15 reasons why you should watch Blade Runner right now

9. It treats the audience with respect

Maybe this is more a personal pet peeve for me than you, but I can’t stand it when movies of any sort talk down to me. Directors and writers sometimes seem so afraid that their point will be missed that they have to shoehorn it into the script. It’s the same for exposition and background information. “As you know,” a character might say, before launching into a long-winded explanation of a relationship or historic event anyway.

But why not let the audience figure something out for themselves? Part of the pleasure of a really good film lies in uncovering its mysteries and being surprised by its revelations. Even unanswered questions, if delivered with grace and thought, can present their own odd sort of satisfaction. Having these things spoon-fed to you not only spoils the joy but insults you. We each have a brain, after all.

Luckily, there’s plenty that Blade Runner doesn’t explain. It could be that this is so odd for a modern moviegoer that it’s irritating, but I find it to be refreshing. Not every mystery needs to be pronounced solved – looking at you, Ridley Scott, and your very final statements on the Decker-replicant question. At least in the movie, you’re left to draw your own conclusions about Deckard’s humanity.

Neither does the audience need to be fed detailed information about the history of the world. Clearly, it’s a dystopia, and clearly there are far away and dangerous space colonies. Thankfully, no one pops up to give us a history lesson and draw you out of the spell of the film.