There exists no other element of a story that so embodies its reason for existence than theme. Theme is why a story, a good story, is told in the first place.

A story without theme, as evinced in so many films made these days, is not really a story at all, but simply a recitation of sequential events. Without theme, a story is empty of meaning, of deeper truth. So many films fail to move audiences because they are the mere simulacra of real movies -- beneath their skin lies nothing but the cogs and wires of Hollywood formula, not the flesh and bone of a living story.

Themes touch upon the values of human lives and human living, the dilemmas, moral struggles, and emotional battlefields of being alive on planet earth. Themes ask, and sometimes attempt to answer, the big questions of existence: Who are we? Why are we here? Why do we want what we want? If you haven’t touched upon these issues at some point in your latest story, then you've failed to address the reason for writing it in the first place.

To illustrate theme, I’m going to go over a work extremely conscious of theme, "Blade Runner." The script was written by Hampton Fancher, then rewritten by David Peoples (for details read my lengthy interview with Fancher, in which he discusses the manic tribulations of writing the original screenplay and getting it made).

Following my analysis, I'll show you how to create theme in your own scripts.

Humanity and Its Discontents

For a film that was critically panned upon its first release, "Blade Runner" has had a life more far-reaching and influential than anyone could have predicted in the time since. I consider it to be one of the great films of the twentieth century. It examines so many facets of our existence, that watching it at times feels like reading a weighty symbolic fairy tale of existential humanism.

Indeed, the film is full of intentional contradictions and insightful metaphors. It reveals new secrets upon repeated viewing, and hits deep philosophical nerves. And its cinematic, visionary beauty is a high point in film history.

Based upon Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" the film, like the book, reasserts many of Dick’s recurring theses, the central one which has haunted philosophers since the dawn of conscious thought: What does it mean to be human?

We are given several paradoxical characters to illustrate this theme. The protagonist, Deckard, is a tired, burnt-out, sanctioned killer who seems more machine than human. The love interest, Rachael, is a replicant, a form of bioengineered humanoid. Yet she is the first of a new type, and has implanted memories that allow her to feel. The antagonists are several renegade Nexus 6 replicants, who have been manufactured with greater strength and agility than humans, and in the case of their leader Roy, also greater intelligence. The fugitives, like all of their kind, have a four-year life span, and seek the means to extend their existence. Although seemingly cold, ruthless killers, they also possess a childlike, wide-eyed innocence of a world they barely understand.

The look of the film is pure film noir homage, with smoky rooms, faces half-hidden in shadow, and dark, forbidding spaces. Indeed, the entire city of Los Angeles is covered with a pall of permanent night, presumably due to choking air pollution.

Though the story is a composite of noir tropes and characters, all are startlingly turned on their head. The detective, supposedly the hero, is really just a legal assassin, and thus might actually be the villain. The tough-talking dame with a soft heart is actually artificial, and ironically the only "person" whom Deckard is able to love. The "psychotic killers" on the lam have the noblest of goals, and flee an unfair, fear-filled existence as slaves. The wealthy industrialist, Tyrell, literally has the power of a god to create life, yet is so morally bereft that he views it as a simple business transaction.

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