A few weeks ago I shared an old Insomnia post to my social media networks for From the Archives Friday — it was a notice celebrating the birthday/inception date of Roy Batty, the leader of the renegade replicants in the original Blade Runner film. Batty’s inception date on January 8, 2016 takes on special importance this year as Blade Runner is celebrating its 35th anniversary, and the film’s long-awaited sequel, Blade Runner 2049, will be released this fall. And hey, being one-year-old is a pretty big deal even for an artificial humanoid.

Celebrating Batty and the Blade Runner universe, I’m planning lots of posts leading up to the release of the sequel this year. Let’s get started with this exhaustive making-of documentary of the original Blade Runner film. Here’s Dangerous Days – On The Edge of Blade Runner…

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On Friday we observed the birthday of Roy Batty. What I’m trying to say is that we observed the “inception date” of Roy Batty — the poet laureate of the replicants in the film, Blade Runner. The Guardian has the word…

8 January 2016 marks the inception date of Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the leader of a gang of renegade replicants on the run from Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) in Ridley Scott’s iconic 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner.

A product of the Tyrell Corporation, Batty was part of the Nexus-6 line of genetically engineered replicants. Described as “more human than human”, the creations look indistinguishable from humans; but possess superior strength, agility, tolerance to extreme temperatures, and intelligence.

But, boy, was the internet pleased to celebrate his birthday.

The events contained within Blade Runner occur in November 2019, in a technologically advanced Los Angeles which sees Spinners flying above the streets littered with ads promoting tourism in “off-world” colonies throughout the galaxy. By this time, replicants have long existed, though now illegal on Planet Earth after they proved dangerous to humans.

Endgadget added…

…it seems as if we’re edging closer and closer to Blade Runner’s world. The very fact that AI, flying cars, robots and private space travel are hot topics at all is a big deal. Who’d have thought in 1982 that real tech giants would share something in common with Tyrell Corporation? Truly intelligent machines and off-world colonies may still be decades away, but they’re at least on the horizon. Building-scale giant displays have been around for a while, too, and the seemingly physics-defying image enhancer isn’t that far-fetched given the existence of gigapixel cameras. And like it or not, we’re starting to see cities suffocated by pollution. Will we get much closer to Roy Batty’s world by the time he’s supposed to shut off in 2019? Probably (and to some extent, hopefully) not, but it’s fascinating that there are any similarities at all.

Here’s the reason Rutger Hauer became an actor…

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