Terminator #1 and #2 are probably more realistic though, despite the time travel.
People usually do not remember what happened turn by turn but they do remember what it made them feel.
Funnily enough, in the movie, the humans have little no feelings but the androids do -- and that is the central question that the movie made me consider -- what makes us human.
I am ofcourse biased because Blade Runner (original) is not only on my top 5 scifi movie list but also on my top 5 movie list. So much so that I am reluctant to watch 2049.
Before Blade Runner almost anything could be science fiction. After Blade Runner science fiction meant detective noir with #tech_upgrade - clones, memory implants, dystopia. Or it was US truckers and/or the military fighting nasty aliens in spaaaaaaace. (Star Wars and its magic space knights was always more fantasy with a science fiction stage set.)
Blade Runner did it far better than the others, but then we had decades of mostly mediocre book knock-offs, especially in the UK. (Gibson gets a pass for taking the new trope even further by being a brilliant stylist, mixing in some tech orientalism, and inventing cyberspace.)
It's a stunning, iconic masterpiece of a movie with an unfortunate chilling cultural effect.
And ironically the Philip K Dick original was... very different.
True. Ridley Scott and Philip K Dick collaborated very closely to tell it like they wanted it to. Studios liked it ... not so much.
If only.
None of these fit those tropes.
It didn't destroy anything; it just set a mold for the next few decades that was used to cookie-cut copies from. It cut a rut, and movie execs LOOOOVE a profitable rut to wallow in.
Gibson was horrified after walking out of a theater after seeing Blade Runner; in that Scott had visualized and shown onscreen the aesthetic of (at that point unpublished) Neuromancer.
It may be trite but “Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too.” gets me every single time
Because, frankly, he may as well try not to kill Deckart, at all. For empathy. Or ask Deckart about how does he do, instead of going into monologue.
I interpret the ending as Batty coming to the end of his life and realising that all life is precious, not just his own. That's why he saves Deckard after toying with him and then goes into his final monologue that taunts Deckard with how much more of a human life that Batty has experienced.
Of course, there's all the Christ symbolism with Batty's "crucified" hand and how he saves Deckard despite him killing all his friends and intending to kill him as well.
The voiceover in the original theatrical version makes this very explicit, in fact.