Blade Runner: Ideology Critique

The Sci-Fi movie Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, is a leap into the future if you viewed this movie back in the 80's. Otherwise today it looks like the timeline is somewhat off, as the setting is supposedly in 2019 in the city of Los Angeles. A city jam-packed full of people and large looming structures. Our protagonist, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) who is a Blade Runner, is forced to re-enter the police force to hunt down and terminate four rouge replicants that escaped on earth. The replicants are robots made to look like humans yet without emotion, and they are trying to find their creator so that they could have their lifespan extended as they are only built to last a total of four years. They are presumed as bad because they are not human, even though they are just looking to live a longer life as they are afraid to die, a human trait. The morals of the society has it set upon them that because the replicants are of inhuman nature they don't deserve a sense of equality. We see that Deckard's life is rough, and he is low on the economic scale. He lives in a crowded area of the city that is dark, dingy and not a place I would ever want to raise children. Deckard seems to undergo a change of emotion after first discovering that Rachel (Sean Young), is actually a replicant after attempting the test upon her. He begins to care about her and understand that maybe not all replicants are presumed bad as they have previously been labeled due to the other's past actions. In addition to the economic scale, it seems Ridley Scott was attempting to show the viewers how he envisions the populated city of real-life Los Angeles. As all the crowds are gathered in chaos on ground level, we see that the higher up we go, the less chaos there is, which portrays the higher economic class in addition to the "off-world" society constantly advertised across the city. The costumes for those below are worn-out, dirty and correctly represent what class they are. Then we see the costumes of higher class, such as Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), a clean, well-fitting suit that looks expensive. This is a very similar representation of our current society and how we have spit into these economic classes of poor and rich. And even more-so, equality. As the replicants are disregarded. Yet it is the ending when Deckard sees the underlined emotion of replicants when his life is spared. We are hinted through the actions in the movie to cherish life and not take it for granted, so live it to the fullest just as Roy (Rutger Hauer) said he had before his time came to an end.