Release Year: 1982

Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller

Director: Ridley Scott

Writers: Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples, Philip K. Dick (novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young

Contrary to what you may have been expecting, Blade Runner is not a movie about a team of misfit teen roller-hockey players who need to defeat a better-trained and snobby team of wealthy roller-hockey players. 

If you're looking for something like that, head on over to D2: The Mighty Ducks.

No, Blade Runner is a science fiction classic about Harrison Ford killing androids that aren't really androids because they're actually kind of human...or something. And then there's this weird skyscraper pyramid, and there's Daryl Hannah doing somersaults and capturing Ford's head between her thighs in a vise-like grip while she tries to kill him. You've surely seen that somewhere; it's been copied in about a million other movies. 

Possibly even D2: The Mighty Ducks.

Oh, wait. That was totally D3: The Mighty Ducks. Our bad.

Blade Runner, which was adapted from Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, morphed into something entirely different. It borrows the bare outline of the book's plot—a guy has to track down and kill rogue biological androids—but it veers in a decidedly different direction.

Whereas Androids was focused more on oddly specific details of its future world, like the mass extinction of animals, Blade Runner became a vision of humanity dehumanized by technology and a meditation on how glimmers of human goodness and empathy can persist through that degradation. The "replicants" hunted by Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard aren't human… and yet they are. In some ways, they're even more human than some of the actual humans in the film.

When it first premiered in 1982, Blade Runner drew a lot of mixed-to-negative reviews. Why? Well, it was released in the summer of 1982, the same summer as E.T. Heartwarming sci-fi was in, and grim negative sci-fi was out.

Other reasons? While impressed by the movie's visuals, a lot of critics seemed bewildered by the story and couldn't follow it. "What was that flake he just picked up in that bathtub?" they asked. "Why is there an origami unicorn at the end?" "So are replicants robots or what?"

But with the passage of time and the release of new versions of the movie—like director Ridley Scott's definitive "Final Cut" in 2007—Blade Runner has sealed its reputation as a permanent sci-fi masterpiece, and the answers to these critics' questions have gradually become clearer.

So, the next time you see some knock-off movie with a noir-ish detective running around a crumbling-yet-technologically-advanced future dystopia while attempting to track down rebellious androids—you know, like in roughly 72% of all anime movies, most cyberpunk stories, and at least one tabletop RPG—you'll know what those filmmakers were ripping off.

They were ripping off Blade Runner.

If you've ever sat around wondering if you lack the correct emotional responses—if, say, eating a boiled dog stuffed with rice sounds more appetizing to you than eating spaghetti—Blade Runner might be able to explain what ails you: you're a replicant.

"But, gee whiz, Shmoop, what's a replicant?" you ask as you drop your popsicle in shocked curiosity.

Well, a replicant is a manufactured, biological android used for slavery in the "off-world" colonies of the future, as depicted in Blade Runner. Contrary to popular belief, a replicant is not exactly a robot: robots are mechanical, involving wires and electricity and stuff, while replicants are biological and are genetically designed. They're kind of like clones, but not quite, since they're actually made as opposed to birthed.

Anyway, what we're trying to say is that the movie Blade Runner goes pretty deep into the question of what it means to be human. It also asks you think about how technology can change humanity. Whether you're a human or a replicant, the question of how technology can change you is something that gets more important year by year. Hey, think of it this way: you're probably taking a break from reading this article to Snapchat with someone right now—so that means technology is altering you, giving you another profound reason to watch and study this movie.

Sure, Blade Runner has action in it, but it's probably not the kind of shoot-'em-up, blast-everything-in-sight adrenaline fueled action movie you might expect—Starship Troopers it ain't. It's a little more philosophical, and it's a little more slowly paced. It takes time to linger on the details of its finely crafted world. It's really a vision—a vision of the future… and of the ways in which humanity might suffer and endure that future.