30 years!

[Rhodes]

Did not realize the Blade Runner did 30 years this year! Then again, it is from 1982 and so am I, I should have know the movie age!




PS: I do have the 25 year dvd set of the movie!

[Sailor Steve]

Meh. Just more stuff to make me feel old.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Awesome movie though! One of my favorites!

[Skybird]

My favourite, too. Must have seen it 30-40 times, know every detail of every scene, could speak any role. Owning the metal box with all versions. At late school, wrote two novels of the movie, and one basing on it. I was almost obsessed with it. And it has had an influence on me like only few others things.

[kranz]

thanks for sharing...

[Agiel7]

Now for the debate: Is Deckard a replicant or not?

[Skybird]

By his eyes, he is.

By the unicorn scene, he is.

By the inner logic of the story and the way Dick usually constucted his stories, he is.

And by statement by director Ridley Scott, he is.

4:0

[Rhodes]

Why the first two?

About the film, also love the soundtrack, the final theme I ear it so many times!

[Jimbuna]

Yes sir a great film indeed

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Rhodes

Why the first two?

About the film, also love the soundtrack, the final theme I ear it so many times!

In some scenes, the known replicants have a certain, alien golden glow in their eyes. When Deckard got beaten up by Leon, and brought Rachel to his appartement, then cleans himself in the bathroom, he leaves the bathroom and Rachel asks him about what she could do, he looks back to her from the dark living room behind - and you see the same golden glow in his eyes.

In the director's cuts - only these reveal the following - , there is the scene where Deckard sits at the piano, daydreaming, and his mind is carried away and he has a memory of an apparent dream or a hallucination: a scene in a forest, and a unicorn breaks free between the trees hidden in the fog. At the end of the movie, when Deckard gets Rachel out of his appratement, on the stairs he finds a small paper figure that Gaff, the deputy, had made and left behind to show Deckard that he had been there - and let Rachel live. Gaff used to make these figures when he was bored: and in this scene its a small unicorn. He reminded Deckard of his dream - and that is a detail that Gaff only could know when he had read about it in Deckard's personnel file. Which would mean that the dream got implanted. Earlier in the movie, Deckard told Rachel that her memories of her childhood where those of Tyrell'S nice, and got implanted inbto her mind, same for her memories about small baby spider in front of her windows of the place where she beolieved she once lived with her mother. On the stairs, with the unicorn in his hand, Deckard seems to realsie beyond all doubt what Gaff told him by ieaving the figurine behind: Deckard in this scene realises that he is a replicant himself, too.

Earlier in the movie, after the fight with Leon, and Deckard and Rachel being in his appartement, Deckard is totally finished and k.o. and lies down in his living room to rest with a drink on his chest, and Rachel asks him if he knows her files and the info about her - and if he ever had run the Voigt-Kampff-test on himself : he registers the question, but saves himself from an answer, saying nothing. Here, he still is in doubt and does not know for sure, or he is refusing to accept the possibility that he could be a replicant himself, too. But when he finally finds the unicorn on the stairs, he knows for sure, and that Gaff knew him in any way like you use to know about any manufactured product with this colour and feature list ordered (and not any other one), because it is printed on the product description chart.

One could add another point to the list of indices that Deckard is a replicant: the movie'S repeated mentioning of photgraphies. Photgraphies play a role for Rachel, but she relasies that they are forged illustrations of an identity she never had. Leon goes back to his appartement to get some photos, getting mocked for this pointless sentimentality by Roy Batty, because both men know the photos are showing a forged history of Leon. The giant advertising movies on the houses showing scenes from alien places on other planets and better life - but it remaisn unproven that the good life they show is a reality, and look at the place where the mkovie is set: the contrast between harsh reality and paradise images on TV is stunning! And finally, the piano in Deckard's appartement, framed by all those "old" family photos, and Deckard looks at them, and the camera just films him with Deckard just saiyng nothing. The theme of photos and the forged identity and forged history they refer to, repeats itself several times throughout the movie.

Artificial identity, artifical reality with the subject of the story initially being unaware of that, but later finding out, is a standard theme in Dick's work. I know probably all of his - roughly - 40 novels. The novel the film is basing on, is not bad, but Blade Runner is one of the few cases when a movie that turns a book into a film surpasses, if not outclasses the book it is basing on.

And yes, the soundtrack is - awesome.

[Rhodes]

I see, thanks! I didn't remember the eyes scene, but then again, since I find out who plays Gaff, I want to re-see the film!
I always dislike the "theory" of Deckard being a replicant, but in being one, he was on earth all that time? He was retired, he was a blade runner, so the info of his past that we learn trough out the movie is also made up, is not?

But he is also a replicant as Rachel, with more life span?

Never read the book, but like the title much!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Rhodes

I see, thanks! I didn't remember the eyes scene, but then again, since I find out who plays Gaff, I want to re-see the film!
I always dislike the "theory" of Deckard being a replicant, but in being one, he was on earth all that time? He was retired, he was a blade runner, so the info of his past that we learn trough out the movie is also made up, is not?

But he is also a replicant as Rachel, with more life span?

Deckard is a replicant created to hunt down replicants. Which is the hidden cynism here, that made people chracaterising the movie as a continuation of the famous film noir series from earelier times. Dick's novels often have a very pessimistic undertone, and anything but an optimistic ending, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is no exception. Whether Deckard has more life span, we do not know, and I would say the film leaves that uncertain. The police know for sure, so did Bryant - maybe that is why he is dealing with Deckard a bit haughty, and is smiling so glibbery.

The movie goes beyond the movie level, like many of Dicks better novels do, too. It asks to what degree we all are controlled and manipulated by impkanted mind patterns - the values focussed on by our cultures, the goals in life society presents to us, the everday stuff and routine we take for granted and assume to be the real basis, worth to found our lives upon. But in the modern consumer workld, and multimedia world, can we really be so sure we really are in control of ourseloves, our thinking, our likings and dislikings? Just watch TV commercial, the bombardement it send into your neocxortex via the eye'S highway.

We all are replicants in this modern time. And, like Deckard, we all believe that we are "authentic". But our imagined indovioduality is mass-produced. We all are products - programmed to believe we are no products, but "originals", and programmed to believe the world that is artifically produced around us, is real and is without alternative so that we have no other choice than to set into the system and function as intended.

Deckard flees, but at a price. He gives up safety, security, certainty, the world he believed to know, for he now knows it is a lie - and he cannot say at all what future and how much times lies ahead of us. The door to the lift slams shut with a loud bang, the screen goes black, and the movie ends with loud, pumping music. The audience needs to go home without having a comfortable answer. It gets thrown out with a loud bang, leaving no room for sentimental wallowing in comfortable certainty.

The producers released the first version of the movie against Scott's will, because they thought the original, sudden ending were too pessimistic for the American audience, also, they thought they need that off-narration to explain it. The sentimental Hollywood-like happy ending was the result, done with material from Kubrik'S "Shining". Scott never wanted that, Ford also never wanted that narration (and thought he could discourage them when he did the narration so bored and demotivated as he did in the English version - the (else very good) German dub does not transport that, and the dubs for the later versions of the movie added some very bad mess-ups due to terrible translation, unfortunately). That the film ends with the liftdoor slamming shut, and that'S it - that'S like a sudden blow with a sword: the blade falls, the head drops, and then nothing but darkness. It is much more in line with the movie and the novel. There is no room for sentimental happy-endings.

[Rhodes]

I remember the two endings. When I saw the directors cut, I thought that was a better ending!

[Agiel7]

But with his cold, detached attitude towards his work, Deckard comes off as less human than the Replicants in the film. This to me presents the most interesting existential quandary. I'm sorry, but Deckard being a Replicant is way too Shyamalan for my tastes. Plus, Deckard being a human fits more with Dick's themes in his book.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Agiel7

But with his cold, detached attitude towards his work, Deckard comes off as less human than the Replicants in the film. This to me presents the most interesting existential quandary.

Which just falls in line with the way the replicants in the movie develope. They start as preprogrammed robots, doing what they were programmed for. The combat models (Roy, Leon). The sex models (Pris, Zorah). The experimental model (Rachel). The police hunting model (Deckard). Tyrell says that Rachel had began to feel that she was a replicant, she fell in despair and gave in to a path that led to revolting: she agreed to flee. Figther Roy and whore Pris fell in love - a human emotion, and decided to revolt, and tried to expand their lives. Fighter Leon got obsessed with his artificial memories, and revolted. Zorah is a bit less differentiated in the movie, we do not get shown her motive why she revolted, but she did. And Deckard functioned like an automat, and then fell in love, and got scruples - and revolted as well. Like the other replicants, he turned out to becomer human after his rebellion against the system. - We also learn in the film that time and again replicants risk their lives to return to Earth, although they know it means a death sentence for them when they get caught - this is the treaosn why Blade Runners even exist.

So what you say, makes sense in supporting that Deckard is a replicant.

I'm sorry, but Deckard being a Replicant is way too Shyamalan for my tastes. Plus, Deckard being a human fits more with Dick's themes in his book.

The film does not tell the story of the book, indeed the book is VERY different. Plus Dick's protagonists almost always find out that reality remote-controls people or is not the natural relaity it is taken for, but an artifical product. His protagonists than are confronted by a universe that all of a sudden breaks apart around them, often leaving them with nothing but uncertainty, even about themselves and their own identity.

The movie stresses this question very strongly - to what degree are people, their ideas and ways of thinking, their beliefs about world and life and their own nature, just produ cts of artifical, alien construction and manipulation processes that they have no own control over, and mostly are not even aware of?

And again I remind of what scott said in an interview himself. He made it clear that the role of Deckard is constructed in a way to make it clear to the careful watcher that Deckard finds oiut to be a replicant himself. It is said in the material and the Making-ofs that come with the metal 25 year-jubilee box, which has hours and hours of documentaries about how the film was made. Very well done dociumentary, btw, I watched it all three times, and found it to be extremely fascinating. Usually I do not care for such stuff.

Their extensive making-of for Gladiator also was a very compelling piece of work, also several hours, as I seem to recall. Or I mix that up with LOTR.

Anyhow... I'm easily getting passionate about Blade Runner, so I better log out here.