Qt3 Movie Podcast: Blade Runner 2049

tomchick · October 16, 2017, 10:49pm

Hey, you don’t have to take my word for it. Why don’t we ask Ridley Scott?. :)

Wired: It was never on paper that Deckard is a replicant.

__Scott:__It was, actually. That’s the whole point of Gaff, the guy who makes origami and leaves little matchstick figures around. He doesn’t like Deckard, and we don’t really know why. If you take for granted for a moment that, let’s say, Deckard is a Nexus 7, he probably has an unknown life span and therefore is starting to get awfully human. Gaff, at the very end, leaves an origami, which is a piece of silver paper you might find in a cigarette packet, and it’s a unicorn. Now, the unicorn in Deckard’s daydream tells me that Deckard wouldn’t normally talk about such a thing to anyone. If Gaff knew about that, it’s Gaff’s message to say, “I’ve read your file, mate.” That relates to Deckard’s first speech to Rachael when he says, “That’s not your imagination, that’s Tyrell’s niece’s daydream.” And he describes a little spider on a bush outside the window. The spider is an implanted piece of imagination. And therefore Deckard, too, has imagination and even history implanted in his head.

Wired: You shot the unicorn dream sequence as part of the original production. Why didn’t you include it in either the work print or the initial release?

__Scott:__As I said, there was too much discussion in the room. I wanted it. They didn’t want it. I said, “Well, it’s a fundamental part of the story.”

-Tom