I saw this when it first came out in theaters, and bought it on VHS when IT first came out, and I bought the Director’s Cut when IT first came out (needless to say, I’m a fan of this flick). And I have to go with the ‘He’s NOT’ crowd on this one. I agree that Ridley’s just covering his ass (and teasing more people into buying the Director’s Cut) by continuing to fan the flames on this. I don’t care how many times he says it.
Oh, and ‘Rosebud’ wasn’t a sled, or a nanny. Rosebud’s a Basselope!
The main reason Ridley Scott brings up the issue of Deckard being a replicant is clear: He is a marketing genius!!! How else to keep the fires buring about his movie and sell copies of the director’s cut to people that have already seen the movie?!
OK, I’m being cynical, but I really don’t remember this being an issue when the movie was first released. Lots of interesting theories in this thread, however!
Some people use this line to say that he is a replicant.
But
To me the questions the story poses are what does it mean to be a human or a replicant.
Deckard bascially goes from replicant to human in the course of the film. At the beginning he is a robot. He does not care about anything. Not even himself really. The ‘robots’ on the other hand obviously feel very passionetly about life and each other. One gives its life testing the fence for the others. Deckard slowly goes from emotionless drone to human. The fact that he is in love at the end of the film makes him human.
Sorry for the hijack.
Because they’re speaking English. If he’d said, “I made the Kessel run in 12 millimeters”, would that mean that millimeters is a measurement of time in that universe? Of course not. The parsec line was a gaffe.
(If you reply to this, would you mind putting it in a new thread? Thanks.)
I really felt ripped off when I paid to see the director’s cut in 1993. The changes were trivial, at best, and that fact that they didn’t fix the 6-replicant error annoyed me.
The big “is-Deckard-a-replicant” question probably has its biggest moment in the movie when Rachael (Sean Young) confronts Deckard with photographic “proof” of her humanity, and he shoots her down. She desperately asks him, regarding the Voight-Kampf replicant screening machine, if he’s “ever taken that test [himself]?”
I may not be remembering this in the exact sequence, but that’s the gist of it.
I’ve never taken the question to mean that Deckard might be a replicant. I’ve always thought it to mean that Deckard was so burnt-out and cold-blooded that the real replicants might have a better claim on humanity. At least they wanted to live, while Deckard was just a big depressed drunken mess waiting to die.
Besides, if Deckard was a replicant, how do the other replicants so casually kick his ass? Zhora and Leon were each on the verge of wasting Deckard before being interrupted, and Pris would have killed him (smothered between the thighs of Daryl Hannah - I can think of worse ways to go) if he hadn’t shot her. And of course, Roy was just toying with Deckard before deciding to let him live.
The unicorn thing is a red herring, as far as I can tell, signifying nothing but some lame mystical image that one can interpret in a hundred meaningless ways. As for the “happy” ending, I think cutting it makes the movie weaker. If Deckard and Rachael end the movie riding down in the elevator, it begs the question: where the hell are they going? Downtown? Offworld? Also, the original ending doesn’t suggest they lived happily ever after, it just says they lived, but for how long, Deckard doesn’t know. Who does?
You have to read the BR faq given above to notice the fine details of is he or isn’t it. (But I can punch holes in virtually of the “against” items.)
Some of my main points:
Scott intended him to be a replicant. Ford (Aka “Mister Ego”) thought that was a bad idea on overruled it. Thus violating the “Never let the actors modify the plot” rule of filmmaking. Cf Ura-Maru. Hence it was built in throughout the movie.
The FAQ covers only a very few of the clues in the movie that says he was. It misses, for example, that only Replicants kill. Even killing a spider is considered barbaric. Similarly, there’s a whole lot more about Gaff’s role that only makes sense if Deckard’s a replicant. I could maybe double the number of “fors” given in the FAQ.
I am amazed that other people have to be told that he was. I saw it within the first 15 minutes. (Hence the ending was a major letdown.)
So, IMHO, saying “Deckard’s a replicant” is no more a spoiler than “Vito’s a mob boss.” It’s Film Noir after all.
(And I had the “…and I want you to go down there and check them out.” TV version and taped over it. Ack. On Beta too!)
It seems to me that something so “obvious” and “built in” shouldn’t require a FAQ.
Charles Schultz spoiled it for me.
Round-headed bastard.
Well, if I were to get all film studenty, I’d say that BR is an exploration of what it means to be human. I don’t have time to get into it, but such a thesis is plausible (and worthy of an A- essay, even).
Among other things, you have Deckard, whose name bears a certain phonetic resemblence to Decartes, the “I think, therefore I am” guy, IIRC.
ftg
Where in the movie does it say that only the replicants kill? That all killing is considered barbaric?
Almost all movies go through rewrites. For instance in early drafts of Moulin Rouge the Satine was an illegitamite child of the writers father. She is not in the film. Just because at one stage of development Deckard was a replicant does not mean that idea stays in the film.
In the book nobody would kill any animal because they are so rare. This is only alluded to the in film when they talk about the snake and how an artifical snake costs less than a real snake.
“Empire Strikes Back- Vader is Luke’s father?”
A couple of points – well, more than a couple…
The idea was that Gaff’s unicorn origami suggests he knows what Deckard is dreaming, suggesting that Deckard’s dreams are implants; hence, he’s a replicant.
The so-called “Director’s Cut” of BLADE RUNNER came out ten years ago. At that time, the question of Deckard being a replicant was hashed and rehased. This is nothing new. Scott is merely repeating what he has always said about the film, but for some reason some people are treating it as if he is making up something after the fact to sell DVDs.
Even without the unicorn, there are hints that Deckard is a replicant, so much so that reviewer Allan Brodsky stated it at the time in “Cinemacabre” magazine. One clue he points to is that, in the scene wherein Rachel asks if Deckard ever tried the replicant test on himself, Deckard’s eyes can be seen briefly glowing red – a trait common to the replicants we see in the film.
It’s subject to debate to say whether the unicorn that finally made it’s way into BLADE RUNNER is “from LEGEND.” Ridley Scott was doing pre-production work on LEGEND while finishing up editing on BLADE RUNNER. During this period, he made some test footage of a unicorn, which is what found its way into the Director’s Cut of BLADE RUNNER. It’s really a matter of accounting whether the cost of shooting this footage was applied to the budget for BLADE RUNNER or LEGEND.
If you’re looking for the original theatrical release of BLADE RUNNER, you need to find an old laserdisc. The VHS always contained the unrated European cut, which includes a few more minutes of gore (the nail going through the back of Roy Batty’s hand, Deckard shooting Pris an extra time).
Thematically, it is very intriguing to consider the possibility that Deckard is a replicant, but plot-wise it raises all kinds of problems. Almost all films with hunters and hunted suggest some kind of identification between the two, blurring the lines between one and the other. To that extent, playing with the idea of Deckard being a replicant is interesting. But as someone else already said in this thread, if Deckard’s a replicant built to hunt other replicants, then why is he so damn physically inferior to them, getting beat up and unable to harm them without his gun?
I could go on, but it’s time for dinner. Interesting topic.
steve biodrowski
www.thescriptanalyst.com
Who the hell is Vito?
OK, just watched the director’s cut last night. Verr Nize.
I mentioned this before. The ambiguity of Deckard’s being manufactured or born only lends to the argument the story was making; Replicants were “More human than human.” That’s the Tyrell Corporation’s motto, as well as the script writer’s.
To answer a nit-pick, Deckard could have very well been an earlier generation of replicant, explaining his weakness compared to the others.
I’m going to sit on the fence here because the view is best from there. This is a question that does not need to be definitively answered, but the conversation has been stimulating.
I felt that one of the clues that he was a replicant was the fact that he was so tough. He gets beat a lot, but he’s never killed. They mention in passing that the replicants have different physical and mental traits, and on the mugshots you can see the replicant’s physical and mental ratings. It could be he’s a replicant but not as strong, possibly even a slightly older model. He definitely shows toughness beyond that of a normal human a few places. Pris out-maneuvers him but is unable to disable him or break his neck. Then there was the guy who throws a punch at Deckard but misses and punches a hole through a metal tank - yet he does land some blows on him. Finally, in the final scenes Deckard shows an amazing amount of willpower or disregard for pain.
These replicants were insanely strong, and should have been able to crush skulls and sever spines with ease, yet they don’t with Deckard. I remember scenes where Deckard is hit repeatedly almost as if the attacker expected to feel his skull give with the first punch and kept trying over and over.
OK, I’m not saying he definitely was or wasn’t, because not knowing is now part of the thing that really enthralls me with this movie, BUT if he were, was he aware? He says, in regard to Rachel “How can it not know what it is?” Did he know about himself. Was he activated only for the purpose of retiring the four Nexus 6s? or was he actually a veteran blade runner, aware of his own existence as a rep? Small detail, but interesting idea to toy around with while watching.
I dunno, he screams pretty good when he snaps his fingers back into place (a scene that creeps me out more than anything else in the movie, by the way).
The entire Deckard-is-a-replicant argument requires making up new information, and thus fails the Occam’s Razor test. If Deckard is a replicant, then he has preprogrammed memories, which should make him at least as advanced as the Nexus-6, but he’s obviously been around much longer than 4 years, UNLESS you also assume that he was PROGRAMMED to be a burnt-out bundle of nerves who only REMEMBERED being a skilled blade runner, and the skin-job hating Bryant would KNOW that Deckard hadn’t been a REAL blade runner, but drafted him ANYWAY, and what would be the point of that?
Proposing Deckard is a replicant simply raises more questions than it answers. Even if it was true, it’s a pointless Twilight Zone plot twist. On the other hand, proposing that a replicant can be more human than a human (or at least more human than Deckard) is a clearer and more interesting message.
The opening narrative (which may or may not have been removed for the director’s cut - I forget) said replicants were twice as strong and agile as humans. That’s not quite at the spine-ripping stage. And as for Deckard taking repeated punches, there are professional boxers and football players and people who get into car accidents who survive similar punishment. Humans are actually pretty hard to kill by brute force. I don’t remember any replicant having trouble overpowering Deckard per se:
[ul]
[li]Zhora had knocked him over and was about to strangle him with his own tie when someone walked into the dressing room.[/li][li]Leon may have missed a punch or two, but when he said “Wake up, it’s time to die” it was obvious he didn’t believe Deckard posed a threat.[/li][li]Pris, I’ll admit, wasted too much time going into those gymnastics, but she did have Deckard at her mercy before he shot her. Her profile wasn’t physical/combative, anyway. She had been some kind of robo-hooker.[/li][li]Roy, of course, could have splattered Deckard at will, but that would be “unsportsmanlike”, and even though Roy was suffering from end-of-lifespan jitters, he still kicked butt.[/li][/ul]
(incident to this last point, if the Batman movie had been made in the mid-eighties, as originally proposed, Rutger Hauer would have been AWESOME in the title role, way better than any of the clowns who eventually got it)
Feeding the Deckard-is-a-replicant flame is a smart marketing move by Ridley Scott, a successful attempt to spur interest in a movie that was never a big financial success in the first place.
I invite everyone to check out the cover of Issue 31 of WARP, the newsletter of the Montreal Science-Fiction and Fantasy Association, of which I am a member and contributer. It may be hard to pick out detail, but give it a shot. The title of the artwork is “Bwade Wunner”. If you’d like a copy, I can get in touch with the artist.
See, that’s the only problem with this question; it always turns to details. Why are we so detail-minded as viewers these days? No fun…
One of my favorite cartoons back when BR first came out was in Starlog. It had a couple of fanboys talking about BR, and one of them is going on about ‘which classic movie star’ Harrison used as a role model for Deckard. He suggests Bogey, and Wayne, and a couple of others, and his friend loses it. Starts going off on how Deckard was beat up by everyone he came across. “You know who I think he was based on?” he says - then a cut to Harrison in his trailer, staring at the mirror and saying “Be vewy vewy qwiet. I’m hunting Weplicants. ha-ha-ha”
There is a second point in the film. When Deckard first goes to the Tyrell building and sees the owl he asks if it is real and Rachel replies “Of course not!”, implying that even someone as rich and powerful as Tyrell can’t have a real animal (or that Tyrell is so proud of his replicant technology that he won’t have anything but his creations around, which could be seen as an early hint that Rachel herself is a replicant.)
That thing cracked me up! I suppose it’s cause I’ve just listened to a couple of Elmer Fudd mp3s (Elmer Fudd reads porno, and Elmer Fudd sings “I’m too sexy”) so I’ve still got his voice in my head. The idea of Harrison Ford method acting off Elmer is just … heh 