While A-list director Ridley Scott has found himself in hot water over his white washing of ancient Egypt in his latest film, Exodus, it’s easy to forget that Scott’s awe-inspiring vision of a dystopian near future in Blade Runner featured an astonishingly prescient L.A. street slang known as City Speak, made up of Spanish, Chinese, and a handful of other languages.
Today, more than 30 years after Blade Runner’s original release our great nation is ever closer to a world where City Speak is a statistical probability, and to help those among us who haven’t taken the time to iron out their espahnyol, Robert Rodriguez’s El Rey television network will be screening the Spanish dubbed version of Blade Runner accompanied by English tutorials to hold your hand through the arduous translation process. Oh, and it’s called “Practice Your Spanish with… Blade Runner.”
What exactly is El Rey going for here? Admittedly it’s kind of funny, and we certainly appreciate the pro-Spanish gesture from the world’s only Latino-themed English-language grindhouse network, but the real question is… will anyone actually watch this?
Or maybe it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes it’s just the thought that counts, and you’ve gotta give props to Rodriguez and his crew at El Rey for such a deeply goofy gesture. And given that it will be screening on Friday at 12am, I’m sure there will more than a few glassy-eyed bilingual Latinos munching on Nutella and looking for a good laugh. If that’s you, don’t worry about the channel surfing and just head straight to El Rey.
El Rey Network will air Blade Runner in Spanish on Friday, December 12 at midnight.