Ridley Scott explains why ‘Blade Runner’ was a “hugely disappointing” experience
It was clear from the beginning that Ridley Scott was destined for a lengthy directorial career, with two of his first three movies going down in history as among the greatest ever made in their chosen genre.
Following up his debut, The Duellists, with seminal sci-fi horror Alien and the jaw-dropping Blade Runner, in most cases, there would be nowhere to go from there but down. Admittedly, that did happen when he immediately followed that pair of all-timers with the disappointing Legend, an experience so miserable both Scott and star Tom Cruise have sworn off fantasy ever since.
And yet, more than 40 years on from Ellen Ripley’s first encounter with a Xenomorph and Rick Deckard’s unravelling of a dystopian mystery, the filmmaker remains as prolific as ever. He almost single-handedly resuscitated the blockbuster historical epic at the turn of the millennium with Gladiator, and the Academy Award-winning movie’s sequel is generating immense levels of excitement and anticipation.
There have been several lulls along the way, though, but Scott remains one of the industry’s most respected and reliable veterans. It might be lauded as one of Hollywood’s best films ever, but Blade Runner wasn’t exactly embraced as an instant classic.
A disappointing performer at the box office, it took a while for Scott’s ambitious sci-fi to gain the appreciation it deserved from day one. As happy as the director is that it ended up happening, he wasn’t above admitting he was seriously bummed out in the wake of its initial theatrical release.
“Blade Runner was hugely disappointing for me,” he admitted to Interview. “I thought I’d made a pretty special film, and I was really stricken when only a few diehards got it.” The movie got there eventually, but in the aftermath of its underperformance, Scott “wondered if audiences were ready for it”.
Gradually, the influence of Blade Runner seeped into sci-fi to a massive degree, with any neon-lit futuristic landscape or rain-drenched story carrying elements of film noir indebted to Scott’s work in one way or another, and he was fully aware of the growing shadow it began to cast over various forms of media.
“I started to notice that the videos on MTV were getting darker,” he explained. “It was always raining, the streets were always shining, and there was smoke coming off them. So I thought, ‘A-ha, it’s finally struck ground’. I was watching Blade Runner‘s influence appear.”
These days, Blade Runner is firmly established as one of the most influential sci-fi flicks ever made, as has been the case for a long time. However, that wasn’t quite the case in 1982, which must have been a frustrating period for Scott, knowing he’d made something phenomenal and then having to sit around and wait for the rest of the world to play catchup.
