It was Sebastian that found the spider and Pris that pulled off the legs.
Actually, Deckard does have empathy for replicants, something which Rachel helped develop in an attempt to get him to give up hunting replicants.
That empathy test always struck me a being a little haphazard. Many humans have no empathy for animals at all and quite cheerfully abuse them for fun or sport. By that test the Runners woud end up wiping out half the world’s population!
None of this ever made sense to me. Why would a replicant " happily while away an hour or so torturing an animal to death"? Why would such a feature have been built into them? Another idiotic flaw in the story is the short life-span of the replicants. Why spend that kind of time and money creating these creatures for such a short time? A replicant must have been enormously expensive to create.
I liked the movie a lot, but if I stop to think about whether any of it made sense? Not so much.
I’d thought that as well. If humans naturally winced at the thought of hurting animals, then we’d all be vegans (except for a few lucky people with cows that they lavished with love) and nobody would hunt. The fact that the humans in the universe of the book/movie didn’t want to hurt animals had more to do with their culture and the high value it placed on animals than human empathy.
He’s detained on a mysterious island.
I think a lot of the watching depends on which version you’ve watched. The theatrical version is nowhere near as good as the final cut.
It was interesting listening to James Edward Olmos talk about his role on Bladerunner and the origami pieces he made and what impact he felt his role had on the film.
I will say that the urgency was just predicated on the fact that they were on Earth and that was forbidden, as opposed to anything else.
I do think it’s interesting after hearing some of you talk about the differences between the book (which I haven’t read) when you think about how much value the replicants place on memories since they have a disregard for the empathy discussed.
The final question from the novella wasn’t really a question; after running through the entire test and not getting a conclusive answer, the deal-breaker was that Deckard pointed to his leather briefcase and pointed out that it was covered in 100% human baby-hide.
No response.
At that point, I don’t much care whether the failee was a replicant or not. Retire the fucker.
Well, they also ask questions like “tell me about your mother.” Anyway, if a Bladerunner put you through the test and you failed, but you knew you were human, as long as you didn’t run they could probably investigate you further and figure out you’re just a jerk.
Also, they seem to keep accountability of replicants, and know when one’s missing, so it would be unusual to expect large numbers of replicants running around. Friends and family and employers could vouch they’ve known you longer than four years.
I always found the miscount annoying as well. They finally fixed that bit of dialogue in The Final Cut, released last year (now two got fried instead of one), along with adding in a few extra special effects and massaging a few other bits and pieces.
It is a big deal in the society to have a care for an animal. IIRC it is a requirement either by law or by religion or both.
The thing is, animals have been gone for so long that the people don’t really know about them. They keep them on the roof of the apartment. One neighobor has a HORSE up there. Deckard thinks it is a real horse. He has no idea that a real horse would need a couple of acres of land and not 6 x 8 foot pen on top of an apartment building.
One scene from the book that really disturbs me is Deckard ends up at a different police station after doing a replicant. These cops have never heard of the VK Test. In his mind Deckard deicdes that all the cops there must be replicants.
Although I don’t like the Deckard-is-a-replicant idea (nor Ridley Scott’s sudden assertion that that was his idea all along), I actually like the air of mystery that line gives the film. Where was the sixth replicant? It doesn’t correspond to anything from the book that I can remember, but it’s the kind of random, paranoia-mongering detail I can imagine in a Philip K. Dick novel.
Another plot hole. If the replicants were so identical to humans that you need special pyschological tests, then they couldn’t pull eggs out of boiling water without being burned. If their skin was that tough, you could tell by a simple DNA test, taking a small sample or even a drop of boiling water.
I always just took that to mean that Batty was a bad-ass… 
You could do it, if you wanted to.
It was Pris who pulled the egg from the water
A DNA test seems the simplest solution, but replicants were designed, among other things, to be assassins off-world. You wouldn’t want your assassin replicant to be easily pegged by a DNA test.
Anyway, Deckard knew what his replicants looked like. He didn’t have to do a DNA test or anything. You find one, it tries to kill you, you kill it.
But skin that was immune to boiling water would have to have much different DNA.
And while you’re waiting for the lab to get back to you with the results, the replicant rips your lungs out.
The boiling water thing seems more like pain tolerance. Do we know for sure if their skin is actually immune? I don’t see why their DNA would have to be detectably different. Lots of people have different tolerances to pain, bruising, sun exposure, etc.
I’m not sure how to fanwank sticking your hand in liquid nitrogen though.
Was it quick? I don’t remember the scene. But anyone can pull an egg from boiling water with a bare hand, the trick is not getting burned. Being that the direction of the heat flow is toward the hand, you might do it really quickly and avoid ruining your hand. Something for mythbusters, not home experiment. Now freezing in liquid nitrogen, a human is going to destroy their hand no matter how fast.
It occurs to me the liquid nitrogen might not have been. There were eyeballs soaking in it that ostensibly someone might want to use, so it was probably some other super cold cryogenic type liquid which again, comes down to pain tolerance rather than massive tissue damage.