One of the things that makes Blade Runner so great is its cyberpunk vision of Los Angeles, a mishmash of architecture, language, and culture. This fascinating video essay takes us through the various components that make up this futuristic noir city and what they suggest about the history of Blade Runner’s world.
Colin Marshall, author of A Los Angeles Primer, is working on a series of video essays titled The City in Cinema, examining how Los Angeles is presented in different films. Here, Marshall talks about not just what we’re seeing on the screen, but also the historical and cultural events that might have arisen in Ridley Scott’s alternate future LA. We’ve always known that the city is central to Blade Runner, but Marshall forces us to consider the city’s backstory as well as its current on-screen status.
You can see Marshall’s video analyses of LA in other movies, including Her, Drive, Night of the Comet, and Alien Nation, over at Vimeo.
[via Blastr]
