Reception
Blade Runner was released in 1,290 theaters on June 25, 1982. That date was chosen by producer Alan Ladd, Jr. because his previous highest-grossing films (Star Wars and Alien) had a similar opening date (May 25) in 1977 and 1979, making the date his "lucky day". The gross for the opening weekend was a disappointing $6.15 million. A significant factor in the film's rather poor box office performance was that it was released around the same time as other science fiction films, including The Thing, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and, most significantly, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which dominated box office revenues that summer.
Film critics were polarized as some felt the story had taken a back seat to special effects and that it was not the action/adventure the studio had advertised. Others acclaimed its complexity and predicted it would stand the test of time.
In the United States, a general criticism was its slow pacing that detracts from other strengths; Sheila Benson from the Los Angeles Times called it "Blade Crawler", while Pat Berman in The State and Columbia Record described it as "science fiction pornography". Pauline Kael noted that with its "extraordinary" congested-megalopolis sets, Blade Runner "has its own look, and a visionary sci-fi movie that has its own look can't be ignored—it has its place in film history" but "hasn't been thought out in human terms." Roger Ebert praised the visuals of both the original Blade Runner and the Director's Cut versions and recommended it for that reason; however, he found the human story clichéd and a little thin. In 2007, upon release of The Final Cut, Ebert somewhat revised his original opinion of the film and added it to his list of Great Movies, while noting, "I have been assured that my problems in the past with Blade Runner represent a failure of my own taste and imagination, but if the film was perfect, why has Sir Ridley continued to tinker with it?"
Read more about this topic: Blade Runner
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)