We watched Bladerunner (1982)* last night, since we plan to see the new Bladerunner 2049 that just started running in theaters.
The movie showed its age a little (of course), but it became a cult flick and one that has been extensively discussed on the internet.
Anyway – I see the chess game from the movie is actually borrowed from one of the most famous games in all of chess history, called ‘The Immortal Game‘.
The game was played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. Anderssen gave up both rooks and a bishop, then his queen, checkmating his opponent with his three remaining minor pieces.
*From Wikipedia : Blade Runner is a 1982 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos. The script was written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, and is a loose adaptation of the 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ by Philip K. Dick. Set in a dystopian Los Angeles in 2019, the story depicts a future in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on off-world colonies. When a fugitive group of replicants led by Roy Batty (Hauer) escape back to Earth, burnt-out LA cop Rick Deckard (Ford) reluctantly accepts one last assignment to hunt them down. During his investigations, Deckard meets Rachael (Young), an advanced replicant who causes him to question his mission.