From the recent movies, I think "The Matrix" was more influential than "Blade Runner". You can split the history in movies before Matrix and the movies after.
That's a great pick. If we were going to pick a handful of candidates, Matrix definitely would have to be a part of that very short list.
Part of me wants to stump for Blade Runner over The Matrix, if only because Blade Runner had less... prior art, so to speak. It was more of an entirely new aesthetic whereas The Matrix was more evolutionary. The leap was huge, don't get me wrong, but it felt more evolutionary.
Blade Runner's look is something you continue to see today in various sci-fi and games, copied nearly verbatim. It was simultaneously the birth of a new aesthetic and maybe its apex as well. Like, where do you even go with that look? It felt fully realized, right there in 1982.
The Matrix... it wasn't really the look that influenced future works, it was more of the camera work and wild shots. Bullet time, the 360deg freeze circular panning thing, and so on. I guess you do see "bullet time" everywhere now.
There's also something to be said about the relative financial success of the movies. Blade Runner was that influential despite being a box office and critical dud at the time. It's relatively easy (and even expected) for smash hits to wield massive influence. But duds? We have to admit: that's just incredible.
Anyway - awesome pick. Rather than picking one over the other, I would say: they both belong on the Mt. Rushmore of "most visually influential movies."
I watched it again yesterday. I'd forgotten how amazingly real and fully realized that world was. I don't think that movie will ever age. Love your points, agreed on all of them.
Maybe a way to put it is like like blade runner innovates horizontally, becoming and start its own thing while matrix innovated vertixally, evolving the existing genre?
Matrix also came out much later. The kids who watched the Matrix when it came out, most of them don't even know what blade runner was because it came out before a lot them were born.
Also matrix doesn't fully hold up with time. It is a bit unintentionally campy. I was captivated by it when it came out, but when you watch it again in modern times or show it to someone who's too young to have been influenced by it, you'll actually kind of notice the campiness. If you don't, the young person will point it out.
One of Matrix's challenges maybe is that the protagonists were clearly meant to seem cool and relatable - or, at least, Neo is relatable in the beginning, trapped in his cubicle, slaving away while using only a fraction of his mind before finding out that he is so much more. We all sort of wanted to be him.
But "cool" doesn't always age well; Neo's kind of a very specific late-90s kind of cool. One decade's "cool" isn't always "cool" 30 years later.
In Blade Runner, Deckard isn't really cool or relatable. I mean, he looks sort of badass in his trenchcoat, but he's an exhausted middle-aged guy with a claustrophobic apartment in a dangerous and thankless line of work. In a way that's maybe more "timeless."
JohnBooty|3 years ago
Part of me wants to stump for Blade Runner over The Matrix, if only because Blade Runner had less... prior art, so to speak. It was more of an entirely new aesthetic whereas The Matrix was more evolutionary. The leap was huge, don't get me wrong, but it felt more evolutionary.
Blade Runner's look is something you continue to see today in various sci-fi and games, copied nearly verbatim. It was simultaneously the birth of a new aesthetic and maybe its apex as well. Like, where do you even go with that look? It felt fully realized, right there in 1982.
The Matrix... it wasn't really the look that influenced future works, it was more of the camera work and wild shots. Bullet time, the 360deg freeze circular panning thing, and so on. I guess you do see "bullet time" everywhere now.
There's also something to be said about the relative financial success of the movies. Blade Runner was that influential despite being a box office and critical dud at the time. It's relatively easy (and even expected) for smash hits to wield massive influence. But duds? We have to admit: that's just incredible.
Anyway - awesome pick. Rather than picking one over the other, I would say: they both belong on the Mt. Rushmore of "most visually influential movies."
trgn|3 years ago
I watched it again yesterday. I'd forgotten how amazingly real and fully realized that world was. I don't think that movie will ever age. Love your points, agreed on all of them.
fattless|3 years ago
deltaonefour|3 years ago
Also matrix doesn't fully hold up with time. It is a bit unintentionally campy. I was captivated by it when it came out, but when you watch it again in modern times or show it to someone who's too young to have been influenced by it, you'll actually kind of notice the campiness. If you don't, the young person will point it out.
JohnBooty|3 years ago
But "cool" doesn't always age well; Neo's kind of a very specific late-90s kind of cool. One decade's "cool" isn't always "cool" 30 years later.
In Blade Runner, Deckard isn't really cool or relatable. I mean, he looks sort of badass in his trenchcoat, but he's an exhausted middle-aged guy with a claustrophobic apartment in a dangerous and thankless line of work. In a way that's maybe more "timeless."