The Visual Similarities of Blade Runner and Metropolis

This image gallery highlights the similarities between Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I colorized the Metropolis images with colors similar to Blade Runner's color themes to get a better idea how certain frames have a remarkable similarity.

DIALOGUE / POETRY COMPARISON

Roy Batty in yellow

Poet William Blake in green

Fiery the angels fell.....
Fiery the Angels rose.....

Deep thunder rolled around their shores
......as they rose deep thunder roll'd

.....burning with the fires of Orc
.....indignant burning with the fires of Orc

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe
They look behind . . . and believe it is a dream

.....attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion
.....shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire

.....c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate
.....who serpent-form'd stands at the Enitharmon Gate

.....all those moments
.....all rose before the aged apparition

.....will be lost in time
.....lost a portion of the infinite

......like tears in the rain
......his tears in deluge piteous

......Time to die
The times are ended

The Eye

Very few films that show a character's eye close up have become as iconic as the eye that fills the frame in the beginning of Blade Runner. It reveals a reflection of the industrial landscape, the smoke stacks erupting with balls of fire. Just as we see as the camera glides over that landscape.

Whose eye is that? Some have suggested Tyrell, though we never see him till later in the film. The most popular answer is, it was Holden's eye, who was standing while puffing on a cigarette allegedly looking out the window. . . waiting for Leon to arrive.

The separate visual cues were there, cutting from the exterior of the pyramid, then to Holden looking intently from the interior, and back and forth. But the separate visual cues simply do not fit together as a cohesive sequence.

Maybe it was "meant to be" Holden by the filmmakers, but it is physically impossible for it to have been him. Estimating that Holden hovered around six feet tall at most, the window opening once seen from the interior is at least eight feet high up the wall or more.

Even with a pyramid slant wall, the only thing he would be able to see is the night sky and spinner cars zipping by. Even if he was on the bottom floor, he would never see the entire industrial landscape as it is reflected in that eye.

I color tinted the sections of the wall to show the difference in height between Holden and the bottom of the window.

For that reflection to take in the entire landscape as it is shown, he would have had to been on a much higher level of the pyramid building, which towered over the industrial landscape.

Not to mention a flood of bright light is pouring in through the window....which not only the eye reflection shows no such bright ambient light, the intense light pouring in would have visually flooded his eyes, obscuring his view to see anything at all.

Holden's line of sight does not match with the window up above, so the only thing he would have seen is . . . the interior wall. As the beginning scene comes to a close, the camera zooms in close to a window, and now we can see someone's head. Is Holden stepping on a ladder for those shots?

The opening scene is a powerful visual, a film hallmark held in high regard for years. So this misfire of presenting a visual impossibility is hardly a scene killer. When watching a masterpiece like Blade Runner, turning a 'blind eye' to a flaw like this, is a fan's prerogative.

Alien / Blade Runner Connection

Alien - The scene when Ripley escapes the Nostromo.

Blade Runner - The scene when Deckard rides in the spinner/hover car.