The Nerve Film Lounge

I disagree with Peter Smith's contention that Deckard-as-Replicant is far more emotionally devastating than Deckard-as-human, if for no other reason than the fact that Smith suggests that this turns the movie into little more than a tired anti-technology screed. The replicants in the film--Beatty, Rachel, Leon, Pris--are all more human than Gaff, Bryant, and, yes, even Deckard himself. An emotional predecessor of the new Battlestar Galactica, the original Bladerunner suggests that the machines we create are ultimately more emotionally alive than their creators-- that as gods, humans are just as cold and distant as our own creator.

If instead we believe that Deckard is a replicant, what are we left with? A rather tired "trick" ending that belies everything we have seen up until that point: rather than a pointed romance between a human and a replicant, we have hot robot-on-robot action; rather than a replicant Beatty teaching the human Deckard what it really means to be alive, we have a robot saving another robot's life; and rather than a human Deckard rejecting his own kind in favor of the ones he was tasked with killing, we have a robot freeing itself from the shackles of its oppressors. Oh boy.

Let Ridley Scott do whatever he wants with his film, but don't try to convince us that these changes are uncontestably the work of genius or that those who prefer the emotional consequences of the original are somehow missing the point.

Okay...I'm sure it's terribly presumptuous of me to interpret this film in the shadow of my betters.... But what I always got from Blade Runner is the question of whether the humans in this film were any more humane than the replicants. Remember when Rachel asks Decard if he ever took the test he gave suspected replicants? She wasn't suggesting he _was_ a replicant...she was making the point that Deckard morally wasn't any different from the replicants. This movie is _about_ what it means to be human, and how little difference there was between the humans and the replicants. The point of the ending...with Deckard escaping the hellish city with Rachel, was that the point of humanity was its capacity for love and empathy...not its biological origins. The reason Roy Barry's death was so poignant, was that we [humans, presumably] could empathize with his fear and desperation...even if he was monstrous in other ways.

In any case, Blade Runner was a tremendous movie...I even liked the original voice-over version...I wish it was available too.

First rate review of one of the greatest evolving films ever....thank you...

Like a prior reader leaving feedback, I have not had a chance to see the latest cut of Blade Runner. I have seen the original and '92 directors cut on a number of occasions.

I suppose my ideal version of this film would have been the director's cut w/out the implication that Deckard is himself a replicant. The removal of the narration and the happy ending were both great improvements. The unicorn and "deckard as replicant", not so much. It smacks of cheap junior high grade irony -- look audience: the killer of androids is ... himself ... an android.

So, add me to the Deckard is human camp, I guess. Not because I like my heroes human and my robots evil, though. I actually think the moral ambiguity of the film all the more striking w/ Deckard as a human. I always viewed the original film this way: there was a very aesthetically striking sentiment to the notion that the androids were in many ways acting more human (survival, love, the search for meaning) than deckard (the human) himself was. Deckard was detached, awkward, unquestioningly following his orders, inhumane in his dealings w/ Rachel's feelings. It was a nice contrast and undermined superficial mandates from past sci fi to destroy all evil robots. It also elevated Roy Batty's final speech to Deckard all the more.

Ah well. I will still look anxiously forward to this final version of the film. Regardless of the metaphysical questions of Deckard's identity, this is still a masterful movie.

I write this without yet having seen the final cut.

Blade Runner is as confusing as hell because it's missing a couple of vital plot points from Philip K Dick's _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_. They're hinted at (the lines about the artificial owl and the empathy test when Deckard meets Rachael and Tyrell ), but the hints are never developed, and so the movie never provides a satisfying motive for hunting the replicants. Without this knowledge the only danger the viewer sees in the replicants is that they committed murders in escaping to Earth (and one feels that murder is a very common occurrence in this world) and that they want more life. It rings pretty hollow, and the movie is undermined. Of course, this might have been intentional, so Scott could tell a different story.

Regarding why, if Deckard is a replicant. should we care about this struggle between machines: As one critic has observed, the replicants are more vital than the human characters in the movie; taking that, along with the Tyrell motto of "More human than human", maybe what we see is that the replicants are taking over far more than just humanity's physical work, but also our emotional work: they engage in living, vital struggles for love and to survive, under the aloof and watchful eyes of overseers like Gaff.

Then Blade Runner becomes prophetic of today's increasingly technological and disconnected world - everybody shut up into their rooms, watching TV and connecting via SMS and on MySpace. Today we feel so much mediated by machines; tomorrow the machines will do the feeling for us.