Blade Runner is a futuristic noir film that takes place in Los Angeles. This film is centered about a dystopia, pollution, and futuristic elements such an flying cars, human replicant androids. Deckerd is a retired police officer/ bounty hunter. Humanity produces these human replicas that are identical in every sense, except they are unable to feel emotions, and they have super human strength. The main controversy in this film is since they are human made and are exactly like humans, why do they lack natural human rights? This film suggests multiple times that Deckard himself might be a replicant, which would force him to reevaluate his hate for them. THis leads to the question of who is real, and who is fake.  Although this movie is suppose to seem very “ahead of time” it seemed sort of like a complex video game in the way the clips were pieces together, and the vivid lighting seen throughout this film. I appreciated the sci-fi feeling this movie emitted with its scenery and gadgets.

In comparison to the film, I felt like the book and the film took completely different directions with the story line. His initial goal in the book is to earn enough money to buy an animal to take care for as suggested since animals are going extinct. Through his hardships feeling bad for killing the androids, he eventually learns to love the toad even if it wasn’t real, because it still has a conscious. However, the movie and the book are similar in the fact that in the film, Deckard never kills Rachael, and in the book, Deckard chooses to accept the fact that the frog was not real. It was the fact that Deckard accepted the way things are made things real.

I enjoyed the plot twist in this film, when Gaff had left an origami unicorn on the floor of Deckard’s apartment door. By the end of this film, I didn’t really think about Deckard or any of the other characters but Gaff. The reason is that it brings up a few questions. Why didn’t Gaff kill Rachael when he had the perfect chance to do it when Deckard was out retiring replicants? Furthermore, why did Gaff never kill Deckard? Once again Gaff misses both opportunities to kill them both.

More specifically, if Gaff didn’t kill them, perhaps he had more in store for Deckard. Perhaps only a replicant can find another replicant, sort of like “it takes one to know one”. Another thing is that there is constantly junk everywhere, almost as if to say, Deckard has to keep digging in order to find out the truth. The replicants behavior was strange as well, then again, you have to remember that they are androids, with someone else memories.

Chinatown has to be one of the best noir films in all the film’s we watched. It’s not so much because of the color, but I was more drawn into the story than previous films. Jake, the protagonists, was constantly being stopped not only by henchman, but also police investigators as well. And what a crazy twist when we found out that Katherine was Evelyn’s daughter and sister after she was slapped by Jake so many times. In the end, he ends up helping Evelyn escape with her daughter/sister but that was cut short.

I think out of all the noir film’s we’ve watched, I felt like this film took a different route than what other noir films usually do. Normally, the femme fatale is the one that pushes the protagonist into more and more trouble. They are usually the ones who are completely manipulative and selfish on what they want. However, in this film, although the femme fatale did lie Jake into trouble, the femme fatale did it for moral reasons, that was to save her daughter from her father. When Evelyn dies and you see Katherine’s father taking Katherine away, it’s like nobody won here.

Once again, the femme fatale in this movie strikes and reels in the protagonist to get him to do what she wants. I thought the story line this noir film got my attention, especially when it was so obvious that Phyllis was taking advantage of Neff after she went along with the plan of killing her husband, what a twisted mind. Like always, small clues left big tracks behind which eventually caught up with Neff leading to him killing Phyllis. This noir film also still follows the convention of the protagonist “redemption”.

In noir films, the protagonist are not heroes of the film, but really redeemers of a tragedy they’ve gotten themselves into. This happen especially in this case, Neff ended up confessing what he had done on a recorder and to Keyes as well. It’s like he knew it was a matter of time that he was going to get caught, why not make yourself look better. He also did pretty much end Phyllis’ reign of terror on the manipulation of her victims.

The movie Chinatown was probably the best film we’ve watched in this class. The movie kept on a good storyline and kept the characters realistic. I enjoyed the scenes where he was spying on Mr Mulwray and how he used a spare watch to track how long he stayed at a place. The film was very interesting but I was not satisfied with its ending. After Evelyn was killed her daughter was taken by the father leaving Jake alone and basically broken as the movie ended with the quote “Forget it Jake it’s Chinatown” which basically told us he finally gave up. This actually came unexpected as the typical noir has some type of closure to the conflicts in the film.

In this Neo-Noir film we have the introduction of color. This was interesting because we had to analyze scenes in color while still trying to retain the noir themes. Thankfully shadows are still black even in colored film. So during the film we had the use of shadows very visible especially when he was tailing his different leads. We also have presence of a femme fatale. This femme fatale is fatal indeed. I believe she offers the biggest plot twist from all the text we have experienced thus far. She provides such a dynamic that changes the scope the entire film as to where she is involved with something very taboo. The plot twist that she provided was the biggest that any femme fatale.

In “The Setup” we have a film noir that does not appear to be a film noir until the very end. During the course of the film we have a very slow build up of the background and plot. We have our protagonist Stoker competing in a boxing match. It unfolds to this under handed deal where Stoker is supposed to take a fall in the match but no one tells him because he is considered to be a washed up boxer without a shot. Stoker manages to win against what could be considered to be the younger version of himself. This results in the deal he knows nothing about blowing up in his face. Then we take the plunge into noir. A four on one fight breaks out and Stoker ends up with a broken hand and empty dreams.

In Blade Runner we have a film that could potentially be called a noir film. We have a detective trying to solve a mystery. As he gets more involved in the case he gets pulled deeper and deeper into the conflict. We have femme fatale that turns out to be the enemy and falls in love with our protagonist Rick. He has to go against what he has been doing his entire so that he can be together with her.

The central conflict of 1984 is the idea that one member of society can try to break the illusion of the social standards as set forth by the ruling power and the effects they have as interpreted by the individual.  The novel goes on to explore an in depth look at the effects an individual goes through when one believes that they have no choice but to fall into line.  The effects of the tremendous amount of oppression from the ruling power drills into a society member’s head that not only can freedom in terms of the law not be possessed but neither can the inner freedoms that only one’s mind possesses.  Any member of society has the ability to question injustice but the problem is that one must realize injustice is occurring in the first place and based on the meek society members in 1984, no change is in sight.  With the amount of people blindly walking in the world, some people may never realize and if they do, there is no saying that anything will change.  For Winston Smith, he tried and he failed.