Burnt Thru

That's exactly the point. The moment of realization is that Deckard in the end is no different than the people he's been sent to kill. The contrast is only necessary up until the moment of reveal. It's like a war film where the audience cheers on one side against the other before being shown that both are as bad as each other. Some people don't want that kind of reveal but others quite like it.

BTW I'd take issue with the idea that Roy is taking revenge for his affliction. The majority of the movie shows a quest to find a cure for the Nexus termination date. The Nexus6 are killers, it's what they've been programmed to be - like Deckard. Meanwhile the ending directly conflicts with your view of revenge. Roy doesn't kill Deckard - in fact he saves him and in doing so shows him what he is capable of (compassion). He breaks his programing and perhaps allows Deckard to go on and break his with regard to Rachel. Not all the Nexus6's are on Roy's level however, and neither is Deckard in some ways.

arminius

And this is a complete 180 from the book. There the replicants don't care about each other and at the end they sort of collapse inside and give up all hope where a human will go on fighting. The replicants are much less sympathetic in the book and the focus is more on Deckards redemption with his wife and Mercerism. Also the reps are not programmed killers, Baty was a pharmacist. I get that the movie goes in the opposite way but I think Horselover Fat had it right.

K&AJones

I love the movie as it is and doing a remake is just wrong and a bad idea. If anything a prequal would be better suited as it would answer many questions who, why and how they were made. Plus in the end of the original with Harrison and Hauer characters in conflict, Hauer talks about what's he's seen. That alone could be an epic adventure for the screen.

Pizza the Hutt

Ridley Scott not only reinvented the entire goddamn fucking Science-Fiction Cinema genre ONCE, this motherfucker did it TWICE.

The ignorance on display in this thread here, right now, is astounding to me.

Jesus Christ.

Sonic

Pizza the Hutt

He's doing the Hollywood game. Doing what he can to drum up interest in this. Ford/Deckard are not going to be in this and you are a moron if you even think that's even a remote possibility. He's just sizing up the situation. Seing what kind of interest there is for this shit.

TomOpus

Makes sense since there is no script. I'm sure they will come up with a few ideas where Deckard would appear and toss those ideas to Harrison to see if he'd be interested. It wouldn't be that difficult to not include Deckard, especially if it's a prequel.

TomOpus

If you're wrong, would you be willing to post a pic of yourself Tebowing in trenchcoat?

Pizza the Hutt

You realize Deckard was a Replicant, right? From the mouth of Ridley, himself.

Pizza the Hutt

I've already done that, Halloween 2010. Yeah, I'd be willing.

brayzie

If there had been no Rachel, or if Rachel had tried to kill in order to preserve herself but Deckard killed her instead, then the reveal that he was a replicant all along would have been better and more fitting with the traditional themes of film noir.

Him being a human, but throwing his life away to go on the run for a female replicant that's only going to live for another 4 years is a perfect ending, IMO.

Him being a replicant, along with Rachel, makes the decision to go on the run slightly less difficult and less tragic.

Plus too, if he's human, it shows that he wasted his life just doing his job and getting through the days, while the replicants lived, in some ways, a fuller life, by seeing and doing things most people never could (seabeams on the tan hauser gate, etc). "The candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long."

So that's why he chooses to the short life he's doomed to have with Rachel.

Pizza the Hutt

I disagree completely. It makes the ending even more tragic than it already was imo. You don't even know if they even make it out of that building alive.

Supermallet

Do you try to insult people in every post or is it just a gift?

brayzie

Good point. Then it's like the hunter realizes he's not really the hunter, but more like another animal used to track other animals, and it has a more tragic/romantic aspect.

Despite my preference of which ending I prefer, I love the way that people can look at the ending and come up with their own interpretation. I mean, Ridley Scott ended up changing things in the end to show that Deckard WAS a replicant, but their still stubtle details that most people wouldn't notice like the eyes, and the bigger confirmation with the unicorn is done in a way that could still be interpreted as ambiguous unless you start to really think about it, and the connection to Rache's spider story.

I'm so glad I own the Final Cut edition.

Pizza the Hutt

Both.

TomOpus

Yes, I've already posted that Ridley considered Deckard a replicant. Has no bearing on whether Deckard would have much of a role in a prequel.

Deckard was a Blade Runner but he wasn't the only one.

arminius

At the end of the movie I see a human taking off with a replicant. I think Ridley was confused by PKD.

Supermallet

Some friendly advice: Quit it.

Solid Snake

Yeah...in the "DC" or "FC" I saw Deck as a Replicant. I didn't find that hard to see. He's got a short fuse that'll end at some point. He chooses it to be w/ Rachel another Rep.

Also...to whomever said about them even making it out alive of the building. Who would they be running from? The movie alluded to nobody else as a threat...I think...I don't have BR to confirm here.

Burnt Thru

Replicants were not allowed on earth. The inference, to me at least, was that they were being given a head-start from the Blade Runner sent to track them down.

gmanca

I never thought of Deckard as a Replicant until fairly recently when I first read about the thoughts from other internet posters. It just adds a layer that doesn't follow the structure of the film as far as how the world of Blade Runner is introduced.

What gets me is the voiceovers; I can see the negativity that comes from them but they're what grounds the film in noir for me. It's a Philip Marlowe story with all of the trimmings, especially with the original country-side ending.

Burnt Thru

I don't understand this bolded part. The reveal of Deckard as a Blade Runner fits nicely with the movie's theme examining the distinction between human and replicant. At what stage does it make any difference whether someone was born from a womb or from a test tube? The film noir trappings still remain but Blade Runner was never really about being a film noir. It's about notions of identity.

gmanca

That Replicants are illegal on Earth; while it makes sense that Tyrell would have a model that roamed his penthouse, I don't see why Deckard would be allowed to roam the streets.

It ends up being a case of "how far does the conspiracy go" in order to make the case for Deckard to be a Replicant.

Burnt Thru

Is there any suggestion that he is roaming the streets? To me he was created and programmed to hunt replicants. He may very well have been on his first mission at the start of the film. A thief to catch a thief..?

Supermallet

Sorry, I still don't buy it. Throughout the film, Deckard is beaten to a pulp by every single Replicant he encounters. Why send a Replicant to kill Replicants if the Replicant is completely identical to a human in every respect? At that point, might as well send a human.