In hindsight, Blade Runner seems like a big budget, production design-heavy counterpart to three obscure proto-cyberpunk 'civilizational malaise' movies of the late 70s and early 80s: Jubilee, Born In Flames, and Burst City. Plus Alphaville's sci-fi noir, The Creation Of The Humanoids' 'Who's a robot?' theme, and Bilal and Moebius' urban landscapes in Metal Hurlant.

It's very much a product of its times, and it's less and less relevant to our own. Clockwork Orange had a Russofied slang and milk bars; Blade Runner has big billboards of Japanese companies, noodle bars, and racks of cyborg magazines. Today's culture would be a weird sci fi movie from the perspective of the 80s, with exurban developments, huge SUVs and hummers, and people in Starbucks staring at their iPads.