Blade Runner 2
- Thread starter WarpFactorZ
- Start date
What film are you talking about? Because Blade Runner is considered a classic.
You're pulling my leg.
Not even remotely.
You'd think a guy named Deckerd would appreciate Blade Runner.
If Deckard is a replicant, which makes more sense?
1. To deal with the group of escaped skin jobs, the Blade Runner Unit gets a new replicant who's weaker than the models he has to hunt down, who has implanted memories of having been a Blade Runner but also having quit the job out of disgust, and who has memories of hating his boss Bryant, all of this making him reluctant to get back on the job. Why not just give him memories of being a happy, well-adjusted, successful blade runner?
Or...
2. Deckard's a replicant unaware of his true status whose incept date was well before the movie begins, so his memories of being a blade runner are real and his conflicts with Bryant are real. But he was allowed to quit and live life as a normal human being, despite the fact that "retirement" for replicants, as explained in the film's opening crawl, is being killed. Replicants are not allowed to live on Earth, and as an older model he's not much use against a Nexus-6. Why let him live? What's the use of keeping him around?
1. To deal with the group of escaped skin jobs, the Blade Runner Unit gets a new replicant who's weaker than the models he has to hunt down, who has implanted memories of having been a Blade Runner but also having quit the job out of disgust, and who has memories of hating his boss Bryant, all of this making him reluctant to get back on the job. Why not just give him memories of being a happy, well-adjusted, successful blade runner?
Or...
2. Deckard's a replicant unaware of his true status whose incept date was well before the movie begins, so his memories of being a blade runner are real and his conflicts with Bryant are real. But he was allowed to quit and live life as a normal human being, despite the fact that "retirement" for replicants, as explained in the film's opening crawl, is being killed. Replicants are not allowed to live on Earth, and as an older model he's not much use against a Nexus-6. Why let him live? What's the use of keeping him around?
All right, let's play devil's advocate here and split the difference.
3. Deckard's a Tyrell Corp. plant, a replicant unaware of his true status. He's weaker than the models he has to hunt down, but more durable than he knows (able to take immense amounts of punishment, like Leon). His memory implants all came from the real Deckard, including his memories of being a Blade Runner and his conflicts with Bryant. The LAPD, when they pick Deckard up at the beginning of the film, have no clue he's not the original Deckard; the implants play perfectly to that. Deckard, like Rachael, 'is an experiment - nothing more.' When Tyrell is killed, the truth is revealed in his computer logs (just after Bryant sends Deckard to Sebastian's house) and Gaff is ordered to take Deckard and Rachael down. He either sympathizes with Deckard at this point and lets them go, or just gives them a headstart to make the hunt more interesting (as the 1981 draft had it).
3. Deckard's a Tyrell Corp. plant, a replicant unaware of his true status. He's weaker than the models he has to hunt down, but more durable than he knows (able to take immense amounts of punishment, like Leon). His memory implants all came from the real Deckard, including his memories of being a Blade Runner and his conflicts with Bryant. The LAPD, when they pick Deckard up at the beginning of the film, have no clue he's not the original Deckard; the implants play perfectly to that. Deckard, like Rachael, 'is an experiment - nothing more.' When Tyrell is killed, the truth is revealed in his computer logs (just after Bryant sends Deckard to Sebastian's house) and Gaff is ordered to take Deckard and Rachael down. He either sympathizes with Deckard at this point and lets them go, or just gives them a headstart to make the hunt more interesting (as the 1981 draft had it).
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That would work...if any of it was in the film. They didn't shoot the 'Dead Tyrell is a copy of the original' scene, made no allusions to Rachael thinking she actually is Tyrell's niece (no mention of her surname, unlike the Rosen family in the book) as opposed to just having a sort of patchwork of memories. I dont think even in the 81 draft the head start was about making a hunt more interesting...gaff couldn't kill Rachael, even if he wanted to, until after Deckard explicitly hasn't killed her (his assignment is to retire her also remember) which is t clear until after they leave his apartment.
The more it's discussed, the more I look into it for the umpteenth time, the more I think the Deckarep theory is just an after the fact reading that gained traction as publicity for the Directors Cut back in the nineties. Neither writer on the final script had anything in there, there's the shakiest of evidence for it, whereas all the evidence is strong in the other direction, and it just makes more narrative sense. Some of the 'confirmation' evidence, particularly from the unmade endings, is really people not grasping a metaphor in a film full of them.
I remember the scene where Leon very quickly wipes the floor with Deckard. I don't know if I'd count five hits as immense amounts of punishment. Deckard puts up no effective resistance at all, and only lives through it due to someone else helping. He's also taken down very easily by Zhora, who is also only moments away from killing Deckard.
^^^ (Again playing devil's advocate) Given that Leon can 'lift 400 lb. atomic loads all day and night,' ONE punch should have been enough to pulp a human's skull. Just saying.
Yep.
With the movie we actually have, Deckard being a replicant requires almost as much willing -- hell, eager -- suspension of disbelief as most of the Master's goofy schemes in Doctor Who or the average Brannon Braga mindfuck episode of TNG. Entertaining enough until you start thinking about the chain of events required for the plot to work.
You also have to want Blade Runner to have a cheap twist ending and have no payoff for all the story's focus on empathy and humanity. If Deckard's human, the fact that his life is saved by a replicant is the culmination of the story's repeated emphasis on how real humans have lost a lot of their basic empathy and how they really have created something more human than human in a way they never planned. They don't care that their creations suffer and feel pain. They don't care much about each other, either. The only really positive, empathetic, sympathetic human character, JF Sebastian, has his own genetic death sentence, and even he gets along better with his artificial friends than any actual people.
Would Bryant pass a VK test? Would Tyrell? We're not supposed to doubt that they're biologically and legally human, but they're both deficient in ordinary human decency.
There's irony in Deckard's realization that replicants can be, emotionally and empathetically, more human than human -- but if he's a replicant, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything that he's an asshole to Rachel for a lot of the movie, because he doesn't know any better. It doesn't matter that Batty saves his life, because it's just one replicant saving another.
Which version tells a more powerful story: one where a victim of an unjust system decides the system is unjust, or one where a beneficiary of an unjust system decides the system is unjust and the role he's played in it is something to be ashamed of?
That's if it his intention to kill him. From memory, the first hits are all Deckard being thrown up against things, and then Leon slaps him a few times. From the dialogue, I'd say Leon wasn't trying to kill him until that last moment just before Rachel blows his brains out. Before that, he's making a point.
Either way it requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Whether Deckard is human or not is irrelevant to all the other plot holes. Why does Holden give the Voight-Kampff test to Leon? They already know he is a replicant. They have his file. Why does Deckard do that fake act with Zhora and doesn't retire her immediately? He also has seen her file and knows she's a "skin-job".
Hmm... yeah. But it gives the impression that a blade runner is a cop investigating people and not just an assassin. If all they had to do was shoot anyone they believed was a replicant, the movie would be a lot shorter and uglier, and Deckard would be a less sympathetic character.