Ridley Scott finds beauty amidst the ugliness of the future in Blade Runner, and begins with a shot that is by equal turns dazzling and horrifying as an introduction to LA 2019. For a neo-noir set almost entirely in the dark, the first frame offers an appropriate glance at the nighttime landscape, a vast, over-populated megacity which stretches out into an orange-smog horizon. The specks of light on the ground shine like glittering stars, of which you'll see none in the night sky through the thick orange-green congealment of fog and light pollution. The factories at the forefront of this endless city callously belch fire into the sky, so that in one single shot we see both the ramifications of extensive pollution on the Earth and the cause of it. And towers of trade, standing high above the dwellings below, tell us just where commerce sits in the hierarchy of things.
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
