But i can’t think of any examples where the actual date was relevant. I’m talking about movies entirely in the future not ones that start in present day.
Its so a member iof the audience can see a futuristic object (like a flying car) and think so thats what its going to be like in 2019
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It’s relevant because talking about years like 1984, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2010, 2015, 2019 were distant enough from the time the works featuring them were created for great changes to have occurred, but near enough for (at least younger readers/viewers) to think “Hey, I’ll still be alive then!”. Certainly I thought about all of those years prior to them coming to pass.
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In the 1980s, there were more than a couple of SF films that began with a manifest.
Where does the film take place?
What ship, or base, serves as shelter from the cold, bleak emptiness?
How large is the crew?
How long have they been away from home?
The most memorable is that Sean Connery remake of High Noon in space. But it feels like a Ladd Company trope.
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Probably just as effective as so that’s what its going to be like in the future.
True, and Los Angeles does have a large Asian community with signage in Chinese and Korean. Still, it has an even larger Hispanic community with signage in Spanish, which is entirely missing in BR. Weird because it isn’t just a failure of prediction – they were around in 1982 as well. Did they all choose a new life of adventure in the Off World colonies?
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One of the themes of both blade runner movies was a cautionary tale about climate change. When doing that it helps to say this future is not as far away as you might think
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Well there is Gaff.
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From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep
This ownerless ruin had, before World War Terminus, been tended and maintained. Here had been the suburbs of San Francisco, a short ride by monorail rapid transit; the entire peninsula had chattered like a bird tree with life and opinions and complaints, and now the watchful owners had either died or migrated to a colony world. Mostly the former; it had been a costly war despite the valiant predictions of the Pentagon and its smug scientific vassel, the Rand Corporation — which had, in fact, existed not far from this spot. Like the apartment owners, the corporation had departed, evidently for good. No one missed it.
In addition, no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet’s surface had originated in no country and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it. First, strangely, the owls had died. At the time it had seemed almost funny, the fat, fluffy white birds lying here and there, in yards and on streets; coming out no earlier than twilight as they had while alive the owls escaped notice. Medieval plagues had manifested themselves in a similar way, in the formof many dead rats. This plague, however, had descended from above.
After the owls, of course, the other birds followed, but by then the mystery had been grasped and understood. A meager colonization program had been underway before the
war but now that the sun had ceased to shine on Earth the colonization entered an entirely new phase. In connection with this a weapon of war, the Synthetic Freedom Fighter, had
been modified; able to function on an alien world the humanoid robot — strictly speaking, the organic android — had become the mobile donkey engine of the colonization program.
Under U.N. law each emigrant automatically received possession of an android subtype of his choice, and, by 1990, the variety of subtypes passed all understanding, in the manner of American automobiles of the 1960s.
It would be a mistake to rely too much on the book to explain the film-- where for instance, is Mercerism-- but the city was meant to be depopulated.
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all I found at some time was a single serving agent in the special effects department in the credits …I might be wrong but it could be a drummer boy issue
when you think that alien had just come out it was a mind storm of indifference or so I thought… that’s what was available as a 2 + 2 equals sum
draw an image of the alien here… thinks!
- It rains in Los Angeles all the time
- Los Angeles is not on fire
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I don’t remember a drone. At least, not an Art Deco one. /s
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If Blade Runner teaches us anything, it’s to always trust in our memories. 
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My father and I saw the film when it was first released. After we walked out of the theater, my father said, “Just how much resolution does that damn’ film have?”
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I would start a science fiction story with “A future”.
That leaves a bit of abiguity, as if “its a possible future, that might happen like that at some point”.
Also obligatory…
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replicants
Are you sure about that?
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That’s creepy as shit 
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