THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO LIVE IN FEAR

I like Blade Runner. It's probably one of my favorite movies. One of the most visually influential movies ever made, I'd say. A masterpiece. It completely pushed the envelope and redefined the futuristic cityscape of our collective unconscious. It changed science-fiction films forever. Suddenly the future was dark and gritty. Rain pouring down claustrophobic alleyways, crumbling walls plastered with flickering advertisement screens. "Enjoy Coca-cola!" Not a gleaming protocol droid or a domed astromech droid in sight. No funny-looking aliens. No shimmering spires, no perpetual sunshine, no british accents. Blade Runner is a future that isn't sleek or shiny. It's a future that's rusted, worn, tired, collapsing under its own weight.

It's easy to overlook just how tremendously innovative this idea was and still is. Metropolis gave us the Future-that-is-Clean. Star Wars gave us the Future-that-has-been-Used. Blade Runner gave us the Future-that-Sucks. But the Future-that-Sucks is not the same future so commonly presented nowadays; it's not a post-apocalyptic world where people have to cope with nuclear radiation and scavenge from the ruins of New York to survive. It's not that future. Instead it's a sprawling metropolis of movement through shadows, where the city sounds compete against the pouring rain that cascades down from the starless heavens. This is the future where it's always dark, but at the same time, always bright. Neon lights shine where the sun doesn't.

This vision of the future has been emulated ever since it appeared, perhaps even more than the futures that it was originally deconstructing. I know at least Blade Runner corresponds with MY vision of the future; consumerism has made people like robots...China's taken over the planet through the world economy...Essentially, I've been visualizing the Blade Runner future my entire life, but I didn't realize it until I saw the movie. I'm not the only one, either. I think my generation has been practically raised on this type of imagery, so much that it is something we no longer even think about. The Future-that-Sucks is second nature to us now, as natural as blinking.

Pretty ironic. Blade Runner wasn't all that successful at the box office or with the critics, and yet...people have been copying it for decades.