WATCHES IN CINEMA: Harrison Ford’s Digital LCD Watch in the 1982 Blade Runner Movie

It has been 35 years since the original Blade Runner movie starring Harrison Ford was released. Like many people, I have been dying for a sequel. In the Fall of 2017, our wishes have come true with the release of Blade Runner 2049. In case you need a laugh, I included the original Blade Runner trailer and it is just awful. If you have never seen the film, please don’t judge it by this hack job that is missing the stupendous Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis, and gives away too many key moments.

While Blade Runner often makes it on many sci-fi fan’s top 10 movie lists, the watches that were worn in the classic film rarely make it on many watch collector’s wrists. It is no secret that watches worn in movies or by movie stars can elevate the status of a watch in the minds and hearts of watch collectors. Movie watches can be an intentional product placement or an unintentional choice by a prop master, but increased desirability is a real effect.

Just imagine the thousands of watches Rolex and Omega have sold because a famous British spy wore their watches in the James Bond films! Or, how about Ripley’s famous Seiko design by Giugiaro. That watch was so popular that Seiko reissued a homage where the design was similar, but not an exact replica. Maybe you have heard of the Tag Heuer Monaco? That watch came from a movie starring Steve McQueen. By many accounts, the watch is better than the film.

Movie Watches Are Not Guaranteed to Become Big Hits

Just having a watch in a movie is not always guaranteed to make it a cult classic. To prove this, try to remember what watch Harrison Ford’s character, Rick Deckard, was wearing in the original Blade Runner movie. You will get extra watch geek points if you can answer that question, but I feel pretty confident that the majority of people will not know. If you need a hint, here are a few scenes from my low-fidelity DVD. Unlike many movie watches, Deckard’s watch was featured in many prominent scenes and not just a glimpse. At first, you just see a black PVD stainless steel bracelet.

I rewatched Blade Runner in anticipation of the new Blade Runner 2049 movie. I felt it was important to refresh my memory of the previous story, and I still had a DVD copy of the 1992 Director’s Cut version of the film. There have been at least 5 official version releases over the years with each one getting a little closer to Ridley Scott’s desired concept. I am curious if there were edits that were made that affected how Rick Deckard’s watch was shown. It is not really that important because the identity of the watch is known. The first big scene with the watch is after Deckard has his first run-in with a replicant.

Near the end of the movie, the digital watch can be seen in several key scenes as Deckard plays a nasty game of cat & mouse with the replicant leader. The use of a digital LCD watch makes sense in the framework of the Blade Runner movie and the time in which it was made. The digital watch was common in when the film was made and apparently the propmasters thought it would be appropriate to represent a future world as well. Little could they have known about smartwatches, which might have been a more prophetic choice.

The theatrical release of the film occurred in 1982, and those who were alive at that time remember how different it was. Blade Runner tried to peer into the future to predict what the year 2019 would look like. In some ways, it failed miserably. Today, there are no flying police cars, and video phone booths do not exist per se. Instead, we all have more powerful mobile phones in our pockets that can make video calls. I also think that the sets and props were supposed to reflect classic film noir… looking backward at Hollywood history, but with a futuristic twist.

The more pertinent thing for watch collectors to remember is that 1982 was smack dab in the middle of the so-called “Quartz Crisis” when cheap digital and quartz watches almost made the Swiss watch industry extinct. Maybe this is why Harrison Ford wore a very cheap digital watch seen throughout the film. In the dystopian world of rainy Los Angeles, everything seemed to be dirty, cheap and dangerous. A luxury watch in that setting for a retired cop would be out of place, so it might be a thoughtful prop choice.

The Microma PVD Digital Watch with an LCD Display

It has been known for a long time that the name of Harrison Ford’s watch is a Microma PVD. It looks pretty typical for the era consisting of a metal case with a window revealing a floating liquid crystal (LCD) display on a grayish background. There are multiple buttons to control several stopwatch functions and a backlight.

If anything stands out, it might be the use of PVD on a stainless steel body, but to be honest this is a fairly generic watch. Contemporary designs would be they Casio and Timex digital watches but the thousands. I remember playing with my cheap plastic LCD  watches for hours using the countdown function to represent a ticking time bomb that my Star Wars action figures had to defuse. Ahhh, those days were much simpler than 2017.

The sample shown below is from an eBay auction and the current bid was $499 at the time of publishing this article (update: final value was $610). I think that wear has actually made the watch more interesting with the edges of the PVD rubbed off revealing the shape of the case better.

Police Chief Bryant’s Mystery Double Watch

Another character named Bryant, played by M. Emmet Walsh, is a police chief who forces Deckard to come out of retirement to “bring back the magic” with his Blade Runner skills. Their meeting in his office reveals a very peculiar and unidentified watch, which got my attention immediately. I am not sure if it was a contemporary off-the-shelf watch or a fabricated prop. It looks like two gold-toned digital watch heads with red glass were cobbled together onto one watch band. It is assumed that this type of watch befits a man of higher social status in the future society. Compared to Deckard’s austere watch, it was flashy. If you know what it is, please leave a clue in the comments.

The Subject of Time in Blade Runner

While these two watches might not have generated the same collecting fever as other movie watches, it does not mean that they did not have important roles to play in Blade Runner. Bryant’s watch was an unusual scene stealer to establish his status. Deckard’s beater watch was present during his whole story arc as the main protagonist. Both watches are appropriate to the propmaster’s  guess of what a what people would be wearing on their wrists in 2019. It proves that people in the 1980s thought that the future would be filled with digital watches, flying cars and maybe even organic replicants that rivaled humans.

I simply cannot write a story about Blade Runner without including the final scene with Rutger Hauer’s famous ad-libbed lines. His replicant character, Batty, talks about the fleeting nature of time and his own mortality in one epic soliloquy. He understood the importance of each moment, knowing that it could be his last. Those simple words have resonated with many sci-fi fans.

I shall soon see if Blade Runner 2049 carries on the tradition of cheap digital wristwatches, but I would suspect more sophisticated smartwatches similar to Apple Watch. Regardless, I am hoping for a nod to the past. I would be incredible if Deckard still had that original watch… or even if the real Harrison Ford had it in a junk drawer. Nobody could have predicted how important Blade Runner would become in the pantheon of science fiction films. Maybe that alone is enough to elevate an apparently cheap digital Microma PVD Digital LCD Watch to cult status. Or, maybe memories of this watch will “disappear like tears in rain.”

All screenshots from the movie are from Warner Brothers.