I don’t know, what kinds of people have traditionally been hired as cops?
I’m still enjoying the idea that Batty just liked the sound of it. He’s totally the sort of character who would have spent days rehearsing that speech in his head and making changes to puch it up. “I’ve seen bad shit, man! I watched a freighter blow up near Betelgeuse! No, wait, that sounds lame. Attack ships would be way cooler. I’ll say, I’ve seen attack ships blow up. . . . no, still lame. Burning sounds cool. I’ve seen attack ships burning off the shoulder of Orion. Sweet! That sounds really badass! Now, when I kill Tyrell, should I call him Father, or fucker?”
Hoo boy yes. The scene of (I think) Pris dying, pounding her fists and feet on the floor in sheer anger and frustration at the knowledge she was going to die is I think one of the most haunting of the film. The message that these are robots so human that they very much want to live is underlined and in bold 24 pt font.
I didn’t hear about the Deckard is a replicant theory until long after I had seen the film several times. I should probably watch it with this idea in my head to see how it seems then. The argument somewhat convinced me, not because it does anything for the actual story, but just because it’s hard to go against the unicorn dream. On the other hand, I seemed to have a different impression about what that meant. Unlike those who come against the dissonance of the idea that he could be a replicant because of his consensus reality relationships - this never even occurred to me. I automatically assumed he’d been a replicant for a very long time, or else was like the girl, a replicant of a real person who had replaced them. And therefore the history wasn’t an issue.
On a tangent, am I the only one who prefers the voiceover? I felt it really added to the ‘future noir detective’ ambience.
That’s a really odd quote. I’m guessing they meant that it casts scary shadows at night. Since, it’s not as bright as the full moon, which does appear during daylight, and if it casts shadows, no one really notices.
This is a GREAT point. Hadn’t thought of that before. Well said!
jackdavinci, as I said, I prefer Deckard’s voice-over also, for its noir-ish quality.
Huh? In the book, the animals came in three categories: real, robot (notably NOT replicant,) and extinct. The remaining humans were more or less required by tradition to maintain an animal.
At the start of the book, Deckard has a sheep (a robot sheep, that requires him to open a panel on its side & remove what it has ingested & recharge it.)
After he gets one of the bounties, he buys a real, live sheep (which Rachael then pushes off the building’s roof, splash.)
At the end of the book, he finds a toad & gets excited because they were supposed to be extinct. His wife however, takes it to the robot animal “doctor” who confirms it’s a robot.
Deckard had burned out and lost the ability to distinguish “real” from robot/replicant. The book in no way implied that all humans were replicants.
Which is not to say that there weren’t any people in the book who were blatantly obviously replicants - the live 24/7 anti-religion-of-empathy talk show that had two or three different shows playing simultaneously with the same people on them was a giveaway.
Well as I said up thread, Gaff and Deckard know each other and it may be that Gaff knows full well that the unicorn is a recurring dream for Deckard. Or Deckard knows the origami unicorn is Gaff’s calling card and the dream could have been triggered by Gaff showing up.
We don’t know, we can’t know where Deckard’s dream comes from or how Gaff knows about it (if he even does).
There are options that point to an implant, and others (as above) that have straightforward real world explanations. Ultimately it might give Deckard reason to doubt his own humanity but in any case, just like Rachel…how can he truly know?
The whole point of the movie to me is the blurring of human/replicant as Tyrell marches on past Nexus 6. In the final showdown who is the one showing the greatest degree of empathy and humanity?
So we don’t know. And for it all to be parcelled up neatly would spoil it for me. My favourite movies are all ambiguous,
12 monkeys- is he mad or a real time traveller?
Bladerunner - is he a replicant or just burned out?
The Usual Suspects - Does Keyser Soze even exist?
I say let’s never find out.
Refering to the bolded part: will you marry me?
It takes considerable (and focused) talent to end a story in an ambiguous yet satisfying way. I just cant understand people that want to “know the truth” in these cases. It’s like wanting to pour ketchup on your caviar, because you’re used to having ketchup in your plate.
IIRC, yes they are required to maintain an animal, and there are supposed to be two categories - robot and real. But the point was the robot animals were supposed to be indistinguishable to the observer, and it is suggested that there really aren’t any real animals left anymore, all animals are robots.
Hmm, I don’t recall that part.
Yeah, well that may be the point, that it was Deckard who was lost and confused. I only read the novel once, and found it blah.
I have bolded for emphasis. Can you not understand that to some people, there is no way to be ambiguous and satisfying? It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and leaving out the last piece, because you know where it goes. It’s like reading all the way through a novel, but then not reading the last page because you don’t want the story to end. It’s incomplete, dammit!
[Aside] Scott Adams had a post on his blog the other day that all analogies are bad, because while strictly speaking the analogy might be neutral, practically they carry baggage of all the associations with the different parts, so any analogy ends up turning into an insult. People react viscerally to analogies, rather than trying to follow the logic, so instead of seeing the point, they immediately become stubborn. You can’t use analogies to convince someone to your position, you can only use analogies for humor/ridicule. [/aside]
Another vote here for liking the voiceover. And for the same reason. It adds to the atmosphere. And to those who complain that Ford “phoned it in” I would like for them to explain in what way that it sounds different than when he’s really trying hard.
Go on then, I’ve not got much on this weekend. My wife’ll do the catering.
Bumped.
You may already have known this, but it’s fun to hear it straight from the director himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPUIDHQv8rM
Just doing the math…
Orion is 1,344 light years away. So I don’t see how Roy could have made it there and back in his short lifespan. I’m voting for implanted memories.
What suggests he went to Orion?
“Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion” means “I was looking up at the night sky, and there, in the general direction of the constellation Orion’s shoulder but a little to the side, I saw attack ships, and they were on fire”. Could have been on the Moon, or Ceres, or Alpha Centauri, or North Dakota - just anywhere near enough that Orion was still a coherent enough thing in the sky to have a shoulder (by which I’ve always understood he meant Betelgeuse, the left shoulder, as it’s much brighter than Bellatrix, the right one).
Also, “Orion” isn’t one distance away - different stars in it are very different distances away. Although you seem to think he meant the nebula given the distance you quoted.
Moreover, and as people may have pointed out over a decade ago (not gonna read the entire thread to this point), there would be no reason to implant memories in… whatever his name was (Roy? I didn’t even realize he had a name).
The purpose of Rachel’s implanted memories was to trick her into thinking she was human. This was not a concern for the Nexus 6 replicants Deckard was hunting: they knew they were synths, and that drove their story as it meant they also knew they would have abbreviated lifespans. They wanted “more life,” so they sought out their creator, thinking he might grant it. Not unlike… Prometheus (another of Ridley Scott’s works—I can’t believe I only just made that connection).
It’s just an opinion. Nothing says he didn’t either.
People also pointed out a decade ago that the solution is ambiguous - it can’t be known. My guess is as good as your.
We don’t know that, do we. We only knew those three did. And one very good reason to give them memories would be to keep them from tracking down their maker and killing him.
Except they did track down their creator and they did explicitly come seeking more life. You can only posit that they were given false memories to cause them to think that they were real people if you ignore the explicit text of the film.
This isn’t some “what if Deckard was a replicant?” conjecture: there are several scenes that center around their awareness that they are synthetics with shortened lifespans and in which their actions are driven by the same knowledge.
There is no ambiguity here.
ETA: See:
Only because they found out. I’m not sure how that contradicts what I wrote. I’m not doubting that Roy knew - only that we don’t know that all the other Synthes did. Are you suggesting all of the synthetics with shortened lifespans knew and were angry enough to walk off the job? That doesn’t make much business sense.
I haven’t seen the movie in a very long while so if I’m misremembering I’m happy to be corrected, but I think we only know that these 3 had this knowledge. I’m imagining Roy found out somehow and convinced the other 2 to come with him. If every synth had this knowledge of course some would come after their creator, many in fact.
Think of it, you create a synthetic, tell them, ‘I know you feel human, but you’re not and so for your short life I’m sending you off to work until your ever-ready goes kaput’. That doesn’t seem like a good way to motivate your workforce.
And if they had the technology to implant memories why not use it?
The Nexus 6 models must have had some sort of memories implanted in them as well. Given their four year lifespan, you can’t afford to spend much time training them to understand English or perform even basic tasks such as loading nuclear heads in the outer colonies like Leon did. These replicants need to hit the ground running once they’re activated.
Well, in the opening crawl, there’s this:
“After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 combat team in an Off-world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth—under penalty of death.”
Sure sounds like a lot of them were pissed off about something. That is, despite their designed lack of “emotional responses” (link to another scene—for some reason, all of the sudden, I can’t embed videos?).
Putting fake memories into them—the sort of memories they might get sentimental over near the end of their very short lives, as in the rooftop scene—would kind of defeat the purpose of the abbreviated lifespan to begin with, wouldn’t it?
Again, Rachel was special: Tyrell wanted her to believe she was human and to respond as one emotionally. With the Nexus 6 replicants, they explicitly, per the text of the film, wanted to avoid this and gave them 4-year lifespans to prevent them from developing such attachments. Guess they should have gone with 3 years and 11 months…