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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Paliku (talk | contribs) at 03:26, 2 March 2011 (→‎Issue of consent). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Featured articleBlade Runner is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 4, 2009.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
April 18, 2005Featured article candidateNot promoted
May 26, 2005Featured article candidateNot promoted
July 19, 2005Peer reviewReviewed
September 15, 2005Featured article candidatePromoted
February 21, 2008Featured article reviewKept
Current status: Featured article

Template:V0.5

Archive
Archives
  1. 2004 to 2005
  2. 2006 to 2007
  3. 2008
  4. January 2009 to September 2010

References to use

Please add to the list references that can be used for the film article.
  • Aurich, Rolf; Jacobsen, Wolfgang; Jatho, Gabriele, eds. (2000). "Animated Machines: On The Terminator, Robocop and Blade Runner (workshop reports)". Artificial Humans: Manic Machines, Controlled Bodies. Jovis. ISBN 3931321266.
  • Booker, M. Keith (2006). "Blade Runner". Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American Culture. Praeger. pp. 171–186. ISBN 0275983951.
  • Bould, Mark (1999). "Preserving machines: recentering the decentered subject in Blade Runner and Johnny Mnemonic". In Bignell, Jonathan (ed.). Writing and Cinema. Crosscurrents. Addison Wesley Publishing Company. pp. 164–178. ISBN 0582357586.
  • Hanson, Matt (2005). "1982: Blade Runner, Tron". Building Sci-Fi Moviescapes: The Science Behind the Fiction. Focal Press. ISBN 0240807723.
  • Knight, Deborah; McKnight, George (2007). "What Is It to be Human? Blade Runner and Dark City". In Sanders, Steven M (ed.). The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film. The Philosophy of Popular Culture. pp. 21–38. ISBN 0813124727.
  • Weaver, John; Kreitzer, Larry (2005). "Blade Runner: On the Definition of Humanity". In Fiddes, Paul; Clarke, Anthony (eds.). Flickering Images: Theology and Film in Dialogue. Regent's Study Guides. Smyth & Helwys Publishing. ISBN 1573124583.

Critical reception and Reception sections?

Why does a featured article have these two sections, where both contain the same information? I am asking this rather than editing it because I trust the featured article review process.Autonova (talk) 23:35, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake, at the beginning of the day it was fine. Same goes for the 'versions' sections. Recommend reverting to the edit at the beginning of the day.Autonova (talk) 23:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Under the Lists of the best films, it is stated that Blade Runner is currently ranked the third best film of all time by The Screen Directory. The reference for this contains a dead link however so perhaps it should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Waxaposse (talkcontribs) 19:48, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On the topic of recent edits (at the time I write this), I wanted to clarify the plot synopsis reference to what I would call, partly out of convenience and partly out of honesty, the rape scene. I'm writing from my memory of the scene, so pardon errors on my part. First of all, the current reference (in which Deckard "roughly initiates sex") is equally speculative with the recently removed edit (in which Deckard "rapes [Rachael]"), because both are reading into the implication of the scene as imagined by the viewer (or writer). What can actually be viewed in the scene seems to me to be sexual assault, and clearly so, given that Deckard is physically and verbally aggressive, and more importantly, that Rachael tries to leave, but is physically prevented from doing so, and subsequently tries to verbally rebuff his advances. Only after continued physical intimidation does she start doing as he says. Am I missing something here? Cybianlesborg (talk) 08:27, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All we should do is to describe the scene. We should not interpret it. Issues of consent, and therefore rape, are irrelevant to the article unless a reliable source has already described it as such. This is one of the rare instances in which a primary source (the film itself) can be used as a source, but going beyond what is shown is not permitted. Having seen it more times than I care to admit, I agree that "roughly initiates sex" is correct, and certainly less loaded than "rape". Rodhullandemu 14:16, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, and thus my confusion: the scene does not depict sex. It does depict Deckard forcibly preventing Rachael from leaving and it does depict Rachael's attempted protestations to Deckard's advances. Cybianlesborg (talk) 06:26, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your recollecting isn't very good, but neither is mine. Ironically the fallibility of memory is one of the themes of the movie, and of this scene in particular. I do however have a wealth of reliable secondary sources in my head that help me reconstruct the scene and its subtext(s). Rachael is trying to leave not because she doesn't want Deckard, but because she's unsure of her identity / sexuality. This is clarified when she mutters, checking divx now: "I can't rely on..." [Deckard cuts her off], what is left unsaid is she feels she cannot rely on her feelings anymore because they could be fake like her memories. Now it can be said, he's taking advantage of someone unsure of themselves, but the scene ends with her, taking the initiative, by saying "put your hands on me". On top of this, she did save his life, so a little gratitude is to be expected?
In the end, for an encyclopedic film summary, subtext is often lost or intentionally left out. - RoyBoy 23:09, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

An anon changed the sex scene to stipulate: "say she wants to have sex", instead of "trust her feeling and make love". Their rationale is there is no evidence of it. Well, put in the context of the movie afterward, I'd say there is. Or are we not allowed to infer backward? - RoyBoy 02:24, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Script

[A little rough-housin']
Deckard: Say kiss me.
Rachael: I can't rely on...
Deckard: Say kiss me.
Rachael: Kiss me.
Deckard: I want you.
Rachael: I want you.
Deckard: Again.
Rachael: I want you. Put your hands on me.
[Sebastian's apartment]

From here. Note that in the last excerpt, Rachael adds "Put your hands on me", unprompted by Deckard. This would seem to imply consent to what follows, unless you want to over-analyse the psychology, which really would be original research. The sex may be rough, but I don't think we can say it's lacking consent from Rachael, and thus rape. This is made even more explicit by the shooting screenplay here. Hence, we need a reliable source to call this rape. Rodhullandemu 22:33, 31 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Gets her to say she wants to make love to him" sounds odd. I changed it to force without realizing the drama behind the verbiage, then noticed the recent edit history and decided to check the talk page... Paliku (talk) 04:31, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Gets" is IMO a very poor choice of word. Something more specific would be preferable. "Persuades", "Convinces", "Coerces"... Doniago (talk) 21:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That was my original reaction, then I noticed the edit history of the article and and reverted myself just in case. Maybe someone involved in the above dispute is still around to weigh in to avoid resurrecting an old (ongoing?) edit war. Paliku (talk) 03:26, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What does a blade runner mean?

IMDB in its trivia section has this piece:

While the film is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", the title comes from a book by Alan Nourse called "The Bladerunner". William S. Burroughs wrote a screenplay based on the Nourse book and a novella entitled "Blade Runner: A Movie." Ridley Scott bought the rights to the title but not the screenplay or the book. The Burroughs composition defines a blade runner as "a person who sells illegal surgical instruments".

So what did it originally mean? A blade runner is a sort of a smuggler? How is that connected to the film plot? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.58.148.35 (talk) 05:27, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is not particularly well explained in this article, the film describes bounty hunters like Deckard as Blade runners, and the name was borrowed from another story basically because it sounds cool. If you follow the various links and read The Bladerunner it is explained there that a Bladerunner is a smuggler of medical equipment in a world where medical care is massively restricted. -- Horkana (talk) 03:22, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also see the above section labelled Alan E Nourse The Bladerunner -- Horkana (talk) 03:27, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Citation cleanup

Editor User:DrKiernan reverted my not very WP:BOLD change to make citations clearer and more specific, instead of using the generic catch all "citation" even in cases where the publication is quite clearly a newspaper and "cite news" is more appropriate. This may be a long established article but it seems entirely unnecessary to seek pre-approval for such a simple improvement and greater semantic clarity. It might perhaps be more appropriate to use "cite journal" than "cite web" for a magazine such as Time or Wired and I'm willing to work with editors trying to improve this but there is no need to label everything as citation when we can be clearer. When Wikipedia:Citing_sources asks for consistency it is not a restriction preventing us from using anything but "citation" everywhere even when "cite news" or "cite book" are more appropriate (it is really about not mixing different academic styles e.g. Harvard, Chicago, MLA, and has nothing to do with using the templates which are about semantic meaning not style). -- Horkana (talk) 14:04, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You've misunderstood. I don't particularly care whether the article uses citation or cite templates. However, articles should only use one or the other, not both. If you switch to cite templates, then all the citations should be switched. DrKiernan (talk) 15:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The article was already using a mix of templates, Citation, cite book and cite news before I made my edits and even after your edit still uses cite news and cite book. You are going to have to explain what exactly you mean and not just point to the guidelines again.
I have read the guidelines you point to and I read them again. They redirects onwards to examples WP:CITE/ES, and it does mention the different styles of academic references. It then says "Some editors use citation templates to format article references, though the use of such templates is not required." There is no mention of having to restrict an article to one template type. The difference is between using "citation" (which is a template, or cite news, cite book, or any other template) compared to manually formatted. Perhaps other editors can provide an opinion too if they see what exactly is DrKiernan is trying to say and why? This is the first time I've ever seen an editor insisting on using the generic Template:citation instead of the more specific cite templates.
Looking at the details of Template:Citation it explains that there may be some minor formatting differences but that templates such as cite news and cite book can appear exactly the same. The major difference seems to be that "citation" automatically generates a Harvard id. What part of citation formatting specifically do you feel is necessary? Please be specific so that I can tweak the more specific templates to get over the minor differences without sacrificing the additional semantic clarity.
Also stripping out line breaks is understandable when a reference is properly filled out and probably finished (and preferably [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources/Further_considerations#Pre-emptive_archiving pre-archived) but stripping out the spaces too is entirely unnecessary makes it much harder to read and check if a citation has been properly filled (such as the bogus rubbish often automatically filled in the author field). -- Horkana (talk) 16:33, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So? I missed a couple. You're making a mountain out of a molehill. It's simply easier to change the cite templates to citation ones because the "citation" ones are more numerous and there is no need to think about which individual cite template should be used.
I've already said that I do not insist on using Template:Citation. You can either use the "cite" templates or the "citation" one. Consistently formatted citations are a featured article criterion. If the references are not formatted consistently, using the same template throughout, the article will no longer meet FA standard.
Finally, would you mind toning down your comments please? There is no need to personalise the debate by constantly refering to me personally. I find it stressful and unnecessarily confrontational. DrKiernan (talk) 19:06, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The timing is very suspicious, that only when I make the effort to add specific citations do you suddenly feel the need to enforce consistency. We are both showing good faith by discussing it here and not battling it out in the edit history.
I'd love to get a third opinion and this to not be about you but so far no other editor has provided any input. It seems I'll have to go to the admin board and actively request one.
I 'strongly disagree with your assertion that the consistency the guidelines are asking for means that "Citation" cannot be mixed with cite news and cite web. Template:Citation and Template:Cite News and Template:Cite web are all templates that give greater semantic meaning and there is little or no inconsistency in using a mix of them (and the documentation for Template:Citation says there is very little difference, which is why I asked for what specific issue was the case). As I said before the guidelines are worded that way to stop people who are manually formatting citations in the different academic styles, and putting their own inconsistent mix parenthesis, bold, italic and other styles formatting all over the place.
I've edited plenty of Featured Articles and you revert of my edits was very unusual so I'll finish by saying sorry it it comes across as personal and I'll go find that third party opinion to clarify the guidelines. -- Horkana (talk) 17:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Third opinion

If you look at the structure of {{Citation}}, {{cite web}} and {{cite news}}, they all use the same internal template (Citation/core), and as a result the end text should be the same. I'm not really sure on what the argument here is, though. As far as I know there's no policy that states that you have to use the same one template throughout the entire page in order to stay an FA. So what's wrong here? Is it the change from Citation -> cite news that's the concern, or the change of author->last1, first1? Or something else? — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 18:17, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand him right he has made a fair and reasonable misunderstanding of a really boring little detail. The guidelines ask for references to be styled consistently. The editor has seen the inconsistent mix of Templates and misunderstood that to be what the guidelines were talking about when they said keep styles consistent.
This being a featured article it think it is very important that people don't get the idea that only one template can be used, that a mix of templates is okay but that the guidelines are really talking about inconsistent formatting of italics, bold, and parenthesis.
He has said he doesn't mind my using the other templates consistently, but it would not be a change I could make all at once, it would be a very slow gradual process to fix the article to use more specific templates where relevant. Before starting that again it needs to be clear to editors that using a mix of Templates is well within the standard of consistency we need to achieve for articles and there is no need for it to be all one or the other. I wouldn't belabour the point if this wasn't an editor making a good faith effort on a Featured Article so I do think it is really important make ti clear before we move on and I can get back to marking links from The Guardian and the New York Times as "cite news" which was the edit I was trying to make. -- Horkana (talk) 18:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The issue at hand, mixing of citation templates in a single article, was previously discussed at Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria/Archive 10#Clarification on 2c. DrKiernan (talk) 20:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Huh, how interesting. FA isn't my area of specialty, so I'm not really aware of the latest trends. In looking at recent articles that have been promoted, it's indeed true that a decision has to be made to use either the Citation or the cite web/news templates. To that end, then, I would say leave them all as Citation for now. If the trend is indeed to move towards using the specific templates and you want to update this page to reflect that, then I would say the best thing to do would be to copy it to a sub userpage, make all the changes there, and then bring it back here. This isn't a heavily trafficked page so you probably would have minimal issues with updates and such. — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 21:01, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Okay that makes it clearer but that is why I asked for what specifically you were concerned about because the introduction to the documentation for {{citation}} says
If invoked with the right parameters, this template produces output identical to that of the Cite templates, such as {{cite book}} and {{cite web}}.
So I still cannot see why the editor in the previous discussion objected to mixing of templates. (To my mind it is the mix of book page references with other citations that look a real mess and if an editor could use cite groups to present them in a much tidier way but that is getting a little off topic.) If I'm reading that right, in the last bit of the conversation editor User_talk:Ucucha does not seem to have a problem so long as the additional bit of markup is used so the end results generated by the templates have a consistent style.
I use the templates so I can get on with editing and not have to worry about styles. Editors who are worried about style can adjust the templates to produce consistent output and improve all of Wikipedia on a wider basis. So if there is a specific bit of styling that bothers you when a mix of templates is used then please say so and we can work towards making whatever small adjustments are needed to keep it consistent without sacrificing the extra clarity of marking the citations with the most relevant template. -- Horkana (talk) 14:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is no extra clarity. The output is identical except for the styling (unless the "separator" parameter is used). You'd be changing it just for the sake of changing it, and creating work for everyone in the process, without any improvement in the article. DrKiernan (talk) 07:53, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your line of logic goes against ever using anything except {{Citation}}, I hope you can understand how hard it is for me to believe the guidelines are really saying that Featured Articles should not use {{cite news}}. What you are asking for here seems very unusual but on good faith I'm willing to continue until we get a clear answer on this.
If User talk:HelloAnnyong has recused himself from the discussion I'll have to ask again for a third opinion, or for him to refer it to an appropriate place. -- Horkana (talk) 03:14, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still active here, I was just waiting to see a little more discussion before chiming in again. I think you'd want to take the discussion to WT:FA?, the talk page for the featured article criteria. But again, look at Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria/Archive 10#Clarification on 2c - they clearly state there that mixing Citation and Cite X templates shouldn't be mixed. And that discussion is from less than a month ago. They do say that using the cite X templates with a different separator does render the text in the same way... so why would you want to mix templates, knowing that you have to sort of shoehorn one to do what you want? Seems easier to just use the same template for everything rather than intentionally make things slightly more difficult.
Also remember that it's really only because this article is an FA; if it wasn't, you could use whatever styling you wanted. — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 12:07, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You ask why I would want to mix templates. I want to call a spade a spade. However if there really is a consensus to give priority to using {{citation}} then I'm left wondering why ever use anything else? Why have a template but then discourage people from using it, if a there is enough of a consensus against using template then wouldn't it be deprecated. I'm willing to spend this much time on this discussion now because I do not want in future to waste my time or other editors time switching to or from {{Citation}}.
It seems like I'm being asked to avoid mixing templates (in the small particular case of featured articles) rather than those worried about the style differences working to fix the templates and ensure they are consistent (in the big wide case across Wikipedia). -- Horkana (talk) 14:29, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rereading it the other discussion looks very much like someone aiming for a Lowest Common Denominator consensus, simple enough that a bot can understand and one more editor being very assertive about what that would require but it does not seem like a very wide consensus.
It seems insane to have one rule for articles in general but to then throw that out when it reaches FA standard. If this really is to be the policy going forward it would make sense (or at last be "more internally consistent") if the other citation tags were deprecated. -- Horkana (talk) 12:31, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mixing citation templates is 100% fine. The issue, though, is twofold. We aim for a consistent presentation style in the article, so any change would have to ensure consistency. The other (larger) problem is the idea of "if it ain't broke, don't fix" and the general consensus not to change the established style (particularly citation style) of an article without a good reason - if, for example, the cite templates add something useful or important, then there is a reasonable argument to use them. Otherwise there is no real need for the change. With that said; if the change is not damaging then there is no real reason to dispute it (this last part is my view on it anyway). --Errant [tmorton166] (chat!) 12:11, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article was mixed before I got to it, although dominated by {{Citation}}. I fixed it and formatted many bare links and references as proper citations. Some of those were changed but some were not and other bare links were still left in the article. It shows a lack of good faith to talk about consistently but to apply it so inconsistently, if people are going to talk about enforcing rules it is a hell of a lot less annoying if they are thorough about it and explain it better in the first place.
It seems as if this has been decided already and the consensus is against me here. Using the specific template does add a little bit more semantic meaning just as using a template adds more semantic meaning that manually formatting the bold italics and parenthesis. I'm severely disappointed that despite very deliberately using Templates to keep away from styles and focus on content I'm forced to deal with style issues I had seriously hoped to avoid. I'm disappointed but not going to waste further time on this article (even though I really think it is a glaring omission that the article fails to mention how Rutger Hauer added words of his own to the highly praised final soliloquy by Roy Baty). -- Horkana (talk) 12:31, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Errant (and Horkana), in that mixing template types is not any sort of problem. Even my reading of Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria/Archive 10#Clarification on 2c leads me to believe that the only concern is consistency of the rendered text. The wikitext used to generate the final rendered text is immaterial, in my opinion. A demand to use the same cite template seems like unnecessary overkill. What's more, it seems to (very slightly) hinder the WP:RS process for articles, since use of the specific "cite news" or "cite book" or "cite journal" templates gives an editor an at-a-glance idea of the reliability of attached refs, whereas the generic "Citation" template requires one to spend a few extra seconds (or much, much more) in parsing. BigK HeX (talk) 13:02, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I will defer my previous comments to everyone else. Honestly my biggest concern was going against the consensus on FACR, but it seems that the consensus there is not as solid as I thought. — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 13:38, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still confused by this whole discussion. Based on WP:IMPROVE I am going to move forward and if a citation is clearly for a book then I am going to mark it as {{cite book}} and if a citation is clearly for a newspaper {{cite news}}. With magazines and journal type publications and web citations it is more ambiguous so I'm going to hold off on those.
If formatting issues arise please say specifically what they are and we see what needs to be done to adjust the templates to keep them more consistent. -- Horkana (talk) 14:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Might be good to use the group parameter of the templates to gather the book citations into a seperate References/Bibliography sub-section, but I'd like to get some consensus before doing that. -- Horkana (talk) 15:16, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Soliloquoy"

Doesn't a soliloquoy mean a speech when the speaker is alone/believes no one else is there? Batty is clearly directing his speech at Deckard in his final line. 129.2.129.223 (talk) 05:49, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Witkionary: soliloquy The act of a character speaking to himself so as to reveal his thoughts to the audience.
So yes and no. You could take a strict definition and perhaps refer to his speech as a monologue but the "revealing thoughts" part is why people consider the speech to be a soliloquy, irrespective of how much of it is directed at Deckard. -- Horkana (talk) 23:54, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Breach of fair use guidelines

There are two images of spinners in the article. It is only necessary to show one. DrKiernan (talk) 10:02, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The intent of the second image seems to be to show the special effects and the advertising featured in the film. That it also contains a spinner seems incidental. Another image might better achieve this, so I'd agree with removing it but would recommend including a slightly different screenshot instead. -- Horkana (talk) 00:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Awards

Lists of the best films

The 'best films' section needs some more work. I did a little bit of tidying but trapped in a mess of small issues. I don't think these could be easily explained in edit summaries so I'm mentioning them here before I try again to tackle it further.

  1. It is unclear why some items are presented as a list and others included in the table.
    It might make more sense if the two items taken from books and do not include rankings were not in the table.
    More prose is preferable, a list is okay. A table seems sub-optimal when items are not easily compariable, and there are gaps, and the table cannot be sorted.
  2. Several items do not have proper sources.
    Total Film readers choice dated 2005, has a source dated 2010, which discusses a poll created based (not on reader choices) but compiled based on 5 star reviews from the magazine. (It also clearly states the list is alphabetical and that placement is not a score.)
    The Empire magazine and Channel 4 polls mentioned are not sourced. The Time magazine sources point to the same index page, the pages they pointed to before seem to have moved, but may still be available, if more than one reference is actually necessary.

Would be nice to get comments from any active editors before I try to change things. I'd like to be able to leave a discussion and possibly also warning comments in the source to guide other editors who might try to add to the section, so that they are not left guessing what the local style consensus might be. -- Horkana (talk) 00:19, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]