Environmental Storytelling: Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell

Ridley Scotts Blade Runner deals with themes of humanity and examines the socio-economic gap between the rich and the poor in the backdrop of a futuristic city based off Hong Kong and the industrial landscape of cities in the North of England. The city in Blade Runner draws influences from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, specifically in the way in which a wealthy elite minority dominates the landscape of the city with it's towering structures, which are built upon the decaying modernist structures representative of the working class majority.

Concept Artist Syd Mead in early art for Blade Runner, juxtaposes the towering postmodern monuments of the wealthy upper class with the decaying ruins of the city below. The neon lights obstruct our view of the ruinous city which is relegated to the bottom fifth of the frame emphasising the implied socio-economic troubles the world of the film depicts.

The dystopian city of Los Angeles in 2019 as imagined by artists in the 1980s is based off 1980s Hong Kong and the industrial landscape of the North of England, where Director Ridley Scott hails from. These influences give the city this sort of conflicting sense of time and place which plays into the Postmodern Aesthetic. This also draws parallels with the city of Hong Kong itself, which itself historically has a conflicting sense of time and place, once a part of China and at the time of the film a colony of the United Kingdom.

Another film that makes use of it's dystopian futuristic city in a similar way is the 1995 Anime film by Mamoru Oshii Ghost in the Shell, which deals with themes of Trans-humanism. The city in Ghost in The Shell is similarly based off Hong Kong with it's conflicting sense of time and place, making use of this is aesthetic in a 3 minute intermission roughly halfway through the film which follows our main character on a boat ride through the city. Here we are brought into the eyes of our main character Motoko with a series of POV establishing shots. These shots are highly detailed paintings that emphasise the architecture of the city. The juxtaposition of futuristic high-rises and run down buildings on the lower levels of the city mirrors that of Los Angeles in Blade Runner and excellently tells the story of a city divided economically with a troubling wealth gap.

Another way in which the design of the establishing shots of the city in Ghost and The Shell ties to the themes of the film is in the more subtle inclusion of wires and clothes lines as well as the intersection of roads leading to the centre of the city, which coincidentally where most of the high rises are located. When viewed from above the design of the city almost serves as a metaphor for one giant brain or supercomputer, with the roads and connecting bridges between the islands serving almost as a stand-in for nerves, which ties even more into the films theme of Transhumanism and questioning of the advancement of technology.