
The Typography of Blade Runner (2016) - slowhand09
https://typesetinthefuture.com/2016/06/19/bladerunner/
======
mzs
Post is an article about fonts and aesthetics from 2016.

We only know it's today cause of the sequel:
[https://twitter.com/bkMethod/status/1183784913209905152](https://twitter.com/bkMethod/status/1183784913209905152)

The original only stated it was this month:
[https://gfycat.com/determinedenchantinggreatargus](https://gfycat.com/determinedenchantinggreatargus)

~~~
djsumdog
huh .. interesting. So in the original, they chose a date far in the future
(2019) and it was Sci-Fi, but the sequel keeping with that timeline, kinda
changes it out to alternative-history.

That is a strong attention to detail/continuity. Kudos to the script
supervisor.

~~~
Barrin92
> but the sequel keeping with that timeline, kinda changes it out to
> alternative-history

I think this is a huge problem with the cyberpunk aesthetic today. What
defined it was the fact how transgressive and original it was when it was
first introduced. When I saw 2049 and how close it stuck to the original, it
didn't seem futuristic but retro, including one scene with a CCCP
advertisement which obviously made sense as a vision for the future in the
early 80s but seems counterfactual now.

I think the movie would have benefitted from taking many more liberties with
the setting to avoid this retro-futurism.

~~~
toyg
The second movie? Nah.

The first Blade Runner is a view of a dystopic future that raises a number of
philosophical themes.

The second Blade Runner is _a love letter to the first_ that also expands on
some themes and further adds to the original myth. It’s kids playing in their
dad’s sandbox once more.

If you started reworking the original BR environment, it would not work. The
whole point is to throw you right back to the original, warts and all. You
have to anchor it firmly, so that then you can take some liberties elsewhere
(nuked Vegas etc).

~~~
Barrin92
>The second Blade Runner is a love letter to the first that also expands on
some themes and further adds to the original myth

fully agreed, but I wish it would have been as visionary and as much of a leap
as the original movie. We seem to live in the age of love letters with star
wars, comic book adaptions, ready player one, and soon a fourth matrix movie.

I would be really glad if we had more filmmakers work on truly new aesthetics
instead of just paying homage to works of the 70s, 80s and 90s.

~~~
Apocryphon
There does seem to be a dearth of new sci-fi aesthetics. I suppose there was a
moment in 2013 with Oblivion's iPodpunk style, Elysium featuring Neill
Blomkamp once again showcasing his "Global South sci-fi" style and themes, Her
doing a heartfelt American version of Black Mirror's near-future consumer tech
sci-fi, and Snowpiercer's vivid revolution in an enclosed vehicle.

~~~
baq
Check out The Expanse, not sure if it’s new, but it is fresh.

~~~
Apocryphon
There's been three prior suggestions for The Expanse, one of which was mine,
and is its own thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21585224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21585224)

------
as1mov
Kinda OT, but I feel Philip K. Dicks' _A Scanner Darkly_ is a much more
realistic depiction of today (even for the year it's set in - 2006),
especially the situation surrounding the mass surveillance issue.

I'll highly recommend the movie adaptation of the novel, it's one of the more
faithful ones. It seems to get lost among all the big-budget blockbusters that
the other adaptations were.

~~~
Apocryphon
The novel was set in June 1994, the movie came out in 2006. The film's setting
has often been described as an America that has "lost the War on Drugs", which
is depressingly apt considering the opiate epidemic.

~~~
yters
It's weird that everyone points to the opiate epidemic as somehow signifying
something major, when it's just the same drug epidemic that has already
ravaged the inner cities decades ago. The only difference with the opiate
epidemic is the drug dealer is the neighborhood doctor, so the risk barrier
has been lowered to fit the middle class more subdued risk palate.

Same weird thing as will the mass shootings. Mass shooting has been going on
for a very long time in the inner cities, but it's only a big thing once
middle class kids and adults start shooting everyone up.

~~~
allovernow
>Mass shooting has been going on for a very long time in the inner cities, but
it's only a big thing once middle class kids and adults start shooting
everyone up.

Inner city "mass shootings" are phenomenologically distinct from the more
modern mass shootings you blame on middle class kids and adults. The former
are born of gang warfare, with specific targets and associated collateral
damage, while the latter are much more random and difficult to explain. It's
dishonest to group them together as certain groups do, particularly those who
cite mass shootings as evidence for the need for gun control. The two problems
have different causes and different solutions.

------
Loughla
But for real - I was having a conversation with a colleague, and the reality
of 2020 being about a month away really set in.

I'm not sure why, but 2020 was always 'the future' when I was a kid.

And it's here. And seemingly the same as it was in the 80's just with more fun
games and lower interest rates.

~~~
zelly
If you covered up all the screens in America, it still looks like 1989.

~~~
wool_gather
Cars have changed a lot too. Less boxy these days.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Not just in looks. Back in the 80s, we were happy when a car lasted beyond
100K miles.

Today, I'd be annoyed if my car needed anything beyond regular scheduled
maintenance in that period. They're vastly more dependable, safer, better
performing, and more comfortable.

------
mlacks
I traveled to Hong Kong a few years ago. That city has a certain vibe that
evokes the lore of sci fi movies. I always felt I had one foot in the past,
one foot in the future during my stay

~~~
Apocryphon
Indeed, HK was the main inspiration for a classic cyberpunk scene:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARTLckN9e7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARTLckN9e7I)

~~~
krtkush
A very good analysis of the said scene -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw&t=228s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw&t=228s)

------
malvosenior
The 1980s was such a great time for imagining the future. That feels all but
lost now. Are there any contemporary visions of the future that are as forward
thinking as the cyberpunk universe imagined in the 80s?

It feels like all we're left with is retro-futurism to get our fix.

~~~
fpgaminer
After the horrific events of World War II, people wanted a positive view of
the future; an escape from what we had just gone through. And there was
fantastic progress in the world with the dawn of the nuclear age, space age,
and computer age. Hence all the retro-futurism media of those following
decades.

It's now been a generation since and while the world is filled with tragedy,
there has been no apocalyptic scale war in most living persons' memory. People
don't need to escape to a fantasy world where the future is bright; we live in
a bright future already. So we see more media around dark futures, new wars,
and apocalypses; because those are fantasies in the minds of the modern
viewers.

That's overall a good thing, though yes we miss out on a lot of that
optimistic-futuristic creativity of the past.

~~~
laumars
I don't agree with this.

Many writers in the 80s would still have been too young to remember WW2 (some
might have even been born after it entirely) and there are still plenty of
sci-fi stories and scripts being written which are based in the future.

I think the explanation is a simpler one: writers didn't know any better. In
the 50s through to 80s exaggerated predictions were made based on observations
of the way tech was advancing at that time (much of that kind of tech was
new). However after people grew up and realised those predictions were vastly
over optimistic they would then go on to set their science fiction stories at
a more pragmatic date in the future. Sometimes writers these days don't even
specify a date and I suspect that's intentional to avoid jokes about it's
"predictions".

Simply put: Writers these days are just more aware of how quickly dates change
and how long their content remains in the cultural conciousness.

It's also worth baring in mind that a lot of the time these kinds of stories
are "alt universe" type stuff. ie based on some theoretically similar universe
to ours _as well as_ x number of years in the future.

~~~
buboard
> However after people grew up and realised those predictions were vastly over
> optimistic

For someone born in the 50s , reality caught up with predictions pretty fast,
even overtaking them

------
dang
Surprisingly, the title was taken from William S. Burroughs' _Blade Runner: A
Movie_ (1979) which has just been reissued:
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/nov/19/ever...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/nov/19/ever-
heard-of-blade-runner-a-movie-no-not-that-one)

Burroughs wanted to make a movie out of _The Bladerunner_ by Alan Nourse
(what? another one? 1974) and when he realized it wouldn't happen, turned it
into a novel instead.

Neither book has anything to do the movie we know. They just liked the title.
And both Burroughs and Nourse got paid for it.

------
CharlesColeman
It's a nice reminder not to believe the technohype. Most of the world
changing-technology that's being hyped today isn't going to happen, and the
world-changing technology that _does_ happen isn't going to be what we
expected.

~~~
riffraff
I'd say, not to believe in the current trends and ideas to last, in general.

For example, Blade Runner has iconic Japanese cultural domination themes (ads,
company names etc) because Japan was overtaking the US economically in the
'80s. Nobody expected decades of Japanese stagnation.

~~~
moomin
I'd argue science fiction fundamentally isn't about futurology, it's always
about today.

"The Space Merchants" still feels relevant because it's about the rise of
multinationals, and they're still around. (England Made Me is about the same
thing, but isn't science fiction.) "Rebel in Time" is about contemporary
racism. "Grass", well, Grass is about a lot of things and it's hard to
summarize but "Sideshow" is about our attitudes to religion and "the other".

Equally, for all of the 80s hairdos, Blade Runner is about the classic science
fiction question of who gets to be human. And so I'd argue it hasn't really
dated at all.

~~~
the_af
> _Blade Runner is about the classic science fiction question of who gets to
> be human. And so I 'd argue it hasn't really dated at all._

Agreed! Like much of Philip Dick's fiction actually. And it hasn't aged at
all. The writing style maybe, but the themes are still compelling.

------
dang
Submitted title was "Blade Runner was set today,2019/11/20", which broke the
site guideline against editorializing. If you want to say what you think is
important in an article, please do so in a comment, where your view is on a
level playing field with everyone else's.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20title%20level%20playing%20field&sort=byDate&type=comment)

------
mixmastamyk
Los Angeles, November 2019.

Have this intro title clip as my background on Facebook this month. And it is
actually raining in LA today, for the first time in six months.

Blade Runner is playing Saturday at the Vista near Silverlake to commemorate.

~~~
205guy
There is still time for a creative person to enact (not re-enact) the "Tears
in the rain" scene on a Los Angeles rooftop tomorrow night. Just so the two
timelines share a special moment.

------
MisterOctober
There's a lot of bad things in the way society and technology have unfolded
since the movie [and even more so, the book] was originally released, but one
thing I'm happy about that contrasts with the story's vision is that, although
we do have serious environmental and ecological problems, wildlife and
especially owls are still plentiful.

~~~
kingkawn
For a little longer

------
slowhand09
If you watched it in the past, it was set in the future. If you watch it
tomorrow, it is set in the past. Is today the future you imagined? Is tomorrow
the past you remember?

~~~
buboard
they promised us flying cars.

but at least people dont smoke anymore

~~~
smabie
Nah reality is even more cyberpunk. They are machine cigarettes (commonly
called brainsticks) produced by the Tetsuto-Osaka Heavy Industries
Corporation, one of the biggest and more powerful mega-corps with interests
spanning cyborgs, neuronal interfaces, and blazing fast matrix holo-decks. The
founder, Rin Tetsuto founded the company over 200 years ago. And while no one
has seen him in over 75 years, it is rumored that he still helms the megacorp,
if true, making him over 240 years old.

But anyways, and maybe it’s just because I’m a smoker, I love the cigarettes.
The mix of high-life and low-life is the definition of cyberpunk: and nothing
represents that more than a hazy smoke filled room of salarymen smoking and
watching VR porn.

In fact, my interest in cyberpunk made me start smoking (and other stuff)
because my 16 year olds self wanted to be like Case and his dope hexogonal dex
pills!

Unfortunately my implants got fried by a neuro-virus and never managed to jack
in and see the beauty of the matrix. One day... (in the off chance I’m still
alive)

------
ajay-d
Obligatory wiki post List of stories set in a future now past:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_set_in_a_futur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_set_in_a_future_now_past)

------
buboard
Actually it was yesterday, 19/11\. jwz.net explains more

there s interesting fan work on reproducing Deckard's newspaper

[https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e6uSgoZAerk/Wph9oqO_PwI/AAAAAAAAH...](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e6uSgoZAerk/Wph9oqO_PwI/AAAAAAAAH5E/dtHty0OF3RsUXIoc7fBMQZogPqllD71_QCLcBGAs/s1600/Blade_Runner_White_Dragon_005.jpg)

~~~
mzs
The date on that replica prop newspaper* can't be right then:
[https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/11/blade-runner-
day/](https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/11/blade-runner-day/)

* [https://www.replicantprophunter.com/2018/03/white-dragon-noo...](https://www.replicantprophunter.com/2018/03/white-dragon-noodle-bar-collection.html)

~~~
buboard
the newspaper appears multiple times, i have to watch the movie again, but
even 22 may be consistent with it.

(btw you'll notice that jwz.net is not an HN fan)

~~~
mzs
Pretty sure that headline appears on the first evening edition. Sorry I did
not know Jamie would redirect it.

------
yarrel
Does anyone know what font the "Los Angeles November, 2019" text is set in?

~~~
zerocrates
I believe it's Goudy, like the "crawl" discussed in the article.

------
abledon
whoa! that makes the cybertruck reveal tomorrow make much more sense

