RUNNING ON ABOUT BLADE RUNNER

In the essay TO THE POWER OF XYZ I said:

In contrast, when I review the 1982 BLADE RUNNER I don't doubt that I will judge it to be a combative work, wherein such characters as Rick Deckard, Pris and Roy Batty take on the aura of spectacular violence.

I have finally reviewed the "Final Cut" edition of the film, but noted in the course of the review that there were many aspects of this multidimensional work that I knew I could not analyze in one review.  One of those is the film's relation to spectacular violence.

Of the Dick novel I wrote earlier:

...in Dick's ANDROIDS, the violence is purely in the functional mode, even if the combatants are dueling with laser tubes.  It's rare to find megadynamic forces handled in a humdrum functional manner, though Dick's motive for so doing may somewhat akin to Heinlein's reason for not winding up STARSHIP TROOPERS with a big colorful battle.  In both cases, however different their themes, the authors sought to make their protagonists seem more "ordinary" despite their marvelous surroundings and/or resources. 

Of course, prose-authors can be as "humdrum" as they like with regard to potentially spectacular effects.  Authors attempting to craft dramatic works frequently eschew spectacular violence in order to communicate to readers the "seriousness" of their efforts. 

The same strategy appears in the medium of film, but it's rare in those films aimed at a mainstream audience. There can be little doubt that director Ridley Scott's aims in 1982's BLADE RUNNER were no less serious than Dick's.  But since Scott sought to please a mainstream audience of filmgoers, he surely knew that he had to give them spectacle to keep them interested.  The picayune scene of Dick's novel, in which Deckard and Batty shoot at each other with laser tubes, is therefore replaced by a long chase scene in which Batty injures Deckard's gun-hand, and then pursues the armed-but-awkward policeman, continually mocking Deckard's inability to kill him.  In one scene Deckard does get in a couple of good blows with a pipe, but in my system his ability is no better than "exemplary."  In my review I pointed out that Deckard is similarly enabled by darn good luck in his encounters with other replicants, in three scenes that resemble nothing in Philip Dick's book.

Scott's use of action-adventure motifs is certainly ironic. Deckard's supervisor calls Deckard a "one-man slaughterhouse," but in all four of the blade runner's encounters with the replicants, they all beat him down and are capable of easily killing him, and Deckard is saved only by contingent circumstances, not by his own skills or powers.

When I first viewed the film, I was particularly perturbed by the scene in which Deckard is almost killed by the acrobatic Pris.  In this scene she seems close to breaking the blade runner's neck, but for no clear reason she lets him go, retreats a few paces, and then tries another acrobatic attack.  This allows Deckard the chance to kill Pris.  The film gives no good reason as to why she breaks off her attack, so that I can only assume the writers did this to "save" the hero so that he would be alive to face off with Batty a bit later.

Nevertheless, even though Deckard's formidability never reaches the higher regions of megadynamicity, as with Harrison Ford's two most famous heroic roles, I would still regard BLADE RUNNER's demihero-protagonist to be a combative one.  I've stressed in other essays that it's not strictly necessary that the protagonist should win all of his battles in order to qualify the work as one in the combative mode, and Deckard's record in this regard may be one of the least successful ever seen in a mainstream-oriented film.  Nevertheless, the violence does go beyond the limits of the functional mode seen in the novel, and so even Scott's slight ironizing does not remove BLADE RUNNER from the mode of the combative.

PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX

I've just finished a review of the 2002 film MINORITY REPORT.  Not having seen the movie since it played in theatres, I had no clear memory of its status as a combative film, though I remembered a certain amount of spectacular stunt-work.  This raised the possibility that it, unlike the source material, might be a work in the combative mode, since I've indicated that it's impossible to convey the significant value of combative sublimity without the use of spectacle.

However, MINORITY REPORT's only important scene in this regard occurs less than halfway through the film. Prior to this scene, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) finds himself accused of being guilty of murder, albeit a murder than hasn't happened yet.  Though Anderton is a cop himself, he goes on the run from the authorities to prove his innocence.  This is a science-fiction twist on a venerable trope from the genre of mundane crime, and within crime movies there's usually no need for spectacle as such.  In this type of story, it's most desirable to show the protagonist as overmatched by the united might of the police tracking him. Rarely if ever does a protagonist in this sort of story become involved in a spectacular fight with police.

Viewers of cinematic science-fiction, however, expect some degree of spectacle, and so it would appear that director Spielberg and his scripters crafted a couple of major FX-scenes-- only one of which involves direct combat-- both of which occur early in the film and which may serve to assuage audience-expectations.  Following Anderton's escape from the police on a vertical freeway and his big fight with a half dozen armed police, the film then eschews showy spectacle for low-key suspense, after the fashion of the classic films noirs from which Spielberg claimed to have copied.  Anderton eventually uncovers the villain who framed him-- or, to be specific, his wife, acting on his behalf, does so-- but though there is a final confrontation between hero and villain, they do not fight.  The villain threatens the hero with a gun and is shot down by police; also a familiar trope out of crime films, which often take the execution of justice out of the hands of individual heroes and utilize the legal authorities to provide such violence.

So the question occurs: how important is it to the mode of the combative that there should be a literal combat near the climax, rather than at any other point in the narrative?

Though it's possible that I'll encounter some exceptions, there seems no way to demonstrate the persistence of the narrative combative value unless there is some sort of spectacle-oriented struggle at or very near the climax. On occasion there may be scenarios in which the central protagonist throws down with an apparent antagonist, only to break off the fight because he realizes it's all a big misunderstanding. Another variation is seen in my review of the 2012 DARK SHADOWS,
wherein vampire protagonist Barnabas Collins has a violent conflict with the villain but is taken out of the fight, after which the villain is destroyed by the main character's allies. But as long as there has been some narrative plot-thread to leads inevitably to some sort of spectacular combat, it doesn't matter if the combat follows the dominant pattern of the main hero overcoming the villain.  In fact, though it's rare for a combative film to end in the defeat of the hero, it does happen, most memorably in 1982's BLADE RUNNER.

Despite Spielberg's attempt to give Tom Cruise's fans some of the same thrills they enjoyed in his MISSION; IMPOSSIBLE success (even using the same stunt-team), MINORITY REPORT is a subcombative work, most comparable in structure to other works that depict violence at early points in the story, as I demonstrated here with regard to Shakespeare's subcombative drama CORIOLANUS.  This would also be another illustration of my concept of a narrative "diffuse force," as discussed here with regard to the 1953 film WAR OF THE WORLDS-- and which I've also discerned in a recent re-read of the Wells source novel, as well.

SHEEP, SANS ELECTRICITY

Having finished my reread of Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS and judged it subcombative in terms of its narrative values, I promptly launched into a reread of Philip K. Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, which like the Heinlein book had been adapted into a film very much in the combative mode.  Going on memories of previous readings I suspected that the Dick book would also prove to be subcombative, and I was correct, but for the opposite reason.  Most of the book avoids much in the way of direct combat, pursuing instead the internal conflict of android hunter Rick Deckard as he agonizes about the interrelationships of humans and their android creations.  Only at the very end does Dick include a "shoot-out" in approved Old West fashion, even though opponents Deckard and his foe, rogue android Roy Batty, are both armed with "laser tubes."  However, Dick's approach to the fight eschews anything like the spectacle one might expect in such a duel.  Thus ANDROIDS possesses the  narrative value of the combative mode-- but not the significant value. It's not enough that there should be two megadynamic forces that appear within the same film.  In my NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE essays, here and here, I stated that "the spectacular mode of violence" was "necessary for the manifestation of combative sublimity."  But in Dick's ANDROIDS, the violence is purely in the functional mode, even if the combatants are dueling with laser tubes.  It's rare to find megadynamic forces handled in a humdrum functional manner, though Dick's motive for so doing may somewhat akin to Heinlein's reason for not winding up STARSHIP TROOPERS with a big colorful battle.  In both cases, however different their themes, the authors sought to make their protagonists seem more "ordinary" despite their marvelous surroundings and/or resources. 

Having made that determination, I ask: what about Philip K. Dick's anxiety-filled, vaguely schizophrenic works has made them so amenable to adaptation into huge, spectacular SF-adventure thrillers?  I also recently reread Dick's short story "Minority Report," and though I have yet to rescreen the Tom Cruise adaptation, it's my recollection that the Cruise film, like Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, amps up the presence of spectacular violence by a factor of 12.  Indeed, the only violence in the short story is one man shooting another, albeit with a ray-weapon.  In future I'll probably reread the source stories for TOTAL RECALL, PAYCHECK and SCREAMERS, and see how the original prose pieces stack up against their cinematic manifestations.

So what makes Dick so attractive?  I don't get the impression that most Dick-derived films, aside from the original TOTAL RECALL, have been box-office winners-- and the first RECALL was also an Ahnold film during the height of his popularity.  BLADE RUNNER lost money on its first screening, though eventually it may have become profitable through the home-rental market, due to its fully deserved status as a "cult film." Dick may also impress filmmakers because of the fecundity of his ideas, or because BLADE RUNNER offers them a much-admired template to follow.  But in the end, the word I used earlier-- "anxiety-filled"-- may hold the key.   Dick himself, who was attempting to focus on the dramatic interactions of his characters, only used violence in a functional way, to punctuate crises in the lives of those characters.  But filmmakers-- who are known for resorting to all manners of spectacle to attract butts to stay in seats-- are able to use the paranoiac scenarios Dick invented, and then simply "add violence as needed."

That said, I want to reiterate, as I said in NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE, that the difference is not one of mere degree; it's one of narrative function.  A work in the subcombative mode, whose violence is merely functional, doesn't just change into a combative one purely through the injection of spectacular violence.  The spectacular violence is not epiphenomenal; it becomes part of the diegesis as soon as it's included, and it changes the nature of the narrative.  This distinction is comparable to a similar observation by Rudolf Otto. He opposes the idea that religious awe was simply different from ordinary fear in "degree."  For him it was clearly a difference "in kind." 

Thus, in NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE PART 2, I compare two monster-movies of roughly the same period: 1957's DEADLY MANTIS and 1961's REPTILICUS.  Both films include giant monsters that get shot at by soldiers, and even suffer attack by flamethrowers.  But the guns and flamethrower in MANTIS are different in "kind" from those in REPTILICUS, because of the way the filmmakers of each respective movie treats these human resources.  In REPTILICUS these naturalistic weapons become spectacular, megadynamic forces, but in MANTIS they remain functional and mundane because MANTIS as a film is less interested in sheer spectacle for its own sake.