If you think Blade Runner is a masterpiece, you’re right. But, if other cool movies are like obedient robots—dutifully executing exactly what the filmmakers wanted—then the metaphor for Blade Runner’s awesomeness can be found in its rebellious replicants. This is a film that tried to destroy itself in nearly every conceivable way and that’s why we love it so much.

When science fiction is considered “good,” it’s often because its messages are contrary to the status quo. If cool and resilient science fiction were a person, it would be the opposite of someone who is “basic.” Philip K. Dick—the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? upon which Blade Runner was based—is about as far away from basic as you can get. In the documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner, we hear Dick in his own words say that “The American people are basically anti-intellectual.” Next up, science fiction author Brian Aldiss asserts that “Dick wrote against the grain of what was currently [then] accepted in science fiction.”

If science fiction writers are inherently a species of contrarians, then Dick—by Aldiss’ estimation—was an iconoclast even on a planet of iconoclasts. Still—call it brilliance or call it testiness—Dick had a hard time dealing with screenwriters. Hampton Fancher, the primary screenwriter of Blade Runner, referred to Dick as being overly “theatrical” and mentioned that the author was someone who believed “he was getting messages from God.”

Fancher is hardly alone in believing Dick was known for theatrics, nor would the author necessarily disagree with the fact that he’d been contacted by intelligence from “beyond.”