Nerdcore: Should Deckard be a replicant in Blade Runner?

[Mischief Maker]

(Edit: WARNING! Spoilers for a classic movie you really should have watched by now, dumbass.)

My argument is an emphatic NO for 4 main reasons:

1. It robs the rooftop scene between Deckard and Roy Batty of any meaning.

2. It makes the character of Rachael redundant.

3. If Deckard was a replicant-hunting replicant, why was he physically overpowered by every single other replicant, especially Pris the "basic pleasure model?"

4. One of the overarching themes of the movie was the juxtaposition of the passionate emotional replicants verses the emotionally repressed humans. The fact that Gaff spared Rachael in the end showed that as dismal as the future of Blade Runner is, we hadn't lost all our humanity. I'd bet money the original director's cut Scott submitted to the studio didn't have the dream sequence and the fact that the origami was in the shape of a unicorn was inconsequential.

[broken harbour]

Agreed.

[Specineff]

Scott and Ford have been trolling us for decades.

[Friendly]

3. He's obvously not the same type (nexus 6) as those off-world workers. Maybe he really is just as strong as a normal human, or "programmed" to not exceed human strength. Presumably the same is true for Rachael.

Should he be one? I quite like this twist. It's not necessary, but it doesn't ruin the movie, either, because these replicants, while used as slaves are sentient beings with feelings, just like humans and should have the right to be free. Which is the point. I don't need this juxtaposition of emotionless human vs. emotional replicant to drive it home.

[Mortificator]

I like ambiguity.

Speaking of differing with Scott and Ford, I think the film works better with narration (though not necessarily the narration Ford delivered). There's a reason the inner monologue's a staple of noir.

[drauch]

3. He's obvously not the same type (nexus 6) as those off-world workers. Maybe he really is just as strong as a normal human, or "programmed" to not exceed human strength. Presumably the same is true for Rachael.

Should he be one? I quite like this twist. It's not necessary, but it doesn't ruin the movie, either, because these replicants, while used as slaves are sentient beings with feelings, just like humans and should have the right to be free. Which is the point. I don't need this juxtaposition of emotionless human vs. emotional replicant to drive it home.

I agree with this. Nexus 6 was designed to be vigorous workers on an off-world mining colony. Judging from the implied, it doesn't seem like Deckard's past run-ins with androids have been all that difficult, or at least to this extreme. He's essentially a cleaner, killing malfunctioning robots or those who go "beyond the line." Kinda like in Michael Crichton's Runaway.

Also, you might want to put a big spoiler tag on this, dude. You'd be a goddamn fool if you haven't seen Blade Runner yet, but I'm sure there is someone out there.

[Mischief Maker]

I go back to numbers 1 and 2. If Deckard is a Replicant, Batty's saving his life, making him learn what it is to be a slave, describing his life's experience, it's all meaningless. Just one meat-bot debugging the programming of another meat-bot.

Please tell me the purpose of Rachael's character beyond the Voight-Kampf scene if Deckard was a replicant.

A little IMDB research told me my hunch was correct. "Legend," which the unicorn dream came from, came out 3 years after Blade Runner. So this WAS Ridley Scott going George Lucas on his director's cut special edition.

I am hearby declaring Deckard's replicant status the midichlorions of Blade Runner!

[CMoon]

I never liked the idea of Deckard actually being a replicant. I like ambiguity, but the 'ah ha, he's also a replicant' is kind of silly. I've never written it down like Mischief Maker, but always felt there was something wrong in that interpretation. I more prefer the bizarre ending of Electric sheep. Deckard being a replicant does fall into that other PKD story where the guy realizes he is a robot/bomb, set to detonate when he realizes it, but it hardly fits into the mood of blade runner. Instead, BR is like some noir film where only the viewer recognizes that the criminals getting gunned down in the streets might be sympathetic characters.

TLDR: MM, totally agree with you. Deckard's character is far more interesting and deplorable if he is human.

[Damocles]

MM, totally agree with you. Deckard's character is far more interesting and deplorable if he is human.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

The discussion is always far more rewarding than having a director just come along and give you the facts.

Off topic, but Stuart Cohen recently ruined The Thing for everyone in a similar way.

[MX7]

I never considered the notion that Dekard WASN'T a replicant. But then the whole point of the film is that humanity isn't intrinsic to what we thought of as humans. When Batty spares Dekard, it's absolutely no different from sparing any other organism. Dekard is just as alive as Roy, as Rachael, as any other character in the film. Dekard is overpowered by everyone else because he is programmed to less than perfect in this way, which, of course, in turn makes him a human.

Given that Dekard is the evidence of singularity between human and cyborg, with the two notions now interchangeable, surely drawing such a distinction is arbitrary? Or do people actually want Blade Runner to be a film about a good cop killing a bunch of bad robots?

Also, dude, change the title of the thread! You're going to ruin one of the greatest moments in mainstream cinema for loads of casual browsers!

(Also, this is sort of by-the-by, but I've only ever seen American people ever suggest that Dekard might not be a replicant... Why is this I wonder? Dunno lol)

[Friendly]

(Also, this is sort of by-the-by, but I've only ever seen American people ever suggest that Dekard might not be a replicant... Why is this I wonder? Dunno lol)

Generalizations go: Maybe they have a strong desire for happy ends*? A knack for ignoring reality/facts (current example: Xbone)? Or maybe they simply don't enjoy mind-fucks?

*The tacked-on end of the cinematic version of Blade Runner makes me barf.

[MX7]

(Also, this is sort of by-the-by, but I've only ever seen American people ever suggest that Dekard might not be a replicant... Why is this I wonder? Dunno lol)

Generalizations go: Maybe they have a strong desire for happy ends*? A knack for ignoring reality/facts (current example: Xbone)? Or maybe they simply don't enjoy mind-fucks?

*The tacked-on end of the cinematic version of Blade Runner makes me barf.

Yeah I don't want to generalize, just wondering if the film was marketed any differently in America.

[cjug]

Mischief Maker, I agree with you!

[GaijinPunch]

The discussion is always far more rewarding than having a director just come along and give you the facts.

Off topic, but Stuart Cohen recently ruined The Thing for everyone in a similar way.

Interesting, but isn't ultimately the director a better person to ask? Didn't John Carpenter say that the order of assimilations is unknown?

[Moniker]

As an American, coz I guess that matters: Never really considered the idea that Deckard could be a Replicant. There's certainly nothing in the film that indicates it. As has been mentioned before, Deckard is relatively weak, and undeniably concerned about the humanity of his marks. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the character is absolved of replicantness due to the fact that he has severe social and moral anxiety over the perceptible realism of his animals. In the novel, empathy is the dividing case between man and machine, and Deckard without doubt is empathetic. To be fully honest, though, in my case, the latter may be informing the former.

Until reading this thread, I hadn't known that Mr. Scott had pegged Deckard as a replicant. I guess the unicorn dream gestures towards it, but that's really a stupid move. If I cared about complete internal consistency, which I don't, really, I would explain away the unicorn dream as an identification b/w humans and replicants that ought not to be, given the Tyrell Corp's legal requirement to separate man from machine, but, unethically, was put into practice.

Long story short, Deckard as machine makes little sense.

[Mischief Maker]

If Prometheus taught us anything, it's that Ridley Scott wasn't any more responsible for the quality of his famous movies' scripts than George Lucas.

Call me an uncultured ugly American, but I say one of the greatest sci fi movies of all time shouldn't squander all its speculative themes for a cheesy-since-the-60s M. Night Shyamalan twist ending.

[Ed Oscuro]

Call me an uncultured ugly American, but I say one of the greatest sci fi movies of all time shouldn't squander all its speculative themes for a cheesy-since-the-60s M. Night Shyamalan twist ending.

I can sign onto this, but I'd rather go a bit farther and say "what means 'should' here?" There is at least some value in having this theme being brought up.

I think having it ambiguous whether he is or isn't serves the same purpose as not showing the bogeyman in a horror film, to some degree, but here it also reflects well the greater moral quandary - it's one thing to be worried about morality when you can think of yourself as still fundamentally unlike, or "superior," to other things; quite another when the line is totally blurred. I think you can be thoughtful like this without having the kind of a reverse elven/fairy bloodline in the hero kind of storyline (which is all the Deckard is a Replicant angle really is). MX7 mentioned this already - in a way the "replicant/not replicant" angle is a bit over the top, but then so much of the cinematic release was. (ironic that the "happy ending" was footage borrowed from The Shining! Another film with Joe Turkel.)

But "should?" Whoa, settle down there.

I watched the Director's Cut DVD, by the way. I've seen the unicorn sequence though, and heard a little of the original narration (the "niggers" sequence). I also saw some version of the deleted scene with Holden in the hospital - now that's something that was a good cut. Speaking of things, this might be interesting, though the combination of water drops / opening titles music is a bit...eh...straightforward.

[CMoon]

If Prometheus taught us anything, it's that Ridley Scott wasn't any more responsible for the quality of his famous movies' scripts than George Lucas.

Call me an uncultured ugly American, but I say one of the greatest sci fi movies of all time shouldn't squander all its speculative themes for a cheesy-since-the-60s M. Night Shyamalan twist ending.

Once again, 100% with you. I feel Scott is best in bringing out the talent around him, and has an Engineer's sense when it comes to being a director, but I find him lacking in so many other ways, especially regarding consistency. I'm definitely ready to give Scott the middle finger regarding added dream sequences, etc. as they add nothing to the film. Like Moniker, I'd rather pull in a bit more from the Electric Sheep story, than a superficial BS 'Deckard was an android all along' sub-plot that really doesn't add anything.

[Ed Oscuro]

I thought the movie worked best with all that stuff stripped out and nothing added - the DC seems to follow that rule, and if that (it's from roughly 2001 I think) is close to Scott's current thinking, then he seems to have found his way back to the light anyway.

[drauch]

Yeah, I definitely prefer the ambiguity myself, otherwise we wouldn't be having a nerdcore debate. Although I've sided with the android Deckard, I think we can all agree the inclusion of the unicorn dream sort of ruins the original magic, not leaving much room for question and uncertainty, which is definitely upsetting, despite my stance.

[Ed Oscuro]

Scott and Ford have been trolling us for decades.

Edward James Olmos, man.

[Friendly]

I thought the movie worked best with all that stuff stripped out and nothing added - the DC seems to follow that rule, and if that (it's from roughly 2001 I think) is close to Scott's current thinking, then he seems to have found his way back to the light anyway.

No, the DC is from 1992, which is how I first consciously watched the movie (a friend had bought the DC laserdisc when it was released in 1993). Since the DC leaves little doubt that Deckard is in fact a relicant, and since the DC obviously represents Scotts original vision before it was screwed up by studio execs, I never even considered the question a matter of debate.
So this is probably the answer to MX7's question: The people who doubt Deckard is a replicant are most likely those who saw the cinematic version (first or exculsively).

[greg]

I go back to numbers 1 and 2. If Deckard is a Replicant, Batty's saving his life, making him learn what it is to be a slave, describing his life's experience, it's all meaningless.

It's not meaningless. Ridley Scott and the scriptwriters out-Dicked Dick, so to speak. In the novel, Deckard is very definitely not an android/Replicant. His wife is real, and he can emote through Mercerism. The Movie Blade Runner is more in line with P.K. Dick's other stories that question, "What is real? Am I real?" In the book, the androidss are just bad no matter what. They'll kill an animal just to watch it die. Deckard bones Rachel because Holden suggests it as an experience, and afterwards she actually kills Deckard's sheep just for the hell of it. There's no hope for androids, and humans engage in Mercerism to experience and empathize with the old man trudging up the hill while others throw rocks at him. It sets them apart from the "andies."

In BR, it explores the "more human than human" angle and shows that despite their short life span, these Replicants can have feelings of love. Deckard and Rachel are so human to the point that they don't know that they aren't. Hence their phony photographs. (Deckard's photos look like they were found at a flea market, even.)

Just one meat-bot debugging the programming of another meat-bot.

That's the point. As is already revealed in the opening text of the movie, one of the main purposes for Replicants is that they are made for brutal, dangerous work that humans aren't willing to do. Would a human really want to hunt down these Replicants? Would a Replicant hunt down other Replicants, knowing that he is one himself? This is why Deckard exists.

Please tell me the purpose of Rachael's character beyond the Voight-Kampf scene if Deckard was a replicant.

Please tell me the purpose of the lame, tacked on, "gee, she doesn't have an expiration date after all," "happily-ever-after" ending. It's dumb. Rachel even asks Deckard if he's ever taken the test himself, and he doesn't even reply. Obviously, he hasn't.

A little IMDB research told me my hunch was correct. "Legend," which the unicorn dream came from, came out 3 years after Blade Runner. So this WAS Ridley Scott going George Lucas on his director's cut special edition.

Not quite. This unicorn from Legend is no secret to BR fans. For those who know a lot about Blade Runner, the movie almost wasn't even made. It was close to getting cancelled so many times. It went into production before everything was finalized, even. Mary's part of the movie was cut out due to time and budget constraints, so scenes were rearranged in editing to try to make sense of her absence. Above all, the studio insisted that Scott give the movie a happy ending, and forced Ford to begrudgingly give the lame narration. I do acknowledge the noir appeal the movie gets from it, but artistically speaking, the original version of BR is not as good as the director's cut.

Since the DC leaves little doubt that Deckard is in fact a relicant, and since the DC obviously represents Scotts original vision before it was screwed up by studio execs, I never even considered the question a matter of debate.
So this is probably the answer to MX7's question: The people who doubt Deckard is a replicant are most likely those who saw the cinematic version (first or exculsively).

I saw the original theatrical version first and loved it. But after the DC was released in the early 90s, at first it took me a bit to get used to it, but I honestly haven't brought myself to watching the original theatrical version since then. It's been over 20 years now since I've watched the original. I wanted to see the DC in the theaters so bad, but I didn't get my license until after high school, and nobody would take me to see it. I saw the final cut in '07 with Undamned in the theater and it gave me the chills. Nobody can fairly compare Scott to Lucas. UD didn't even notice the changes, but I did. Tweaks should be very small and barely noticeable, and the FC BR movie is solid gold in comparison to the SE SW movies and all that "Greedo shoots first" BS. (And on top of that, he has made every version of the movie available on DVD, except I remember the version I first watched and recorded off my local UHF TV station had the opening intro text narrated with a voiceover too.)

[MX7]

Gregg, you've summed up everything I wanted to say. The ending of BR was so satisfying, so Phillip K. dick I was amazed Deckard is categorically NOT a replicant in the novel.

My surprise at the resistance to the notion that Deckard is a replicant is that it was so mindcrushingly influential on a variety of media. William Gibson may have almost finished Neuromancer by the time BR was theatrically released, but he was simultaneously blown away/annoyed that it had narrowly prefigured the trans-human thematics of his novel. I think Blade Runner really remains timeless through its influence, on everything from Snatcher to Ghost in the Shell to Bubblegum Crisis to Snowcrash to 2046 to every glorious and not so glorious po-faced musing on "WHAT IS HUMANITY?" in pop culture. Yes, Blade Runner is glorious to consume on an erotic level, but it's the subtle mindfuck of realising that the protagonist is a replicant, and yet more human than many 'human' characters. It's not a Shymalayanan plot twist by any stretch of the imagination. I wouldn't even call it a twist, more of a hypnogogic realisation, a culmination of the drip feed of ideology throughout. I twigged halfway through the first time I watched it (though I was about 16).

I guess any film can be what you want it to be. I would lightly resist any reading of The Thing or Aliens as anything other than revulsion and terror and abjection in the face of an incomprehensible Other. But to deprive Blade Runner as its status as this big budget Trojan, sneaking posthuman themes into such a mainstream film? It's just too appealing to consider otherwise.

[greg]

Thanks. I forgot to react to what was said before by somebody when they compared Blade Runner with Deckard as a Replicant to an M. Night Shabalabadingdong twist. Twists are great in movies. Blade Runner DC, Planet of the Apes, etc. Even Shaymalan's first few movies were fantastic, especially 6th Sense. IIRC, Signs wasn't about twists, but the cool thing about that movie was the "so are the aliens real or not?" deal. Then Shaymalan became a joke, an adjective, and a verb by becoming a predictable one trick pony, and shoveling the twists and became a horrible character director like Lucas. Like Lucas, Shaymalan was a genius, but just got full of himself to the point of becoming absurd.

I still haven't seen Prometheus. The Honest Trailers take on that movie is enough to make me avoid it. And to think that Scott is wanting to do a Blade Runner sequel and his script writer is the dork responsible for the stupid Green Lantern movie (another one I won't bother to watch)... It's frightening.

I just recently got this BR decal for the back of my car. I'm probably the only one in town who knows what it is, though.

[Ed Oscuro]

I didn't want to say anything about the original PKD text because I couldn't force myself to get through it - that sounds even worse than I thought, the way the androids are being depicted. I just gave up when they started talking about mercerism and the fake animals - come on! ("Do you like our owl?" and the bit about the snake that took the pleasures are still two of my favorite lines from the film, though.)

[drauch]

Wait, what? Not trying to derail, but since when was it debatable that the aliens in Signs may/may not exist? I thought it was pretty straight forward bland Sci-fi tale, full of silly plot holes, deus ex machina solutions, and blatant religious allegory regarding lost faith. M. Night is certainly deserving of his negative comments. I'm unaware of anything of his that is even relatively decent except The Sixth Sense, and even then, I can't say I'm that impressed.

[GaijinPunch]

Wait, what? Not trying to derail, but since when was it debatable that the aliens in Signs may/may not exist? I thought it was pretty straight forward bland Sci-fi tale, full of silly plot holes, deus ex machina solutions, and blatant religious allegory regarding lost faith. M. Night is certainly deserving of his negative comments. I'm unaware of anything of his that is even relatively decent except The Sixth Sense, and even then, I can't say I'm that impressed.

I think Signs played out a lot like what an alien "invasion" would play out like here (that didn't involve big spaceships). There was very sparse indication that aliens were around, so a lot of it had to do with what each person believed. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the aliens were Jews, and had no chance against Mel Gibson.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

So could Deckard be regarded as a Nexus 6 or 7 variant model? And just how many LA police force issued replicants are on the payroll (surely there are more than with just Deckard shown)? I find it fascinating that the BR film does co-exist within the original Alien flick universe as well. Tyrell Corp. and Weyland Industries (later on known as Weyland-Yutani joint-venture conglomerate) co-existing together in the 21st century.

There was one unfilmed scene of the real Eldon Tyrell preserved in a cryogenic sleep chamber while Roy killed his Tyrell replicant double but Scott wasn't able to film this scene as intended as it would've run into additional expenses that the studio didn't want to cough up.

And lastly, the extravagant unfilmed holographic scene with Zhora and her dance with the boa constrictor that the audience was watching when Deckard was served a drink at the bar. The studio was unwilling to fork over the budget to get this particular scene shot as originally envisioned. Instead, the audience sees the bar patrons watching her sexy dance routine.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~