Japanese Design Influences

Blade Runner looks to be set during Japan's global domination!

I think Chance is also using chop sticks in the observation area of the USS Prometheus when he and Ravel are discussing atmosphere generators. I think Alien is a product of its envornment. In the late 1970's Japanese corporations were buying European companies, building factories and out- performing the established US rivals. They were an export tiger. So it was natrual for RS to see a large Japanese influence in the future.

Like my father and grandmother before me, I'm a huge enthusiast of Japanese art and design. The interplay of the delicate and the rugged, the ever present influence of nature, balanced against technological innovation and industrial might make Japanese culture mystifying and at times hard to comprehend. These are perfect ingredients for fantastic fiction, even a hint of Japanese culture is evocative of all of the above, a foreignness that is at once attractive and intimidating. Ridley was among the first of a long line of mainstream western artists to use Japanese influences to high effect, and in turn influenced a legion of artists to come, William Gibson being an obvious example. Blade runner wore its Japanese on its sleeve, but Alien was permeated with it too, the Lotus flower cryo pods, the space suits, the bizarre organic industrial design of Giger, even the brute otherness of the Nostromo itself. And, just like Prometheus, a host of other well curated influences as well. I'm tellin ya, these films are masterworks!

And Janek acting like a kamikaze pilot [img]http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/1261/movieclipping.jpg[/img]