None of these change anything. It is quite simple. If he is a replicant, either he is unique (or exceptionally rare) or he is not.
If he is not then the entire first movie is not plausible as there would be a million better ways to engineer the breeding of Rachel than sheer happenstance. Moreover, the making of many replicants who could mate with a single female makes little logical sense.
If he is unique (or damn near) then the second movie’s plot is not plausible (Wallace is a moron for not recognizing that he has half the key) and the first movie’s plot is also not plausible (Deckard is unnecessarily put in harms way).
There would be a more logical explanation of this whole thing but the second movie shut it down. If the mating of Deckard/Rachel was actually an accident and NOT engineered (i.e.,a “miracle”) then the series makes a bit more sense (though Wallace should still want to study him if he was). But Wallace outright indicates that Tyrell made Rachel with that ability.
Continue to argue it if you want but to me this last movie seems to unintentionally defeat the “replicant Deckard” theory.
Deckard is implied to be a Nexus 7 (if he’s a replicant at all). Not unique but a newer model than the ones he hunted, but older than the ones hunted in the new movie.
First model to have no finite lifespan, but not special, more a prototype.
If he’s a replicant in the first movie then everybody knows it (the other blade runner certainly does) and all the romance in the first movie is a setup through careful selection of memories (which this movie’s plot would support). It’s not happenstance.
I think Granath’s points are well reasoned and logical. If any replicant male could reproduce, there would be a much simpler way for Rachel to be made pregnant. If Deckard was a special replicant, why would he be a blade runner, and why wouldn’t Wallace acknowledge it. BUT, Wallace does have Decker in his custody and plans to take him apart. Maybe he DOES realize he hit gold and isn’t just letting Deckard know.
I thought the movie is deliberately vague about whether Deckard is a replicant. Certainly as @Granath said it would be internally implausible (but not impossible) for Deckard to be a replicant. On the other hand, nobody in the movie actually makes any kind of declaration on whether Deckard is a replicant. In fact, the premise of the movie itself is putting the old theory to the test: that a replicant is built to hunt replicants.
Which brings me back to the original theory. I’ve watched the Director’s Cut (it was a while ago) and The Final Cut (recently because it is the only “official” version still in wide circulation), never the original cut (too young for that!). None of that led me to believe Deckard is a replicant. Those dreams Deckard had can just be dreams, and nothing more.
Whether they’re dreams or implanted memories, you have to account for the movie making a point of showing you that Gaff knew about them.
It’s really very simple: Ridley Scott made a movie in which Deckard was a replicant, but the studio cut and released a movie in which Deckard wasn’t a replicant. You can have whatever opinion you want about a fictional character, but supporting your opinion depends entirely on which of the two versions you’re referencing.
It’s so vague that I didn’t even notice it the first time I watched the movie! I do think it leans more towards Deckard is a replicant, but you’re right that it’s deliberately vague. It’s so coy about it that you might not even notice if you’re making assumptions about which version it’s following!
You mean Gaff giving Deckard orgami that matched Deckard’s dream? It was kind of vague whether Gaff knew about the dream or maybe it was just an unsettling coincidence. And Gaff gave K an orgami horse in the sequel. Maybe it was his thing (or they are trying to retcon). And then we have to compare which version of Bladerunner we are talking about.
The sequel left it vague for their own self-serving reason. A) invalidating one version over another probably means they will lose some audience from one camp or another. B) they can say that this story is about Rachel and her legacy. Whether Deckard is a replicant is tangential to this story and therefore they refuse to address it.
Is there a director’s/producer’s commentary on this?
Dude. Please. You think Ridley Scott put that in there as a last minute red herring? Just a coincidence to throw you off before you leave the theater? Wow, that guy happened to make an origami figure of a thing the other guy dreamed about in a movie where mental images can be manufactured and implanted into people’s heads! What are the odds?!?!??
:)
It’s a reveal, not a coincidence.
Well, that’s what you’ve got to establish up front. As I said, it’s a simple matter of which movie you watched. In one he is, in the other he’s not. And, yes, there’s a director’s commentary, books, interviews, scripts, footage, etc., etc., etc, that all corroborate Ridley Scott’s intent.
When I was watching The Final Cut, I (like many others no doubt) looked for conclusive evidence that Deckard is a replicant. You say Gaff’s orgami is a reveal, but it could just as well be interpreted as a coincidence. Orgami is Gaff’s calling card, he is just putting Deckard on notice that he will come after Rachel (and/or him). The Final Cut did not settle the debate one way or another. There is evidence but nothing conclusive.
And we aren’t even talking about David Lynch. It is Ridley Scott! That Ridley Scott who made Alien: Convenent! So I thought he left it vague even in The Final Cut. He can talk outside of the movie, but looking just inside the movie it wasn’t clear.
We all know the unicorn sequence was not in the initial filming. It was filmed for the movie Legend and only put in for the Director’s Cut. As far as Scott “making a movie in which Deckard was a replicant”, Harrison Ford’s own words dispute that point as far as the original cut goes. He said that Scott was purposely non-committal on that point and we all know that Ford then decided that Deckard was human and acted accordingly. Your statement that it was the studio that declared Deckard to not be a replicant is not quite true. Ford says he is not. The two writers (Fancher and Peoples) say he was not written that way. The guy who wrote the original story (Dick) says he is not. Scott himself was non-committal on this point until his 1992 version. All evidence suggests that Deckard was most certainly not a replicant during initial filming.
For me, the defining characteristic is the actor playing the character played him as human and would have played him differently than if he was a replicant. The performance onscreen that we see is of Deckard as a human and there is no getting around that.
It really can’t. The director is telling you something, Soma.
There’s other evidence in the movie and that reveal is a significant part of how this is noir: the detective investigating something that ends up involving him directly. Here’s the discussion we recently had.
Sigh. I really have no desire to get into all this again, but you’re repeating something that’s not true. Unicorn footage was indeed shot specifically for Blade Runner and taken out before the movie was released. You can read specifics in the other thread if you’re really interested.
@tomchick Also the orgami “reveal” would work too much as deus ex machina, because there were hardly any firm evidence that Deckard is a replicant until then. It is not like that was a eureka moment for me, nor do I think it was intended as such.
The story already works intelligently as a sort of The Crying Game about andriod: the ultimate dehumaniser of android, a blade runner, comes around and considers an android a human, by loving her. Without Deckard being an android. (Incidentally this message is what the sequel crudely beats your head with so you can’t miss it, whereas in the original it is all show-not-tell.)
The story becomes quite a different beast if Deckard is a replicant. And a mundane one IMO. It would be about one android breaking programming, which is a routine occurrence to require a blade runner.
Now I’m not saying Ridley Scott couldn’t have done the more mundane story, and intended it as sort of a clever twist. But that would be trading cleverness over intelligence.
