Blade Runner and I go way back. We’re the same age (both ‘82 babies), and as a teenager my VHS copy was probably my favorite movie at the time. The fascinating world, the visuals, the Vangelis soundtrack, the whole noire cool of it. Over the years since it’s gone up and down in my personal rankings, but it’s always been in my brain and in my blood.
If you want to talk about anything Blade Runner, here’s the place. Deckard: Replicant or no? What’s your preferred version? Any secret voiceover fans out there? Discuss the original in its various iterations, 2049, the upcoming Amazon series. Even Soldier if that’s your thing. Or all the way back to Philip Dick’s novel, where it all began.
I’ll get the ball rolling. Deckard’s human, and the 1992 cut is superior.
While we’re mulling that over, here’s a video from James “Mr. Sunday Movies” and Nick Mason. Have a laugh, and maybe learn something while you’re at it.
First saw this movie on TV when I was a kid staying at my grandmothers house for the night, which must have been the theatrical version. It’s fair to say I didn’t really understand it at the time, all I knew was it was this haunting, disturbing film about life and death. It took many years before I even learned what Blade Runner was, and when I properly watched it I remembered back to that first time when I was a kid watching this compellingly sad film. It’s always been a favourite of mine, and I love putting it on (Final Cut) for a rainy Friday night with a big glass of Scotch.
I lean towards Deckard being a replicant. Not just because of the unicorn but also due to how inhumanely strong he is.
I’ve never seen Deckard as particularly strong, especially since every encounter he has with the confirmed Replicants involves him getting his ass beat and winning the fight thanks to a gun vs. an unarmed opponent. Maybe he’s just an older model that doesn’t have that extra Nexus 6 horsepower. I’ll hand it to him managing to pull himself onto the rooftop at the end, in the rain, with broken fingers, but I chalk that up to him operating 90% on adrenaline and fear at that point.
As for the much discussed unicorn, I’ve never taken Deckard’s vision of it or Gaff’s apparent awareness of it at the end totally literally. To me, the unicorn represents everything their world isn’t: beauty, purity, freedom. (Appropriately embodied in an animal that doesn’t really exist.) Deckard dreams of that, longs for it. And Gaff’s little origami is his way of telling Deckard, “Yeah, I get it. Go try to find that if you can. You have my blessing.”
Though the theory Maso mentions in the video, while painfully literal like most unicorn theories are, is at least a new one to me. That Deckard is a Replicant implanted with Gaff’s memories, which is why they’re both into unicorns. Sure, maybe. But nothing will shake me from my “human Deckard” position.
I definitely like the idea of pairing a nice Scotch with this movie. Reminds me of the backwash of blood into Deckard’s glass after his fight with Leon. Little touches like that help to make this movie just magical.
Just got ot see it in theaters for the third time, it’s an objectively very flawed and absolutely fascinating piece of cinema..
Deckard being a replicant feels so much like an afterthought, I never bought it beyond a metaphorical “who is the real human?” kind of thing.
And I just noticed Roy calls Deckard by name in the climax! Does he know him, does he know he’s a replicant, did they fight together off world? Or is it just sloppy writing, or more likely the conequence of a deleted scene? Scott was at his visual peak, storytellingwise he’s… Not that reliable.
No doubt the movie is a mess, the themes are all over the place, and I guess it’s possible Deckard only fears he’s a replicant and Gaff somehow exploits that. But it’s that idea that sits under the whole film, and Deckard’s final nod sums it up nicely.
Is that Darabont in the Dangerous Days documentary? I really need to give that a watch.
I’ll admit there’s room in the movie’s text for multiple interpretations of Deckard’s nature. For me, it comes down to which interpretation makes the movie more compelling. If he’s a Replicant, then it seems it’s about him discovering who he really is. In which case, good for him, I guess, but that really affects only him as an individual, and we don’t get a chance to see the repercussions of that since the movie then ends. Other than him running off with another of his “kind.”
Whereas to me if he’s human, the whole movie is about bridging the human/Replicant divide that seems so essential to their world. It’s a radical statement of solidarity and shared humanity, rather than just one man finding his tribe. Deckard and Rachael falling in love, Roy saving Deckard’s life, Deckard fleeing his Blade Runner life at the end — these all chip away at the wall that’s been built up between humans and Replicants, between a master race and the “wretched of the earth” created to serve them. By the end, Deckard has chosen to be a part of erasing that barrier instead of enforcing it. To me, that’s the story I’m more interested in.
It’s on one of the supplements from the DVD/Blu-ray set.
To me, the movie is about a man who has been desensitized and dehumanized by his work, and only in the process of hunting down artificial beings – who have more life and vitality than he does – and falling in love with one does he finally reconnect with being a human being again.
I like that interpretation, Belloq — not least because it’s like the ultimate “human Deckard” theory. Not only is he human, but by the end of the movie he’s more human than he was at the beginning!
I just watched Dangerous Days — all almost four hours of it. A lot of good material. I particularly love how all the shots of the movie itself appear to be from deleted scenes or takes that didn’t make it into any released version of the movie (as far as I could tell). So you keep getting slightly different versions or interpretations of familiar scenes.
One thing that struck me is that the opening scene of 2049 is inspired by a scene in an early version of Hampton Fancher’s screenplay for the original, where Deckard finds and retires a Replicant at a remote farm, right down to the soup cooking on the stove. Fancher wrote 2049 as well, so he was probably happy for a second chance to include that scene in slightly different form. But it’s interesting that the documentary chose to highlight that unused scene in the original screenplay, not knowing it would end up in a sequel that wouldn’t come out until a decade later.