Bladerunner - I missed the hints? (Spoilers)

[ianzin]

Apologies in advance to all the true fans and knowledgeable people, be gentle with me, but… why is he called a ‘blade runner’? In the context of the movie, what has this phrase to do with eliminating rogue replicants? Is this ever explained anywhere?

[Terminus_Est]

A blade runner is the term for a person [ha!] who retires replicants. The origin of the name is unexplained (nor does it appear in the book).

[Johnny_L.A]

@Terminus Est

The origin of the name is unexplained (nor does it appear in the book).

From Wiki:

When Scott noted Deckard’s line of work needed a new name, Fancher found a cinema treatment by William S. Burroughs for Alan E. Nourse’s novel The Bladerunner (1974), entitled Blade Runner (a movie). Scott liked it and Deeley obtained the rights to the titles, but Scott soon considered Blade Runner a working title for the film and wanted to find something more “commercial”. (Note: Some editions of Nourse’s novel use the two-word spacing Blade Runner, as does the Burroughs book.)

[Dangerosa]

@CalMeacham

Scott’s recent interview, linked above, re-iterates the claim that Deckard was supposed to be a replicant from the start. But, again, therre’s nothing to drive you to that conclusion in the flick as released, despite his claim that the others said “Isn’t it obvious?”. No. Why would it be?
Show me a single review from the 1982 release that even suggests this possibility. Or anything from Scott at that time that says “You people are all missing the REAL point of my film!”

I wrote a paper on Blade Runner between 1984 and 1988 when I was majoring in film. By the time I wrote the paper, the “was he or wasn’t he a replicant” was an important thematic question (I was more interested in rape or not rape in the paper - and rain - Ridley Scott was really into rain at that point in his career). I believe, however, this was post first “director’s cut.”

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@CarnalK

This was touched on in the recent thread on the Blade Runner “Final Cut” a couple days back. (look for Stranger on a Train’s post). There’s a little controversy on whether that alternate plot point “fits”. It sure never did for me.

Wow, I’m noticed. Thanks!

Regarding the Deckard is or is not a replicant discussion, I have to agree with what Chronos said:

@Chronos

Am I the only one who thinks that Deckard being a human or Deckard being a replicant diminishes the movie? The whole point, as I see it, is that you can’t tell whether Deckard (or any other character in the movie) is “real” or not… Even people hate and fear the replicants, and there’s this huge infrastructure to hunt them down, there’s really no fundamental difference between them: The replicants are human.

Exactly. Whether the replicants are manufactured or not, they have the same desire for connection, the same fears about mortality, the same longing for freedom and self-determination. “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.” The replicants aren’t brutal psychopaths; they’re victims of a society which views them as machinery, even as it endows them (albeit despite their attempt to deny them a legacy) with the intellectual capability to question and dream. The replicants are human; so human, it takes an extensive autoposy to distiniguish them. And yet, they’re treated like slaves, or worse; to be destroyed if they even dare to return to Earth.

From any practical standpoint, however, Deckard clearly isn’t a replicant, quite aside from the cinematic trickery of the Director’s Cut. He’s barely able to hold his own against regular humans, and against the least of the replicants his “retirements” are entirely luck and armorment, not skill. That he shares their detachment from humanity is recognition that it’s not just their manufacture that makes them different; Deckard, a hired killer, is just as much an outcast as “machines” that are built to execute. The irony, of sorts, is that the replicants are “better” humans–more capable, of greater morality, more intelligent and philosophical–than the people charged with hunting them down. Sans the predicated “four year lifespan”, they might be productive citizens for a lifetime. Certainly they seem to care more about themselves than their creator does of them. There’s an entire thematic notion that is lost by declaring Deckard to be a replicant. And as noted in the other thread, the idea that he is the “lost” replicant is bolsh; “Mary”, the fifth replicant, was lost in script revisions.

@Scumpup

I read it. I found it a rather dreary read and finished it only because I am a fan of the movie. To be frank, I’ve never read anything by Philip K. Dick that I enjoyed. Why he and Michael Moorcock have the fanbases they do mystify me. I find them both nearly unreadable.

I can’t believe you mention the same in the both sentance. To be certain, the writing of Philip K. Dick is something of an acquired taste; his envisioned worlds are bizarre, drug-fueled fantasies of disconnection, but he’s a skilled author asking very philosophical questions about the nature of reality. Films like The Matrix are a very watered down version of Dick’s speculations on reality and perception, and novels like The Man In The High Castle, Ubik, and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, are veritable classics. But to each his own. Just don’t throw him in the same bin as Moorcock.

Stranger