The differences and similarities between "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Blade Runner - The Directors Cut"

Authors Avatar

Keith Trotter

Science Fiction, Society and Science

The differences and similarities between

 “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Blade Runner – The Directors Cut”  

Introduction

There have been many science fiction films made and many of them have been highly rated. Although there have been so many highly rated science fiction films none of them have reached the level of the two greatest science fiction films of all time and they are “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Blade Runner – The Directors Cut”. These two films, in over twenty years have never been bettered and they have been the inspiration for many films. They are really the foundations of any science fiction film. On the outside these two films look very different and look like they have nothing in common. Through extensive reading on these films there is more in common with each of them then first thought. There are many concepts in each film that many writers have gone into. There are also many writers that contradict each other. The writing on each of the films have been very good because there are so many different ways of looking at each film and each writer has chosen what they see in the film to write about. The “York Film Notes – Blade Runner” was a very unbiased book. The book went into a lot of the theories of the film; it also went into detail on each character, which was very useful in order to understand them. One aspect the book was particularly good on was the technology that is in the film. The book explained in great detail some of the gadgets that weren’t explained in the film. “Studying film” contained a lot of useful information again into the theory of both films. The problem with this book was that it never really went too deep into the films. It only really went into the surface of the films; this is probably due to the fact that the book isn’t really about the two films but just films in general. The book did inform me about such aspects as ‘Tech Noir’ and ‘Utopian/Dystopian’. Some books tended not to be so useful. These books included the “Making of Blade Runner”. This book was more about the physical making of the film. It went into how they built the sets and how they did the special effects. It never really went into the theory of the film. The only parts of the book that did go into the theory of the film was when the author was talking about the writer and the director discussing the storyline and what needed to be changed. This book also went into the ‘Is Deckard a replicant?’ argument. The book didn’t really go into the argument but all about the speculation surrounding the argument. There was also a large section in the book about the original “Blade Runner” and the changes they had to make before the release of the ‘Directors Cut’. Another book that was not very useful was “Ridley Scott, The Making of his Movies”. This book was short write-ups on Ridley Scott films. There was very little written on “Blade Runner”. Again it was about the way that Ridley Scott made the film and his troubles with making it and so on.

Using websites was difficult because much of it was the writer’s own personal opinion. The writers also went too deep into the film. One site went into some hidden messages in “Blade Runner”, these included the fact that the number twenty three kept coming up in the film, such as Deckards apartment number added together and another characters birth date also added up to twenty three. The website went into the fact that “Blade Runner” is racist in the way that replicants are just like humans that are built and humans are using them for certain tasks that they were designed for. The writer said that this was slavery and says that its just history repeating itself. This was irrelevant to the study and could be argued with. Other websites were very useful such as the one that was purely based on the Deckard as replicant argument. This website went into great detail on both sides of the case. It even went into it in more detail than the two official “Blade Runner” books.    

The extracts from the “Sight and Sound” publications, all provided useful and interesting information on both films especially “2001: A Space Odyssey”. The magazine has been running for over fifty years and they have some very well established writers. Once again this publication is very unbiased and goes into the theory of the film and the theory of science fiction films in general. The article on “2001: A Space Odyssey” called “A Skeleton Key to 2001” provided very useful information as this article broke down the whole film and explained it all a piece at a time. The article went into great detail about the mysterious monolith. Not many other books or articles went into as much detail, other books looked at the monolith trying to work out what it was and where it came from. The article stated that The monolith is not only a device from the stars. It is the fiction in the science fiction”. This is what tells me that the basis of the film is and what makes it a science fiction film.

Basic science fiction characteristics

Dystopian/Utopian

Science fiction films usually fit into either the dystopian or the utopian lifestyles. This tends to be because the writer’s vision of the future is usually an extreme, either the best place in the world or the worst place imaginable, a writer would want to make the future as far away from our reality as possible. After the opening ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence in “2001: A Space Odyssey” it shows an almost perfect life the characters live or in the utopian lifestyle. This is both shown in the ‘The Lunar Journey’ and ‘The Jupiter Mission’. Although the characters are at work they have everything provided for them from food to comfort and entertainment. Everything is clean and tidy and very comfortable. They don’t have to move chairs as its done electronically as well as having phone/video calls directed to where ever they are. The characters almost want for nothing. “Blade Runner” is the complete opposite of this. As soon as the film starts you can see what Los Angles; maybe the world has become and has been described as Visions of a technologically saturated near future”. Totally run by corporations with high rise buildings everywhere and small very dirty marketplaces. People talk different languages and are all very poor. There is no sun because There has been an ecological disaster that has polluted the atmosphere, virtually obliterating the sun”. This is a typical dystopian lifestyle with the only advantage of having advanced technology. “Blade Runner” with the technology and dystopian lifestyle has been described as techno-dystopic”. This is the first obvious difference between these two films, the way people live in the future.

Join now!

Characters

Characters are one of the main parts of any movie. Without characters in a movie there is no movie. Characters are usually required to involve us in a film”. “2001: A Space Odyssey” is different. The film has characters but there is no real main character, no hero, and no emotions shown. We learn nothing about the characters. This is due to the film being over two hours long with less than forty minutes of dialogue. With the lack of dialogue we, the audience, don’t learn anything about any of the characters. The only character we get ...

This is a preview of the whole essay