Art Direction

The overall atmosphere of Blade Runner is bleak and dreary, with constant rain and a nearly total absence of sunlight. This overall, gothic-like nightmare acts as both a motif and a theme, since it not only sets up and carries the film, but also hopes to deliver a message to our present generation. This world, created largely by the director, Ripley Scott, can not be underplayed. The creativity involved in creating such a foreboding background must have been phenomenal and few, if any, other films have so successfully created such a world solely for the purposes of a movie.

Add to this bleak atmosphere, magnificent skyscrapers arising from the dark, literally out of the dead ground, since there is no grass or living plants surrounding these massive buildings like we would see today. The architecture, itself, is different from any seen before. The structures are a combination...