Is Deckard a replicant?

What is this boondoggle??

In regards to the history of the film, and how the studio didn't allow Ridley final cut on the first theatrical release of the film, it is not, and never has been, the definitive cut. Read the book Future Noir : The Making of Blade Runner for more on this. Also, your point about selling more DVDs and Blu Rays just doesn't wash when aimed at Ridley Scott and Blade Runner. Scott wasn't allowed to finish the film in 1981. His first official cut was released in 1992. Claiming this was done to sell more DVDs and Blu Rays, even though neither format existed at that point, just doesn't make any sense at all, especially when Ridley didn't have any rights to the film at that point.

In regards to Lucas, I think you are pretty much spot on.

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The point is the question, not the answer. The same is true going back to the book, though the themes of the book and the themes of the movie are different. The fact that it is a legitimate question at all has serious implications and that is the point.

And you cannot say Deckard was absolutely a human in the theatrical cut but turned into a replicant in the later cuts. The other cuts make the question more obvious but the question itself was there in the original film. Just as it was in the book.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

SPOILERS FOR BR2049!

The answer lies within Jared Leto’s mind.

Depending on the context you mean, it actually would. As that is storywriting. Plot-twists are one aspect but fleshing out characters and their backgrounds/motivations and overall perceptions of them in the larger context of a series, is what it's all about.

The original Blade Runner (1982) was not Ridley's film, he was hired as a director. It's a myth that directors always control everything in a movie. And it's a myth that a director's vision is the only thing that matters. Had Ridley produced (paid for) the movie, and wrote it, as well as directing it, then it would be his movie & his vision, but Blade Runner is not solely Ridley's work.

The directing part: visuals and staging of the shots and directing of actors, are his...But...it was not his story idea, he did not pay to have the film made, he did not write the screenplay, he did not own the film. He was part of a team and so his ideas are no more important than the people who actually wrote the script and gave the story life.

I haven't seen Blade Runner 2049 but from what I've read it sounds pretty great. I'm looking forward to watching it. But no matter what it says about Deckard being a human or a replicant, it doesn't effect or change the original movie.


Whenever a director comes out years after a film has been made and then makes a claim about what he was trying to show in the movie...it doesn't change my personal interpenetration of the film. That's called The Death of the Author and it means my interpretation doesn't rely on someone else personal beliefs, but is formed by my response to the movie.

No director's later opinions, no reboots, no reedits can change the original work. The original work stands on it's own.

Why? Why can't a sequel expand on the ideas or reveal a mystery from another film? You stated in an earlier post that Blade Runner wasn't Ridley's film because he didn't write it or pay for it. If that is the case (which I do not agree completely, btw), then why doesn't a sequel, written by the same guy that wrote the original film (Hampton Fancher in this case), have any relation to the original material as far as interpretation? Will we now move the goal posts back and say that no one involved in making the films has any important input in the concepts of the films? Is it now just going to be Phil K. Dick's input that matters? At what point can ideas be expanded on or revealed more?

Stanley Kubrick's films are mostly adaptations. Was he just some hired hand with no artistic vision or input? I don't see what you are getting at here when you claim the be-all, end-all definition of a film is all up to the viewer's interpretation. A viewer's interpretation is important, and sort of a personal thing, but it doesn't define a film, or any other piece of art, for that matter. Why do the artist's intentions not matter? One thing I have read a few different people say about the original Blade Runner, and at least a couple of times in the book I mentioned, is that the visual and atmospheric elements were created with a very unique vision that came almost entirely from Ridley Scott at the time. Other people involved in the production of the film said exactly that. I think his input and ideas should at least be considered, yea?

Also, if the "original work" was tampered with before it was released, as is the case here, that should come into play, as well.

@Citizen Rules

Does Rachel ask Deckard if he has taken the replicant test in the theatrical cut? If so than I don't think there is any way you can say that he is human beyond a shadow of doubt. That question is only there for one reason and that is to put the question in the head of the audience of whether he is or isn't.

I have seen Blade Runner three times now. Pretty sure I saw the director's cut the first two times. Watched the final cut a couple weeks ago and the unicorn stuff is pretty definitive but if that's not the original intent I could be swayed.

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Letterboxd

A sequel can expand on an idea from an original movie, but a sequel stands alone in that it can't change what was originally done. At least it sure ain't going to change it for me. I know the opinions that I formed when I first watched Blade Runner in the theater back in 1982 won't be changed by later cuts of the same movie. Ridley can delete scenes as he did, and he can add in scenes, but it doesn't change the original movie experience for me. At least he didn't pull a Lucas and make the Theatrical Cut unavailable, and for that I'm glad.

See, I don't believe in an universally connection between movies, movies aren't real to me in that way and my mind doesn't work that way either. But I gather a lot of people do think of movies like Blade Runner as real in some existential way. And I think a lot of the fans who believe Deckard is and always was a replicant, do so based out of a philosophical or ideological desire.....which is OK, as we're all different and all have different ways of thinking. But it's not how I approach things.

No, not really to me. The book is the book and the movie is the movie, just as BR2049 is another movie. While the various edits by Ridley are just variations on the original.


Good question, does the often panned 2010 change or ruin what Kurbrick did in 2001? No. They should each be judged by themselves as they are works of art.


Because Ridley did not show us Deckard as a replicant in the original film, he edited the Directors Cut to allude to that fact, but that doesn't transcend time backwards and change the original version.

What if Sean Young said tomorrow that Rachel was a human and was pretending to be a replicant to test the validity of the Voight-Kampff? Would you then believe that to be truth? Or would you believe you eyes in what you had originally seen on the screen?

Now what if Ridley Scott said that, would you then believe Rachel had been a human along? That's what I mean about Death of Author, it's a literary term.

I did indeed say that already,'
Disagree, the movie and the book are two different works and I judge them separately. I never care what a book was, only if I like the movie or not.

But the question was there. Without a doubt the question was there. The audience was always meant to question whether Deckard was a replicant or a human even in the theatrical cut. That's vital to understanding the movie.

Yes it's in the Theatrical Cut.

Good question, glad you asked it.

Rachel delivers that line and looks so hurt when she says it. It's designed to show us, how humiliating the test was for her, and shows how she's been treated less than human. It invokes the audiences sympathy for her. It's where we start to care about her.
Before that Rachel is portrayed as cold and Deckard refers to her as an IT at the start of the film.

That's a critical scene too because that's where we start to realize Rachel is not an IT and this is where the audience and Deckard starts 'falling in love' with Rachel. Which is important for us to see her humanity, which allows us to see that using Replicants are also human. Different, but human.

See that's the thing, usually the first movie version we're exposed to, is the one that forms opinions in our head. Happens to me all the time. Lets say I watch two version of a classic story, almost without fail, I'll like the first one I seen better than the second. And it doesn't mater if I watch the original movie first or the remake first, it's the version I first see that gets imprinted on my brain as the 'real' story. Unless of course the second version is made really badly. I think that happens to a lot of people.

This has nothing to do with Blade Runner per say, it happens to me with many, many movies. But it might explain why younger people who's first Blade Runner experience is the Directors Cut or Final Cut, believe Deckard is a replicant...While a lot of older people who's first viewings was the Theatrical Cut or TV version believe Deckard to be human.

I've scoured the internet for articles from those who think he's a human, and often they come from people who say they've seen the movie back in 1982. So all of that then might explain some of the reasons why people see it so differently.

That's fair but if my opinion is colored by my original viewing, wouldn't yours be? Honestly I don't remember if it occurred to me on first viewing or not.

Also this quote is confusing to your position:

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." And they said, "Well, isn't it obvious that he's a replicant?" And I said, "No more obvious than that he's not a replicant at the end." So, it's a matter of choice, isn't it?

I bolded the part that is confusing. This is the producers telling him it is obvious Deckard is a replicant?

In my view, there's nothing wrong with the question. It's the fact that Ridley Scott's Director's Cut tries to throw down an unequivocal answer. I'm not saying the ambiguity is totally erased from that version, thankfully, but it's pretty easy to see which conclusion Scott wants the audience to draw.

I'm in the "theatrical cut is canon" camp. I hate when directors go back and tinker with films years later. Yes, they're artists and they're entitled to revisit their own work. And sometimes it's interesting to explore an alternate take on a well-known film. But as an artist myself, I feel strongly that when you release a piece of art into the world, in a way it's not yours anymore. It also belongs to everyone who looks at it, experiences it, ponders it, is moved by it. To change the fundamental nature of the original artwork risks sullying the deep and connective relationship people have with that work.

Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci came back from the dead to paint a new expression on the Mona Lisa. People would lose their minds!

He is not. In the book, it is quite clear he isn't, and it's rather obvious to me, anyway. Deckard learns. He adapts. Replicants, being machines, can't do that. Machines only do what they're programmed to do, and have no adaptability. So, no, Deckard is not a Replicant.

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Thanks again, Mr Portridge.

BTW, I enjoy talking about this subject. It's cool if people see it differently. I'm not into trying to make someone change their minds. But it's fun to talk about it, as so seldom does a movie lend itself to deep analysis like Blade Runner does.



I think it's more basic than that, Ridley was telling how he wanted the unicorn scene and the producers said no to that idea. To me it reads Ridley saying it's a matter of choice as to how one views Deckard, when later he flat out says Deckard is a replicant.

Does Tom Hanks have a big penis?

Some things we just don't need to know.

I agree, I love kickingthis stuff around. Not even sure you are wrong but I do feel it is purposely ambiguous.

Definitely disagree on the quote though. It seems to me Ridley asked them for the unicorn stuff. They said no because it is obvious he is a replicant.

This could be Ridley misrepresenting things but it seems clear that's what he meant in the quote.

If you chose to believe that, then it's your truth and that's fine. We all get to believe what we want.

Movies are art, and like Sleezy just posted, art belongs to the world and speak to us on an individual level. We get to interpret art as we each choose.

And personally I never thought that Deckard was suppose to have a question mark over his head regarding his humanity. I mean if that was truly the intentions of the film, there would have been some scene were Gaff and Bryant discussing Deckard, saying something like:"Do you think he knows what he is?" That would be one thing, but there's no scenes like that and everything we are shown points to him being human.

Well said, thank you, that's what I was trying to express either, with The Death of the Author.

I have a bunch more stuff saved

Ridley might have misrepresented what the producers said originally, he's known to be pretty stubborn. Or it could be that the producers were saying Deckard as a replicant was OK to do...But there too, I don't care what the producers say about Deckard, what I care is what the film showed me.