Station Zero

This is an old piece from around the time Blade Runner 2049 was released. I think I still stand by most of it... 2019 (1982) Gosh, they made some good films when I was young. I can measure out my teenage years in them: Star Wars, Close Encounters, Alien, Excalibur, Blade Runner, Brazil. .. It's no wonder that I ended up writing sci-fi and fantasy, or that half those titles are still generating sequels, spin-offs and reboots forty years on. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner has been so influential, and ripped off so frequently by other films, that it's probably hard for younger viewers to imagine how startlingly new and real it looked when it was released in 1982. Before that, the futuristic cities I'd seen on screen tended to look shiny and super-modernist: pale concrete, spotless pavements, plate glass walls. Blade Runner recognised that the architecture of the future won't simply replace the architecture of the past, it will be built amongst and around and o...