Fastest click ever. Bladerunner is a dream. The greatness of Bladerunner is the question not the answer. Knowing if he is or isn't a replicant wrecks the dream...it wakes you up.
I don't think so. Blade Runner is about what makes us human (having a will to live, emptions and a conscience, not your actual make-up or way of coming into being) and about slavery. Debating the question of whether Deckard was a replicant or not is fun to do, but not the core of the film, it is connected only inasmuch as how it influences the creators's intention for the viewers to recognise replicants as othered beings deserving of human rights. For Ty, Deckard's behaviour is a biological-human analogue of the clear replicant Leon and he feels Deckard being a replicant ruins that. To me, however, Deckard is the film's focus character whom the viewer roots for, so finding out that he is a replicant should give us a much stronger sense that replicants are indeed deserving of human rights.
As for why Zora puts on the jacket, I heard in a behind-the-scenes video about the costumes of Blade Runner that it was to add some protection from injury for the stuntwoman. Never really thought before about why it was see-through, but perhaps that was keeping in character with her stripper persona.
@@TheJosep70 well I suppose if Rachel could give birth I'm assuming that will grow so yeah lol. What a great film to be still discussing all these years later
I believe the only way he could be a replicant is if it was a secret. If half the police force knows he's a rep and are "effing up with him" there's no way that secret wouldn't come out - he would be Retired immediately if it's publicly found. They would also know he's a ticking bomb waiting to murder someone, which is something I don't think Rep-Detect would do.
**spolilers for BR and BR 2049!!!!** I personally think Villenevue walked a tight line to ensure Deckards synthetic nature remained ambiguous. I don't recall mention of the first time a replicant and a *human* had a kid, just first time a replicant had a kid. All the data from the specifics were lost in the black out for plot convenience. Also the think Wallaces line "you were made for each other" is supposed to throw fuel onto the debate.
I think there was almost a throwaway line in 2049 when looking at the files about different replicant models that there was a series that aged like humans - to give cover for Deckard possibly being a replicant.
@@WhiskyCanuck ...and while this was Villeneuve retconning, in the original, notice that Rachel _wasn't_ a super-human, Tyrrell apparently made her with an ambition to really pass for a human in every sense (including the plot hole that boiling or freezing water would more easily identify the replicant than the Voight-Kampff test.)
I agree with Ty on the point that the replicants are people. "They're just people." Humans, for the reason of cheap labor, created beings who are exactly like them. They then enslaved them and blithely chose life or death for them. To make that sit well in their psyche, the humans decided to pretend that they're not real. Regarding the significance of the pictures to Deckard, humans have been known to burn to death in their homes trying to save mementos. In an empty world, it's not outside of reason for Deckard to cling to pictures that hold great sentiment for him.
The point that Replicants are people is pretty much the central theme, and Roy is the actual freedom-fighting hero. But I strongly disagree with Ty that Deckard being a replicant contradicts this. If you, the viewer, felt sympathy for Deckard as a human, and learn at the end that he was a replicant, that adds a lot to it.
@@Daneelro - If a viewer watched the movie and only felt sympathy for Deckard because he was human and didn't feel sympathy for the replicants because they were not, then that revealed something about that particular human viewer that they should find difficult to swallow. I didn't particularly care for Deckard as a character, until he began to demonstrate empathy-- limited as it was-- for the replicants. Having the character, after the fact, be a replicant was the height of emotional lazy writing/directing, in my opinion.
“Ridley Scott considers Blade Runner in the same universe as Alien” “…I know he does… and… yeah…” 😂🤣 exactly how I feel about that idea too. Ty comin out of the gate strong with his take on Ridley Scott’s story-telling sensibilities. Could not agree more. Not 5 min in and already super hyped for this deep-dive.
Cameron also considers them the same universe. There are several Easter eggs in Aliens and BR 2049 that confirm they're the same. Other than the timelines not quite making sense, there is nothing that detracts from the individual films with a shared universe in this case. Tyrell, Hyperdyne, and ultimately Weyland-Yutani all took a shot at building artificial humans.
I've always been bemused by "The Off-World Colonies". The advertising blimp is giving a hard sell for how wonderful they are. Apparently, a large percentage of people have migrated there. And yet... Replicants are needed for hazardous slave labor there. And replicants are used for combat. Combat? Who is fighting who in the Off-World Colonies? Why? Obviously, Earth is an ecologically ruined and poisoned mess that people are fleeing, but The Colonies sound like humans have made them hellish as well.
I think that ambiguity of is Deckard a replicant is just to Philip K. Dick's liking. All his stories are about not being sure about your very own identity so that it's possible for the two to read the movie differently would make the writer happy I guess and makes the movie so much better...
Deckard is neither human nor a replicant. He's a plush toy. If you watch closely, Deckard emits a high-pitched squeak whenever someone punches or hugs him.
I'm with Ty. Having Deckard be a replicant defeats his whole hero redemption arc and existential yearning of the replicants. Remember Tyrell's corporate motto: "More Human Than Human." Deckard is the human who doesn't appreciate living and killing those that want more life. He only appreciates life when he's hanging by his fingers and Batty saving him drives the point home that maybe the replicants are the more human of the two. They teach Deckard to be human again.
Hey Guys. The Eye at the beginning, I think, is Rachel's eye as she's looking out toward the city. it certainly looks like Rachel, to me anyway. It plays to her character if it is, searching for herself locked in her guilded cage. it's really not right you two having this entire conversation without me haha.
Ty, you are so right about story... Pat Conroy ( The Great Santini) summed it up well in his book "My Reading Life"..."The writers that scoff at the idea of primacy of stories either are idiots or cannot write them".
I never thought about it, but you're totally right. Deckard would have been killed by Zhora if the dancers hadn't come back to the dressing room, by Leon if Rachael hadn't saved him and Roy spared him. Classic noir detectives were always getting slugged with black jacks but when they came round they got themselves out of the jams they were in 😁
I'd always wondered how Deckard was able to keep functioning with all the damage he had to have taken in the brutal hand-to-hand fights with the replicants and the answer wasn't (as Ty points out) "this is just a typical 80's action movie." So when Ridley started leaning into the Deckard is a replicant view with the re-releases it occurred to me that Deckard survived because of his replicant toughness, but didn't access his replicant strength because he thought he was human and didn't realize he had it. So now I believe that Deckard's empathy for the replicants and disgust at having to kill them is even more evidence of the potential humanity that replicants have. And if we consider Bladerunner 2049, how could Deckard survive in radioactive Las Vegas if he was just human?
Thank you guys again for the great discussion, stories and conversation of this classic movie. I love Wes introduction as always and I think that Ty is so right on that this movie is so great, it takes two episodes to do this movie justice. I have listened to this twice now, it is that great of a show, Kudos! I cannot wait for next week's show!
In an ultimate "what if...", Rutger Hauer was originally offered the roll of the captain in "Das Boot" before being offered Blade Runner. He declined the roll because it was going to take over a year to film "Das Boot" (14 months) since it was originally a miniseries in Europe and he didn't want to commit to a project for that long.
Wes says that BN stays relevant with lots of reviewing. I feel that way with The Expanse. I've seen the series enough times to dream about it. Always relevant.
Speaking of Rutger Hauer; y'all should look at Crossworlds, which, IMO is a good example of his mid-career work. It's also notable as some of Jack Black's earliest work. A fun movie, but definitely a C-grade movie.
I went years of my life (childhood) with the scene of Zora running, and falling through the glass as she got shot. I didn't know the name of the movie all that time (I was a teenager). I finLly reconnected with the film in my mid 20s, and fell in love with it all over again. Later It became cool. Lol. I'm. Not showing my kids until I know they can understand the underlying introspective parts of the film. Most people don't see past the surface layer of films. Drives me nut when you watch a film w people, your mind is like "I get it, that was beautiful". AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE LIKE, "YEAH, IT was OK". 😂
Zora's death scene has stuck with me since I saw it when I was 16. It was one of the main images that came to mind when I obsessively listened to the Vangelis soundtrack. I was very happy to see a loving homage to it and several other key scenes from the movie in the "Red Dwarf" mini-series "Back to Earth."
This was so good, can't wait for part 2! Here's my question about Blade Runner though...if the replicants were created for labor and offworld, why would they make them so humanlike? Wouldn't they just want them without emotions so they can just do what they're supposed to do without question?
That's a really good question. Perhaps its like Westworld and the creators wanted regular humans to feel more comfortable working and living around the replicants, especially the pleasure models. But for whatever reason, it does make for a more complex and compelling scenario.
Watching Blade Runner for the first time... For me, it took a while, and that's because in Hungary, they gave it a very stupid title (a literal translation of "Blade Runner" would not work, so they went with "Winged bounty hunter"), which made me think that it is some stupid fantasy. It wasn't until a highschool friend explained that it's completely different from what I imagined, so I watched it for the first time when it had a late night TV re-run. I was instantly pulled in by the opening scene and Vangelis's music.
To be fair ...Blade runner is a stupid name, it sounds cool but it makes no sense, given the lack of blades and um.....theres a bit of running (?). At least the bounty hunter tracks. R. Scott stole the name from a book about an underground medical movement.
By the way, I don't think any viewers outside Hungary realise, but, beyond German & French, the creole language detective Gaff speaks (which was created by the actor himself) includes Hungarian words & phrases, pronounced with well-enough precision to be understood.
@@Daneelro whaaaaat? Do you remember what he says? I always thought that bit was weird. Everyone's speaking creole and Dek can't get his fish- but nope the old guy can understand him and so can his ex boss?
@@no_no_just_no The very first sentence he says contains all three languages: "Monsieur! Azonnal kövessen engem, Bitte!" - meaning "Mister, follow me immediately, please!" The next is almost entirely in Hungarian: "Lófasz! Nehogy má'! Te vagy a Blade Runner!" Meaning "Horse dick, that can't be! _You're_ the blade runner!"
Let's talk a bit more about the plot hole Ty mentioned: replicants are supposed to be identifiable by Voight-Kampff test only, but we see them performing superhuman acts like touching super-cold or hot things with no problems. Even if there were no superhuman powers that can be tested, we have a problem, and I think it is rooted in Ridley Scott's limited understanding of chemistry. In the original film, it's never clearly said what replicants truly are, but it's indicated that they have been built to resemble living beings at the molecular level. The sequel reinforces that notion by showing that replicants have DNA. But the thing is, if something _resembles_ a living thing at the molecular level, it is actually _identical_ to it: it's the same arrangement of the same atoms, you can't break down a living thing at a lower level (and can't have resemblance with differences at a lower, that is sub-atomic level). So if Scott understood chemistry, he would have seen that his replicants aren't just humans in the sense of having a mind and a conscience and deserving rights, they are also humans chemically, so the ideology for their enslavement should not have been as simple as for robots. It's less relevant to the message of the film, but manufacturing a living being at the molecular level doesn't make much practical sense, either: it should be much more economical to let a single cell's existing chemical machinery crate billions of copies through cell division. That is, grow the replicants, not manufacture them. (Scott's vague understanding of chemistry also showed in his idea of, and visual representation of, the black goo breaking down DNA in Prometheus. The black goo is supposed to be some chemical causing mutations, so at molecular level, it should have been some big unwieldy thing that attaches to the double helix, cuts out segments, and re-inserts those elsewhere. Instead, we see a "rotting" of the double helix, that is "rotting" the atoms themselves - which doesn't make any physical sense - by something "black" that flows over the molecules like a non-localised electron.)
Not sure it's a plot hole re Voight-Kampff. They can always 'fake' a reaction to something hot or cold for instance. The test is not presented to them as a 'replicant' test, presumably if someone hasn't done anything 'wrong' and there's no justification for trampling their rights but they are 'suspected' of being a replicant then this is a good 'soft' way of making sure (without violating them) before you blow someone's head off.
Also, importantly for the Deckart-replicant-or-not question, Rachel is _not_ super-strong, she was clearly made by Tyrrell to be as human-like as possible.
I think its all but stated that shes not. Given Shes a prototype with artificial memories- and when your testing a brand new feature like memory implants i'd bet you want to pair back on other expensive and dangerous stuff in case it turns schizoid or something.
@@no_no_just_no I think she was more of a pet project for Tyrrell to resemble humans as much as possible (treated as her own daughter, not slave No. 165,555,237) rather than a normal prototype.
@@Daneelro yea I meant an experimental prototype as opposed to a production model. But he did drop her quickly.... Not the best family. ( But that might have been intentional manipulation)
To me the world of Blade Runner shares a lot of similarity to Spain and its 16th Century colonial empire. Not only did the colonies suck all the talent out of the world, the wealth of the colonies was only benefiting those supplying the colonies (such as Tyrell). The people who are left are those who are not worth taking out of to the colonies ... and they know it (or don't care).
So in the short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it is explicit that the Earth is dying. Most humans are sterile from radiation exposure & there is very little organic life left. Most people who can have gone off world. That's why you have delapitated empty apartment buildings that only 1 person lives in. The themes in the book are a little different & the androids aren't really sympathetic. Empathy is a huge theme & with so much of PK Dick's work so is the concept of not knowing what reality is. Anyway, I think I enjoyed the film more for the concepts it explored & fpr me Deckard being a Replicant completely negates the poignancy of the ending. Of RoyBadde saving him, of his running off with Rachel...yeah if he's a Replicant it's just a different movie & the subtext about them gaining their humanity is lost. Also in the book Deckard was human so there's that. Blade Runner unfortunately came out in theatres the same year as ET. I enjoyed that movie, it was very cute & heart felt but Blade Runner was & is one of my all time favorite scifi films. Edit: what made Rachel different was that she didn't have a built-in expiration date & had been implanted with Tyrell's neice's memories. The whole motivation for the Replicants being on Earth was to live longer vs in the book {spoilers} they wanted to take over & had infiltrated the police dept. & possibly the govt
The discussion about the lack of animal life reminded me of one of the great IMDB Goofs entries back when those were fun and interesting. Someone had noticed that there were a lot of non-synthetic pigeons in the finale and pointed out that these millions of dollars worth of biological animals would surely have been taken and sold already. I like to imagine a parallel story to this one about roving bands of anti-Blade-Runners running the Voight-Kampf test on rats and cockroaches and keeping the real ones. Might’ve made a good Mel Brooks movie!
I think Deckard getting his ass kicked throughout the movie despite being built up as a badass is meant to illustrate that hunting replicants I'd extraordinarily dangerous, and just being able to survive the encounter is viewed as a success.
2049 was definitely good. What elevates the original is how even after 40 years we can still have the 'Decard is/isnot replicant' debate and both sides are viable. Hell, for any given viewing a person can choose which way they want to view the film and that ambiguity keeps it special.
@@brownph99 The Deckard replicant theory never made sense in the broader context of the universe. What purpose does it serve for the people making decisions in that universe to have a replicant perfectly emulate a human (no superhuman abilities, human lifespan, can reproduce), to make him believe he's a human and to task him with tracking other replicants? It's not like there's a shortage of humans.
Took me a while to get Ty's point (assuming I am understanding correctly) but it is an interesting take that I don't think I have heard before. If I get his point, he is saying that Tyrell Corporation *never* actually made replicants at all. They were simply making cloned humans with improved features adapted to off-world work, military use, and accelerated growth. Then they threw in some genetic impairment to make them die at a preset point and called them replicants to make it so they can use them as slave labor and military force without compunction. I think I have heard a LOT of back and forth on whether Deckard is a replicant or not, but I don't think I ever heard anyone surmise that there never were *any* replicants to start with, just manipulated humans.
I also never understood why Rutger Hauer ended up in these trite roles in the later 80’s. I saw Deckard as a burnt out human who was emotionally unavailable…. depressed; someone who probably wouldn’t have passed his own test. I loved this movie. J.S Sebastian is one of the most perfect casting. I was too young too go but also watched it at 2 in the morning on HBO. Blew my young mind. Have watched it over and over at least every 5-7 years. I saw him using the voice to confuse/trick and not tip his hat with the snake lady. She is obviously in hiding and is an adult performer so acting as a union rep made sense.
ridley scott allowed the scripts for prometheus and alien covenant to go forward. he can direct, but he couldn't identify a good story if he had a gun to his head
I don't know but around the 42 minute mark, Ty starts spitting truth about the Hollywood agent game...and my boy Wes starts fluttering his eyes like he's failing the Voight-Kampff test himself. Either that or he's thinking...yeah, I need to talk to my fuckin' agent when we are done here. STAT
oooh I'm so happy! last few episodes have been movies that are especially interesting for me. on another topic, could we get more episodes where you suggest horror shorts you liked? i Wish it would be at least a yearly thing for Halloween!
On Rutger Hauer: Split Second is in my top 5 movies ever. I would recommend it as a great bad movie to anyone. I would love to see the guys do some kind of deep dive on that kind of low budget scifi action movies of the late 80s/early 90s.
I really think you guys should give 2049 a second chance. I’m not going to insult your collective intelligence by referencing a generational thing (the same way I’m sure your old heads didn’t like the original at the time) - but I think Denis vision if you actually look at it is both faithful to the themes and narrative beats of the original while building and expanding upon the conversations of identity and meaning. And I hear people mention that 2049 definitively answers “the replicant question” but I still think the film can be read as supportive of either conclusion, all the while updating the sci fi film language with elements taken from stories like Her and other contemporary genre pushers. I know Wes knocks on what he perceives to be story bumps, but while this movie (especially the bit before the final act) is certainly flawed, for me, it’s true to the dreamlike logic that occasionally permeates the original as well and may hold up better now that you know what to look for. And that’s without mention the visual masterwork of cinematographer Roger Deacons. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better one-two original-sequel punch in all of sci fi (not including trilogies). Would love for y’all to do a retrospective after a new viewing!
One of the big things lost today is the idea of a Soul, can a robot have a soul? Today we tend to thing of AI as intelligence, being self aware. In the past Christianity was bigger, the idea of having a soul was more important than being self aware. So you have the dichotomy of soul/self awareness, the robot and human.
I have, at times, found great - & perverse - comfort in seeing myself as just some fabricated-&-programmed entity; a machine of sorts. (So often, I've related to the "hosts" in the Westworld series, grappling with their in/humanity.) The character of Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory thinks it high praise when someone compares him to a robot. In an episode of TNG, a child - after a traumatic event - finds solace in modelling himself after the character of Data. Similarly (but differently), Deckard may have experienced some kind of PTSD from all that "retiring" of Replicants he had done in the past, that he could no longer morally differentiate himself from them. This may even have been exacerbated by the way we see him treated by cops: even THEY have come to associate this retirer of Replicants WITH them ("You are what you kill?") And his identification with Replicants (which is "akin" to identifying AS Replicant) may even be exacerbated by the semantics of considering himself to have *retired* FROM retiring Replicants. (Also, I know of a cameraman who had to take a break from his job because he was having difficulty distinguishing himself from the subjects seen thru his lens. Is Ridley Scott trying to address that breakdown of subject/object with those eye scenes?) So it makes great sense to me that the best way for Wes - & others - to make sense of the movie is to *see* Deckard as a Replicant. Seems to me the point of the story may be to try to redress judgmental dichotomies. Then again, what do eye know? 😉
I love your thoughts on one my favorite movies. In my personal head canon Decker is definitely not a replicant! I think that the movie misses a powerful message if Decker is a replicant, too. The whole point is that replicants seem to have somehow acquired souls, too. It doesn't matter how they have been created. And therefore it's ok that a human and a replicant are in love with each other. Decker realizes that. This aspect is lost if Decker is also a replicant. I was very disappointed when Scott started to change the interpretation of one of his best movies!
Blade Runner has been my favorite movie since, well, kinda before I even saw it. I remember seeing the preview in a theater (zero recollection of what I was there to see) and having it melt my 14 year old brain. This was clearly something different. Flash forward to last week. Visiting friends in LA spending a chunk of Wednesday getting my Blade Runner tattoo, then found myself visiting the Bradbury building Friday afternoon. The timing of your episode fits nicely.
If Deckert is a replicant then the L.A. Police Force searching for Nexus Six are the dumbest ever, which would make Him the most advanced Model; completely undetectable? ~
deckard is clearly a replicant as Gaff left the unicorn origami to tell deckard himself. Also. if you havent noticed, deckards own living, is that which mirrors the replicants he hunts down. a house full of photos. but those not related at all to his own time frame, he says he was married, but no photos of her. only memory. of course we seen the red eye of both him and rachel. not to mention his job as a Blade Runner. who better to hunt replicants than a replicant. Also their is one aspect about bladerunner that no one seems to address. The fact that its possible that no one is actually human. that they all could be replicants. Supposedly the humans shiped off earth to the colonies. but their is no proof of this in the film. we're dealing with a dying planet few resources and populations forced into small supercities. The idea being a past war, and the fallout since. But their is nothing to suggest the validity of humans being human when replicants have gone to become more human than human. Though not made true in the film, Tyrell himself was supposedly a replicant and his real body kept in staciss, its easy to assume that someone who created replicants would continue his legacy with a never ending copy of himself. and those copies being as smart as their own creators.
Robert Heinlein was my favorite author through my teens and twenties and his novel Friday, about an illegally freed AI/Artificial Person, was in my top 5 - so it's no surprise that this film is also a favorite, as the basic issues re personhood and identity that today's discussion of the film covered are all in the book. It's more a spy/action/thriller than a noir but Friday's world is also rapidly falling apart and - warning - there is torture and sexual assault narrated in the first person by a woman trained to think of herself as less than human and the assault as just part of her job. Her changing sense of self is the story behind the adventure. Sorry for the long post but wanted to note that lovers of this movie and its themes might enjoy a novel from a classic science fiction author.
Deckard is a replicant. The scene when he dreams with the unicorn. The police officer who makes the origamis left a unicorn origami at Deckard's apartment door at the final of the movie. Then, he knows Deckard's memories; The replicants are obsessed with photos. Again, in the unicorn's dream scene, the camera shows the piano crowded with photos; The police officers always treat Deckard with distance and suspicion; And the involuntary dilation of the iris, as seen it in Rachel and in the owl. At the end, Roy saved Deckard because he saw in Deckard's eyes that he also was a replicant (this my theory, of course. I wrote this before to listen Wes talking about it).
I think the only fault of this movie is that weird voice Ford does. It feels like something out of a Indy/Spielberg movie and does not fit in at all with the character.
@@DoctorX101 uh, it's the Director. It is HIS movie. His vision. He decides what goes to screen. End of story. According to him, he's a Replicant. Doesn't matter if you don't like it. It's what it is.
@@Shaki123 It is the viewer's movie. Their interpretation. They decide what it means. End of story. Does not matter than you do not like the obvious interpretation against the facile imaginations of a poor artist. It is what it is.
@@Shaki123 The reality of Philip K. Dick is that, when you choose not to believe it and follow the religious fantasies of a Scott, will not go away. #Micdrop
Deckard being a replicant makes 0 sense, diegetically-wise. When you sum it all up: -He has no superhuman abilities, no super strength, agility, durability, nothing. -He has the lifespan of a human. -He thinks he's a human. -He can reproduce like a human. So from a material perspective, he's either a human or the exact equivalent of a human. My question is, what purpose would it serve to put a replicant without any superhuman advantage and not knowing that he's a replicant in charge of tracking other replicants? Why would the authorities of this world do that, what's the logic behind it? I can't see one. Just put a human on the job, it's not like they are lacking people overall, and the human will perform just as good, without any of the risks of involving a replicant in the process. Because using replicants not knowing that they are replicants as blade runners is a huge risk, because if the blade runner discovers that they are actually a replicant (and a blade runner is basically the most suited person in the universe to make such a discovery), they could easily snap and act in the interest of their fellow replicants, by letting them go, things like that. Besides that, there's various other facts making the Deckard replicant theory absurd, like the fact that Rachel is supposed to be the most recent and advanced form of replicant ever made, and even her couldn't pass as a human. So how could Deckard be an even better replicant version of her, without anyone knowing?
I always feel like crying when I watch Roy Batty's final monologue and his death, and I wish I could see what Roy has seen during his short life!
He has SEEN things, you people wouldn't believe!
@@DoctorX101 , I have the strange wish to travel from Tannhäuser Gate to the Shoulder of Orion....
@@sabineb.5616 All these moments will be lost in time.
I enjoyed both Blade Runners! ❤
Totally agree. The second one adds that much more to the world building. One of Goslings best roles
I love this movie so much I have 5 versions of it. Excellent discussion gentlemen and I am immediately going on to part2.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.
Welcome back!!!
Haha. The way Wes did that scene then said his intro made me think of Roy dying then waking back up to Wes screaming it in his face.
Rutger Hower came up with that line. rip.
Fastest click ever.
Bladerunner is a dream.
The greatness of Bladerunner is the question not the answer. Knowing if he is or isn't a replicant wrecks the dream...it wakes you up.
I don't think so. Blade Runner is about what makes us human (having a will to live, emptions and a conscience, not your actual make-up or way of coming into being) and about slavery. Debating the question of whether Deckard was a replicant or not is fun to do, but not the core of the film, it is connected only inasmuch as how it influences the creators's intention for the viewers to recognise replicants as othered beings deserving of human rights. For Ty, Deckard's behaviour is a biological-human analogue of the clear replicant Leon and he feels Deckard being a replicant ruins that. To me, however, Deckard is the film's focus character whom the viewer roots for, so finding out that he is a replicant should give us a much stronger sense that replicants are indeed deserving of human rights.
As for why Zora puts on the jacket, I heard in a behind-the-scenes video about the costumes of Blade Runner that it was to add some protection from injury for the stuntwoman. Never really thought before about why it was see-through, but perhaps that was keeping in character with her stripper persona.
I'm with Ty - Deckerd is not a replicant
I can't see how he would be seeing as he's an old dude in 2049
@@balthazarasquith But Tyrell's goal was to make them more human than human, so...
@@TheJosep70 well I suppose if Rachel could give birth I'm assuming that will grow so yeah lol. What a great film to be still discussing all these years later
I believe the only way he could be a replicant is if it was a secret. If half the police force knows he's a rep and are "effing up with him" there's no way that secret wouldn't come out - he would be Retired immediately if it's publicly found. They would also know he's a ticking bomb waiting to murder someone, which is something I don't think Rep-Detect would do.
@@SergioLeRoux yeah that's a very good point. In 2049 they treat Gosling like utter rubbish
**spolilers for BR and BR 2049!!!!** I personally think Villenevue walked a tight line to ensure Deckards synthetic nature remained ambiguous. I don't recall mention of the first time a replicant and a *human* had a kid, just first time a replicant had a kid. All the data from the specifics were lost in the black out for plot convenience. Also the think Wallaces line "you were made for each other" is supposed to throw fuel onto the debate.
I think there was almost a throwaway line in 2049 when looking at the files about different replicant models that there was a series that aged like humans - to give cover for Deckard possibly being a replicant.
@@WhiskyCanuck ...and while this was Villeneuve retconning, in the original, notice that Rachel _wasn't_ a super-human, Tyrrell apparently made her with an ambition to really pass for a human in every sense (including the plot hole that boiling or freezing water would more easily identify the replicant than the Voight-Kampff test.)
@@Daneelro I think replicants can just lie/pretend to be hurt by the scalding, plus it's not exactly a test you want to conduct on people willy-nilly.
Ty taking pulls of moonshine like its water! What a champ!
I agree with Ty on the point that the replicants are people. "They're just people." Humans, for the reason of cheap labor, created beings who are exactly like them. They then enslaved them and blithely chose life or death for them. To make that sit well in their psyche, the humans decided to pretend that they're not real.
Regarding the significance of the pictures to Deckard, humans have been known to burn to death in their homes trying to save mementos. In an empty world, it's not outside of reason for Deckard to cling to pictures that hold great sentiment for him.
The point that Replicants are people is pretty much the central theme, and Roy is the actual freedom-fighting hero. But I strongly disagree with Ty that Deckard being a replicant contradicts this. If you, the viewer, felt sympathy for Deckard as a human, and learn at the end that he was a replicant, that adds a lot to it.
@@Daneelro - If a viewer watched the movie and only felt sympathy for Deckard because he was human and didn't feel sympathy for the replicants because they were not, then that revealed something about that particular human viewer that they should find difficult to swallow.
I didn't particularly care for Deckard as a character, until he began to demonstrate empathy-- limited as it was-- for the replicants. Having the character, after the fact, be a replicant was the height of emotional lazy writing/directing, in my opinion.
“Ridley Scott considers Blade Runner in the same universe as Alien”
“…I know he does… and… yeah…”
😂🤣 exactly how I feel about that idea too.
Ty comin out of the gate strong with his take on Ridley Scott’s story-telling sensibilities. Could not agree more. Not 5 min in and already super hyped for this deep-dive.
Cameron also considers them the same universe.
There are several Easter eggs in Aliens and BR 2049 that confirm they're the same.
Other than the timelines not quite making sense, there is nothing that detracts from the individual films with a shared universe in this case.
Tyrell, Hyperdyne, and ultimately Weyland-Yutani all took a shot at building artificial humans.
I really appreciate Ty's introduction to this world as a "decaying" world. Great analysis from both Ty and Wes. One of my favorite movies of all time!
I’m an 80s kid and you guys nailed it. Very. Well. Done.
I've always been bemused by "The Off-World Colonies". The advertising blimp is giving a hard sell for how wonderful they are. Apparently, a large percentage of people have migrated there. And yet... Replicants are needed for hazardous slave labor there. And replicants are used for combat. Combat? Who is fighting who in the Off-World Colonies? Why? Obviously, Earth is an ecologically ruined and poisoned mess that people are fleeing, but The Colonies sound like humans have made them hellish as well.
There is conical evidence that Kurt Russell’s movie Soldier is in the same cinematic universe.
I think that ambiguity of is Deckard a replicant is just to Philip K. Dick's liking. All his stories are about not being sure about your very own identity so that it's possible for the two to read the movie differently would make the writer happy I guess and makes the movie so much better...
Deckard is neither human nor a replicant. He's a plush toy. If you watch closely, Deckard emits a high-pitched squeak whenever someone punches or hugs him.
I'm with Ty. Having Deckard be a replicant defeats his whole hero redemption arc and existential yearning of the replicants. Remember Tyrell's corporate motto: "More Human Than Human." Deckard is the human who doesn't appreciate living and killing those that want more life. He only appreciates life when he's hanging by his fingers and Batty saving him drives the point home that maybe the replicants are the more human of the two. They teach Deckard to be human again.
Wes, unironically I didn't know how much I wanted to hear that monologue from you, lol. That hit the spot.
Roy Batty is the hero, once you realize this the whole thing turns the right way up.
Hey Guys. The Eye at the beginning, I think, is Rachel's eye as she's looking out toward the city. it certainly looks like Rachel, to me anyway. It plays to her character if it is, searching for herself locked in her guilded cage. it's really not right you two having this entire conversation without me haha.
Ty, you are so right about story... Pat Conroy ( The Great Santini) summed it up well in his book "My Reading Life"..."The writers that scoff at the idea of primacy of stories either are idiots or cannot write them".
"There are no laws in L.A., there's just cops..."
Now I kinda want a Bladrunner/Judge Dredd crossover! :)
57-58 min The Big Sleep, scene in the bookshop- gumshoe nostalgia
I never thought about it, but you're totally right. Deckard would have been killed by Zhora if the dancers hadn't come back to the dressing room, by Leon if Rachael hadn't saved him and Roy spared him. Classic noir detectives were always getting slugged with black jacks but when they came round they got themselves out of the jams they were in 😁
I'd always wondered how Deckard was able to keep functioning with all the damage he had to have taken in the brutal hand-to-hand fights with the replicants and the answer wasn't (as Ty points out) "this is just a typical 80's action movie." So when Ridley started leaning into the Deckard is a replicant view with the re-releases it occurred to me that Deckard survived because of his replicant toughness, but didn't access his replicant strength because he thought he was human and didn't realize he had it.
So now I believe that Deckard's empathy for the replicants and disgust at having to kill them is even more evidence of the potential humanity that replicants have. And if we consider Bladerunner 2049, how could Deckard survive in radioactive Las Vegas if he was just human?
Same... I don't remember how I felt about it in 84...first time I saw it... Now I fall asleep to it every other nite
Thank you guys again for the great discussion, stories and conversation of this classic movie. I love Wes introduction as always and I think that Ty is so right on that this movie is so great, it takes two episodes to do this movie justice. I have listened to this twice now, it is that great of a show, Kudos! I cannot wait for next week's show!
Awesome episode for a perfect movie ! Hope you won’t forget to address the immense contribution of Vangelis sound track in part 2 🙏🙏🙏🙏
In an ultimate "what if...", Rutger Hauer was originally offered the roll of the captain in "Das Boot" before being offered Blade Runner. He declined the roll because it was going to take over a year to film "Das Boot" (14 months) since it was originally a miniseries in Europe and he didn't want to commit to a project for that long.
Deckard's voice when addressing Zhora was to establish himself as pathetic and inconsequential. It was a feint.
I am with Ty on this one. When Roy lets Dekkard live at the end, it is an act of mercy, perhaps, that makes him all the more human.
Anne Rice (RIP) clearly envisioned Rutger Hauer as LeStat, and I *totally* SEE it!
Wes says that BN stays relevant with lots of reviewing. I feel that way with The Expanse. I've seen the series enough times to dream about it. Always relevant.
Speaking of Rutger Hauer; y'all should look at Crossworlds, which, IMO is a good example of his mid-career work. It's also notable as some of Jack Black's earliest work. A fun movie, but definitely a C-grade movie.
Also. Honorable mention for Hobo with a Shotgun. A really fun movie with a fun title.
Love you guys, this podcast is my new favourite. Can't wait for more😊
Wow, you guys actually kept me the whole time. It's been a while. Welcome back.
I went years of my life (childhood) with the scene of Zora running, and falling through the glass as she got shot. I didn't know the name of the movie all that time (I was a teenager). I finLly reconnected with the film in my mid 20s, and fell in love with it all over again. Later It became cool. Lol. I'm. Not showing my kids until I know they can understand the underlying introspective parts of the film. Most people don't see past the surface layer of films. Drives me nut when you watch a film w people, your mind is like "I get it, that was beautiful". AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE LIKE, "YEAH, IT was OK". 😂
Zora's death scene has stuck with me since I saw it when I was 16. It was one of the main images that came to mind when I obsessively listened to the Vangelis soundtrack. I was very happy to see a loving homage to it and several other key scenes from the movie in the "Red Dwarf" mini-series "Back to Earth."
This was so good, can't wait for part 2! Here's my question about Blade Runner though...if the replicants were created for labor and offworld, why would they make them so humanlike? Wouldn't they just want them without emotions so they can just do what they're supposed to do without question?
That's a really good question. Perhaps its like Westworld and the creators wanted regular humans to feel more comfortable working and living around the replicants, especially the pleasure models. But for whatever reason, it does make for a more complex and compelling scenario.
It's by far one of the best sci fi films of all time
This should be a 3 parter at least. This is one the better discussions this podcast has done. I guess I'll live with 2 parts though.
Watching Blade Runner for the first time... For me, it took a while, and that's because in Hungary, they gave it a very stupid title (a literal translation of "Blade Runner" would not work, so they went with "Winged bounty hunter"), which made me think that it is some stupid fantasy. It wasn't until a highschool friend explained that it's completely different from what I imagined, so I watched it for the first time when it had a late night TV re-run. I was instantly pulled in by the opening scene and Vangelis's music.
To be fair ...Blade runner is a stupid name, it sounds cool but it makes no sense, given the lack of blades and um.....theres a bit of running (?). At least the bounty hunter tracks. R. Scott stole the name from a book about an underground medical movement.
@@no_no_just_no But he is definitely wingless :-)
By the way, I don't think any viewers outside Hungary realise, but, beyond German & French, the creole language detective Gaff speaks (which was created by the actor himself) includes Hungarian words & phrases, pronounced with well-enough precision to be understood.
@@Daneelro whaaaaat? Do you remember what he says? I always thought that bit was weird. Everyone's speaking creole and Dek can't get his fish- but nope the old guy can understand him and so can his ex boss?
@@no_no_just_no The very first sentence he says contains all three languages: "Monsieur! Azonnal kövessen engem, Bitte!" - meaning "Mister, follow me immediately, please!"
The next is almost entirely in Hungarian: "Lófasz! Nehogy má'! Te vagy a Blade Runner!" Meaning "Horse dick, that can't be! _You're_ the blade runner!"
Let's talk a bit more about the plot hole Ty mentioned: replicants are supposed to be identifiable by Voight-Kampff test only, but we see them performing superhuman acts like touching super-cold or hot things with no problems. Even if there were no superhuman powers that can be tested, we have a problem, and I think it is rooted in Ridley Scott's limited understanding of chemistry.
In the original film, it's never clearly said what replicants truly are, but it's indicated that they have been built to resemble living beings at the molecular level. The sequel reinforces that notion by showing that replicants have DNA. But the thing is, if something _resembles_ a living thing at the molecular level, it is actually _identical_ to it: it's the same arrangement of the same atoms, you can't break down a living thing at a lower level (and can't have resemblance with differences at a lower, that is sub-atomic level). So if Scott understood chemistry, he would have seen that his replicants aren't just humans in the sense of having a mind and a conscience and deserving rights, they are also humans chemically, so the ideology for their enslavement should not have been as simple as for robots.
It's less relevant to the message of the film, but manufacturing a living being at the molecular level doesn't make much practical sense, either: it should be much more economical to let a single cell's existing chemical machinery crate billions of copies through cell division. That is, grow the replicants, not manufacture them.
(Scott's vague understanding of chemistry also showed in his idea of, and visual representation of, the black goo breaking down DNA in Prometheus. The black goo is supposed to be some chemical causing mutations, so at molecular level, it should have been some big unwieldy thing that attaches to the double helix, cuts out segments, and re-inserts those elsewhere. Instead, we see a "rotting" of the double helix, that is "rotting" the atoms themselves - which doesn't make any physical sense - by something "black" that flows over the molecules like a non-localised electron.)
Not sure it's a plot hole re Voight-Kampff. They can always 'fake' a reaction to something hot or cold for instance. The test is not presented to them as a 'replicant' test, presumably if someone hasn't done anything 'wrong' and there's no justification for trampling their rights but they are 'suspected' of being a replicant then this is a good 'soft' way of making sure (without violating them) before you blow someone's head off.
Thanks guys
Rachel is not Nexus-6, she is more special. It's said Deckard needs a lot more questions than usual to expose her.
Also, importantly for the Deckart-replicant-or-not question, Rachel is _not_ super-strong, she was clearly made by Tyrrell to be as human-like as possible.
All that makes her special is the same as any of us. Were they subjected to trauma and abuse during their development, or were they loved and nurtured
I think its all but stated that shes not. Given Shes a prototype with artificial memories- and when your testing a brand new feature like memory implants i'd bet you want to pair back on other expensive and dangerous stuff in case it turns schizoid or something.
@@no_no_just_no I think she was more of a pet project for Tyrrell to resemble humans as much as possible (treated as her own daughter, not slave No. 165,555,237) rather than a normal prototype.
@@Daneelro yea I meant an experimental prototype as opposed to a production model. But he did drop her quickly.... Not the best family. ( But that might have been intentional manipulation)
To me the world of Blade Runner shares a lot of similarity to Spain and its 16th Century colonial empire. Not only did the colonies suck all the talent out of the world, the wealth of the colonies was only benefiting those supplying the colonies (such as Tyrell). The people who are left are those who are not worth taking out of to the colonies ... and they know it (or don't care).
I sure hope you talk about the magnificent soundtrack of the movie! It adds to it by a lot.
So in the short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it is explicit that the Earth is dying. Most humans are sterile from radiation exposure & there is very little organic life left. Most people who can have gone off world. That's why you have delapitated empty apartment buildings that only 1 person lives in. The themes in the book are a little different & the androids aren't really sympathetic. Empathy is a huge theme & with so much of PK Dick's work so is the concept of not knowing what reality is. Anyway, I think I enjoyed the film more for the concepts it explored & fpr me Deckard being a Replicant completely negates the poignancy of the ending. Of RoyBadde saving him, of his running off with Rachel...yeah if he's a Replicant it's just a different movie & the subtext about them gaining their humanity is lost. Also in the book Deckard was human so there's that.
Blade Runner unfortunately came out in theatres the same year as ET. I enjoyed that movie, it was very cute & heart felt but Blade Runner was & is one of my all time favorite scifi films.
Edit: what made Rachel different was that she didn't have a built-in expiration date & had been implanted with Tyrell's neice's memories. The whole motivation for the Replicants being on Earth was to live longer vs in the book {spoilers}
they wanted to take over & had infiltrated the police dept. & possibly the govt
The discussion about the lack of animal life reminded me of one of the great IMDB Goofs entries back when those were fun and interesting. Someone had noticed that there were a lot of non-synthetic pigeons in the finale and pointed out that these millions of dollars worth of biological animals would surely have been taken and sold already. I like to imagine a parallel story to this one about roving bands of anti-Blade-Runners running the Voight-Kampf test on rats and cockroaches and keeping the real ones. Might’ve made a good Mel Brooks movie!
I think Deckard getting his ass kicked throughout the movie despite being built up as a badass is meant to illustrate that hunting replicants I'd extraordinarily dangerous, and just being able to survive the encounter is viewed as a success.
I'm in the tiny minority that prefers Blade Runner 2049. I suspect that this episode will just confirm how tiny that minority is.
I think the sequel was amazing, but I've only watched it once so far
An underrated movie for sure…. But not up to the original. IMO….
2049 was definitely good. What elevates the original is how even after 40 years we can still have the 'Decard is/isnot replicant' debate and both sides are viable. Hell, for any given viewing a person can choose which way they want to view the film and that ambiguity keeps it special.
2049 is extremely solid. honestly think it surpasses the original in a few areas.
@@brownph99 The Deckard replicant theory never made sense in the broader context of the universe. What purpose does it serve for the people making decisions in that universe to have a replicant perfectly emulate a human (no superhuman abilities, human lifespan, can reproduce), to make him believe he's a human and to task him with tracking other replicants? It's not like there's a shortage of humans.
Took me a while to get Ty's point (assuming I am understanding correctly) but it is an interesting take that I don't think I have heard before. If I get his point, he is saying that Tyrell Corporation *never* actually made replicants at all. They were simply making cloned humans with improved features adapted to off-world work, military use, and accelerated growth. Then they threw in some genetic impairment to make them die at a preset point and called them replicants to make it so they can use them as slave labor and military force without compunction. I think I have heard a LOT of back and forth on whether Deckard is a replicant or not, but I don't think I ever heard anyone surmise that there never were *any* replicants to start with, just manipulated humans.
I also never understood why Rutger Hauer ended up in these trite roles in the later 80’s.
I saw Deckard as a burnt out human who was emotionally unavailable….
depressed; someone who probably wouldn’t have passed his own test. I loved this movie. J.S Sebastian is one of the most perfect casting. I was too young too go but also watched it at 2 in the morning on HBO. Blew my young mind. Have watched it over and over at least every 5-7 years.
I saw him using the voice to confuse/trick and not tip his hat with the snake lady. She is obviously in hiding and is an adult performer so acting as a union rep made sense.
Ty-you are SO right about Ridley Scott! Keep him away from the writer’s room!
ridley scott allowed the scripts for prometheus and alien covenant to go forward. he can direct, but he couldn't identify a good story if he had a gun to his head
I don't know but around the 42 minute mark, Ty starts spitting truth about the Hollywood agent game...and my boy Wes starts fluttering his eyes like he's failing the Voight-Kampff test himself. Either that or he's thinking...yeah, I need to talk to my fuckin' agent when we are done here. STAT
They didn't have enough money to shoot Zora's dance routine.
If anyone hasn't seen it yet, please do yourself a favor and watch the Director's Cut vs. Theatrical version.
oooh I'm so happy! last few episodes have been movies that are especially interesting for me.
on another topic, could we get more episodes where you suggest horror shorts you liked? i Wish it would be at least a yearly thing for Halloween!
On Rutger Hauer: Split Second is in my top 5 movies ever. I would recommend it as a great bad movie to anyone. I would love to see the guys do some kind of deep dive on that kind of low budget scifi action movies of the late 80s/early 90s.
Great break down of the first half the movie.
Me getting my back up every time Wes says Deckard is a replicant. I don’t care what the director says!
Good to see you guys comment on the BLADE
I really think you guys should give 2049 a second chance. I’m not going to insult your collective intelligence by referencing a generational thing (the same way I’m sure your old heads didn’t like the original at the time) - but I think Denis vision if you actually look at it is both faithful to the themes and narrative beats of the original while building and expanding upon the conversations of identity and meaning. And I hear people mention that 2049 definitively answers “the replicant question” but I still think the film can be read as supportive of either conclusion, all the while updating the sci fi film language with elements taken from stories like Her and other contemporary genre pushers. I know Wes knocks on what he perceives to be story bumps, but while this movie (especially the bit before the final act) is certainly flawed, for me, it’s true to the dreamlike logic that occasionally permeates the original as well and may hold up better now that you know what to look for. And that’s without mention the visual masterwork of cinematographer Roger Deacons. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better one-two original-sequel punch in all of sci fi (not including trilogies). Would love for y’all to do a retrospective after a new viewing!
If it takes place in the same universe as aliens then Predators are also in that universe and so is Ah-nold!
“…in rain.”
This was a short story turned into a movie.
Actually, a sub-plot taken from “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep”. In the book, the Replicants were only a minor part of the book.
I would have liked to hear more about Dick in the discussion.@@Bikewer
One of the big things lost today is the idea of a Soul, can a robot have a soul?
Today we tend to thing of AI as intelligence, being self aware. In the past Christianity was bigger, the idea of having a soul was more important than being self aware.
So you have the dichotomy of soul/self awareness, the robot and human.
I have, at times, found great - & perverse - comfort in seeing myself as just some fabricated-&-programmed entity; a machine of sorts. (So often, I've related to the "hosts" in the Westworld series, grappling with their in/humanity.) The character of Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory thinks it high praise when someone compares him to a robot. In an episode of TNG, a child - after a traumatic event - finds solace in modelling himself after the character of Data.
Similarly (but differently), Deckard may have experienced some kind of PTSD from all that "retiring" of Replicants he had done in the past, that he could no longer morally differentiate himself from them. This may even have been exacerbated by the way we see him treated by cops: even THEY have come to associate this retirer of Replicants WITH them ("You are what you kill?") And his identification with Replicants (which is "akin" to identifying AS Replicant) may even be exacerbated by the semantics of considering himself to have *retired* FROM retiring Replicants. (Also, I know of a cameraman who had to take a break from his job because he was having difficulty distinguishing himself from the subjects seen thru his lens. Is Ridley Scott trying to address that breakdown of subject/object with those eye scenes?)
So it makes great sense to me that the best way for Wes - & others - to make sense of the movie is to *see* Deckard as a Replicant. Seems to me the point of the story may be to try to redress judgmental dichotomies. Then again, what do eye know? 😉
To Ty & That Guy: your RUclips channel is one of my favourite things in the world.
I love you Wes!!!!! ❤❤❤❤
Agree agree agree Ty
I love your thoughts on one my favorite movies.
In my personal head canon Decker is definitely not a replicant! I think that the movie misses a powerful message if Decker is a replicant, too. The whole point is that replicants seem to have somehow acquired souls, too. It doesn't matter how they have been created. And therefore it's ok that a human and a replicant are in love with each other. Decker realizes that. This aspect is lost if Decker is also a replicant. I was very disappointed when Scott started to change the interpretation of one of his best movies!
Blade Runner has been my favorite movie since, well, kinda before I even saw it. I remember seeing the preview in a theater (zero recollection of what I was there to see) and having it melt my 14 year old brain. This was clearly something different. Flash forward to last week. Visiting friends in LA spending a chunk of Wednesday getting my Blade Runner tattoo, then found myself visiting the Bradbury building Friday afternoon. The timing of your episode fits nicely.
The original avp comic worked reslly well.
If Deckert is a replicant then the L.A. Police Force searching for Nexus Six are the dumbest ever, which would make Him the most advanced Model; completely undetectable? ~
deckard is clearly a replicant as Gaff left the unicorn origami to tell deckard himself. Also. if you havent noticed, deckards own living, is that which mirrors the replicants he hunts down. a house full of photos. but those not related at all to his own time frame, he says he was married, but no photos of her. only memory. of course we seen the red eye of both him and rachel. not to mention his job as a Blade Runner. who better to hunt replicants than a replicant. Also their is one aspect about bladerunner that no one seems to address. The fact that its possible that no one is actually human. that they all could be replicants. Supposedly the humans shiped off earth to the colonies. but their is no proof of this in the film. we're dealing with a dying planet few resources and populations forced into small supercities. The idea being a past war, and the fallout since. But their is nothing to suggest the validity of humans being human when replicants have gone to become more human than human. Though not made true in the film, Tyrell himself was supposedly a replicant and his real body kept in staciss, its easy to assume that someone who created replicants would continue his legacy with a never ending copy of himself. and those copies being as smart as their own creators.
Robert Heinlein was my favorite author through my teens and twenties and his novel Friday, about an illegally freed AI/Artificial Person, was in my top 5 - so it's no surprise that this film is also a favorite, as the basic issues re personhood and identity that today's discussion of the film covered are all in the book.
It's more a spy/action/thriller than a noir but Friday's world is also rapidly falling apart and - warning - there is torture and sexual assault narrated in the first person by a woman trained to think of herself as less than human and the assault as just part of her job.
Her changing sense of self is the story behind the adventure.
Sorry for the long post but wanted to note that lovers of this movie and its themes might enjoy a novel from a classic science fiction author.
DECKER?!!
👍🏻
Deckard is a replicant. The scene when he dreams with the unicorn. The police officer who makes the origamis left a unicorn origami at Deckard's apartment door at the final of the movie. Then, he knows Deckard's memories; The replicants are obsessed with photos. Again, in the unicorn's dream scene, the camera shows the piano crowded with photos; The police officers always treat Deckard with distance and suspicion; And the involuntary dilation of the iris, as seen it in Rachel and in the owl. At the end, Roy saved Deckard because he saw in Deckard's eyes that he also was a replicant (this my theory, of course. I wrote this before to listen Wes talking about it).
my fuckin god, u go to cult classics... :D :D ... But yeah, I think 2049 is superior version compared to old one
Deckard WAS a replicant but Nexus 6 were the latest models, stronger and faster than Deckard.
I think the only fault of this movie is that weird voice Ford does. It feels like something out of a Indy/Spielberg movie and does not fit in at all with the character.
Ridley Scott is wrong.
Not A Replicant
He IS a Replicant because the Author decided so in the Final Cut. If you can't trust the author, then what the H are we doing.
Not the Author. Merely the Adapter.
@@DoctorX101 uh, it's the Director. It is HIS movie. His vision. He decides what goes to screen. End of story. According to him, he's a Replicant. Doesn't matter if you don't like it. It's what it is.
@@Shaki123 It is the viewer's movie.
Their interpretation. They decide what it means.
End of story.
Does not matter than you do not like the obvious interpretation against the facile imaginations of a poor artist.
It is what it is.
@@DoctorX101 lol.
@@Shaki123 The reality of Philip K. Dick is that, when you choose not to believe it and follow the religious fantasies of a Scott, will not go away.
#Micdrop
Deckard being a replicant makes 0 sense, diegetically-wise. When you sum it all up:
-He has no superhuman abilities, no super strength, agility, durability, nothing.
-He has the lifespan of a human.
-He thinks he's a human.
-He can reproduce like a human.
So from a material perspective, he's either a human or the exact equivalent of a human.
My question is, what purpose would it serve to put a replicant without any superhuman advantage and not knowing that he's a replicant in charge of tracking other replicants? Why would the authorities of this world do that, what's the logic behind it? I can't see one. Just put a human on the job, it's not like they are lacking people overall, and the human will perform just as good, without any of the risks of involving a replicant in the process.
Because using replicants not knowing that they are replicants as blade runners is a huge risk, because if the blade runner discovers that they are actually a replicant (and a blade runner is basically the most suited person in the universe to make such a discovery), they could easily snap and act in the interest of their fellow replicants, by letting them go, things like that.
Besides that, there's various other facts making the Deckard replicant theory absurd, like the fact that Rachel is supposed to be the most recent and advanced form of replicant ever made, and even her couldn't pass as a human. So how could Deckard be an even better replicant version of her, without anyone knowing?
I don't know about durability
@@aemeth5418 Being able to pick up an egg in boiling water means that you are somewhat "durable".
@@trolleurdurden5534 being pushed through walls and not die, kinda too.