Is Deckard a Replicant?

[Rii]

In the Final Cut (what I thought was the Director's Cut, in another thread,) Deckard is, unambiguously, a replicant.


Deckard is very much like a Nazi who, after a Jew spares his life, is told by a fellow Nazi he is a Jew so that he can escape with his new found Jewish lover, instead of murdering her. This is a boring story with zero emotional interest, especially since Deckard is burnt out murderer.

Since all the main human characters (which would be only Tyrell and Sebastian!) are murdered by replicants, all of which murderers are themselves dead by movie's end, the moral of the story is that inhumans who murder humans deserve to die, while those who don't can live. This is also trite and therefore boring. And Batty, being an inhuman monster, does not symbolically represent Man meeting his Creator, no matter the dialogue in his confrontation with Tyrell.

A lame argument has been made that Deckard being a replicant doesn't undermine the theme that can be expressed as "Actions makes us human." Batty does not transcend his replicant nature by saving a human enemy. Deckard does not transcend his inhuman nature by saving a replicant. The most "human" character by this standard of actions is Gaff, who saves his supposed enemies by tipping off Deckard and Rachel. Which is manifestly ridiculous, and also bad writing. In that case, Gaff should have been a main character. In short, Blade Runner the Final Cut is thematically empty. That unicorn horn spears the movie's superficial meaning and guts it like a trout.

Deckard is a replicant also is dreadful plotting. Glowing eyes indicating replicants means every scene featuring the V-K test was pointless gibberish. Programming replicant Deckard to think he was retired and had to be strongarmed into returning is senseless. Making Deckard weak meant that he would fail, as indeed he did. It was only Rachel who saved him from Zhora.

Replicant Deckard is also bad characterization. Leon had a photograph collection documenting his brief life (which is exactly why it could provide clues.) Rachel had photographs falsely documenting her faked childhood. Deckard had very old photographs from our time or before, unlike Rachel or Leon, for no discernible purpose at all, except a dumbass notion of all replicants keep photos. By which standard we'd have to suspect every fifteen year old with a digital camera! Tyrell must know that Deckard is a replicant, being one of the experimental models with memories, but he isn't interested in Deckard, the one he hasn't supervised closely, but in whether Rachel passes a test he could adminster himself.

In short, the case for claiming that Deckard is a human in the Theatrical Edition rests solely on the fact that replicant Deckard is a dumb ass "idea" foisted on the film by the director. The Theatrical edition can be saved by simply assuming the red eyes were a mistake. Those who can overlook a mistake in favor of the whole thing can still regards Blade Runner as a good movie.

Those who parrot conventional wisdom that the director is the creator can amuse themselves analyzing the thematic and stylistic developments in the Ridley Scott oeuvre (in addition to Blade Runner, that's Alien; Legend; Someone to Watch Over Me; Black Rain; Thelma and Louise; 1492; Gladiator; Black Hawk Down; Kingdom of Heaven; American Gangster; Body of Lies) They round off the exercise by explaining how, when a powerful star refuses to take direction or a director shoots many, many hours of film that the film editor turns into a movie, the director is still the creator.

If they manage to complete these simple exercises , they are left with a movie that, bereft of thematic weight, is alternately plodding and obscure, then melodramatic and obscure. And with lots of campy scenes of Harrison Ford getting his ass kicked by women. That great truth, that scifi is dumb shit for people unashamed to admit to low tastes is reaffirmed.

PS Generally, important questions should be answered in dramas. The trick is knowing what is important. Deckard's humanity is important, why Deckard keeps his grandma's photo collection on his piano isn't.
The Theatrical Edition's "happy" ending falls into the latter category. We do not know whether in fact Deckard and Rachel succeed in escaping or if Deckard is just hoping. But whether they do escape is thematically unimportant, so it can be left unanswered. None of us know how long we have, after all. If the sentimental want to accept the ending at face value, that's still true.

If you'd kept up for another few paragraphs I just might've had to kill myself.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Perhaps Saul was thinking of Legend, but that was filmed after Blade Runner, so I guess not.

ETA ... if you believe the story that the sequence was rescued from the cutting room floor.

 

[Deckerd]

The director counts for everything -- the actor for nothing.

Oh I doubt that. Especially since Ridley Scott (hallowed be His Name) only came out with this guff years later to promote some new edits. If you ask any competent actor he'll remember the the brief. If HF said he was not briefed to be a robot then I trust his professionalism. I love this film and the veneers of fable it has accrued over the years are a testament to its greatness. But let's not get carried away with whose recollections have more weight than others.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I prefer him to be human and always have no matter how fashionable it is for him to not be. To me it's more satisfying that through the course of the film and his dealings with the replicants that he regains the humanity he had been missing. I don't see narratively what is to be gained by him being a replicant.

 

[Kirkman1987]

I prefer him to be human and always have no matter how fashionable it is for him to not be. To me it's more satisfying that through the course of the film and his dealings with the replicants that he regains the humanity he had been missing. I don't see narratively what is to be gained by him being a replicant.

This is my thinking. I don't see the point of him being a replicant outside of a twist ending type thrill.

That said, the evidence is there.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The director counts for everything -- the actor for nothing.

Oh I doubt that. Especially since Ridley Scott (hallowed be His Name) only came out with this guff years later to promote some new edits. If you ask any competent actor he'll remember the the brief. If HF said he was not briefed to be a robot then I trust his professionalism. I love this film and the veneers of fable it has accrued over the years are a testament to its greatness. But let's not get carried away with whose recollections have more weight than others.

The movie is the director's artistic vision and his alone -- it doesn't matter what the actor says afterwards. The director could have deliberately mislead him to get a certain type of performance. If the studio or anyone else dicks with the content of a movie, a director is perfectly entitled to ask for it to be labelled as directed by "Alan Smithee". I personally think Ridley Scott changed his mind about making it obvious that Deckard was a replicant in the period between the original theatrical version and the director's cut, and then retrospectively blamed someone else.

 

[Hyperspace05]

The director counts for everything -- the actor for nothing.

Oh I doubt that. Especially since Ridley Scott (hallowed be His Name) only came out with this guff years later to promote some new edits. If you ask any competent actor he'll remember the the brief. If HF said he was not briefed to be a robot then I trust his professionalism. I love this film and the veneers of fable it has accrued over the years are a testament to its greatness. But let's not get carried away with whose recollections have more weight than others.

No new material was shot for the Directors cut or Ultimate edition. All the material was all there from the beginning, even if some of it was cut from the theatrical release. Scott did not change his mind. You just need to look at the multitude of clues throughout the film to see that he had a clear train of thought.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

It's not a matter of what's "fashionable" - it's what's in the film, and what the director put into the film. With the original release you can shrug his intent off if you like, but in the Final Cut Deckard is shown to be a replicant - as was intended from the beginning.

 

[Harvey]

In the Final Cut (what I thought was the Director's Cut, in another thread,) Deckard is, unambiguously, a replicant.

The 1992 Director's Cut and the 2007 Final Cut are essentially the same film. They both include the unicorn dream, drop the voice over, and eliminate the happy ending. The director's cut, however, was not produced with extensive involvement from Ridley Scott. He dictated these broad changes, but was not around during the editing to finesse the cut to his satisfaction.

Thus, the Final Cut shortens some shots (which had been made longer in the theatrical version to accomodate the voice over, but left at that length in the Director's Cut when the voice over was removed) and makes dozens of subtle, technical alterations.

 

[Harvey]

No new material was shot for the Directors cut or Ultimate edition. All the material was all there from the beginning, even if some of it was cut from the theatrical release. Scott did not change his mind. You just need to look at the multitude of clues throughout the film to see that he had a clear train of thought.

Except for some new shots of Zhora's face, filmed to replace a stunt double's face in two scenes for the Final Cut, and some new footage of the mouths of Ben Ford and another actor to make the image match the dubbing in one other scene, that's correct. Note that the take used for the unicorn dream is different in the Director's Cut and the Final Cut. Editors couldn't locate Scott's chosen take of the scene in 1992, but managed to find an alternate take to use instead.

The notion that the unicorn was taken from Legend has long been debunked. The unicorn was one of the last pick-up shots on the schedule of Blade Runner.

 

[MyCylon]

Let me begin by saying that I think it doesn't matter what views Scott, Ford or anyone else who worked on "Blade Runner" hold as regards Deckard's 'humanity' or lack thereof. It's certainly interesting to learn of their views and gain insights into the creative process. But I think "Blade Runner", as a work of art, speaks for itself. It is between the beholder and the movie to determine what is 'true'.

Agreed and disagreed. I think author intent is important to consider when analyzing any creative work. In this case, the author or auteur is Scott, especially considering his nature as a very involved director.
But, sometimes a creative work takes on a life of its own. IMO, I can't think of any that would fall into this special category at the moment, but I'm sure I could come up with some eventually.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a special category at all. I’d consider it the norm, really. Though I will say that some works are certainly more powerful in that regard than others. I suppose to me it comes down to two consideration:

- A director might intend for a scene to be sad but I might simply find it hilarious (an exaggerated example but you know what I mean). His intentions have no bearing on this experience of the scene. Note: This doesn't necessarily mean he's an awful director. It might simply mean that his life's experience is so different from mine that are responses to certain situations or scenes are diametrically opposed.

- It is very possible for works to be passed on over time but information about their author to be lost. Personally, I think this in no way diminishes the value these works might have to me as a beholder.

So as a consequence, I feel that works of art, well, must, really, speak for themselves. Having said that, information about the author and the time the work was created can provide you with greater insights and allow you to interpret things in a different light. After all, times change, and your reading of a scene, for example, might be completely different from what was intended if you don’t account for the time it was made.

Nonetheless, I find that my own experience of going into an art gallery, for example, is that I like to simply approach the pictures without much prior knowledge. Some of them ‘speak’ to me (for lack of a better expression), others do not. There is so much in a painting to appreciate and enjoy (color combination, contrasts, proportions, motifs, etc.) that works without knowing the slightest thing about the painter. And I think the same thing is or can be true of a movie.
I don’t know if I’m making my point very well here or whether I fully grasped your approach to this topic.

While I've never noticed that in that scene, the scenes between Deckard and Bryant have always struck me as strange. Bryant seems to have this stiff attitude, a sort of nervous look in his eyes.

I think that’s probably true. He never really seems at ease with Deckard, does he?

Btw. it's been a while since I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". But I remember coming away thinking it was by no means certain that Deckard was human being. I would say that, yes, it was certainly very likely. But as is often the case with PKD's stories, very little is truly certain.

It's been a few months since I read it, but Rick gives himself the VK Test with another man reading him the results and he seemed satisfied with the readings to me.

I suppose that degree of removal, plus he would be a little bias if he actually was an andy, causes some doubt... Seems like a very minor doubt to me, personally.

Hmm, I really must read the book again. It’s been too long ago. I certainly remember not coming away from the book and feeling confident he was an android as I do with the film. I suppose to some extent it’s easy to suspect something isn’t what it seems in a fictional world where so much isn’t ‘real’ anymore.

 

[Extrocomp]

Has anyone actually seen the documentary where Ridley Scott says that Deckard is a replicant? Is it on any of the DVDs?

 

[Harvey]

There's a variety of interviews on the internet (and in the book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner) in which he makes that claim. I'm not sure about the DVDs, but the features are so extensive that I would be rather surprised if it wasn't brought up more than once.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

It's not a matter of what's "fashionable" - it's what's in the film, and what the director put into the film. With the original release you can shrug his intent off if you like, but in the Final Cut Deckard is shown to be a replicant - as was intended from the beginning.

I've never seen the Final Cut and I grew up with the other but I'm not in denial over Ridley's intent these days (and maybe indeed from the beginning). I like my interpretation for the reasons I stated above but even if you like him as a replicant I think it was a lot more interesting when it was less cut-and-dried.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Not only has Scott stated unambiguously that Deckard was a replicant, he doesn't seem to understand why there's any confusion about it. The way he talks about it, anyone who thinks he's human must be a complete idiot.

Personally, I think the novelty of having the hero turn out to be a machine ruins what should be a story about a guy rediscovering his own humanity.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Not only has Scott stated unambiguously that Deckard was a replicant, he doesn't seem to understand why there's any confusion about it. The way he talks about it, anyone who thinks he's human must be a complete idiot.

Personally, I think the novelty of having the hero turn out to be a machine ruins what should be a story about a guy rediscovering his own humanity.

QFT. Simple to fix though by ignoring or editing out the unicorn sequence. I think Ridley Scott is somewhat of an idiot savant director. He produces fabulous images onscreen but I'm not entirely convinced that he is in conscious control of his talent when it comes to storytelling.

 

[Deckerd]

Not only has Scott stated unambiguously that Deckard was a replicant, he doesn't seem to understand why there's any confusion about it. The way he talks about it, anyone who thinks he's human must be a complete idiot.

Personally, I think the novelty of having the hero turn out to be a machine ruins what should be a story about a guy rediscovering his own humanity.

He's delighted there's confusion about it. You don't seem to grasp that whatever a director says, it's what the audience think that's important. A lot of you seem to think his word is sacrosanct but from the length of this thread, it manifestly isn't. There's almost a religious element to this slavish devotion. You're all funny.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

He's delighted there's confusion about it. You don't seem to grasp that whatever a director says, it's what the audience think that's important. A lot of you seem to think his word is sacrosanct but from the length of this thread, it manifestly isn't. There's almost a religious element to this slavish devotion. You're all funny.

That's probably 'cause we mostly only have one X chromosome. I tend to ignore Ridley Scott's pronouncements as his artistic sense seems to be channeled from some Platonic realm, and bypasses his cognative functions.

 

[Deckerd]

Alien and Blade Runner were pinnacle of his achievement IMO. He's never done anything that approaches them. If he had wanted to make the blade runners replicants, there would have been no argument about it, he would have filmed it that way and then cut it to satisfy the company. We would have had an awful lot more than nebulous hints. What he added is just tinkering to fuel the controversy.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

No love for "Thelma & Louise", "Gladiator", "Kingdom of Heaven" or "Black Hawk Down"?