I liked the so-called “happy” ending. The movie is incomplete without it.
Zhora, Pris, Leon, and Roy Batty are the first Nexus 6 replicants that Deckard has ever gone after, which is made clear in the prologue and Bryant’s instructions. As it stands, Deckard only manages to retire Zhora and Pris by luck; Zhora is interrupted in strangling Deckard, and Pris foolishly toys with Deckard, giving him a chance to grab his weapon. (BTW, Bryant fucked up; Zhora was the “basic pleasure model” and Pris a members of the “hit murder squad”.) Rachel retires Leon just as he’s about to kill Deckard, and Roy easily defeated Deckard, only to save him in his own dying moments. Deckard clearly isn’t the equal of the Nexus 6 replicants, and it makes little sense for him to be a replicant himself in any practical manner.
In thematic terms, it doesn’t really matter; whether Deckard is manufactured or a “natural human”, he discovers that the replicants he hunts have the same hopes, loves, and fears that he has, and perhaps even moreso, the intensity driven by their limited lifespan. They are slaves, just as Deckard is a slave (“If you’re not cop, you’re little people,” as Bryant tells him) and the only way to be free of the tyranny of fate is to serve some greater purpose; in Batty’s case, to save Deckard’s life. Whether human or replicant, the characters are sentient and therefore deserving of rights and respect of sentient beings.
To answer the question of the o.p., while Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep cannot be considered canonical (as the film diverges greatly from the source material), Soldier, also written by David Webb Peoples, is ostensibly a “side-quel”, occurring the in same universe as and roughly contemporaneous with Blade Runner, and it very clearly incorporates interstellar travel into its mise. I think it is safe to say that the “off-world colonies” are interstellar in nature, and that Roy’s soliloquy, while somewhat poetic and metaphorical in nature, is, in fact, describing his adventures beyond the solar system, which “you people wouldn’t even believe.”
Next up: why Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is not science fiction, and how In Bruges is actually a perfect Christmas film.
Ian Fleming may come close.
Stranger
Sounds pretty lucky to me, her showing up like that out of nowhere.
Is that on the screens during the briefing? I don’t recall. And I think the term was the unclarified “kick murder squad”.
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.
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This
The book is franckly mostly irrelevant.
The famous unicorn scene of course implies he’s a replicant. But as far as I know, nobody, not even people involved in the movie, knows whether or not he’s a replicant (yes, I know what Ridley Scott said. But assuming he viewed Deckard as a replicant from the get-go, apparently he told nobody while the film was being made).
It’s better left uncertain. It makes plenty of sense in the movie, adding a layer of doubt that fits the film.
For my part, I like thinking he is.
Let us know what you thought of it…
I too intend to watch it (again) this week-end. And maybe playing the computer game too (it’s quite good).
Like other posters, I never interpreted “off world colonies” has meaning “extra-solar”. I always assumed they were on the moon, mars, etc…
There could be an alternative (though a bit implausible) explanation. Gaff shares the same dreams as Deckard (or rather has the same kind of fantasies, very removed from the “real world”, and he expresses them in origami, while Deckard dream them). He share the sensibilities and the doubts of Deckard, and that’s why he let them go.
Based on the Director’s cut, there isn’t any certainty that they’ll be even able to leave the building alive. The way the movie ends, in fact let me feel that they’re doomed. The closing doors make me think of a guillotine, and the blackness of death.
Ok, I should have multi-quoted. I didn’t expect to post so much.
Indeed it was, for Deckard. Of course, he had just called her a few minutes ago to come down and have a drink with him at the bar, so not inexplicable, but lucky nonetheless.
No, but it is quite apparent from their actions that Pris is more skilled at combat (Zhora desperately tries to strangle Deckard when she should have been able to break his neck in a single blow) and Zhora is definitely a sexpot. In the world of Blade Runner, everything on Earth is falling apart–the ecology, the industry, the infrastructure, et cetera–and nearly anyone who can leave has done so, while the systems and people who remain are largely damaged or marginally competent.
In fact, Ford reports that Scott assured him that Deckard is not a replicant. The Twilight Zone-esque twist ending detracts from the core theme of the movie, e.g. that we are all human, and the replicants perhaps moreso for their desperate limited lifespan in slavery.
The unicorn–in both dream and orgamic figuring–can be considered a motif rather than the more blunt, heavy-handed symbolism of Deckard being a replicant (known, presumably, to Gaff) Deckard is the unicorn, the mythological beast that cannot be captured or killed until he forgets himself and falls into the lap of a maiden, becoming defenseless. Deckard falls under the spell of Rachael, rendering him incapable of dispatching her despite his duty to do so. Gaff is always shadowing right behind Deckard; he clearly admires him but at the same time sees him as increasingly ineffectual and wants him out of the way. Giving him Rachael guarantees that he’ll run.
Stranger
I’ve been sick and/or extremely busy this week, and now I haven’t become fully awake yet. It makes it hard to debate this topic. I’ve been wanting to say basically what you said. To me, Deckard turning out to be a replicant is a cop-out. The DUH-duh-duuuuhhhh! twist works well in TZ, and M. Knight Shamalamadingdong has made a career of it. In Blade Runner it would miss the point of the story.
Deckard has lost his humanity. What’s the point if he was never ‘human’ to begin with? The film is a classic juxtaposition of a human who has become an automaton, and the ‘robot’ (yes, I know; genetically-engineered flesh golem) that is ‘more human than human’. When Rachael asks, ‘Have you taken the test yourself?’ this is not a clue that Deckard is a replicant. It is a pointed note that the ‘natural human’ has lost his humanity. Unless Deckard is a natural human who has ‘fallen from grace’, as it were, then there can be no redemption. He loses his humanity, and then rediscovers it at the end. If he’s a replicant all along, then it doesn’t work.
As for the unicorn, I agree that it’s a motif instead of, as friend Stranger says, a ‘blunt, heavy-handed’ clue to the audience. I think we need to remember when Blade Runner was made. The '70s saw a resurgence of Tolkien. Early in the decade Led Zeppelin had ‘warrior-themed’ songs. Later, Styx had a really bad song called Lord of the Rings. Ralph Bakshi made The Lord Of The Rings and Wizards. Vaughn Bode had his Junkwaffel comics. Everyone was reading Tolkien (again). So mythical creatures were popular in society at the time. By the '80s I was seeing a lot of mystically-themed art. In particular, I remember that unicorns were popular. Stuff like this. (Doesn’t that make you want to throw right up?) We’d just come out of a rocky decade, we had a cowboy for a President, and (many) people wanted to believe in magic because reality wasn’t much fun. ISTM that’s when the whole New Age crystal thing really took off.
Taken in the context of the era – a time when not every film had to have A Big Twist – the unicorn is just a symbol of hope, and not a clue to the Big Twist Ending. Deckard as a human who has lost his humanity, and then rediscovers it through the love of a replicant makes for a good story. Deckard as a replicant who doesn’t know he’s a replicant is just a cheap gimmick.
That just means that they were created by artificial processes, as opposed to natural human reproduction.
That’s right. With some tradeoffs for “burning brighter.”
In the canonical edits, “two of them got fried running through an electrical field.” Thus Bryant presents Deckard with “four skinjobs walking the streets.”
Interesting that Ridley Scott also made “Legend” soon after Bladerunner. The unicorn playing a major part in that film as well.
I don’t see that Gaff’s origami unicorn seals the deal either way. If that is his calling card then perhaps it isn’t surprising that Deckard dreams of one soon after meeting Gaff again. Though if that were the case I’m not sure what narrative purpose it serves. Maybe it just to blurs the line between an implanted memory and a legitimate one. And would one ever know?
Nitpick - Orion has two shoulders
I enjoyed it immensely. Haven’t seen it in like, 15-20 years. Held up so well that I have no complaints.
Director’s cut. I never got the impression that Decker was a replicant or that Roy’s memories were anything but real (admittedly, I purposely try not to think too much). I sure did not miss the voice-over that was in the version I first saw. Yuck.
I love film noir and would easily place this in the pantheon along with The Big Sleep, High & Low, Kiss Me Deadly, Mirage and others.
Funny thing, I’ve been in the Bradbury building (years ago). I kept shouting “Trent, Trent” the security guard laughed and said that everyone yells that, or “That’s The Spriit!” whenever they first see the lobby.
Heh. I didn’t get the Trent reference. Now I’m watching Demon with a Glass Hand on Youtube. I was two months old when it originally aired.
I love the internet.
Rewatched “The Final Cut” version on the weekend and I remain quite convinced that those are real memories. Other things I find interesting: Only certain places are densly populated – the entire Bradbury building only has a single occupant. There’s a suggestion during our first sequence with Sabastian and Pris that the only reason anyone would stay on Earth is that they aren’t fit to make the trip to one of the off-world colonies, so one might reasonably conclude that Earth isn’t so much overpopulated as it is completely ruined (we never see an actual animal in the show - they’re all artificial). Eyes as the window to the soul seem to be a very common motif, right from the opening sequence and all the way through. And I still love the scene in Hannibal Chew’s eye-growing lab. 
If that’s the case, it lends further support to the idea that the off-world colonies are extra-solar. It seems unlikey that a significant proprtion of Earth’s population could migrate to an artificial environment and enjoy a better quality of life there. if the Blade Runner universe had the technology to build artifical environments on that scale, it would still be chaper and easier to build them on Earth, no matter how ruined it is.
I know the book’s world isn’t exactly like the movie’s. But, in the book, Earth had been damaged by a low-grade nuclear war. No Armageddon. But the weather had been screwed, many animals were extinct & most humans who remained had some kind of illness.
And the off-world colonies were beyond our solar system.
I’m buying a white panel van just to put that on it.
It also adds nothing to the movie if he is a replicant. The rule of conservation of detail would not support Deckard being a replicant unless it was important to the plot.