The Sci-Fi 25: The Genre's Best Since 1982

Image credit: Kobal Collection

3. BLADE RUNNER (1982)
Directed by Ridley Scott

Blade Runner follows cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) — who may or may not be human — as he attempts to terminate four bioengineered androids, called replicants, on the streets of 2019 Los Angeles. Adapted from a novel by noted writer and nutcase Philip K. Dick, the film, particularly in its Director's Cut incarnation, asks big questions — namely, ''Are you really who you think you are?'' And it does so against the backdrop of a stunningly designed near-future worldscape whose many nods to globalization make it seem more prescient with every passing day.

POP CULTURE LEGACY Scott's rain-lashed, dystopic film offered a hugely influential vision of a future. In subsequent films, this, more often than not, is what the future looks like.

THE BEST BIT The genuinely heartbreaking pre-death speech by the replicant played by Rutger Hauer (''I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...'') is also the most geeked-out, hardcore sci-fi sequence in the pantheon of all-time great movie moments. —Clark Collis