Sunday, August 15, 2021

"Like Tears in Rain"? Hakon Soreide Has Recreated Famous Blade Runner Scene Using Only PETSCII Text

 

Roy Batty Weaps For What Will Be Lost
Tears in Rain by Hakon Soreide

The chase scene between Roy Batty and Rick Deckard is one of the most iconic scenes in Science Fiction filmic history. It transforms what had been a narrative of two predators hunting one another into something more, a narrative of redemption. Roy Batty's actions at the end of the scene, and his monologue, change the dynamic of the entire film. It's a moment of great meaning, meaning that is diluted if one is in the "Deckard is a Replicant" camp, where a replicant gives up its life for "the other." It's a moment that completely subverts the conflict of the book that inspired Blade Runner, but simultaneously makes it a perfect conduit for the moral message of that book. It is the moment when the replicant truly becomes more human than human and it is a thing of beauty.

You can watch Hakon Soreide's full adaptation of this scene into PETSCII characters in the embedded video below. PETSCII, for those who don't know, is the particular expression of text characters (and some specialized graphic icons) for the Commodore 64 and other Commodore computers. Soreide's painstaking recreation of the scene is the product of hard work and it generates a kind of dual nostalgia; nostalgia for the movie and nostalgia for the Commodore 64. Very cool.

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