Sean Young's Blade Runner polaroids capture a literal snapshot of life on set. Blade Runner was director Ridley Scott's follow-up to Alien and was based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The story takes in place in the (then distant) future of 2019, where Harrison Ford's Blade Runner is tasked with taking down androids dubbed Replicants. Despite being a box-office disappointment upon release, the movie is now considered a landmark sci-fi film, thanks to its themes on what it means to the human, its great performances and stunning visuals.
Blade Runner's reputation would only grow in the years following its 1982 release, especially when Ridley Scott released a director's cut that removed Ford's pained voiceover and the jarring happy ending been forced on the movie by the studio. The movie eventually received a sequel in the form of Blade Runner 2049. This follow-up finds Replicant K (Ryan Gosling) tasked with tracking down Harrison Ford's Deckard, who vanished decades prior. Blade Runner 2049 was another visually stunning sci-fi epic and played more like an art movie than a blockbuster. Sadly, this might be a reason the sequel ultimately underperformed in spite of critical acclaim.
While another sequel is in doubt, the Blade Runner franchise is set to continue in the form of Adult Swim's upcoming animated series Black Runner: Black Lotus, with Shinichirō Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop) serving as the show's creative producer. The making of Blade Runner has been well documented at this point, with the production being a stressful, fraught experience for those involved. Scott and Ford famously disagreed over the question of whether or not Deckard himself is a Replicant, which is still hotly debated by fans to this day. There's little sign of that tension in the polaroid shots taken by co-star Sean Young during the production, however.
Sean Young's Blade Runner polaroids feel like social media selfies long, long before that was even a thing, and finds her palling around with Ridley Scott, Rutger Hauer, and a bemused Harrison Ford, in addition to other members of the cast and crew. Young originally made these polaroids available on her website but they've since been taken down, though more of her stills can be found at the website Dangerous Minds. Young also shared some behind the scenes footage of her time making David Lynch's Dune on her Youtube page, and coincidentally, Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve is currently working on a new adaptation of the Dune novels. To make things even more tangled, Ridley Scott himself developed a version of Dune before leaving to start work on Blade Runner instead.
The Sean Young Blade Runner polaroids provide something of a unique snapshot of the production, even one that's as well documented as Ridley Scott's sci-fi epic.