the other ﬁlms considered in the

society struggle for identity in an increasingly

emotions by eliminating the extremes of the

main section show some of the ways SF cinema

dangerous world where everything does what it

spectrum of human emotion: melancholy and

is currently responding to the past. Techniques

must to survive.

joy, nostalgia and ecstasy.’58 Blade Runner if

in common with Blade Runner - the ‘layering’ of

scenery, a variety of aesthetic styles, using iconic

As cities grow larger and more complex, the

extremes. This is not a place one would want to

buildings - seem make a more convincing

temptation is to oversimplify our understanding

live, but a place fans are happy to visit again and

future, which explains why architecture students

of them and risk the reality of sterile corporate

again because of its inﬁnite urban experience.

today are still encouraged to watch that ﬁlm.

environments being the only image of the city

Bukatman calls the ﬁlm ‘a post-modern

Through the overview of 2019 LA we have seen

that survives its transformation. As Deyan

nostalgia for a lost image of urban complexity;

that perhaps the Blade Runner city is not the

Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum in

even congestion and alienation could be

City of Angels at all, but rather the structure of a

London warns, ‘to sweep away the darkness is to

preferred to the disappearance of real public

generic world metropolis, and that increasing

risk the collateral damage that will destroy the

space and human bodies,’59 - challenges facing

the scale and density of an existing urban

very qualities that make a city work.’56 Blade

today’s cities.

landscape can propel it into the future. The

Runner was not well received in the ﬁrst few

city’s transport exaggerates the difference

years of its debut - audiences reacted badly to

between horizontal and vertical space, as well as

the traumatic emotional side of the ﬁlm. Terry

the importance of motion to city life. We have

Rawlings, supervising editor, remarked, “This

seen how SF ﬁlms make extensive use of

was a study of the future, and I don't think at

ancient symbolism, and how the retroﬁtting of

the time people wanted to see the future,

Blade Runner’s buildings led the way for

especially like predicted in the ﬁlm.”57 However

discussions on information technology in cities.

understandable the initial reaction was, the

Exploring the innards of these buildings has

ﬁlm’s power lies precisely in the way its creators

highlighted man’s search for a home in a future

were unafraid to visit the darker side of cities.

when the past seems decayed and lost. Finally,

Pallasmaa writes that one of the problems of

in the streets we have watched a multi-cultural

today’s architecture is that it has ‘normalised

anything overwhelms the audience with its

! !

Sudjic, Devan. “Berlin: Towards an Urban Age | LSE Cities.” Accessed January 4, 2014. http://lsecities.net/publications/conference-newspapers/berlin-towards-an-urban-age/.

Rawlings, Terry. Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner. Documentary, 2007.

Pallasmaa, Juhani, page 29

Bukatman, Scott, page 86 35

The ﬁlm does not always give us answers to the

SF ﬁlm can help push ideas in a certain

problems it poses, and the failure to deliver a

direction as to affect long-term realities. If ﬁlms

way out highlights its dystopian nature. As Paul

can continue to have the impact of Blade Runner

Sammon says, Blade Runner is essentially a

then they will continue to have a role to play in

cautionary piece:

architectural design. Until then, many people

will continue to return to the dark revelry of Los

‘It's telling us to beware. It's telling us; look where we're heading, look what we can do to

Angeles 2019 in order to seek out what should -

each

other.’60

and should not - become reality.

Now, 30 years later, does science ﬁction still have a role to play in consideration of our future architecture? A recent decrease in positive thinking about the future could be seen as a r e s u l t o f p e o p l e ’s a w a r e n e s s o f t h e i r predicament but paralysis concerning action and suspicion towards government. Peter Fitting believes this is why, in ﬁlms such as Dark City (1998) and The Matrix (1999) the future is played out in simulated worlds. Our retreat from ‘real

The Matrix

life’ reflects fears that something is wrong with the reality given to us by the media. Architecture cannot do this - as a service, it is continually pulled back to the real world and it could be that architects miss opportunities film-makers (and architecture students) have to explore vast possibilities. Most architects however are visionaries at heart, and while the future they shape is the immediate one, the influence of a

Sammon, Paul, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. In Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner. Documentary, 2007. 36

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Nichols, Shaun. 2006. The Architecture of the Imagination - New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Elsaesser, Thomas. 2000. Metropolis. London: BFI Pub.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2001. The Architecture of image: existential space in cinema. Helsinki: Rakennustieto.

Gunn, James E., and Matthew Candelaria. 2005. Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Scarecrow Press.

Schwart, Richard A. 2001. The Films of Ridley Scott. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Runner.” Architectural Design 64.

Darkness of the Cinema - on Film, Architecture and the Poetics of the Urban.” Skala, no. 22.

Florian Kossak, and Stephen Walker. 2010. “Portrait of the City.” In University College, Dublin. Fortin, David Terrance. 2011.

Fortin, David T. Architecture and Science-Fiction Film: Philip K. Dick and the Spectacle of Home. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Gillis, Stacy. 2005. The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded. Wallﬂower Press.

! Giuliana Bruno. 1987. “Ramble City: Postmodernism and Bladeruner.” October, no. 41.

“Special Issue on the City and Cinema.” 1988. East-West Film Journal 3 (1). - “Cities on the Edge of Time: The Urban Science Fiction Film”. Vivian Sobchack - “Future Noir: Contemporary Representations of Visionary Cities.” Janet Staiger

“Architecture, Philip K Dick and Science-

Chris Rogers. 2013. “Architecture and Visual

Fiction Film | The Critics | Architects Journal.” 2013. Accessed November 2. http:// www.architectsjournal.co.uk/culture/ architecture-philip-k-dick-and-science-ﬁctionﬁlm/8618144.article? item1=item#comments_f orm.

Culture.” Accessed December 3. http:// www.chrismrogers.net.

“Berlin: Towards an Urban Age | LSE Cities.” 2014. Accessed January 4. http://lsecities.net/ publications/conference-newspapers/berlintowards-an-urban-age/.

“Blade Runner: Hades Landscape | Douglas

Stefan Lovgren. 2003. “Climate Change Killed

Trumbull - Immersive Media and Visual

of Maya Civilisation, Study Says.” National Geographic, March 13.

Effects.” 2013. Accessed December 3. http:// douglastrumbull.com/key-fx-sequences-bladerunner-hades-landscape. “BladeZone Presents: An Exclusive Interview with Gene Winfield, the Builder of the Spinner.” 2014. Accessed April 17. http:// media.bladezone.com/contents/film/interviews/ gene-winfield/.

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Websites: “A Study of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.” 2014. Blade Runner Insight. Accessed April 11. http:// br-insight.com/2002/12/08/a-stud y-of-ridleyscotts-blade-runner/.

“Architecture on Film: Code 46 + Michael Winterbottom Q&A | Architecture Foundation.” 2014. Accessed April 16. http:// www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/ 2009/architecture-on-ﬁlm/code-46-michaelwinterbottom-qanda.

“Bladezone.com Apartment by G. Willoughby.” 2014. Accessed April 11. http:// media.bladezone.com/Apartment.php.

“BLDGBLOG: Glass Avenues of Paris 2054.” 2014. Accessed April 19. http:// bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2006/10/glass-avenuesof-paris-2054.html.

“Dark Roasted Blend: Hallucinatory Architecture of the Future.” 2013. Dark Roasted Blend. Accessed November 2. http:// www.darkroastedblend.com/2010/02/ hallucinatory-architecture-of-future.html.

Drummond, Rho. 2014. “Metropolis (2001).” Musings From Us. Accessed March 16. http:// musings.elisair.com/2011/metropolis-2001/.

Eric Mahleb. 2013. “Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.” Accessed November 9. http:// www.yume.co.uk/architectural-representationsof-the-city-in-science-ﬁction-cinema.

“Films & Architecture: ‘Blade Runner.’” 2013. ArchDaily. Accessed November 9. http:// www.archdaily.com/233625/ﬁlms-architectureblade-runner/. Glancey, Jonathan. 2009. “From Metropolis to Blade Runner: Architecture That Stole the Show.” The Guardian. November 5. http:// www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/ 05/architecture-ﬁlm-riba.

Hill, John. 2014. “A Daily Dose of Architecture: Dubai 46.” Accessed March 1. http:// archidose.blogspot.co.uk/2005/11/dubai-46.html.

“Information Is Beautiful.” 2014. Information Is Beautiful. Accessed April 7. http:// www.informationisbeautiful.net/.

MacInnes, Daniel Thomas. 2014. “Ghibli Blog Studio Ghibli, Animation and the Movies:

“Ward Shelley Homepage.” 2014. Accessed April 8. http://www.wardshelley.com/.

Wax, Roxna. 2014. “Blade Runner Concept Artist, Design-Fiction Guru – Syd Mead | Graphicine.” Accessed February 15. http:// www.graphicine.com/

! ! !

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Russell D. Light, tutor at the University of Shefﬁeld, for his ideas, support and lending of materials throughout the formation of this study. I am also indebted to the Blade Runner fans who run the website BladeZone.com for many a useful insight.

I have been unable to credit the many image sources for ﬁlm stills in this study and would like to extend my apologies for this, as well as my thanks.

Photos - Metropolis (2001) (Blu-Ray).” Accessed March 16. http://ghiblicon.blogspot.co.uk/ 2009/08/photos-metrpolis-2001.html.

“Off-World: The Blade Runner Wiki.” 2014. Accessed April 14. http:// bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page.

“Permanence.” 2014. Accessed April 14. http:// www.tboake.com/madness/chow/permanence/ permanence.html.

“Rotten Tomatoes: Movies | TV Shows | Movie Trailers | Reviews.” 2014. Accessed April 19. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/.

“Twilight Language: Blade Runner: 30 Years of Synchromysticism - Part 2 (Aztec-Mayan Symbolism).” 2014. Accessed April 11. http:// copycateffect.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bladerunner2.html.

Appendix Film synopses and notes

Metropolis (1927) - Fritz Lang

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Synopsis: In Metropolis, the rich inhabit dazzling skyscrapers and pleasure-gardens while workers toil at steaming, rhythmic machines underground. Freder, son of Fredersen the Master of Metropolis, has been sheltered from knowledge of the underground world and, on his ﬁrst excursion there, discovers the beginnings of a revolt. He also witnesses and falls in love with the beautiful Maria as she brings hope to the workers, prophesying the coming of a saviour to reconcile the two worlds of the city. Meanwhile, inventor Rotwang, who loved Freder’s mother Hel before her death in childbirth, is plotting to bring her back to life in the form of a humanoid robot. Fredersen allows him on the condition that the machine be given Maria’s likeness in order to sow discord among the workers. The plan backﬁres when the false Maria runs loose in Metropolis’ Yoshiwara district, causing men to murder out of lust. Under its orders, the workers destroy the Heart Machine, the central power station for Metropolis, unknowingly endangering the children they have left behind. The foreman Grot manages to show them their folly and in mad grief, not knowing that Freder and the real Maria are busy rescuing the children, they seek

and destroy the robot. Rotwang, however, believes Maria is the woman he loved come back to life, and pursues her to the roof of the cathedral before Freder fights and kills him. In the final scene, Freder fulfils his role as the prophesied mediator, the Heart, by linking the hands of the city’s Head (his father) and Hands (Grot, symbol of the workers).

Key idea: a city with head and hands but no heart is doomed to disaster,

! ! !

High Treason (1929) - Maurice Elvey Synopsis: Set in a futuristic London in 1940/50, world peace is threatened when the "United States of Europe" comes into conflict with the "Empire of the Atlantic States”. Dr. Seymour, leader of the Peace League, desperately attempts to avert war. His daughter Evelyn seeks to convince her boyfriend Michael, commander of the European air force, not to fight, but he insists he must do his duty. Evelyn says she will leave him. Terrorists try to kill Dr. Seymour by bombing the Peace League, but he survives. Pacifists led by Evelyn demonstrate en masse at the airfield to prevent an aerial counterstrike. Seymour confronts the President to appeal for peace, but is forced, despite his pacifism, to shoot him to

Adapted from IMDb 43

stop him making the broadcast that would start the war.

Key idea: A city does not have to be high-rise to be futuristic.

Things To Come (1936) - William Cameron Menzies

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Synopsis: A global war begins in 1940, dragging out over many decades until most people, especially those born after the war started, do not even know who started it or why. Nothing is being manufactured and society has broken down into primitive localised communities. In 1966 a great plague wipes out most of what people are left but small numbers survive. One day a strange aircraft lands at one of these communities and its pilot reports that an organisation is slowly rebuilding civilisation. Great reconstruction takes place over the next few decades and society is once again great and strong. The world's population is now living in underground cities. In Everytown in the year 2035, a popular uprising against progress (which some people claim has caused the wars of the past) gains support and becomes violent.61

Key idea: Utopia requires a clean slate.

! ! !

Playtime (1967) - Jacques Tati

•

Synopsis: Playtime is structured in six sequences, following two characters who repeatedly encounter one another in one day in future ‘Paris’: young American tourist Barbara, and Monsieur Hulot, a befuddled Frenchman played by the director. The film travels through the Airport, Offices, Trade Exhibition, Apartments, Royal Garden and Carousel of Cars, showing us a city dominated by the International Style and characterised by its inaneness. Tati uses the film to playfully criticise modern industrial technology as sterile and anti-human. The film is famous for its enormous, expensive specially constructed sets.

Key idea: The world has been taken over by The International Style. ‘That’s really Paris’ says a passerby after seeing an advert for London.

! !

•

! !

footsteps, computer beeps, doors swinging, multilingual gibberish, announcements. The city is a broad sprawl of repeated Miesian blocks (only experienced from within it - no aerial views?) People are shepherded around in identical outﬁts. No personality. ‘Wait till you see how modern it is!’ The ‘thro-out-Greek style’ bin in the shape of a Greek column is a playful criticism of Modernisms rejection of classical architecture. The protagonist keeps walking into glass doors - a metaphor for the illusion of progression and the invisible barriers of Modernism? Lack of privacy in the modern city. Furnishings are cold and impersonal. While they watch TV it looks like they are watching and laughing at each other.

Notes: •

•

This world bases itself on reality but pushes it to the extreme as a warning/criticism of what might be to come. A convincing space despite being so uncompromising in its absurdity. A bizarre series of sterile, disorientating spaces in cold grey tones. Animated by

blocking out the sickly sun. What time of day is it meant to be?

Blade Runner (1982) - Ridley Scott

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(Synopsis in main body, page 13 )

•

memories.’ The whole city rests on the

Notes: •

•

• •

‘ M e m o r i e s … yo u ’r e t a l k i n g a b o u t

La November 2019 - vastness and depth created by the scenery. All you see are lights - not actual buildings. Ziggurat - a vast, dark, wa t ch i n g l a by r i n t h . S c e n e s o f c i t y juxtaposed. Police building - Windows in building let in shafts of light but are too high to see out. No personalisation of space. ‘If you’re not a cop, you’re little people.’ The metropolis - giant faces advertising on the side of building are impersonal and affronting. Acid rain, lots of lights and identical TVs in shop windows. Chinatown roadside bar where they don’t speak English. Deckard is an alien in his own city. Retroﬁt city - Old styles class next to new. The cars are futuristic helicopter-like things. Some buildings are crazy and you deﬁnitely wouldn’t see now. Dark density of the police building. It is hot, several fans are on. Discomfort. Inner city is just as grim. Deckard eats his pot noodles - no time for creature comforts.. Tyrell HQ (Ziggurat) is like Pentagon with pipes. Classical pillars, reaching into high dark ceilings. The blind comes down,

•

importance of memories. Replicants have no parents, no memories of a younger life. The city retrofits itself rather than wiping away and starting again. Significance of the neon (translates as Origin) - it is alive but not alive. It flickers. The city feels cramped and abandoned simultaneously. Steam venting into streets feels industrial, hostile to people. Deckard’s apartment feels like a cocoon, masculine but soft and sleepy. Tight security. He looks out his balcony and can only look down to the street, not up to the sun and sky - no signs of freedom. Giant pillars hold the plate above him up - he is at the top of the bottom. A precarious place. Vehicles on all levels within the city. Skips and inanimate objects tell you to move along, don’t do this, do that etc. Honking horns, noise everywhere. Loneliness - Sebastian ‘makes his own friends.’ There is no sense of familiarity except the innate bond between replicants. They have what Deckard is missing - healthy relationships with one another, loyalty and love. Layers of obstacles - street technology. Everything roadside - even chemist. Are people escaping the oppressive buildings into the street despite the rain? 45

•

Believable because all strata of society are here - rich and poor, police, foreigners etc. CitySpeak. Deﬁnitely not clinical and perfect so more believable. City as microcosm - scavengers rip up cars and are dangerous to people. Fight to survive. Deckard’s ﬁght on the roof - he is forced to confront his raw humanity and fragility as he runs. Final scene - no comfort, just the services of the building on the roof. Alone with your enemy. Confronting yourself. Wrestling with God?

Dangerous Days: The Making Of Blade Runner

•

(2007) - Charles de Lauzirika

! !

Synopsis: Through a collection of footage from before, during and after production of Blade Runner and interviews with creators and critics, this ﬁlm comprehensively documents its making.

•

Key idea: ‘[Blade Runner] spawned a whole genre of science ﬁction when the future was no longer a pristine Star Trek type of future, where we started to see the wears and tears of the future.’

! !

Notes: •

•

‘One of the largest motivating factors was the enormous ecological concern in the original novel - the world is slowly falling apart because of world wars, biological plagues and that type of thing. Analogues for pollution and overpopulation.’ Syd Mead - 'one of the great illustrators of industrial objects...'cityscapes, urban development. Sid was actually a great preview on where we've gone, now, in Tokyo, Shanghai...the way urban development is going.’ One famous architect - 'when I saw Blade Runner, the evolution in the beauty of technology suddenly became very apparent - the guts on the outside.' Rogers?

•

Cars - Altered 27 cars to make the vehicles, also scale models for the flying ones. Using new materials like fibreglass and wood, or reusing old stuff. The only set designed, not shot on location, was the street. Others - Bradbury Building and Union Station. 'Crunchy comic strip architecture which is nearly real.’ 400 painters, plasterers etc. so relationship between what was built and what was designed is really difficult - like a real building. Bud Yorkin, Financier - 'an amazing amount of construction had to be done.’ Syd: ’I was walking through one of my miniature renderings.’ The kanji which says Origin becomes the sign behind Deckard at the roadside cafe. Turned into a map of the world. The question of the film. What is our origin? Scott: 'The landscape, the proscenium, is a character.’'One of the protagonists was the city, the environment.' David L Snyder: Art Director 'I look at Blade Runner as the last analog science fiction movie made because we didn't have all the advantages that people have now, and I'm glad we didn't because there is nothing artificial about it.' David Dryer 'plain old fashioned filming.' Stephen Dane 'One of the last great in-camera special effects movies ever done.’ Mark Stetson: 'You never design a visual effects shot to get the audience to go 'what a

•

great visual effects shot.' You have to tell the story.’ Technology of the etchings - acid etching. Fine ﬁligree detail. Build up perspective with smoke. A system to automatically puff smoke so it doesn't ﬂicker. Horizon almost disappears. Tyrell pyramid - a megastructure to represent the entire city. Single source light to highlight its importance. A big light box, sealed with paint then scraped off the windows. The miniatures - constructing in a way they look like they belong together. 'Everything's got this gritty look - it's dirty, it's nasty, it's leaky.' Detail has to be beyond good because as resolution goes so does detail. Have to be

•

! !

heavy handed - as realistic as you can, then add heavy-handedness. Retrofitted base of the city: two sided buildings. Miniatures on plywood. Flight through the buildings - using anything you can as buildings. Spaceships with added antennae, even a kitchen sink. Matte painting - alters the look of a location or set. Post production - combo of painted artwork and live action photography. Shot and exposed with the photography. Paintings look horrible until shot as the colours change. Legacy: ’The whole idea that LA is influenced by this Asian aesthetic...is now part of the conversation.''Of all the big influential science fiction films, the ones that made a stab at predicting how life would be...this film has been the most accurate.' Mark Romanek.

'Blade Runner is essentially a cautionary piece. It's telling us to beware. It's telling us look where we're heading, look what we can do to each other...be human. And that was a pretty heavy message, especially in a time where there was an emphasis on the material. And Blade Runner is about the spiritual.'

Metropolis (2003) - Rintaro

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Synopsis: Loosely based in the 1927 film of the same name and a comic by Osamu Tezuka, the film tells the story of a futuristic triple-levelled city where robots and humans coexist, but where robots are discriminated against and blamed for the unemployment of the city’s people. Characters in the utopian city are dwarfed by huge structures, machines, and gear works. Private detective Shunsaku Ban and his nephew, Kenichi, travel to Metropolis to arrest Dr. Laughton, a mad scientist wanted for organ trafficking, not knowing that the city’s leader Duke Red has hired Laughton to build an advanced robot modelled and named after Red's deceased daughter, Tima. Tima is intended to control a secret weapon hidden in the city’s towering Ziggurat. When Red’s adopted son Rock (who hates robots) destroys the laboratory, Tima falls deep into the city and is found by Kenichi, and together they explore the enormous spaces of the lower levels. The remarkably human girl does not realise she is a robot, and when it is revealed to her in the film’s dramatic conclusion, she goes insane, destroying the Ziggurat and with it vast areas of the city. Her last words to Kenichi, ‘Who am I?’ remind us of her conflicted nature. Kenichi chooses to remain behind and rebuild the city as a place where humans and robots can coexist peacefully.

Key idea: The beauty of a city can be in its destruction.

! !

Notes: •

• •

•

The city - Art Deco, jazz music every time they show the scenery. Pretty early introduces the Ziggurat, bathed in light. Manifests itself quite differently to old Metropolis. Buildings are objects of desire and beauty, brightly coloured. A circus-like spectacle. Ancient Babylonian politics - the ‘Marduks’ are the elite police. Night -shows bright lights and extremely tall buildings, like an extruded earth city. City by day - Mansard roofs, a collision of old and new styles. Romantic, classical buildings in between layers and layers of transport. Travelators in the streets - the scale of the three-tiered city is so big you need to shorten distances. Tightly controlled and in the blazing sun, hard to conceal anything. ‘A city of levels with light transit controls.’ Gates block ways between Zones but there are secret passages. Zone1 - artiﬁcial light, a carnival atmosphere. The tall buildings don’t block out the light. Huge, extravagant. Straight to the underbelly - dark, green, smoggy, eerie, vast, beyond control. Zone 2 - The machines that keep the city going and where the majority of people live. Giant machines run themselves. Technology 48

•

is a visual mix of clockwork and space-age with eclectic styles as well as ‘futuristic’ blobby stuff and unnatural colours. People carry parasols even though there is no sun or daylight. Everything is a little jaded but there is too much unfamiliarity and awe to be real. Zone 3 - dark, textural, pipes everywhere, only patches of sun. In every scene the humans are dwarfed by their surroundings, powerless to the workings of their city - as shown by the fact its workings have been taken over by robots. Ziggurat is the Tower of Babel, testament to the King’s arrogance. God struck down the king. ‘Without emotions we are nothing.’ Only those in a place of power can inﬂuence the city and build things like the Ziggurat. Destruction of Metropolis - hellish, people have vanished, infrastructure collapses. The next day it is just a complete mess, no longer the same symbol of spectacular power. Our powerlessness before disasters of our own creation.

Minority Report (2002) - Stephen Spielberg

! !

Synopsis: In 2054 Washington D.C crime is virtually eliminated thanks to an elite law enforcing squad known as “PreCrime.” Three gifted humans (called "Pre-Cogs") with special powers to see into the future predict crimes beforehand. John Anderton is a high-ranking officer at PreCrime and believes in the system's flawlessness steadfastly. However one day the Pre-Cogs predict that Anderton will commit a murder himself in the next 36 hours, with a victim Anderton doesn’t even know. He decides to clear his name by finding the 'minority report,’ the prediction of the female Pre-Cog Agatha that might tell a different story and prove Anderton innocent. Along the way he discovers disturbing secrets about PreCrime that have been buried for years, and becomes an agent in destroying the system he helped create.

•

Key idea: ’You know your own future, which means you can change it.’ Dystopias show us the future we should try and change. Notes: •

On ground level, pretty similar city but with a few futuristic follow a prop through with angles. Giants screens on

to a modern touches. We low camera the street

‘It’s not the future if you stop it.’ ‘The fact that you prevent it from happening doesn’t

! ! !

advertising PreCrime everywhere - under bridges, in the ‘forgotten’ spaces. The dark underbelly of the city contrasted to day lit DC elsewhere. The apartment - cold, analytical, but messy with touches of inhabitation. Not like Deckard’s apartment in Blade Runner which feels lived in. You talk to the lights and music, and the cereal box dances but it feels very lonely.

•

mean it wasn’t going to happen…’ PreCogs live in ‘The Temple’ - a sacred space with a pool and a triangle of pre cogs - not even treated like people. Simple light source, dark walls and a spiral of lights. It lacks stimulation. ‘Science has stolen all of our miracles.’ The pre cogs are deiﬁed. ‘We’re more like clergy than cops.’ Idea of Perfection - ‘if there is a ﬂaw, it’s human. It always is.’ The future is perfect when you take humans out of it. Perfect architecture of whiteness, monumentality, smoothly functioning. A system. Trying to stay separate from the violent city past as they strive towards the future - ‘If you dig up the past, all you get is dirty.’ Cleanliness and simplicity is an ideal. Dirt and chaos is reality. ‘The Sprawl’ - Outside. People who are outside the system are poorer and are treated differently but still have to obey

•

PreCrime. When John is accused, he has to escape but is in his car which he doesn’t drive. The city functions perfectly until you get on the wrong side of the system. Shopping centre - adverts are all tailored to the irises - not that far off now! The building attacks you with advertising, reports you. Monitoring goes across the whole city - the only way to escape is to leave the clean centre and go into the Sprawl. View through barbed wire juxtaposes old and new. An old tenement block, with building chute. Chased through the industrial building, John is trapped between people and machine. Nature and the automobile are seen in harmony in his escape. Nature itself has been transformed to be hostile. ‘Every creature is only interested in their own survival.’ The city is an organism full of living creatures ﬁghting to survive. Anderton just wants to survive.

•

In the Sprawl it is dirty and decaying, diseased. Murder scenes show on the TV s c r e e n . S i ck n e s s i s d i s g u s t i n g a n d unconﬁned, unlike LeMar’s polite coughs. The angle makes everything disturbing. Ugliness, faeces, alien language, you can almost imagine the bad smell (and the bad taste when he eats the rotten food!) Everything attacks your senses as a viewer so you relate to Anderton’s discomfort. Anderton is tying to escape back to his past - watching holograms, going back to that day he lost his boy. He works with the future but strives for a time when everything was really pure and not just empty. Takes drugs to get back.

•

Back to the office it is clean and bright again, a massive contrast. Views from above imply a deity watching over the Temple. The way the PreCogs see is like a dream, but combines third person views with reflections in glass. A shattered view of reality. Underground - Shopping adverts tell everything what you last bought - the ultimate way to control people. Noise everywhere. In the experience centre, like a rave. Let go of all instincts. Reflections and darkness. A bootleg city. Laura’s house is an old detached prairie house, beautiful, unspoilt. But it has been spoilt - lost Sean. And now invaded again.

Colour also starts to invade - confusion,

‘There is so much love in this house.’ Now

chaos and dirt. Previously the ﬁlm was full of greys and whites, clean and controlled. The elements invade in a way they haven’t before - curtains ﬂap in the breeze, lights s h i n e i n c o n f u s i n g l y, w a t e r d r i p s uncontrolled down the walls. When he thinks of his wife as in the hologram she is surrounded by nature. When he loses Sean the scene is in bright colour, suggests since that day no happiness. Cops invade the Sprawl. We watch from above - a plan section - as the spiders invade people’s lives. People barely notice them used to it. We also get the spider’s angle as they creep about, disorientating ourselves but adding to sense of fear as they become bigger and dominate the screen.

we see why Anderton is not at home in the

! !

city.

Code 46 (2003) - Michael Winterbottom

Notes:

Synopsis:

•

A totalitarian regime controls genes. Long highways thread through the desert before reaching Shanghai. ‘It’s not living, just existing’ says the voiceover. Smog-ﬁlled skyline contrasted with a clinical white room - retreating into pure indoors.

•

The city of the present and the future simultaneously - by collaging cities from around the world you get a very realistic future but with obvious gaps and things

! !

A romance set in the near future, where genetic modification has resulted in the Code 46 law, banning humans with certain genetic matches from forming romantic relationships. Travel between countries is strictly controlled by the use of official passports called ‘papelles.’ It seems ecological damage has affected large parts of the world, and a common language that is a mix of Spanish, Chinese and English is starting to develop. The film follows the efforts of Seattle native William in his search for someone in Shanghai selling papelles on the black market. He finds and falls in love with Maria, an enigmatic young woman who may or may not be selling the passports, but his affair with her leads to a pregnancy and the discovery that they have broken Code 46. After he finds her in a facility with her memory wiped and the foetus aborted, he manages to convince her of the truth of who he is. Now they must attempt to run from the authorities and begin anew Outside.

•

Key idea: Not much has to change at all to make a realistic, edgy near-future.

! ! ! !

•

‘wrong’ - the desert outside Shanghai, the jumps from city to city while staying in the same city. Lots of rushing transport and lights - the city becomes a prison? People only go outdoors at night. Viruses are used to enhance behaviour - empathy. Darkness and confusion. Low budget ﬁlm? A social dystopia. Jebu Ali - a mystical place Outside the regime where you can do whatever you want if you want it enough. Riotous freedom is desired. Inside vs Outside - to be Outside is to be exiled without a papelle and is a subject of myth and a scare story used to limit people. It is bad but is it worse than living within the regime? Very little distinction between what is safe and good and what is oppressive - on edge, unable to trust even those who mean well. Low-rise vs high rise - Shanghai is tall and rich, Jebu Ali is low and very poor. The idea 51

is that certain things about our cities won’t •

•

change - social segregation, high-rise living. The fence - what is on the other side? Safety or constriction? Shanghai is a city with no memory, but people keep their memories unless they are wiped. ‘Trying to cheat the Sphinx’ - again, the Authority/Corporation is given an ancient identity. (Blade Runner, Metropolis x2). In the slums it’s like you don’t exist. Cold daylight as opposed to warm darkness.

Overall a ‘weirdly convincing’ portrait - because it is near future. Multi-cultural sentences and hybrid accents - everyone can understand one language. Not a shiny latex future or a dirty dystopia but an honest ‘this could already be happening’ SF ﬁlm.

! !

Renaissance (2006) - Christian Volckman

Notes:

Synopsis:

•

! !

In 2054 Paris, where every move is monitored and every action recorded, the Avalon Corporation has securely woven its way into every aspect of modern living by making youth and beauty the most valued commodity around. Troubles arises in the City of Lights when a high-profile scientist named Ilona is kidnapped, and policeman Karas is assigned the task of solving the case. Karas soon discovers that events that took place in 2006 have cast a dark shadow over the future of humankind. The film mixes Blade Runner aesthetics with stark, Sin City-style visuals, filmed using motion-capture animation with extravagant production design by Alfred Frazzani.62 The city’s streets have been replaced with bulletproof glass. ‘The city itself has become a massively cross-buttressed machine of arches, superhighways, and elevated trains. There are tunnels, archives, and holographic surveillance screens – and lots of iron, glass, and brick. The Seine has been concretized into a kind of industrial megacanal.’63

Key idea: the city of the future is transparent.

•

Initial view of Paris - normal except for giant screens advertising Avalon (medieval symbolism) health and beauty. Eiffel Tower, glowing windows. City drops away in a sudden edge, into deep crevass with elevated canal. Train rushes past, vast columns and girders. Harsh light and shade from a nightclub hanging under a bridge. Dangling over a drop of many levels. Paris is known for being flat and limiting heights of buildings. Looking out over the city its lights are denser than now, can see more arcades and iron walkways. Cable car in background. Police station - echo of a wooden floor. High tech. Plastiglass boxes for overnight stays. The camera goes through the screen into the rainy scene. Daytime Paris - a glass box perched ontop of a roof. Seine is deeper, sludgy. Underground same as usual, graffitti, train maybe makes a different sound. View up to Basilique du Sacré Coeur, all the greenhouses glowing. The buildings' windows are larger, brighter. Aerial view of the city, we can see the road network lit up and the clustering of large buildings up

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Montmartre hill. Looking down on a street neon, car headlights, strips of light up the side of buildings. The 3D adverts of women are made of light. Police sirens. A bar, everything familiar, even the link to the back alley. Karas' apartment - we enter through a window. He collects holograms for each case, inhabiting a world of strangers. An 'invisible' man in the rain - technology. Avalon HQ - a large wheel with an office on a chord - the first 100% futuristic building? Doesn't really look like a building. Have to walk through a forest of adverts to get in Purity, clarity, vision. Opposite of Blade Runner. CEO's office. Painting of a woman drowning. Only realise at end of scene whole office is transparent, floor, walls and ceiling. Boss sits on solid bit, you dangle.

Adapted from Jason Buchanan, Rovi. Taken from “Rotten Tomatoes: Movies | TV Shows | Movie Trailers | Reviews.” Accessed April 19, 2014. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/.

63 “BLDGBLOG:

Glass Avenues of Paris 2054.” Accessed April 19, 2014. http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2006/10/glass-avenues-of-paris-2054.html. 52

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The cars are strangely old-fashioned but shiny and new with futuristic tyres suggests returning to old fashions? Glass walkways over all the roads. Heading towards Notre Dame. Again, ﬂoor has been replaced with glass. Huge panels impossible now? Giant cast-iron pillars hold it up. Everything decorative, graphic style. Farthello's lair - Islamic baths? Geometric patterns, circular openings. Luxury. Information given on a tuning fork that opens up to a screen. idea of clarity. Circular lift up to Muller's house. Greenhouse, a forest like the one Ilona is in. Nightjars, crickets. Kind of alien. Vaults under Avalon - very futuristic, humming electricity, sterile whiteness. Security cut the power and it is pitch black but security can see.