Leon MUST have had artificial memories at one point- remember how important those old “family” photos were to him?
Sure, NOW he knows those photos weren’t really family members, but he once thought they were, and those memories still mean the world to him (so much so that he risks his life to get them back), even though he knows now they weren’t real.
I just bought that movie, I’m going to have it delivered today. I am very much looking forward to watching it tonight.
I see Leon’s photos as a child-like attempt to create a past for himself. Sort of like he’s fantasizing a story for each photo. Leon is the “Dumb” laborer model and it’s not surprising to see him try to create a past for himself like a child would create an imaginary friend. He knows the photos are not of his past. But it’s comforting to pretend.
Roy’s memories have to be real to be meaningful. He’s showing what amazing things he’s done and seen in his four years. He’s saying, “Look! I’m a real person too. When I die, all my wondrous experiences will die with me.” Makes me wonder what he might have accomplished in ten years rather than four.
I’m pretty sure the precious photos were of the other replicants, so they were most likely ones that he had taken himself.
I go with real memories, Deckard being human and the symmetry suggested by Mr. Mortiss.
As an aside, for a 30 year old movie this still looks particularly stunning. I saw an HD broadcast a few months ago and it continues to look fabulous. The little set piece with Rachel in the board room looks beautiful. As sparse and cold as the outside is wet and dirty.
Some effects are slightly dated but overall it has aged well.
Remember, there was no GCI when Bladerunner was made. Watch the extras and prepare for your head to explode.
One photo was of the replicants. It stood out from the others which were of random people and places. It was the one Deckard analyzed on his machine.
What do you mean “dated”?
The most dated thing about it is the advertisements.
Besides, “Attack Ships on Fire off Betelgeuse” would just have sounded silly.
Sebastiens “toys”, the hovercar flights, some of the screen graphics. But that is about it.
I’m really not criticising, those are about the only things that would date it from the early 80’s.
Thank you.
The shoulder of orion is the star Betelgeuse, about 650 light years away. I think it makes more sense that Roy was actually at Betelgeuse, rather than looking at a patch of sky. Once he moved slightly, relative to the “burning attack ships”, they would appear in a different constellation.
I agree, except that Deckard was a replicant. We’ve been over all the reasons why he is/isn’t before. To me, the weight of evidence points towards him being artificial. His being notably weaker physically than Roy et. al. was by design in order to keep others (and Deckard himself) from catching on to his true nature.
Why would you deliberately design a machine to catch replicants that was weaker than replicants?
For that matter, why would you let your purpose-build replicant-hunting machine quit, as Deckard did?
And for THAT matter, why would your purpose-built replicant-hunting machine (which by all accounts was as advanced as Rachel, herself an advanced version of the Nexus-6) not know anything about the Nexus-6, requiring an expository briefing from Bryant?
There’s no good way to make Deckard a replicant without having to discard some other plot element, nor any good reason why we should.
Those memories were real. His point was that he is a unique individual and everything he contributed to the universe would be lost only because he was made that way.
I also believe he meant the shoulder of Orion literally. The movie established they have interstellar space flight and colonies. What they are vague on is exactly who is at war.
We’ve been over this before, maybe even you and me specifically. We’re not going to convince each other, I daresay.
Going back to the OP, I see no reason why Roy’s memories would be implanted. As other posters have said, Rachel is a later experiment designed to find a make a more stable replicant. Her ability at dealing with the Voight-Kampff test is a side effect of that.
As to whether Deckard is a replicant, for me the most satisfying explanation is not that he is (it seems somewhat unlikely), but that he could be.
My guess is that Roy Batty’s memories are real and he was relating his account of a hostile encounter near Betelgeuse space. As far as I recall, this ‘world’ is set in a future where we have established interstellar colonies.
[WARNING SERIOUS DERAIL]
(Note: all references below are from The Astronomical Journal, 135:1430–1440, 2008 April – A NEW VLA–HIPPARCOS DISTANCE TO BETELGEUSE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
Graham M. Harper, Alexander Brown, and Edward F. Guinan)
I wondered what the distance to Beleguese is (to give me some sense of the expanse of the Blade Runner universe’s influence) and I got this rather interesting quote: “The distance to the M supergiant Betelgeuse is poorly known, with the Hipparcos parallax having a significant
uncertainty.”
After further reading, I discovered that the distance to this star apparently appears to be difficult to pin down with an estimated distance of 197 ± 45 pc (643 ± 146 ly).
It seems that this star has a large relative velocity as measured by the average of its general region.
“We find that the most likely star-formation scenario for Betelgeuse is that it is a runaway star
from the Ori OB1 association and was originally a member of a high-mass multiple system within Ori OB1a.”
This surprised me.
Is this interesting to anyone else?
[/WARNING SERIOUS DERAIL]
I think it is absurd to assume that people are traveling hundreds of light years inside four-year lifespans solely on the evidence of this one line. Do you have anything else?