Page "Cyberpunk" Paragraph 21

The film Blade Runner ( 1982 ), adapted from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?, is set in 2019 in a dystopian future in which manufactured beings called replicants are slaves used on space colonies and are legal prey on Earth to various bounty hunters who " retire " ( kill ) them.

Although Blade Runner was largely unsuccessful in its first theatrical release, it found a viewership in the home video market and became a cult film.

Since the movie omits the religious and mythical elements of Dick's original novel ( e. g. empathy boxes and Wilbur Mercer ), it falls more strictly within the cyberpunk genre than the novel does.

William Gibson would later reveal that upon first viewing the film, he was surprised at how the look of this film matched his vision when he was working on Neuromancer.

The film's tone has since been the staple of many cyberpunk movies, such as The Matrix ( 1999 ), which uses a wide variety of cyberpunk elements.