Gif : Warner Bros.

Hey, do you have a creeping sense that some people are actually ruthless, homicidal androids merely posing as humans? I have some bad news. According to the documentary film Blade Runner, which takes place in November 2019, replicants have already arrived on Earth.




“But Tom, Blade Runner is fictional,” you might respond, stupidly. “The November 2019 setting stated in the intro is November 2019 in the world of Blade Runner, and not the real world.”

“You’re an idiot and Blade Runner is real and happening tomorrow,” I would shoot back.


Blade Runner depicts a November 2019 where mega-corporations rule the world with little resistance from the government and the institutions of civil society have been effectively crushed under their boot heels. Instead of scientific advances that benefit humanity, technological innovations in the world of Blade Runner are channeled into fantastical wastes of resources for the sole benefit of an ever-narrowing class of elites who consider themselves akin to living gods. And people themselves? In Blade Runner, human laborers are almost completely devalued, replaced by hostile, artificially engineered simulacra. This should all sound pretty familiar!

In fact, it may be easier to list the things present in Blade Runner’s 2019 that we don’t have in the world of today. Aside from god-pyramids and towering pillars of flame, the most conspicuous elements missing are flying cars and replicants. The former , the TV brainiacs now assure us, are only four or five years away. The latter ?

Well, decide for yourself.