SOURCE: Desser, David. “The New Eve: The Influence of Paradise Lost and Frankenstein on Blade Runner.” In Retrofitting “Blade Runner”: Issues in Ridley Scott's “Blade Runner” and Philip K. Dick's “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” edited by Judith B. Kerman, pp. 53-65. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Desser explores how Blade Runner reworks motifs and mythic themes from John Milton's Paradise Lost and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, focusing particularly on the themes of redemption and transcendence.

A number of critics have claimed that some of the remarkable power of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's stylish film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, rests on the way it utilizes a fundamental mythic structure apparent in the novel, Frankenstein, and in many of its film adaptations: “the struggle with human facsimiles” (Strick 168). While this is certainly an...