I recently finally got reading glasses after around a decade of refusing to go through the process. I don't know why I was so stubborn about this because I clearly needed them and they are not expensive but as I may have mentioned in times past, I am selectively lazy and certain things that are just perhaps everyday for most people seem like a huge pain the ass to me.
Well I finally ended up with some stock-standard reading glasses after someone in a minimart let me use his after overhearing how I was unable to read a package that I was looking at. He also told me where to easily get a pair of my own for a few dollars. I almost immediately started reading books again and I have been tearing through them lately.
Now that we have that boring-ass part of the story out of the way l want to talk to you about one of the first books I read now that I have the ability to see again. It's called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but most people probably know it by its cinematic name Blade Runner.
Keep in mind that I am going to spoil the shit out of both book and movie here so if you don't want spoilers then you should probably not read this.
I've been aware of the film's existence for quite some time and was alive when it was released. It wasn't a big part of my childhood because Star Wars took all the science-fiction enthusiasm that the world had in it at the time so there wasn't much left over for anyone else to take. There are also boobies in Blade Runner so even if I had wanted to see it, my parents wouldn't have allowed it.
So I went and watched the film for the first time in my life a few days ago and this was after having finished the book in the same day.
I will run the risk of sounding like one of those "The book is so much better than the movie!" nerds by saying this but that is exactly how I feel. This isn't just because the book is in fact better than the movie but because the movie doesn't really have a lot in common with the book other than the fact that there is a bounty hunter named "Rick Deckard" (played by Harrison Ford) and there are androids on Earth that need to be hunted down because: Reasons.
My complaints here are not meant to be exhaustive because I am not trying to get a master's degree thesis out of this but rather, point out some aspects of the movie vs. the book that don't make a lot of sense to me.
Why change the name of "android" to "replicant?
This is a minor thing but something I can't really understand that they would do. At no point in time are the androids referred to as "replicants" in the book and vice-versa. They are colloquially referred to as "andys" in the book but never replicants.
The android/andy/replicant's motivations are totally different in the movie
The book does a pretty good job of making you feel sorry for the androids because they are not violent people for the most part. The only thing that they want is to escape their lives of "slavery" on Mars and stay under the radar on Earth.
In the movie they are presented as manipulative killers who would need to be hunted down even if they weren't androids. They are a menace to society and seek to extend their own lives. The desire for extension of life is briefly touched base on in the book but it isn't their main goal. In the book they simply want to not be killed and go to great lengths just to be left alone. In the movie they are willing to do whatever it takes in order to achieve their goals and when they find out that it can't be done, they murder everyone involved including "Sebastian" (who was named Isadore in the book) who has done nothing but help them up to this point.
The android showdown was over quickly in the books
I understand that Hollywood has to turn this into an action film and had they not drawn this out the movie couldn't really be considered action. However, in the book the "showdown" with 3 of the androids (one of which isn't in the movie at all) in an apartment complex is over in one chapter.
The fight with Pris is ridiculous in the movie but maybe I only feel that way because I read the book first. The fact that Rick Deckard has a 20 minute showdown with Roy Batty despite rather unceremoniously "retiring" him in the book.
It's also kind of funny because at the start of this showdown Batty is wearing a full leather getup including jacket and the next scene he has stripped down to his underpants... why?
I guess I didn't really like the way that Deckard is presented as being kind of a bad-ass killer in the books but in the movie he gets disarmed regularly and in half of his replicant encounters sees him on the losing end of the stick despite the fact that he is meant to be one of the best at this.
Almost no focus on electronic animals in the film
This may have been because it would have been too difficult to replicate on screen in 1982 but the obsession with animals is a MAJOR piece of the entire book and it is barely even mentioned in the movie. Rick Deckard obsesses over getting another animal, preferably a real one, in order to compensate for his electronic sheep that he keeps on the roof of his building. Eventually he ends up with a very expensive goat that he surprises his wife with at the end of a day of killing "andys." The goat and Deckard's wife is never mentioned in the film at all.
Electronic animals are only mentioned a couple of times in the film including where they inexplicably changed one of the android/replicants from an opera singer into an exotic dancer who happens to have snakes.
The alternate police station is not in the movie at all
This was crucial to the internal struggle that Rick Deckard faces in the book as he starts to empathize with androids as well as question whether or not he actually is one. At a certain part in the book he is escorted to a police station that he has never been to before. As it turns out this police station is fake and almost all of the staff there are androids, many of which are unaware they are androids. I will admit that this plot point is kind of glanced over in the book as well because if there are so many more of them, enough to staff a fake police station, wouldn't there be a lot more "andys" to go after?
Nevertheless this plot point and all the characters involved in it, do not appear in the film at all.
Mercerism not in the film at all
The new religion in the book is called "Mercerism" and it is the way that the population achieves some sort of spiritual enlightenment. Although it isn't explicitly stated in the book, it appears as though author Phillip K. Dick was hinting at this religion being a form of societal control. One that even after it is exposed as being fraudulent, the believers continue to defend and believe in.
Maybe it was just beyond the scope of a 2 hour movie. I don't know. I just thought it was strange that this rather major part of the book, as well as the empathy boxes that came alone with it, weren't even mentioned at all on screen.
Where's the dust?
The world being in the state it is in was presented in the book as being a by-product of incredible dust storms or something like that which resulted in the extinction of most of the world's animals. Yet in the movie it is perpetually rainy
This might have been the inspiration for making the sequel Blade Runner 2049 which was exceptionally dusty in nature. Also, from the picture above it is worth noting that Edward James Olmos's character "Gaff" isn't in the book at all.
There are a ton of other differences and when I was looking into it a bit more because I was unreasonably upset about these differences I found out that director Ridley Scott has said time and time again that they were never trying to make an exact errr... replicant of the book, but that it was "loosely based on it."
So there you have it. Those are my gripes of book vs. film and it is something that I rarely do because for the past 20 years or so I haven't read very many books because English language books are a bit difficult to come by in SE Asia.
If I've made a mistake or two and someone who is a super fanboi would like to refute me on some of my points I welcome the criticism and/or correction to any mistakes I have made. In the end while I appreciate the visual effects of Blade Runner especially considering the time in which it was made, I do not think it is a good film.
Now don't get me started on Alex Garland's The Beach :) Maybe I'll rant about that at a future time since I actually lived where some of that movie was filmed.
