July 10, 2000

Scott Reveals Blade Runner Secret

Director Ridley Scott has finally settled one of moviedom's most hotly
debated ambiguities: Is Harrison Ford's robot-hunting cop in Blade Runner
one of the genetically engineered replicants he's supposed to be rounding
up?

Spoiler alert: If you want to keep the issue unsettled, we suggest you stop
reading right now.

Still with us? OK. In a new documentary that aired on British TV, Scott says
that yes, Ford's character, Rick Deckard, is a replicant.

Like his love interest, Rachel (Sean Young), Deckard doesn't know he's
man-made, with synthetic memories and a limited life span.

Speculation about Deckard's true nature didn't really come to the fore until
Scott revealed a director's cut, which featured extra scenes. But even the
original 1982 film had some clues — besides his superhuman ability to hang
on to a ledge with two fingers after being attacked by wild-eyed replicant
Roy (Rutger Hauer), Deckard's eyes also glitter in the dark (as do
Rachel's).

"I still think it is one of the best films I ever made," said the British
director, who gave us Gladiator this summer and who is currently helming
Hannibal.

The hugely influential sci-fi-noir film was panned upon its release, but
eventually gave birth to a diehard cult.

Scott says that Blade Runner was "kind of a dark novel," which may account
for its longevity. "You revisit it constantly like re-reading one of your
favorite books. You always find you get sucked in again," he told the
Channel 4 documentary.

I wonder if you can argue that the other replicants KNOW Deckard is one of them ... and that he doesn't know it himself. Hence Zhora's patronizing reaction to him, and Leon's going immediately for his "glittering" eyes.

Then again, following that idea, Leon would immediately have known that Holden (the investigator at the beginning) was a replicant as well ... but then, who knows how many replicants are moving about in this society? Or how they're programmed, or what they're for.

quote:

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Originally posted by H Rocco:
I always thought it was rather obvious, myself.

I also thought that the guy who interrogates Brion James at the beginning was a replicant as well. In fact, discussing the question of Ford's replicancy, my father pointed out how much the other actor (David Dukes, I think) looked like Harrison Ford. I just shrugged and said "Maybe they're the same model."

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One wonders now if Deckard is a specially designed replicant to eliminate other replicants...

It just seems more moving and more ironic if he had been human. He was so soulless compared to the replicants, so less alive. They wanted life so much, he had it but it was wasted on him. Thus bringing the point home that is how you spend your time, not how much you have.

Why would they ever let Deckard retire, even temporarily?

Also, if he was designed to catch and retire replicants, why was Leon able to hold him like that?

If I was designing a replicant killer, I would make sure that it had at least as good a strength as the replicants it was designed to hunt. I might give him enhanced vision and hearing as well. I would certainly turn up his eye/hand coordination as well as his other motor skills.

Why would the Japanese bladerunner let him go? If was a replicant, they certainly wouldn't let him just wander off. He would be valuable property, not to mention that there would be little way to cover it up.

I can understand that it might make it a little easier for others to deal with him, but the potential risk of making too human (Weak as a Human)leaves him vulnerable. If you going make him a human, why not use a human in the first place. Its not like they had a shortage.

First off, this was never a secret. Paul M. Sammon's excellent tome on the subject of Blade Runner, which is called Future Noir, goes into a lot of detail as to the different versions of the film and what how they impact on the story.

Scott said that while it could be considered ambiguous in the original theatrical versions (there were two), in the so-called director's cut version there can be no doubt whatsoever as to the... er... replicantness of Deckart.

Now, as to how to explain how this works out within the Blade Runner universe...

The replicant "models" are just a group of genetic material that is grown into a being. This being will develop according to...

• The physical limitations or abilities of the batch.
  Zhora and Roy are smarter, for example, than either Pris or Leon.
  
• The nature of the memory implants.
  ...or lack thereoff. Leon, for example, was very effected by his lack of a past, and so began collecting photos of himself and the other replicants.
  
• The actual experiences the replicants have in the real world.
  This is what nobody can control. The memory implants may clash with the actual experiences. This is how I interpret Deckart's situation to be... when he was still "new," he was the best, doing exactly what he was supposed to do, but not really enjoying it. He eventually got sick of it, and I would assume that the police department figured (rightly) that it wasn't so difficult to keep track of a law-abiding citizen.
  

This is my interpretation of how Deckart came to be walking around... the department may well have just figured that they could bring their ace Blade Runner in case of an emergency (which they did; they got good results with Zhora and Pris, but Leon's boldness was misjudged by everyone, and Batty was the ubermensch, nobody really knew what he was capable of). That's why I think Gaff was around, to keep a general eye on Deckart.

quote:

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Originally posted by Gae:
I love this movie but unfortunately the DVD out in circulation is the Director's cut without Deckard's voice over. This was the first version I ever watched and, personally, I prefer it to the Directors cut..so I refuse to buy the DVD until the original is restored.

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Dude, you just don't get it do you. The original theatrical version is a result of Hollywood's distortion of Ridley Scott and the author of "Do Andriod's Dream of Electric Sheep" original story. The narrations were simply put there because Warner Bros thought that the audiance would understand the movie better. The whole idea behind it was to keep Dekard's backstory a mystery until the very end. I always thought that the narrations were cheesy "detective movie" type and distracted me from the rest of the film. For more insight as to why they may have deleted the narrations, read my original response to this thread.

I guess it all goes back to what version is the real version of the movie. For me, it will always be the version that I saw in the theater the week that it was released. To me the backstory is not whether he is a replicant, but rather how can a human be so much less human than the things he creates.

Regarding the voice-over, I don't neccesarily mind the idea of it, but the way it was written and delivered (both Bud Yorkin and Harrison Ford were on their third try this time) makes me like the version of the film without it... with one exception. Roy's death would have been well served with either Yorkin's original take or even the one that ended up in the original theatrical versions.

However, the voice-over was not done over the protests of Ridley Scott. There was always supposed to be a voice-over in the film, it's just that Scott was so dissatisfied with all of the deliveries that he ended up dropping the idea. It was reinstated by the studio after preview screenings.

However, one place where studio meddling was clearly done was the ending. Although several ideas existed for the ending, Scott ended up settling for the doors closing. That was in his original notes and the ones he provided for the director's cut. I can't stand all those images of a lush landscape after seeing the wasteland of a city... it makes sense in context of the story.

As far as the unicorn and Deckart being a replicant...

Since that was one of Scott's original ideas (and one of the reasons he and Harrison Ford had disagreements) I can only say that it betrays nothing to make it a bit more explicit in this version. If you don't like that idea, then so be it.

Dramatically, it does make sense (if you look at the Voight- Kampf scene, for example, watch Joe Turkel's performance. Who's being tested in this scene?).

The Blade Runner squad would, of course, consist of replicants that are programmed to be good at tracking down other replicants. Deckart, despite his deficiencies, was quite successful at figuring out quite a few things about the replicants. That Leon suprised him is one thing (it was a stupid thing to do); that Roy overpowered him was because Roy had a stronger will to live than Deckart, who up until that point, had mostly taken his humanity for granted.

When Gaff says, "It's too bad she won't live, but then again, who does?" it becomes a different sort of idea... Gaff could, presumably, have seen Deckart's incept date, just as Deckart saw the dates for the four (five, counting the elusive Mary) replicants he was sent to kill.

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Forget about ever seeing the original version on video, though. The director's cut edition has not only replaced the theatrical versions as the "official" edition of the movie, that's also the one that has been put in the Library of Congress.

1. DECKARD'S EMOTIONS: With the narration eliminated, Deckard is no longer necessarily a cold, hardened, apathetic character (with an ex-wife no less). He's just quiet, possibly introverted, though no less tough for it. Like the other Nexus 6, he is emotionally (probably less than) 3 years old. He looks around a lot when being driven by Gaff, as if the world is still kind of new and foreign to him. Batty and Pris exhibit some unwieldiness with their emotions at Sebastian's place. Deckard also does so with his "romancing" of Rachel. He tosses her against his window, then withdraws his hands, as if he's just messed up. When he shoots Zorah, and you'd think he'd never killed anyone before, the way he hyperventilates (with no cold narration, his reaction plays quite differently). Perhaps it was his first time (though he has false memories of other times).

2. TYRELL'S GOALS: Tyrell, a chess player, likes to try to get past the restrictions placed upon him. He likes to beat the tests. Rachel is an example, a replicant who doesn't know that she is one, who has memories. She can almost beat a Voight-kompf (sp?). What if Tyrell's actually already one step past her, having gone past Rachel and placed one out in the community with the job of no less than pursuing other replicants. I don't think Tyrell actually designed him for the purpose of terminating replicants, but I think he knew that that job would put his best one in the position to most likely discover his own nature. It's the ultimate test.

Deckard asks Bryant, essentially, "What if we can't detect them?" and he's given a worried look in response, as if (it seemed to me) Bryant hopes that day hasn't finally arrived, as if knowing that that's inevitable. It would be in character for Tyrell to try to slip into society replicants who are so close to human that they are no different (the point of the film anyway).

And, of course, being a replicant, Deckard naturally would understand them better, and would be a better tracker.

3. DECKARD'S PAST: With no narration, he's no longer a down-and-out cop, divorcee, etc. He has no past that we know of, save having worked for Bryant before as a Blade Runner. I think that his memories are Gaff's. Gaff seems to resent him through most of the movie. He *always* knows where to find Deckard, just shows up sometimes. He really is "keeping an eye on him" as has been suggested. He makes the unicorn - whose dream was it originally? When he finds Deckard at the top of the building, he says, for the first time speaking to Deckard in English, "You've done a man's job, sir." Gaff knows what Deckard is. Gaff is a Blade Runner, and has been one. He has probably *actually* "retired" replicants, while Deckard may only remember having done so.

And whose photos are faker than Deckard's? His piano is littered with pictures that look to date from the 1800's. And I've always thought that the movement of the Rachel photo was a subtle pull-in tactic; Deckard is staring at a phototgraph that he mentally, I don't know, dives into, because photos are so important, or effective to him.

4. ENVIRONMENTAL CUES: It turns out that one aspect of the novel, which is very different from the film, is subtly present. To go off-world, one has to be physically almost perfect. Who's left on Earth? Gaff with his limp, the lady with a patch on her eye, the overweight, the old, those with rapid aging disease, or very bad eyesight . . . I'm not sure if this applies comprehensively, but as I remember almost everyone in the film has something "wrong" with them - except the Nexus, and Rachel and Deckard (possibly Holden too, hadn't thought of him being one before). They're the Healthy & Beautiful People. Deckard qualifies.

The eyes that shine, or glow, is a very subtle, but also quite specific indicator. ONLY replicants, or artificial animals, are photographed with this effect. Our first glimmer of it is the owl at Tyrell's, which is specifically pointed out to be artificial. Deckard's eyes exhibit this phenomenon once in the film, in the background of a shot when Rachel is asking if he'd hunt her, and he's telling her, "No, but someone would."

5. ROY AND DECKARD: I believe that Roy knows about Deckard at the end. I think that he has much of Tyrell in him, note how they dialogue in detail about the genetic possibilities for more life, like a meeting of the same kinds of minds. He beats him in chess, not just smarter, but perhaps knowing his opponent's strategies. It's possible that the replicants were a kind of wish-fulfillment for, say Tyrell and Gaff (so Gaff lets the girl live for Deckard, Tyrell welcomes, if cautiously, Roy) I think that after killing Tyrell, Roy might have poked around a bit, not one to give up. He could have found data on other replicants, Deckard being among them.

In the chase, he toys with Deckard, punishing him for Zorah and Pris, but otherwise toys with him. How good is Deckard? What can or can't he do? He saves Deckard at the end, no longer because he "loved life, any life, my life" as in the narrated, but now for reasons we have to find in what is present sans narration. Deckard's one of the only people he doesn't kill.

I think there's more, but that's what I can come up with. It looks to me like a movie where, as it was filmed, Deckard was always intended to have been a replicant. As such, it deals with the question of "What is human" in quite an interesting way, giving us a protagonist who has all the human priviledges, but doesn't know (until the end) that he isn't one, as far as some are concerned. In this version, with more viewings, it becomes harder and harder to see the Nexus as "bad" guys. They're escaping slaves.

It's a very interesting film in its newer form.

I wonder why Scott hasn't made anything as dense or interesting since, with the possible exception of the underrated (says me) 1492.