No he isn’t wrong. What you are saying here amounts to no more than your opinion about what would make the film better not what the film was.
If I make a film in which the main character dies at the end, then the main character dies at the end. That you think it would have “carried more significance” if the main character had lived, or would have been “a real fitting way to end the film” or “say a lot” is neither here nor there. The main character in my film died at the end. You want to make a film in which he doesn’t, then go ahead. Maybe it will be a film with more significance, with a more fitting ending, and which says a lot.
But the main character in my film died at the end. Get over it.
That’s why I said “in a way,” not to mention that it should be obvious that it’s just my opinion just like everyone else’s post here is their own opinion about the artist’s work. I thought my post was appropriate too considering the title and content of the original post.
If its clear in the film that the character dies, sure. If you make it ambiguous, though, sorry, your post facto explanation is not in the film, and does not need to be considered.
I was thinking about the film from a film noir POV, and thought the idea of Deckard being human works perfectly in that regard. However, your post made me realize that is the point of the film, not just to tell a futuristic noir tale.
The replicant’s are clearly not human and yet they behave like humans, so how are they different? Deckard kills, they kill. They value their lives, as does Deckard. They both treasure photos and memories. And if Deckard is a human or not, we the audience view the story through his eyes, and if we feel the same things so does that make him a human or just a good deception?
The Final Cut is my favorite version of the film and I like how the ending is left up for the viewer to decide, which ends up being a different film for different people. Everyone involved in that film really created something special.
Perhaps, but what needs even less to be considered is what would make the film better in someone’s opinion. There are heaps of crappy films. A film isn’t something merely because that is what it could be, and if it were that it would be better.
And Blade Runner’s ending is actually pretty clear based on what is in the film. Most of those that say it isn’t just want the ending to be something else, because they think the film would be better that way.
It’s how people perceive it, which is just what this thread is about.
The ending is clear based on what version of the film? There’s the workprint version, theatrical release, director’s cut, and the final cut. And it’s not explicit in the films that Deckard is a replicant so it’s up to interpretation.
Mary Harron says that the murders in American Psycho DID happen but she’s wrong. They didn’t happen. There are parts in the film that don’t match up. Like when Patrick Batemen is dragging a travel bag with a dead body in it, leaving a trail of blood behind, but in the next scene we see there is no blood trail at all. He also finds out that Paul Allen is still alive. Then again, the realtor for Paul Allen’s apartment, if it was even ever his, acts like something did happen.
Anyway, the murders were all in his head and it’s about he’s just as bland as everyone around, if not more, but on the inside he’s a mess. His secretary is the only one to realize that something is wrong with him when she finds his scribbles and drawings from his desk. All the money and status can’t fill the void he has within him.
In my opinion it’s a nice companion piece to the book, where it seems like he DID commit all those murders. To ways to view the same story.
Who says this thread is about perceptions? If you review the OP, it is quite emphatic. It’s about artists being “WRONG”. Further, I don’t necessarily give a fig for people’s perceptions. A lot of them make no sense. The question is whether those perceptions have any objective backing. If they don’t, saying the artist is “WRONG” is ludicrous and arrogant.
I’m not a great scholar of the Blade Runner versions but I think it’s the director’s cut which has the unicorn dream which iirc Scott has said was intended to (and in my view does) indicate that Deckard was a replicant. It would seem to me ludicrous to say he was “WRONG” about this, at least insofar as his own cut of the film is concerned.
Fanwanking alternate explanations of the unicorn dream are of course possible, but not particularly convincing.
IMHO one can take a strict textual attitude, or one can start to admit other external factors into one’s interpretation. If one takes a strict textual attitude then one needs to take into account the clues in the film and not fanwank them away because you don’t like them. If one starts to admit other external factors such as “what you think would make the film better” then you should also admit “what the director himself says” in which case IMHO the latter trumps the former.
And the OP specifically mentioned Ridley Scott and Blade Runner, as well as Pan’s Labyrinth. The films mentioned have stories that are left up to interpretation.
If they don’t make sense to you maybe you should ask them for more details or facts to back it up instead of acting arrogant and ludicrous and writing them off.
The unicorn scene is in the director’s cut and the final cut but the unicorn scene does not explicitly mean that Deckard is a replicant despite what Ridley Scott says. We can only go by what’s in the film, not what the artist says outside of it. Not to mention, regardless of whether or not he always intended for the unicorn dream sequence, either way it didn’t make it into the workprint-non-happy ending, or the theatrical release.
And despite what George Lucas claims, supposedly intended, and later inserted into the film, Han shot first.
I base that on what’s in the film. There’s enough in the film to support both interpretations, which is why I think he’s wrong to state “Deckard is a replicant,” since it can go either way, and in my opinion it weighs more to the side that he is human, although him being a replicant or ambiguous also works just as well, if not better in some aspect as scabpicker implied.
BigT’s comment about “there is no canon” reminds me of another one. Rich Burlew, creator of Order of the Stick, insists that he doesn’t have D&D stats written up for the characters. Maybe that’s true, and he’s just playing it all by instinct… but if that’s so, then his D&D instincts are sufficiently well-developed as to be the functional equivalent of written stats. With as much information as he gives and we can derive from what we see them do, it’s extremely rare for the readers to find any inconsistencies.
Personally, I suspect that he really does have stats written down, but that he wants to retain the freedom to tweak and retcon them without the readers complaining, and so he says that he doesn’t.
Well, it’s a discussion about art. What did you think it would be about?
I favor that interpretation myself, because I think the idea of a person learning that he’s not real is more interesting than the idea of a person learning to be nice to a robot. But the evidence for it is all inferential. The unicorn, for example, does not need to have a literal meaning in the story. It could be purely symbolic, with no actual plot significance.
Well, that’s a matter of perception, isn’t it? Apparently, a lot of people do find it convincing, otherwise this wouldn’t be a twenty year controversy.
That’s all pretty arbitrary. Why should I abide by any of it? We’re talking about watching a movie, not playing a football match. We don’t need “rules” about how we can watch it. Watch it in whatever way makes you like it the most. That’s all that matters. Why should someone be required to subscribe to an interpretation of a work that substantially lowers their enjoyment of it? What’s the use of that?
I half suspect that Burlew is telling the literal truth when he claims he doesn’t have the stats written down. Instead, he has them typed up on his computer.
If they created a replicant to hunt other replicants why give Deckard the memory that he’s retired? If he’s made to be more human than human there’s always the possibility he will refuse to come out of retirement despite the threats they give him. Why make him so vulnerable mentally and physically that he gets the shakes, and drinks so heavily?
“Bryant seems to I need ya, Deck. This is a bad one, the worst yet. I need the old blade runner, I need your magic.”
“You could learn from this guy, Gaff. He’s a goddamned one-man slaughterhouse, that’s what he is. Four more to go!”
“Drink some for me, huh, pal?”
There’s no hint or clue that Bryant is not sincere in what he’s saying. He gives the impression that he’s worked with Deckard before and for a considerable amount of time. Bryant also doesn’t seem like that clever a man to be able to fake that kind of repertoire so convincingly. Compare it to unbelievable way Deckard was trying to fool Zhora.
Replicants are illegal on Earth after some of them went rogue and started a mutiny off-world. Why would they allow them to be on the police force or have them mix freely with the public?
He administers the VK test and knows what to look for and what responses are wrong. If himself lacks empathy for certain questions how would he recognize a lack of empathy in others?
The unicorn sequence could be a memory or dream implant of Rachel’s that he knew of like her other implants and was recalling or thinking about it.
When he finds the origami unicorn Gaff left outside his apartment he picks it up, followed by him remembering Gaff’s dialogue “It’s too bad she won’t live but then again who does.” Deckard nods understandingly and proceeds to leave with Rachel. It looks more like he understands that Gaff (who must also be up to date on Rachels memories and history) knows the now-illegal Rachel is with him but that he’s either giving them a head start or that he’s allowing them to flee.
If instead it lets Deckard know that Gaff is privy to his private memories or dreams and therefore they must be fake meaning he’s a replicant, then he appears to accept this startling revelation much too quickly and too easy.
Whether the artist is “WRONG”. See the OP. Really, the OP is quite emphatic. Sure, perhaps it should be about perceptions and opinions, but I didn’t write the OP.
There is a dance that I see performed in Cafe Society continually. We could perhaps call it the Cafe Society Two Step. It goes like this: Poster A first steps firmly forward saying something very emphatically about a work of art, as a statement of truth. Poster A enjoys the rhetorical impact of the certainty and confidence of their statement. Then Poster B steps forward calling out Poster A as stating something with no rational basis, at which point Poster A steps firmly back while singing the “it was just my opinion” song.
I’m not saying there has to be rigid rules about appreciation of art. However, unless the word “WRONG” is to be deprived of all meaning, one cannot say someone is “WRONG” about a work of art without having some framework as to what is right and what is not.
Sure. It could all be a complete co-incidence. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink…
You say that the twenty year controversy is indicative of its substance. The twenty year controversy has a lot of reasons behind it. Key I think is that the first version of the film was more ambiguous and the director didn’t say anything at first. This lead to a lot of emotional investment in a point of view that was contradicted by the director’s cut, which has in my opinion lead to a lot of people keeping a controversy alive past it being rational to do so.
As to point one the detective coming out of retirement is a standard cop storyline and doesn’t necessarily mean a thing other than that it adds drama. As to drinking and shaking, the replicants have all sorts of defects. They are experimental. That’s kind of the point. Why does Rachel even exist? What is the point of her emotional stuff? And there’s no doubt she’s a replicant, right?
As to point two, you are pinning your argument on a characterisation of Bryant’s acting skills. It’s seriously weak stuff.
As to point three, so what? Things change and you read about the police doing illegal things every day.
As to point four, how about because he was given the correct and incorrect answers? I mean seriously, dude.
As to point five, this is complete fanwank. You are making up something for which there is not an iota of actual evidence. You are being given a clue in a story and instead of taking it you are choosing to find a way to explain it away. Your choice, of course.
As to point six your first paragraph is irrelevant. I agree with your interpretation but it simply doesn’t have any relevance to the question at hand. As to your second paragraph, the discussion is about whether Deckard was a replicant, not whether he knew he was. He may well not have realised the implication of the unicorn.
Really, you are given a big bold brassy clue and you are choosing to explain it away. Whatever, but your choice to do so doesn’t come even close to providing a basis for saying Ridley Scott was in any sense wrong.
I provided examples of why Scott is wrong. There’s nothing in the film to definitively say that Deckard is a replicant, and even though Scott says Deckard is a replicant, the material leaves it ambiguous enough that it can go either way.
Nothing you provided came even close to being examples of why Scott is “wrong”. Your points, to the extent they make any sense at all, are based on highly subjective judgment calls. They could never be sufficient to say Scott is “wrong”.
So now we’re supposed to disregard what happens in the actual movie as something meaningless?
Except for the fact that the defects in them is primarily the reason why they are not allowed on Earth.
She’s an experimental prototype that not given a gun and assigned to killing. She’s not tasked with anything serious like hunting down replicants posing as humans.
To you it’s weak stuff because you want so strongly to believe Deckard is a replicant. But there’s no hint that Bryant is faking his experience with Deckard.
No but considering that their job is to uphold the law it lends more credence to that they would obey the law.
Because if he were a replicant he would question WHY certain answers were incorrect.
And there is no evidence that says it’s a dream, memory or recollection exclusive to Deckard.
If he does realize the implication of the unicorn because he nods while looking at it and remembering Gaff’s words.