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Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The novel was published in 1968 and follows Agent Deckerd, a Blade Runner, who must hunt down and “retire” missing Nexus six’s. While the film and the novel differ in many ways, the overall concepts and themes are the same. For example, the film does mention that most real animals are borderline extinct and very expensive, but the novel goes into far more detail about how owning a real animal is a status symbol and how Deckerd only has a black-faced electric sheep. It’s note a new concept for movies to be adapted from novels, but what’s interesting is the title change, begging the question: why is Blade Runner called Blade Runner?
What Exactly is a Blade Runner?
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While the title might suggest that a “Blade Runner” may have something to do with running or skating, that is absolutely not the case. In the Blade Runner universe, a “Blade Runner” is a special member of a specific police task force that is responsible for hunting down and “retiring” — or, simply, killing — rogue replicants. In the Blade Runner films, Agent Deckard and K are both “blade runners” who seek out and retire replicants from service. Having the title of “Blade Runner” gives them immunity for their crimes. The concept of being able to freely kill an indistinguishable android without any consequences makes a statement about humanity as a whole. Replicants appear human in every way, so why is it that the police are allowed to murder them in cold blood without any consequences. This raises the question of how we define humanity and what humanity really is.
What Does the Phrase “Blade Runner” Mean?
In the Blade Runner Universe, the phrase “Blade Runner’’ is simply a job description and has little to no meaning and was simply thought of as a cool name to call a detective on a special task force, especially in a dystopian Cyberpunk world. In the novel from which the film title came, The Bladerunner, the term “Blade Runner” refers to people who run “blades” as part of a black market of medical services. Both references to the phrase “Blade Runner” simply use the term as an arbitrary name for a job description. One could say that this just appears to be a cool made-up name, but this name has stuck and while it may just be a cool name with no real meaning, it still made an impact on the science fiction genre.
Where Did the Title Come From?
While the Blade Runner franchise was based on the novel by Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the term ‘Blade Runner’ was never actually used in the novel. We have screenwriter Hampton Fancher to thank for this futuristic yet arbitrary title. After drafting the film under a variety of names including Android, Fancher pitched the title to Ridley Scott who absolutely loved it, but Fancher did not come up with the term. “Blade Runner” was the title of a book by William S. Burroughs called Blade Runner: A Movie, which was based on the book The Bladerunner by Alan Nourse, a dystopian novel set in an overpopulated world where anyone who needs medical treatment must be sterilized, since anyone sick or injured is deemed unfit to reproduce by the government. Burroughs’ novel was a cinematic retelling of the story as he deemed that The Bladerunner had great potential as a film. While Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is unrelated to Blade Runner: A Movie, the concept was used by Tom Huckabee as a backdrop for a project called Taking Tiger Mountain.
