What’s the point other than a clever thing for the audience to figure out. IMHO…Batty rescuing a human is much more important than the trick of Deckard being a replicant. It’s the ultimate expression of humanity. Batty is more than human in many ways.
Now the other things…rather than give Blade Runner three threads.
“Movies that today would have the audience screaming “RAPE!!!”” What then was just a noir moment. (Deckard not letting Rachel leave and making her ask to be sexually moved upon) Yes, I could argue that some point was being made about her not being human therefore she CANT have rights that humans have. But really I just think it was a noir thing.
Man… Sean Young. “Actors or actresses that didn’t get a fair break” She’s great in Cousins, and she’s great here. I don’t know what happened between her and James Young and don’t care about the Batman mess…she didn’t deserve to be blackballed.
Deckard being a replicant makes the movie a waste of time, as well as introducing several major plot holes.
And Sean Young was and to some degree still is remarkably do-able.
The first time I saw Bladerunner, it was in an ancient theater that had, well, issues. Like often having problems changing reels. There’d be clunks and the picture would stutter, then go black for a few seconds, then the next reel would come on at an angle and there’d be hammering as the gate was getting jammed into place.
My point? One of those events occurred as Tyrell is talking to Deckard, and we lost almost a minute of the movie. So even rewatching it at the same theater, I never even heard it proposed that Rachel was a replicant. I still contend it made it a more ambiguous, moody film.
And a different film from what everyone else saw… the “anti-director’s version”.
Let’s be honest; how many “director’s cuts” are better than the original? I can’t think of any. Movies are edited for a reason.
I still remember watching the cit scenes on the DVD version of “Pulp Fiction” and being impressed by Quentin Tarantino’s understanding of the moviemaking process; he introduced all the scenes, and in every case he said (in his manic manner) something to the effect of “I really love this scene, it’s so great, but cutting it out made it a better movie.” There was no “director’s cut” where Winston Wolf has a conversation with the dude who ran the wrecking yard. Great scene on its own, but Tarantino and Sally Menke decided it just didn’t advance the story, so kaboom, it’s out. The movie is what it is.
Any work of art has to be viewed on its own terms; a movie is what it is, a series of images and sounds directed at the viewer. As a viewer of “Blade Runner,” it simply makes no sense to me that Deckard is a replicant. It is not well established and it really doesn’t make a great deal of sense. As a twist, it adds nothing to the narrative and, as the OP points out, would actually significantly DETRACT from the film’s themes and characterizations. It’s really quite irrelevant what Ridley Scott said 20-25 years after he made the film.
Interesting idea for a thread. Though in this place, it has probably been done ten times already.
My answer to this: the “international version” of Leon: The Professional is a substantially better movie than the original, theatrical version: it adds over 20 minutes and some of the best scenes in the movie.
Surprised to see so may people agree. Usually the SD goes with the “is a Replicant” opinion. Must be early.
The fact that Deckard is “less human” than the replicants, while actually being a human, is the whole point of the film, IMO. Batty showed more compassion on the roof than Deckard showed in the whole film.
Then to go off and say that the film is a “stunt” film, a gotchya, turns it into a M. Night film, and not one of the good ones. Then there are those who say that EVERYONE on earth is a replicant. What would the point of that be? It makes it Cars, a sad film about sentient creatures who don’t know that they are created, that imitate their creators, and don’t know why.
One, at least. Aliens. The added scenes really do add to the story without being clunky.
A director’s cut of Wrath of Khan, adding in the cut scenes with Peter Preston, would be an improvement as well. Surprised that doesn’t exist, actually.
“Is Deckard a replicant?” is a great question. But “Yes” is not the correct answer. Neither is “No” the correct answer. The correct answer is “We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter”.
I’m just now watching these deleted/alternate scenes from Blade Runner for the first time. I hadn’t realized Harrison Ford had recorded narration for what feels like almost the entire movie. In some of these scenes, Deckard’s depression and self-loathing is far more apparent, not exactly features one would program in on purpose. There is one moment that introduced ambiguity - a bit in the scene on the rooftop after Batty saves Deckard and then dies. Gaff addresses the wounded Deckard: “You’ve done a man’s job, sir! But are you sure you are a man? It’s hard to tell who’s who around here!”
Even if I’d seen that in the initial release, I don’t think I would have concluded that Deckard might be a replicant, just that the replicants have gotten so realistic that “retiring” one is practically indistinguishable from killing a human.
There’s another scene - one of the original endings - when Deckard and Rachel escape to the north. They’re driving instead of flying, which I find a bit jarring but no matter. The dialog is cutesy-ambiguous, including Rachel saying “You know what else I think? That you and I were made for each other.”
As I see it, the major problem with Deckard being a replicant is the opening text, which as far as I know appears in all versions. “Replicants were declared illegal on Earth - under penalty of death. Special police squads - BLADE RUNNER UNITS - had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, and trespassing Replicant.”
Unless we want to call this narration unreliable, it establishes that replicants on Earth is considered a big no-no. Even if Deckard was a replicant who didn’t know that he was (a concept that is supposed to be new with the Rachel prototype), I don’t see him ever being allowed to roam the city armed and then, more implausibly, being allowed to retire in the conventional sense as opposed to being “retired” by another Blade Runner.
For extended-movie versions, I guess Aliens, Terminator 2, Star Trek 2: TWOK and Superman: the Movie all had scenes restored that helped clarify some plot issues and (especially for the first two) were cool and all, but none of them were strictly necessary.
Not to the answer, but to the “it doesn’t matter”. What’s the point of the film if it doesn’t matter? Then the film is just a lame shoot-em-up actioner, and not a very coherent one.
To have the characters of Rachel, Batty, Pris, and to a lesser extent, Zora and Leon, being believably human characters on one side, and the ostensibly human* characters Gaff and Bryant being soulless killers on the other, the side that Deckard falls on is important.
If everyone knew right from the beginning that Deckard was a replicant, then it is a totally different film. One about a tool being used, but a tool that can question its own use. It also depends on who knows Deckard is a replicant. If Bryant does then he is a hypocrite. Also, how long Deckard has been active is important - was he just made the day before? Then why does Bryant act like he knows and likes him? What purpose does that serve?**
If Tyrell does, what’s the point of the scene where he has Deckard give Rachel a V-K test? Could a replicant give a meaningful test. or would its non-humanness make the results invalid? Is the scene just Tyrell playing with his toys, as it were? Jerking them around for “fun”?
*assuming that they, too are not replicants
**Yes, I can create meaningful answers to these questions. But it is the filmmaker’s job to do that, not me. And they didn’t.
I agree with Chronos that the answer generally doesn’t matter in the context of the film, because none of them are soulless killers. Pretty much all of them are killers, even Rachel.
It doesn’t matter because the film isn’t asking who’s a soulless killer, it’s asking what makes us human. Both the natural and the synthetic ones behave with the same traits, one just has a shorter lifespan.
As I’ve said many, many times before. This movie only makes sense if he is a replicant.
It’s film noir. You are what you are chasing.
Unfortunately, Ridley was forced to water down the revelation so much that it blows by many people. But it was there in the script early on and never really eliminated. But the unicorn vision was later added back in to convince even those people.
Plot holes if Deckard is a replicant? Puhleeze. The movie is lousy with plot holes. They had pictures and other data on the escapees. Why was Holden doing the Voight-Kampff on Leon, especially like that? Why was Deckard being such a dweeb around Zhora? How did Roy know Deckard’s name? Etc.
There is a lot of silliness the anti-replicant crowd goes thru in their arguments. Take section 14 of the old USENET Blade Runner FAQ. E.g., the point about Deckard having an ex-wife? He does? We never see her. Maybe he has memory implants. Duh. Ridiculous arguments mostly. (The eye glow thing is the best argument, but that’s only indirect and partially explained. We never see Zhora’s eyes glow either.)
Note that this is a society that thinks that butterfly collecting kids are mentally unstable. Humans don’t kill. Replicants kill. Blade runners are created, given memories and sent out into the street to do a specific job. Complete with an otherwise useless handler.
I am in the camp that the movie makes no sense if Deckard *is *a replicant, because the message of the movie is that he *is *what he is chasing because *there is no difference *between humans and replicants. If it is replicants chasing replicants then the message is vitiated.
See the previous responses. The point of the film is not ‘We’re all people, kumbayah’. The point of the film is that Deckard is human, and yet he does not have the humanity of the replicants. This is not M. Night Shyamalan(-a-ding-dong), as someone said. This is Philip K. Dick. Remember that the book came out in 1968, which was a period that was big on social commentary. Actually, 1982 was pretty good for social commentary too. The film only makes sense if Deckard is human – unless it’s all just a setup for a cheap ‘Gotcha!’
In the book, Deckard was human. If Scott intended him to be a replicant, then he was suffering a serious loss of imagination.
Right off the bat, you’re wrong. Was Edmund O’Brien a killer (or a bit of plutonium) in* DOA*? Was Bogie a blackmailer and murderer in The Big Sleep? Yours is a complete misreadig of what noir is.
If said it before, and I’ll say it again. The reason Scott thinks Deckard is a replicant is because he completely misunderstood what the writers were telling him. It was NEVER in the script that Deckard was a replicant. It may be in the movie, yes, (depending on which side you like), but it was not in the script.
Yep, all plot holes. And they are still plot holes whether Deckard is a replicant or not!
There’s a lot of silliness the pro-replicant crowd goes through as well.
If it took a replicant to kill a replicant, and if everyone knew Deckard (and all Brade Runners, obviously) were replicants, they would tell them. What would be the point of not? What is gained by the deception?
Roy and company all knew what they were, and they still functioned, and killed, quite well. So would replicant blade runners.
Agreed. Even more convoluted is why would the police force supposedly deploy Deckard as a replicant Blade Runner, suppress his self-awareness, and as a weakened non-combat version that can be beat up by a generic pleasure model. Otherwise the movie seems to imply that a typical replicant knows that they are not human and is aware that their own implanted memories are false, even if they may still cling to old photos for psychological comfort. The movie makes a deliberate point of Rachel’s unawareness of her own inhumanity as being a revolutionary exception for a “matured” replicant.
