You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you.

Smith, Murray. 2006. Film, art, argument, and ambiguity. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (1): 33–42. Nevertheless, he has still offered a pretty fascinating hint that Blade Runner’s Earth and Alien’s cold cosmos are one in the same universe.Often imitated but never fully replicated is Vangelis’ Golden Globe nominated synth score. Recorded on an Yamaha’s CS-80 synthesizer, these ambient textures were as vital to creating the universe of the film as the set design (which drew inspiration from Edward Hopper paintings and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis), costume, lighting and Orwellian ‘Cityspeak’ language invented for the film. But for whatever is in the actual movies, those in charge of marketing and fan-baiting at 20th Century Fox have been stoking this theory for years. Look no further than the 20th anniversary Alien DVD from 1999, which hid deep in its extras this fascinating easter egg: apparently Tom Skeritt’s Capt. Arthur Dallas freelanced a stint for the Tyrell Corporation of Blade Runner. The Voight-Kampff Machine, or VK, from Blade Runner is an extremely advanced form of lie detector that functions on blush response, pupil dilation, respiration, heart rate, and other physiological factors in response to emotionally charged questions to determine if the interrogation subject does or does not dream of electric sheep. It’s also an awesome prop, making it a great subject for our Sci-Fi contest. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. The film and the new psychology. In Sense and non-sense, 48–59. Trans. H. Dreyfus, and P. Dreyfus. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

And as Alien is set in 2122 while Blade Runner occurs in 2019, the 2093 setting of Prometheus makes the most sense from a technological level. Roy Batty is fiercely soulful and independent while David is just as intellectually curious but enjoys the upgrade of eternal life (Roy’s short lifespan contributed to his madness). Nevertheless, there is enough strong evidence within the actual films themselves, their marketing materials, and even Ridley Scott’s circuitous musings to suggest that at some point somewhere, a xenomorph might be forced to take a Voight-Kampff test. And that’s a world we want to be a part of, dammit! Now that November of 2019 has passed, it’s a shame that some of the predictions made in Blade Runner for this future haven’t yet come true. Oh sure, 109 million people living in Los Angeles would be fun and all, but until we get our flying cars, we’ll just have to console ourselves with the ability to “Enhance!” photographs. While the new service, AI Image Enlarger, can’t tease out three-dimensional information, the app is intended to sharpen enlargements of low-resolution images, improving the focus and bringing up details in the darker parts of the image. The marketing material claims that the app uses machine learning, and is looking for volunteers to upload high-resolution images to improve its training set. Morrison, Rachela. 1990. Casablanca meets Star Wars: The Blakean dialectics of Blade Runner. Literature Film Quarterly 18 (1): 2–10. In Alien, Ash is unstable and perhaps the craftiest aspect of the story beside the infamous chestburster itself. An erudite and standoffish science officer nobody else on the crew knows or particularly likes, Holm’s character is an outsider among anti-social misfits. He also was placed on the ship at the last minute because he’s really an android. He is literally a company robot out to perform the interests of Weyland-Yutani, even if it is in direct threat to the crew of the ship.

Designed with a Blade Runner-inspired style, this umbrella features a unique colour-changing LED system that illuminates the canopy, creating a mesmerizing and eye-catching effect. Watch as the colours shift and blend, adding a touch of magic to your surroundings.

Erv’ Plecter] replaced the central support rod for the umbrella with a clear polycarbonate tube. An optic cable snakes through the hollow tube, illuminated by a Luxeon LED in the handle. The custom PCB and 900 mAh battery are both housed there as well. Take a look at (and listen to) the demo after the break. We’ll need to add this to our future projects list right after that Lightsaber movie replica build.It’s possible that Godard also intended the umbrella as a reference to the surrealists, who were fond of using them as symbols of the mystique and evocative power of everyday objects. In a recording he made to accompany Une femme est une femme, Godard says, “A red umbrella: Aragon,” referencing Louis Aragon and perhaps the motto that he and his fellow surrealists borrowed from the writings of the Comte de Lautréamont, who once described a young boy as “as beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella”. There are many in the fan communities for both series’ original films— Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982)—who swear by this theory. And we certainly think, to a point, that it has merit. Granted, if we are being completely honest, the likelihood of ever getting a firm commitment or denial from filmmakers seems unlikely since ambiguity breeds interest. Meanwhile as each franchise is owned by different studios with 20th Century Fox having been the distributor and financial powerhouse behind every xenomorph adventure since the ‘70s, and Warner Bros. buying the rights to Blade Runner in 2011, it is almost impossible to imagine any sort of crossover ever occurring. Wartenberg, Thomas E. 2006. Beyond mere illustration: How films can be philosophy. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (1): 19–32. Of course, the most referenced and telling connection between Alien and Blade Runner is how they share what is essentially the same tech. In Alien when Sigourney Weaver prepares to fire up her escape lifeboat from the Nostromo, she revs the engines by commencing to “Purge” them.

Pate, Anthony. 2009. Nietzsche’s Übermensch in the hyperreal flux: An analysis of Blade Runner, Fight Club, and Miami Vice. Dissertations and Graduate Research Overview, Paper 15. http://digitalcommons.ric.edu/etd/15. Accessed 12 Aug 2019. Livingston, Paisley. 2006. Theses on cinema as philosophy. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (1): 11–18. Carroll, Noel. 2006. Philosophizing through the moving image: The case of Serene Velocity. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (1): 173–185. The machine itself is an odd mix of 70’s and 80’s electronics with older technology. Three mini CRT displays, a sensor arm, and a bellows are some of the machine’s best-known features. [Tom] is starting with the sensor arm, an odd mix of belts and telescoping rods. He’s already got a manually operated prototype built. Add a motor, and one part of the machine is ready for action. Upgrade your umbrella game today with the Blade Runner Umbrella. Stand out from the crowd, stay dry, and enjoy the benefits of this unique and stylish accessory.Los Angeles, 2019. Bursts of flame erupt over a city bathed in perpetual twilight. From the pyramid-like offices of the Tyrell Corporation, we see an eye in close-up, the lights of the city reflected in it. Whether this eye is human is yet to be determined. But, ultimately, in Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterwork, the eye of the beholder is irrelevant. In the world of Blade Runner the future is a hardscrabble hellscape with no escape. Is it any wonder, then, that Rutger Hauer’s band of rogue replicants – humanoid worker robots designed to blend in with the flesh and blood population – have decided to go rogue, pursuing a semblance of agency in the last days of their pre-programmed lives? Blade Runner showed us a dystopian megatropolis vision of Los Angeles in the far-off future. What was a distant dream for the 1982 theater-goes (2019) is now our everyday. We know Los Angeles is not perpetually overcast, flying cars are not cruising those skies, and replicants are not hiding among the population. Or… are they? Prometheus’ David is the perfect bridge between the two. He has a more complicated set of motivations and aspirations than Ash, and he savors living like Roy Batty while being crueler than either. He’ll wipe out whole civilizations for his own ends. While speaking on one of many Blade Runner DVD director’s commentaries, Scott said this about their similarities: