I think you mean Rick Deckard. Deckard Cain isn’t a replicant so far as I’m aware!
Dude!! Spoilers for Diablo 3!!
I watched The Fountain last week (after hearing about it so dang much on the podcasts*) and was delighted when Tom picked it for his #3 choice. I just love movies that refuse to answer questions, that leave topics up for interpretation, and that allow (or depend on) the viewers to draw on their own experiences to fill in the gaps. It’s kind of poetic, and it brings depth that answering the questions may not provide. Very cool.
- You guys, you invoke The Fountain any time there’s a movie with emotion. A Single Man? The Fountain. A Separation? The Fountain. Goon? The Fountain.
That was pretty awesome!
I’ll say. You can’t even get the character name right. But you really don’t understand the difference between a movie being filmed and a movie being edited? Is it really that hard a concept?
But I’ll state my case again: Blade Runner was shot/filmed as a movie about a guy who’s a replicant, with no ambiguity whatsoever. It was later edited to, among other things, remove that element of the story for the theatrical release.
My point is that it’s not an unanswered question no matter how you look at it. In the theatrical release, it’s not even posed as a question. And in the version filmed and later restored in the director’s cut, it’s all but spelled out with a neon unicorn.
You’re kind of supposed to watch the movie to the end. Edward James Olmos will be along to help you with that interpretation shortly before the credits.
-Tom
You of all people should not make that comment.
But, but, but…StGabe of all people should know Rick Deckard from Deckard Cain!
-Tim
Well, it’s an easy mistake to make:
Stay a while, and listen!
See?
A week before D3’s launch you’ll have to pardon my confusion. :-)
As for:
But you really don’t understand the difference between a movie being filmed and a movie being edited?
Yes, I understand that and I still have no idea how you arrived at the notion that a movie has some canonical version that it is “shot at”. My favorite film, The Thin Red Line, was “shot at” 6 hours. There were many stories that could have come from that. A simple omission here or there could have completely changed the meaning or ambiguity of it’s story. Just as a painting might be a combination of many mediums and many strokes a film is the sum total of many things. The original story has Deckard as a human. That doesn’t mean that saying “it was written as that” is the end of the conversation.
You can keep using strong declarative statements that there is “no ambiguity” but it still won’t make that correct. We’re among literally thousands of people who have argued this point (due to the fact that it’s anything but ambiguous). LMGTFY.
And the more I think about it the more I like the interpretation that Deckard isn’t a replicant.
The whole movie is two separate arcs: Deckard becoming increasingly dehumanized and the replicants becoming increasingly humanized to the point that the lines blur and we’re not sure there’s a difference or, if there is, that it really matters. Deckard being a replicant himself undermines the whole thing. Roy’s speech on the roof isn’t nearly as interesting if it’s just one replicant to another. Deckard being a replicant is a cheap reveal and I like the story better without it.
They have these things called scripts. It’s sort of like the blueprints people use when they make buildings. Or design documents when people make videogames.
As you no doubt know from your own job, sometimes a project shifts as it goes along. And sometimes it’s very clear where this shift happens. With Blade Runner, the shift is after the shooting but before the release. It’s famously documented and it includes things like adding a noire-ish voiceover and removing the reveal that Deckard is a replicant. Feel free to Google that stuff if you like.
Fair enough observations, since I can’t really take issue with whatever you personally find “interesting”. But you’re missing a central facet of noire. Namely, that the detective is already corrupted by the very thing he’s investigating. See, uh, well, pretty much any noire detective story.
-Tom
Except the reveal was ambiguous in the script and in the film. Yes, some of this stuff changed and yes, almost 20 years later Scott gave his interpretation of the ambiguous film he shot. That doesn’t really change the fact that the first released version is very ambiguous and later additions add only hints and not declarative statements of what you’re saying.
“As I know from my job” a project like this isn’t just about one person. Many people working on the project, privy to the script and all of the filmed scenes, had different interpretations of the meaning of the story. The original author had a different interpretation. You’re locked on to your interpretation but that doesn’t make it right. It just makes you one dude on the internet with an opinion. And I still have no idea what the film was “shot at”. By alluding to the script you seem to be agreeing with me though that there is far more to what story a movie tells than the camera work.
And we’re right back where we started.
I maintain that you’re confusing “subtle” with “ambiguous”. Movies like Pan’s Labyrinth, Blade Runner, Birth, and Take Shelter aren’t ambiguous. If you carefully consider the information the movie provides, you’ll find a clear and often direct statement about what has happened. Questions are, in fact, answered. They just are answered in such a way that people can either have interesting conversations about them or silly internet arguments in which they direct each other to Google.
I don’t either, but by all means, keep quoting it as if someone said that.
-Tom
And you can maintain all you want but it’s still not the case that Deckard is clearly outed as a replicant. Gaff hints at it but Gaff could just be fucking with Deckard (they both know a lot about the implanted memories of replicants) and the whole shared dreams thing could just be an allusion to how replicants and humans aren’t really that different. Gaff says, “it’s too bad she won’t live” and not, “it’s too bad you won’t live”.
And you can maintain all you want but it’s still not the case that Deckard is clearly outed as a replicant. Gaff hints at it but Gaff could just be fucking with Deckard (they both know a lot about the implanted memories of replicants) and the whole shared dreams thing could just be an allusion to how replicants and humans aren’t really that different. And even if Scott intended Deckard to be a replicant he still made the movie ambiguous. For all I know the director of the Italian Job’s came out a few years ago and said that they fell off the cliff at the end. That doesn’t mean the movie is not ambiguous.
If you read Paul M. Sammon’s Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner (which is more or less the definitive literary work on the film), Ridley Scott states unambiguously that Deckard is and was always meant to be a replicant.
From pp 390:
We began this discussion with an examination of one of Blade Runner’s most controversial elements: the unicorn. I’d like to wind our talk up with its other most high-profile ingredient: the question of whether Deckard is or isn’t a replicant.
Well in preparing the storyline, it always seemed logical that Deckard should find out he was a replicant. It seemed proper that a replicant detective might begin to wonder whether at some point the police department hadn’t done precisely the same thing to him.
So I always felt the amusing irony about Harrison’s character would be that he was, in fact, a synthetic human. A narrative detail which would always be hidden, except from those audience members who paid attention and got it. But Tandem felt this idea was corny. I said, “I don’t think it’s corny. I think it’s logical. It’s part of the full circle of the initial idea. Ties it off with a certain elegance, in fact.” That’s why, at the end of Blade Runner, Deckard picks up that teeny piece of foil -
-the tinfoil unicorn origami-
-right, the unicorn, which visually links up with his previous vision of seeing a unicorn. Which tells us that the Eddie Olmos character A) has been to Deckard’s apartment, and B) is giving Deckard a full blast of his own paranoia. Gaff’s message there is “Listen, pal. I know your innermost thoughts. Therefore you’re a replicant. How else would I know this?”
…and with regards to other clues about Deckards replicant status…
pp391
-but I must say I better appreciate the more subtle suggestions that Decard might be a replicant. Such as the fact that collects photographs, which you see scattered over his piano. And of course the most significant visual clue is that over-the-shoulder, out-of-focus shot in Deckard’s kitchen, when you see Ford’s eyes briefly glowing. Was that setup intentional?
Totally intentional, sir. I was hoping there’d be those who’d pick up on that.
Since Blade Runner is a paranoid film, throughout there is this suggestion that Deckard may be a replicant himself. His glowing eyes were another allusion to that notion, another of the subtle little bits and pieces which were all leading up to that scene in the end where Deckard retrieves Gaff’s tinfoil unicorn and realizes the man knows his secret thoughts.
Actually, though, my chief purpose in having Deckard’s eyes glow was to prepare the audience for the moment when Ford nods after he picks up the unicorn. I had assumed that if I’d clued them in earlier, by showing Harrison Ford’s eyes glowing, some viewers might be thinking “Hey, maybe he’s a replicant, too.” Then when Deckard picked up the tinfoil unicorn and nodded - a signal that Ford is thinking, “Yes, I know why Gaff left this behind” - the same viewers would realize their suspicions had been confirmed.
I don’t think it gets any more definitive than that.
I agree with all that. Despite Scott’s cut being vastly superior to the original bean-counters enforcements, that’s the one point it fails on. That particular aspect of the movie was better with ambiguity rather than Scott’s vision.
Not to mention that Deckard gets his ass kicked by four replicants in a row, including a “basic pleasure model” when in theory Deckard should be a combat model.
Ridley Scott answers this, as well:
Deckard was the first android who was the equivalent of being human - with all our vulnerabilities. And who knows how long he would live? Maybe longer than us. Why build in the “aging” gland if you don’t have to?
…and you may like the story better if Deckard weren’t a replicant, but Scott’s intentions are well documented. He’s a replicant.
See at that point I think Scott is just trolling us. :-)
I don’t think that anyone entered this conversation unaware of Scott’s statements on the matter (so you can guys can stop impressing us with your ability to look up stuff we already know :-). As with all good there are many interpretations possible. I think that Scott (and a bunch of other people; he didn’t write the screenplay, etc.) made a movie that was ambiguous, later patched it to strengthen one interpretation, but that one can still interpret the result in multiple ways.
If you already know this stuff, I’m not sure why this conversation is even taking place…you can coddle your pet theories about Blade Runner all you want, but there’s nothing ambiguous about it. Scott made Ford wear contacts specifically so his eyes would reflect light in the very same way the fake owl and Rachel’s eyes do. He didn’t do so to create ambiguity. He isn’t retroactively creating this interpretation - it was there from the outset. To claim otherwise you have to ignore metric shitloads of production information which supports Scott’s intent.
Insofar as the creator’s vision of the film is concerned, Deckard’s a replicant. You’re free to view the work through any lens you wish, but any other interpretation is counter to Scott’s intent and is to be regarded thusly.