if you're surprised the general public doesn't have more sympathy for the replicants, then the sequel is going to be a fun reaction to watch! Edit: Roy's body was shutting down, and the nail thru the hand was a way (thru pain) to extend the expiration of the flesh, even for just a few moments longer.
Blade Runner is quite literally a perfect film. The script, the cast, the design, the soundtrack are all top tier. It is a genuine masterpiece. I studied theatre & film design at the same art college Ridley Scott attended. The opening sequence of the LA skyline is based upon the oil refineries & blast furnaces that stand on the Tees Estuary near Middlesbrough, North East England. Scott grew up in the area & the post apocalyptic skyline left a lasting impact on him. When I was at art college, I used to walk down the beach at dusk just to see the flames & lights on the estuary. It was both beautiful & nightmarish at the same time. When I was in LA, I visited the Bradbury Building, which is where they filmed some of the sequences of JF Sebastian’s apartment; mainly the exterior & the Art Deco lifts. Please make sure you watch Blade Runner 2049!! It’s soo soo good….& my god seeing it in IMAX mindblowing. To answer the question about the darkness. The atmosphere has become so polluted, that it’s almost a perpetual twilight. Also due to the collapse of the environment, there’s been wide spread extinction of animals; which is what was alluded to in the first meeting with Rachel & also why there’s people making synthetic animals. Also, classic BBC sci if comedy series Red Dwarf played homage to Blade Runner in their final series; the photograph analysis was one thing & also, the Tyrell building showed up in the London skyline 😂 Daryl Hannah recreated her ‘Pris death throw’s’ in Kill Bill 2. Before anyone mentions the horse dream sequence that’s in the Final Cut….it ISNT a left over from Ridley Scotts ‘Legend’. Basically the horse sequence was in test screenings & was cut before release due to negative responses from the audience. The footage disappeared until the directors cut came out. Legend was released several years after Blade Runner & people just assumed it was unused footage from Legend. The main give away is that the horse aren’t the same breed 😂 Another fun little fact is that the US cut has an upbeat ending with Rachel & Deckard driving off through the mountains. Those shots were actually pieces of footage Stanley Kubrick had filmed for the opened of The Shining; Scott managed to convince his friend Kubrick to let him have the footage.
If you watch it again or even just remember a few key moments you can see clearly that the Replicants were very immature emotionally. Remember they are only 3 or 4 years old. As Tyrell explains, they are like children but never had a childhood. They have no access to a lifetime of experiences and memories “that you and I take for granted”. That is why Leon collects “family photos” That is why Roy, a combat model, is so simple and sad and child-like when he tells Pris, “There are only two of us now…” I think the nail at the end is more of an adrenaline boost as Roy feels himself shutting down. He wants more life. He’s fighting for his life. Every second counts. Even the line while he’s fighting Deckard, “That’s the spirit!” underscores this. Roy relates and strongly identifies with Deckard fighting for his life. Finally, unable to save himself, he saves Deckard instead. Humanity achieved… I hope that helps. Cheers.
It's the other way around, Coscurant architecture is based on Blade Runner. Blade Runner is from 1982, Coscurant was only seen in its full glory in Attack Of The Clones in 2002.
Personally, I think the Theatrical Cut explains too much - that and the saccharine ending make it feel somewhat "designed by committee" to me. The Final Cut is much better in that regard - but pretty much removes the ambiguity wrt the question whether Deckard is a replicant. Some people actively dislike the "Deckard may be a replicant"-angle - but it's quite important to the philosophical themes of the movie and the story even in the Theatrical Cut (when Rachel asks him whether he's ever taken the test himself). I've heard the argument that the "point" of the story is that humans all act rather like unfeeling automata, while replicants show emotion - and Deckard the human learns empathy from the replicant Rachel. The aspect of how automata-like humans act and how emotion-driven replicants behave is certainly quite important, and taking "Human learns empathy from replicant" as the central point of the story is certainly a beautiful reading - but of course it's not the only one. There is similar (or to me even more impressive) beautifully tragic aspect of the story that becomes central when you read it as Deckard being a replicant: In that case, there is a kind of symmetry in the roles of Deckard and Rachel - even while their relation as Blade Runner and fleeing replicant is antipodal. The symmetry lies in both of them being slaves whose life is exploited by a corporation to unwittingly subjugate their own kind - one as an assistant to management at Tyrell, one as an executioner for misbehaving replicants. Together, they realize their situation and chose to flee from it. In general - the movie does rather directly raise the interesting philosophical questions of "how and to what extent is identity based on memory - and how far can we trust our sense of identity when we know there are things with implanted memories to whom those feel as real as ours do to us?" - and makes them rather central to the story. First in the form of Rachel - but when she asks Deckard whether he'd ever taken the test himself, it plants the idea in our heads that he might be a Replicant. How could we tell? How could he tell? Can anyone tell? We have not a shred of backstory for him - except that he "used to be Blade Runner". There's also Tyrell saying that Rachel is an experiment - but of course, there's no reason to assume he can't be lying - as he surely would if he knew Deckard was a replicant. When we learn that Rachel is a replicant who doesn't know that she is, the possibility is first introduced to us - but in a third-person perspective. Deckard is our protagonist, the character we most likely identify with. When we consider that Deckard may be a replicant - it becomes a lot more immediate, and we are primed to ask ourselves epistemological questions about our own minds - how far can we actually know our own mind, and the veracity of our memories? This, together with the aspect of two people unwittingly enslaved to help subjugate their own kind attaining self-awareness and breaking free make this a reading of the movie that is at least as satisfying and deep to me as the "Human learns empathy from Replicant"-reading. Still - both readings seem quite deep and beautiful to me. P.S. Regarding the Jesus-symbolism of the nail through the hand, I can definitely see Roy symbolizing how the replicants are literally "dying for our sins" - our sin of creating consciousness without granting it rights, and our sin of exploiting it mercilessly. P.P.S.: W.r.t regarding them as "different from human due to lack of a soul" - that raises the question of what a "soul" is supposed to be and whether that actually exists - or whether that's just constituted by conscious experience, memory, and (formed by experience and memory among other things) personality / character - all of which the replicants seem to have. There is the philosophical problem that we cannot operationalize our definition of phenomenal consciousness (qualia), so we have no external way to tell if something is "really" conscious. That also means we pretty much have to go by "if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... and does all other things a duck does... we should probably treat it like a duck". So while there is a factual distinction between how replicants and humans come about, there is no a priori reason to regard as fully conscious persons, and hence no a priori reason to deny them the rights that ought to go along with that.
RE: Roy and the nail - "stigmata" - 28:30 "I don't like the idea of us playing God" Robot/artificial life rebellion is literally ground zero of science fiction. The first science fiction novel was Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" and the word "Robot" is Czech, it means worker or laborer and it is from Karel Capek's play "Rossum's Universal Robots" which was about - you guessed it, robots rising up to overthrow their human masters. The themes of both are the consequences of "Playing God" and creating life as God created man, which continue throughout every robot AI rebellion story on through Terminator and The Matrix. *Cyberpunk* deals with class division and the consequences of runaway capitalism. The city is stratified in a literal sense, where the lower classes are the teeming masses at ground level and the rich and powerful live at the tops of towers and pyramids in the clouds, and the richest and most powerful can live on other planets. The environment is destroyed, it rains 24/7 in Los Angeles, most familiar megafauna are extinct and cows and butterflies are protected species (creating the pardoxical social values that protect the last remaining real animals at all costs, but consider the lives of the near-human replicants worthless). There's only one daylight scene and it's in Tyrell's office. The sun appears once in a picture window, as if Tyrell owns the sun and it is an ornament on his wall. Even then, it is obscured by buildings. Our one glimpse of real nature is encroached on by technology. Then Deckard requests the shades be drawn and Tyrell puts the sun away like it's his toy. Tyrell is really leaning into the "playing God" trope. If Tyrell is God, then Roy is Jesus. His hand starts seizing, indicating the first stages of his death. He sticks the nail through his hand, presumably to keep it functioning a few moments longer. He just happens to see a dove on the roof. Which is a pigeon-urban vermin, one of the few real animals that can survive in this over industrialized world. It's poetic that it's not contrived, it totally make sense that urban vermin, including the symbol of peace, would be one of the few survivng species in this world that Roy might find on a roof in the middle of a chase, (that in itself has all kinds of symbolism) and that he would idly just grab a "living thing" he sees in the last moments of his life out of curiosity. He dies with the stigmata on his hand and as he dies the dove ascends to heaven. The other big motif was *eyes* It starts from the first shot "2019" not an arbitrary "sooner than comfortable" future year - it's one short of 20/20- because robot rebellion stories are about man's *shortsightedness* The second shot is the first shot reflected in Holden's *eye* The VK machine tests if you're a replicant by shining a laser into your *eye* The owl and the other replicants have that weird glow in their *eyes.* It's only the replicant characters except in one shot when Rachel asks him if he ever took the test himself. The replicants have superhuman vision, Tyrell wears coke-bottle glasses The replicant's collect photographs - *visual* records of memories They track Tyrell by first interrogating the *eyemaker* Their favorite method of murder is pushing in their victim's *eyes* And Roy's iconic speech begins with "I've *seen* things..."
Roy put the nail in his hand because his body was failing and the pain would make him alert and focused. Clearly the replicants were not robots. They were simply people created in a genetics laboratory. The ethics of the situation is that there is no moral basis for denying freedom to anything capable of asking for it.
oddly enough corporations in the real world can patent any DNA sequence except a human infant, so they grow these replicants as fully grown human beings that were never infants would get around that limitation, which makes legal sense for both Blade Runner (1982) and The Island (2004).
When this was released at the time this movie made you believe that movies would always create new believable worlds to explore, both outside and within the mind. That's not always the case but we can still dream.
i love these old movies, maybe because i'm old too 😁 i guess i have most of them, there are so many great movies here are some of them, the forbidden planet with Leslie Nielsen (1956) the right stuff with multiple high ranking actors (1983) labyrinth with David Bowie (1986) remo unarmed and dangerous with Fred Ward & Kate Mulgrew (1985) war of the worlds (1953) the andromeda strain (1971) westworld and futureworld (1973/1976) and so many others, to many to mention them all, cheers
This is one of the few movies that asks questions, but doesn't answer all of them. That's left to the audience. Like when is something so close to human that it is nearly indistinguishable from humans, isn't it human? What makes us human? What if something more human than human? And so on.
I am very happy that you gave the film and you a chance! For 30 years, this film -next to Fightclub- is my number 1 film and number 1 novel! Although you certainly understood the philosophical, existential part, I had the impression that you could not really connect with the film - that's a kinda sad! Questions: Who am I, where do I come from, what makes me, what defines me and where am I going...but above all: what makes my morality? I think in a few years, when you have had more important, sad and deep experiences, more MEMORIES collected, you should watch the film again! All the best from Germany & again Thx for your reaction!!! (Sorry for my poor english)
As I've grown older I look back and kind of connect with Roy. I'm retired US Sailor, and all MY memories will be gone someday. It applies to all of us.
I'm GLAD you went with the theatrical version, the narration explains some things and doesn't muddy the plot with the question of whether Deckard is a replicant or not. On a 2nd watch go with the Final Cut version, sure. It dumps the narration and happy ending so it's more ambiguous. You did cut my favorite line from the film, when Rachel says, "I'm not in the business. I am the business." Heartbreaking, she woke up that day thinking she was human then told that she was not, her very memories are someone else's. The author is Philip K. Dick who often wrote about the question of identity. He also wrote the stories behind "Minority Report" and "Total Recall" as well as "Screamers", "Imposter" and "A Scanner Darkly". The thin about the replicants is they're created as adults but have no life experience. That's why Roy and Pris liked toys and playing games, they're basically children in adult bodies. Only Rachel had memory implants.
The nail and the hand thing was to stay alive through injury and pain but I'm sure there was symbolism in it. The lights were a symbol of invasion of privacy.
Theatrical/voiceover is the beginnee cut. The Final Cut is when you wanna put your own spin on it. Every reactor I've seen ao many reactors get confused
Stuff 1. Joe Turkel/Tyrell played Lloyd (bartender) in "The Shining". 2. Roy/Rutger Hauer😇 plays in "Blind Fury" a great first time/share. 3. Leon/ Brion James in "Tango and Cash". Much bigger role first time/share also. 4. Deckard/Harrison Ford, two overlooked must first time/share "Witness" and "Force 10 from Naverone". 5. In the original Roy tells Tyrell, "I want more life FUCKER" not father. 6. Ford disliked almost everything about this movie (including Sean Young). He mostly disliked the voiceover. He refused to even watch it until it was "fixed". 7. Daryl Hannah cut her elbow when she ran into that van window 8. Philipe K Dick first came up with the idea for his novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" 9. You must watch Blade Runner 2049.
That comment about not having souls is really disturbing. To just assert that artificial people can't have the same moral worth when what's depicted in the movie is artificial people being subjected to hellish conditions while starting from emotional infancy and confusing their emotional immaturity for 'being robotic'...
Good to see young folks are watching this kind of film noir. But you missed one absolut important part. It is the soundtrack from Vangelis. It is adds a kind of romanticism to an absolute distopian nightmarish cityscape. It is a kind of finding the formula for getting two absolute contrary things together. Vangelis is a master for that.
Odd version to watch. The Final Cut is the one to watch. The end scene with the forest makes no sense (it was added later) because Earth is undergoing ecological collapse (hence why everyone who can leave has left and why 99% of animals are extinct and replaced with replicants). Before you watch Blade Runner 2049, go to TH-cam and watch the 3 webisodes with Jared Leto, Dave Bautista, and Benedict Wing which explain the intervening years. 1 is animated and 2 are live action. Blade Runner Black Lotus is an animated show and is set in the same intervening years but doesn't feel like Blade Runner, more like cyberpunk than future noir.
You should have watched the Final Cut. The voiceover and happy ending were tacked on by the studio against Ridley Scotts wishes. The Directors Cut and Final Cut are virtually identical, - the Final Cut just has some continuity errors fixed, special effects fixes (it's subtle though), they reshot the death scene with Zhora as in the original and Directors Cut its an obvious stunt double and corrected the background in the scene where the dove flies up so it fits in with the rest of the scene.
Pity you went gor the domestic theater version instead of the Final Cut, the latter a better version of the film. The differences are not significant in scene counting but changes the context and dubtext of the film a bit and the lack of narration makes the movie more moody and stmospheric and mysterious, all pluses.
One of the most significant differences is in the scene between Roy and Tyrell. The director's cut makes Roy more complex and sympathetic, emphasizing his reverence for Tyrell as his Father (with a capital F). Also, after killing Tyrell Roy tells J.F. "I'm sorry" for what he was going to do to him. He genuinely liked J.F. but didn't have the emotional experience to completely overcome his utilitarian programming.
On the philosophical issue of the relative humanity of Replicants, there's an exchange between the blade runner and his boss I won't spoil for you, but it's a pretty devastating bit of dialogue. Also, Roy's unhinged behavior at the end was basically just him accepting that he was near death and choosing to just get weird with it
A classic of the genre. Check out the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Phillip K. Dick, a great book. Thirteen works of his have been turned into films or TV series, this film, Total Recall and Minority Report to name a few. I regard to the VK tests and the animal centric questions. By 2019 most of the Earth is ecological destroyed and very few real animals exist. The test measures the empathy of the one taking it. That is why Leon stumbled on the distressed tortoise question. Racheal being a more refined replicant has more empathy. Roy Batty had little empathy at the start but once he knew he was only moments from death he saved Deckard's life.
This seems likely to have inspired quite a lot of the classic noir-scifi anime "Cowboy Bebop." Especially the beautiful-tragic themes of Gothic existentialism.
That line from Rachel: 'What if I go North?' The original story was written when Americans, if they could, would cross the border into Canada, and get some protection against US law. From the draft, from corrupt Police, for many reasons. In one Philip K Dick story 'The Pre-persons' it's from the abortion laws, which ruled that anyone with less than a certain level of education was 'subnormal' and could be 'sent to the pound' like an unwanted puppy. Bizarrely, this resulted in mothers not wanting their own children, because they had come to hate their husbands. Kind of horrible, and he received death-threats for it. But there was always escaping to Canada.
What makes this film special is the visuals combined with the music. I prefer the Final cut version. The end is different. The sequel Blade Runner 2049 is a good continuation of the story 30 years later, but the visuals are not really cyberpunk and the music doesn't come close to the Vangelis score of this one.
Finally review of the original and my favorite version - the theatrical cut. The original is the most faithful to the atmospheric neo-noir and better explains the plot twists. While the "Final Cut", the "Director's Cut" and the unofficial "Electric Unicorn Cut" have their own merits, these versions are excessive as for my taste and not as atmospheric. They are for hardcore Blade Runner fans. Also I've never liked Scott's idea, implemented in the "Final Cut", that Deckard is a replicant. This idea is redundant in the semantic aspect and it is ruining Deckard's character (not to mention that it contradicts the book - at least what Scott left of it). Also the theatrical cut has happy ending which puts the original above any other version by default. This movie is like all other Scott's movies - it has beautiful image and sound, but intelellectually it is superficial. The idea of the "Blade Runner" it is both simple and non-obvious, like all true things - if at the beginning of the film Deckard needs a Voight-Kampff test in order to determine whether Rachel is human, then at the end it only requires two questions. And more, in fact, is not required.
roys dying speech was partially ad libed by rutger hauer, rip, who was great as roy. ver kinda clones. lots ethical qs in vis, way ahead of its time, n respected, became a cult classic.
Ill say it now and at the end, models robotics special effects and practical effects are far superior to CGI! This, The Thing, and Alien... also by Scott. And all 3 used models, miniatures, robotics, special effects and practical effects. There's a larger tie in here. In Prometheus the prequel to all. The being in the chair with it's chest blown out in alien is a Engineer. Engineers seed life on planets and watch the progression. If they don't like how the life is progressing they seed another life to wipe out the remaining then they destroy each other. Engineers created humans Aliens and supposedly Predators and gave humans the technology for Replicants and Terminators!! Also Weyland Corp, Tyrell Corp and Cyberdyne Systems, all related! . In shots in this movie u see resumes of the Crew. Dallas worked for Tyrell Corp 😮😮😮 That's Bladerunner! Cyberdyne Systems supplied tech for Tyrell Corp and Weyland Corp! Weyland Corp did industrial and flight operations for Tyrell Corp! Tyrell Corp is Bladerunner and Weyland Corp is Aliens! Cyberdyne Systems is Terminator! Pro tips, leon was supposed to be played by a huge star , I cant remember the name. But was hurt and unavailable. This guy got the role and set his career! Roy batty end speech, he changed completely up and addlibbed! The version deckerd narrarates, is better! The part of Priss was originally offered to debbie harry of Blondie, but her manager made her not take. Huge mistake! No Deckerd is not a replicant...he gets his ass kicked, bleeds, bones broke, etc.
The Bradbury building is an homage to the great sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. Blade Runner the film is based on the book, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", by another great sci-fi writer, Philip K. Dick. There have been a ton of films and TV shows based on his works. Like these: - The Man in the High Castle (TV Series) Electric Dreams (TV Series) The Adjustment Bureau A Scanner Darkly Paycheck Minority Report Total Recall - Great reaction review guys. Check out some of those others. Especially, Total Recall if you haven't seen it. --- As we say in Texas; y'all be safe.
The Whole " " Nail Through The Hand " " Thing ? ? ? Roy Batty Wanted To Prolong His Life For A Few Minutes Longer By - Way Of Inducing Shock - Stimuli . What ' s The Fastest Way Of Elevating Ones Senses To A Maximum Level ? ? ? ---------- P A I N ---------- That ' s It . Not Much Symbolism Intended . Also . . . P A I N . . . Can Help To Direct A " " Person ' s " " Focus . Dizziness // // Shortness Of Breath // Stiffening Joints . All Masked By The Pain . The Self - In - - flicted Pain Helped Roy To Centralize A N D Focus His Thoughts On His O N E Remaining Mission (( Soldier )) . . . Hunt Down Deckard ( In My Humble Opinion ) .
Oh Christ, why did you go with the Theatrical Version? You should've seen the Final Cut because otherwise that ending won't make any damn sense when you go to BLADE RUNNER 2049. The voiceover was written in 1 afternoon by someone who wasn't even part of the production and Harrison Ford did his best to ruin his reading of it so they'd scrap it.
if you're surprised the general public doesn't have more sympathy for the replicants, then the sequel is going to be a fun reaction to watch! Edit: Roy's body was shutting down, and the nail thru the hand was a way (thru pain) to extend the expiration of the flesh, even for just a few moments longer.
Blade Runner is quite literally a perfect film. The script, the cast, the design, the soundtrack are all top tier. It is a genuine masterpiece.
I studied theatre & film design at the same art college Ridley Scott attended. The opening sequence of the LA skyline is based upon the oil refineries & blast furnaces that stand on the Tees Estuary near Middlesbrough, North East England. Scott grew up in the area & the post apocalyptic skyline left a lasting impact on him.
When I was at art college, I used to walk down the beach at dusk just to see the flames & lights on the estuary. It was both beautiful & nightmarish at the same time.
When I was in LA, I visited the Bradbury Building, which is where they filmed some of the sequences of JF Sebastian’s apartment; mainly the exterior & the Art Deco lifts.
Please make sure you watch Blade Runner 2049!! It’s soo soo good….& my god seeing it in IMAX mindblowing.
To answer the question about the darkness. The atmosphere has become so polluted, that it’s almost a perpetual twilight. Also due to the collapse of the environment, there’s been wide spread extinction of animals; which is what was alluded to in the first meeting with Rachel & also why there’s people making synthetic animals.
Also, classic BBC sci if comedy series Red Dwarf played homage to Blade Runner in their final series; the photograph analysis was one thing & also, the Tyrell building showed up in the London skyline 😂
Daryl Hannah recreated her ‘Pris death throw’s’ in Kill Bill 2.
Before anyone mentions the horse dream sequence that’s in the Final Cut….it ISNT a left over from Ridley Scotts ‘Legend’. Basically the horse sequence was in test screenings & was cut before release due to negative responses from the audience.
The footage disappeared until the directors cut came out. Legend was released several years after Blade Runner & people just assumed it was unused footage from Legend. The main give away is that the horse aren’t the same breed 😂
Another fun little fact is that the US cut has an upbeat ending with Rachel & Deckard driving off through the mountains. Those shots were actually pieces of footage Stanley Kubrick had filmed for the opened of The Shining; Scott managed to convince his friend Kubrick to let him have the footage.
If you watch it again or even just remember a few key moments you can see clearly that the Replicants were very immature emotionally. Remember they are only 3 or 4 years old. As Tyrell explains, they are like children but never had a childhood. They have no access to a lifetime of experiences and memories “that you and I take for granted”. That is why Leon collects “family photos” That is why Roy, a combat model, is so simple and sad and child-like when he tells Pris, “There are only two of us now…”
I think the nail at the end is more of an adrenaline boost as Roy feels himself shutting down.
He wants more life.
He’s fighting for his life. Every second counts.
Even the line while he’s fighting Deckard, “That’s the spirit!” underscores this. Roy relates and strongly identifies with Deckard fighting for his life.
Finally, unable to save himself,
he saves Deckard instead.
Humanity achieved… I hope that helps. Cheers.
"All those moments will be lost like.... tears in rain." Forever shall i remember this phrase.
It's the other way around, Coscurant architecture is based on Blade Runner. Blade Runner is from 1982, Coscurant was only seen in its full glory in Attack Of The Clones in 2002.
They both owe a lot to1950s Isaac Asimov novels. Look up artwork for the planet Trantor from the Foundation universe.
Actually Scott borrowed heavily from Moebius alt world depictions. See Heavy Metal mag/ "Airtight Garage (?)"
My favorite movie of all time.
Personally, I think the Theatrical Cut explains too much - that and the saccharine ending make it feel somewhat "designed by committee" to me.
The Final Cut is much better in that regard - but pretty much removes the ambiguity wrt the question whether Deckard is a replicant.
Some people actively dislike the "Deckard may be a replicant"-angle - but it's quite important to the philosophical themes of the movie and the story even in the Theatrical Cut (when Rachel asks him whether he's ever taken the test himself). I've heard the argument that the "point" of the story is that humans all act rather like unfeeling automata, while replicants show emotion - and Deckard the human learns empathy from the replicant Rachel.
The aspect of how automata-like humans act and how emotion-driven replicants behave is certainly quite important, and taking "Human learns empathy from replicant" as the central point of the story is certainly a beautiful reading - but of course it's not the only one. There is similar (or to me even more impressive) beautifully tragic aspect of the story that becomes central when you read it as Deckard being a replicant:
In that case, there is a kind of symmetry in the roles of Deckard and Rachel - even while their relation as Blade Runner and fleeing replicant is antipodal. The symmetry lies in both of them being slaves whose life is exploited by a corporation to unwittingly subjugate their own kind - one as an assistant to management at Tyrell, one as an executioner for misbehaving replicants. Together, they realize their situation and chose to flee from it.
In general - the movie does rather directly raise the interesting philosophical questions of "how and to what extent is identity based on memory - and how far can we trust our sense of identity when we know there are things with implanted memories to whom those feel as real as ours do to us?" - and makes them rather central to the story. First in the form of Rachel - but when she asks Deckard whether he'd ever taken the test himself, it plants the idea in our heads that he might be a Replicant. How could we tell? How could he tell? Can anyone tell? We have not a shred of backstory for him - except that he "used to be Blade Runner". There's also Tyrell saying that Rachel is an experiment - but of course, there's no reason to assume he can't be lying - as he surely would if he knew Deckard was a replicant.
When we learn that Rachel is a replicant who doesn't know that she is, the possibility is first introduced to us - but in a third-person perspective. Deckard is our protagonist, the character we most likely identify with. When we consider that Deckard may be a replicant - it becomes a lot more immediate, and we are primed to ask ourselves epistemological questions about our own minds - how far can we actually know our own mind, and the veracity of our memories?
This, together with the aspect of two people unwittingly enslaved to help subjugate their own kind attaining self-awareness and breaking free make this a reading of the movie that is at least as satisfying and deep to me as the "Human learns empathy from Replicant"-reading.
Still - both readings seem quite deep and beautiful to me.
P.S. Regarding the Jesus-symbolism of the nail through the hand, I can definitely see Roy symbolizing how the replicants are literally "dying for our sins" - our sin of creating consciousness without granting it rights, and our sin of exploiting it mercilessly.
P.P.S.: W.r.t regarding them as "different from human due to lack of a soul" - that raises the question of what a "soul" is supposed to be and whether that actually exists - or whether that's just constituted by conscious experience, memory, and (formed by experience and memory among other things) personality / character - all of which the replicants seem to have. There is the philosophical problem that we cannot operationalize our definition of phenomenal consciousness (qualia), so we have no external way to tell if something is "really" conscious.
That also means we pretty much have to go by "if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... and does all other things a duck does... we should probably treat it like a duck". So while there is a factual distinction between how replicants and humans come about, there is no a priori reason to regard as fully conscious persons, and hence no a priori reason to deny them the rights that ought to go along with that.
Absolutely my favourite movie ever. A masterpiece, plain and simple.
RE: Roy and the nail - "stigmata" - 28:30 "I don't like the idea of us playing God"
Robot/artificial life rebellion is literally ground zero of science fiction. The first science fiction novel was Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" and the word "Robot" is Czech, it means worker or laborer and it is from Karel Capek's play "Rossum's Universal Robots" which was about - you guessed it, robots rising up to overthrow their human masters.
The themes of both are the consequences of "Playing God" and creating life as God created man, which continue throughout every robot AI rebellion story on through Terminator and The Matrix.
*Cyberpunk* deals with class division and the consequences of runaway capitalism. The city is stratified in a literal sense, where the lower classes are the teeming masses at ground level and the rich and powerful live at the tops of towers and pyramids in the clouds, and the richest and most powerful can live on other planets. The environment is destroyed, it rains 24/7 in Los Angeles, most familiar megafauna are extinct and cows and butterflies are protected species (creating the pardoxical social values that protect the last remaining real animals at all costs, but consider the lives of the near-human replicants worthless). There's only one daylight scene and it's in Tyrell's office. The sun appears once in a picture window, as if Tyrell owns the sun and it is an ornament on his wall. Even then, it is obscured by buildings. Our one glimpse of real nature is encroached on by technology. Then Deckard requests the shades be drawn and Tyrell puts the sun away like it's his toy. Tyrell is really leaning into the "playing God" trope.
If Tyrell is God, then Roy is Jesus. His hand starts seizing, indicating the first stages of his death. He sticks the nail through his hand, presumably to keep it functioning a few moments longer. He just happens to see a dove on the roof. Which is a pigeon-urban vermin, one of the few real animals that can survive in this over industrialized world. It's poetic that it's not contrived, it totally make sense that urban vermin, including the symbol of peace, would be one of the few survivng species in this world that Roy might find on a roof in the middle of a chase, (that in itself has all kinds of symbolism) and that he would idly just grab a "living thing" he sees in the last moments of his life out of curiosity. He dies with the stigmata on his hand and as he dies the dove ascends to heaven.
The other big motif was *eyes*
It starts from the first shot "2019" not an arbitrary "sooner than comfortable" future year - it's one short of 20/20- because robot rebellion stories are about man's *shortsightedness*
The second shot is the first shot reflected in Holden's *eye*
The VK machine tests if you're a replicant by shining a laser into your *eye*
The owl and the other replicants have that weird glow in their *eyes.* It's only the replicant characters except in one shot when Rachel asks him if he ever took the test himself.
The replicants have superhuman vision, Tyrell wears coke-bottle glasses
The replicant's collect photographs - *visual* records of memories
They track Tyrell by first interrogating the *eyemaker*
Their favorite method of murder is pushing in their victim's *eyes*
And Roy's iconic speech begins with "I've *seen* things..."
@@mwl78rwe 👍
One of my favorite movies of all time. Great reactions.
Watch Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher for another amazing performance
I agree. Fantastic film, too.
Eels up inside ya 🎵
Oh, sorry, wrong Hitcher.
Roy put the nail in his hand because his body was failing and the pain would make him alert and focused.
Clearly the replicants were not robots. They were simply people created in a genetics laboratory. The ethics of the situation is that there is no moral basis for denying freedom to anything capable of asking for it.
oddly enough corporations in the real world can patent any DNA sequence except a human infant, so they grow these replicants as fully grown human beings that were never infants would get around that limitation, which makes legal sense for both Blade Runner (1982) and The Island (2004).
@@MDBowron I feel like laws against slavery and so on would cover it.
You have to consider that the emotions they were feeling were very complex for a person that is only four years old
both star wars and blade runner's city designs owe a lot to the grandfather of Scifi movies metropolis (1927)
When this was released at the time this movie made you believe that movies would always create new believable worlds to explore, both outside and within the mind. That's not always the case but we can still dream.
i love these old movies, maybe because i'm old too 😁 i guess i have most of them, there are so many great movies
here are some of them, the forbidden planet with Leslie Nielsen (1956) the right stuff with multiple high ranking actors (1983) labyrinth with David Bowie (1986) remo unarmed and dangerous with Fred Ward & Kate Mulgrew (1985) war of the worlds (1953)
the andromeda strain (1971) westworld and futureworld (1973/1976) and so many others, to many to mention them all, cheers
This is one of the few movies that asks questions, but doesn't answer all of them. That's left to the audience.
Like when is something so close to human that it is nearly indistinguishable from humans, isn't it human? What makes us human? What if something more human than human?
And so on.
when you go inside the Bradbury and see how they shot that blimp. amazing
I am very happy that you gave the film and you a chance! For 30 years, this film -next to Fightclub- is my number 1 film and number 1 novel!
Although you certainly understood the philosophical, existential part, I had the impression that you could not really connect with the film - that's a kinda sad! Questions: Who am I, where do I come from, what makes me, what defines me and where am I going...but above all: what makes my morality?
I think in a few years, when you have had more important, sad and deep experiences, more MEMORIES collected, you should watch the film again!
All the best from Germany & again Thx for your reaction!!!
(Sorry for my poor english)
This is good advice. I too needed to watch the film a few times at different points of my life to appreciate it.
As I've grown older I look back and kind of connect with Roy. I'm retired US Sailor, and all MY memories will be gone someday. It applies to all of us.
I'm GLAD you went with the theatrical version, the narration explains some things and doesn't muddy the plot with the question of whether Deckard is a replicant or not. On a 2nd watch go with the Final Cut version, sure. It dumps the narration and happy ending so it's more ambiguous.
You did cut my favorite line from the film, when Rachel says, "I'm not in the business. I am the business." Heartbreaking, she woke up that day thinking she was human then told that she was not, her very memories are someone else's.
The author is Philip K. Dick who often wrote about the question of identity. He also wrote the stories behind "Minority Report" and "Total Recall" as well as "Screamers", "Imposter" and "A Scanner Darkly".
The thin about the replicants is they're created as adults but have no life experience. That's why Roy and Pris liked toys and playing games, they're basically children in adult bodies. Only Rachel had memory implants.
The nail and the hand thing was to stay alive through injury and pain but I'm sure there was symbolism in it. The lights were a symbol of invasion of privacy.
a happy back is a happy reaction, my grandmother always said
Oh no, you watched the theatrical cut lol
Final Cut is the preferred version. No terrible voice over and tacked on ending.
The theatrical version is the best version.
@group-music Absolutely! Gives it more of a film-noir fell and helps the audience understand the movie better.
Theatrical/voiceover is the beginnee cut.
The Final Cut is when you wanna put your own spin on it. Every reactor I've seen ao many reactors get confused
"Christine" (1983) great movie by Stephen king & John Carpenter, evil's car.
Stuff
1. Joe Turkel/Tyrell played Lloyd (bartender) in "The Shining".
2. Roy/Rutger Hauer😇 plays in "Blind Fury" a great first time/share.
3. Leon/ Brion James in "Tango and Cash". Much bigger role first time/share also.
4. Deckard/Harrison Ford, two overlooked must first time/share "Witness" and "Force 10 from Naverone".
5. In the original Roy tells Tyrell, "I want more life FUCKER" not father.
6. Ford disliked almost everything about this movie (including Sean Young). He mostly disliked the voiceover. He refused to even watch it until it was "fixed".
7. Daryl Hannah cut her elbow when she ran into that van window
8. Philipe K Dick first came up with the idea for his novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
9. You must watch Blade Runner 2049.
That comment about not having souls is really disturbing. To just assert that artificial people can't have the same moral worth when what's depicted in the movie is artificial people being subjected to hellish conditions while starting from emotional infancy and confusing their emotional immaturity for 'being robotic'...
He was "dying" ...... And he wanted to be "remembered, but not for all bad", He wanted to be more human........ But it was to late.......
Good to see young folks are watching this kind of film noir. But you missed one absolut important part. It is the soundtrack from Vangelis. It is adds a kind of romanticism to an absolute distopian nightmarish cityscape. It is a kind of finding the formula for getting two absolute contrary things together. Vangelis is a master for that.
Odd version to watch. The Final Cut is the one to watch. The end scene with the forest makes no sense (it was added later) because Earth is undergoing ecological collapse (hence why everyone who can leave has left and why 99% of animals are extinct and replaced with replicants).
Before you watch Blade Runner 2049, go to TH-cam and watch the 3 webisodes with Jared Leto, Dave Bautista, and Benedict Wing which explain the intervening years. 1 is animated and 2 are live action. Blade Runner Black Lotus is an animated show and is set in the same intervening years but doesn't feel like Blade Runner, more like cyberpunk than future noir.
You should have watched the Final Cut. The voiceover and happy ending were tacked on by the studio against Ridley Scotts wishes.
The Directors Cut and Final Cut are virtually identical, - the Final Cut just has some continuity errors fixed, special effects fixes (it's subtle though), they reshot the death scene with Zhora as in the original and Directors Cut its an obvious stunt double and corrected the background in the scene where the dove flies up so it fits in with the rest of the scene.
cant believe that I found a reaction video from 2007
Theatrical 😂😂 Still, nice reaction you guys.
Yeah... wasn't aware there was more than one version until it was too late
You did the right version for a first time viewing. In my opinion, always do the theatrical version of any movie.@@pubreacts
Pity you went gor the domestic theater version instead of the Final Cut, the latter a better version of the film. The differences are not significant in scene counting but changes the context and dubtext of the film a bit and the lack of narration makes the movie more moody and stmospheric and mysterious, all pluses.
One of the most significant differences is in the scene between Roy and Tyrell. The director's cut makes Roy more complex and sympathetic, emphasizing his reverence for Tyrell as his Father (with a capital F). Also, after killing Tyrell Roy tells J.F. "I'm sorry" for what he was going to do to him. He genuinely liked J.F. but didn't have the emotional experience to completely overcome his utilitarian programming.
@@submandave1125 i think Roy kill J.F. by same reason he kill Tyrell and chinese guy - for stopping them create more replicant-slaves
On the philosophical issue of the relative humanity of Replicants, there's an exchange between the blade runner and his boss I won't spoil for you, but it's a pretty devastating bit of dialogue.
Also, Roy's unhinged behavior at the end was basically just him accepting that he was near death and choosing to just get weird with it
A classic of the genre. Check out the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Phillip K. Dick, a great book. Thirteen works of his have been turned into films or TV series, this film, Total Recall and Minority Report to name a few. I regard to the VK tests and the animal centric questions. By 2019 most of the Earth is ecological destroyed and very few real animals exist. The test measures the empathy of the one taking it. That is why Leon stumbled on the distressed tortoise question. Racheal being a more refined replicant has more empathy. Roy Batty had little empathy at the start but once he knew he was only moments from death he saved Deckard's life.
yay! I'm team Sarah
Good reaction hope y'all can do the sequel too
See Slavoj Zizek's commentary on the fight scene in They Live, to understand the weird romance scene in Deckard's apartment with Rachel.
This seems likely to have inspired quite a lot of the classic noir-scifi anime "Cowboy Bebop." Especially the beautiful-tragic themes of Gothic existentialism.
Check out In Bruges (2008) please, my favourite Martin McDonagh movie!
You should watch the director's cut (also wait some 5 years)... You'll see how different it'll hit
More Sarah!
That line from Rachel: 'What if I go North?'
The original story was written when Americans, if they could, would cross the border into Canada, and get some protection against US law.
From the draft, from corrupt Police, for many reasons.
In one Philip K Dick story 'The Pre-persons' it's from the abortion laws, which ruled that anyone with less than a certain level of education was 'subnormal' and could be 'sent to the pound' like an unwanted puppy.
Bizarrely, this resulted in mothers not wanting their own children, because they had come to hate their husbands.
Kind of horrible, and he received death-threats for it.
But there was always escaping to Canada.
What makes this film special is the visuals combined with the music. I prefer the Final cut version. The end is different. The sequel Blade Runner 2049 is a good continuation of the story 30 years later, but the visuals are not really cyberpunk and the music doesn't come close to the Vangelis score of this one.
Finally review of the original and my favorite version - the theatrical cut. The original is the most faithful to the atmospheric neo-noir and better explains the plot twists. While the "Final Cut", the "Director's Cut" and the unofficial "Electric Unicorn Cut" have their own merits, these versions are excessive as for my taste and not as atmospheric. They are for hardcore Blade Runner fans. Also I've never liked Scott's idea, implemented in the "Final Cut", that Deckard is a replicant. This idea is redundant in the semantic aspect and it is ruining Deckard's character (not to mention that it contradicts the book - at least what Scott left of it). Also the theatrical cut has happy ending which puts the original above any other version by default. This movie is like all other Scott's movies - it has beautiful image and sound, but intelellectually it is superficial. The idea of the "Blade Runner" it is both simple and non-obvious, like all true things - if at the beginning of the film Deckard needs a Voight-Kampff test in order to determine whether Rachel is human, then at the end it only requires two questions. And more, in fact, is not required.
roys dying speech was partially ad libed by rutger hauer, rip, who was great as roy. ver kinda clones. lots ethical qs in vis, way ahead of its time, n respected, became a cult classic.
Ill say it now and at the end, models robotics special effects and practical effects are far superior to CGI!
This, The Thing, and Alien... also by Scott. And all 3 used models, miniatures, robotics, special effects and practical effects. There's a larger tie in here. In Prometheus the prequel to all. The being in the chair with it's chest blown out in alien is a Engineer. Engineers seed life on planets and watch the progression. If they don't like how the life is progressing they seed another life to wipe out the remaining then they destroy each other. Engineers created humans Aliens and supposedly Predators and gave humans the technology for Replicants and Terminators!! Also Weyland Corp, Tyrell Corp and Cyberdyne Systems, all related! . In shots in this movie u see resumes of the Crew. Dallas worked for Tyrell Corp 😮😮😮 That's Bladerunner! Cyberdyne Systems supplied tech for Tyrell Corp and Weyland Corp! Weyland Corp did industrial and flight operations for Tyrell Corp! Tyrell Corp is Bladerunner and Weyland Corp is Aliens! Cyberdyne Systems is Terminator! Pro tips, leon was supposed to be played by a huge star , I cant remember the name. But was hurt and unavailable. This guy got the role and set his career! Roy batty end speech, he changed completely up and addlibbed! The version deckerd narrarates, is better! The part of Priss was originally offered to debbie harry of Blondie, but her manager made her not take. Huge mistake! No Deckerd is not a replicant...he gets his ass kicked, bleeds, bones broke, etc.
The Thing was by John Carpenter (also released in 1982)
The Bradbury building is an homage to the great sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. Blade Runner the film is based on the book, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", by another great sci-fi writer, Philip K. Dick. There have been a ton of films and TV shows based on his works. Like these:
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The Man in the High Castle (TV Series)
Electric Dreams (TV Series)
The Adjustment Bureau
A Scanner Darkly
Paycheck
Minority Report
Total Recall
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Great reaction review guys. Check out some of those others. Especially, Total Recall if you haven't seen it.
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As we say in Texas; y'all be safe.
The Bradury Building is a Los Angeles historical landmark built in 1893. Ray Bradbury was born in 1920. Hope that helps.
@@voidmstr Well, maybe he was named after the building..
You guys should watch the Final Cut its the best version of blade runner and is in 4k looks much better than this version
The Whole " " Nail Through The Hand " "
Thing ? ? ? Roy Batty Wanted To Prolong
His Life For A Few Minutes Longer By - Way
Of Inducing Shock - Stimuli .
What ' s The Fastest Way Of Elevating
Ones Senses To A Maximum Level ? ? ?
---------- P A I N ----------
That ' s It . Not Much Symbolism Intended .
Also . . . P A I N . . . Can Help To Direct
A " " Person ' s " " Focus . Dizziness //
// Shortness Of Breath // Stiffening Joints .
All Masked By The Pain . The Self - In -
- flicted Pain Helped Roy To Centralize
A N D Focus His Thoughts On His O N E
Remaining Mission (( Soldier )) . . . Hunt
Down Deckard ( In My Humble Opinion ) .
I’d rather watch the theatrical cut than the director’s cut. No narration from Ford
narrator voiceover kill all vibe of this beautiful movie. sad you choose this version
Oh Christ, why did you go with the Theatrical Version? You should've seen the Final Cut because otherwise that ending won't make any damn sense when you go to BLADE RUNNER 2049. The voiceover was written in 1 afternoon by someone who wasn't even part of the production and Harrison Ford did his best to ruin his reading of it so they'd scrap it.
The sequel is a piece of garbage. It's insulting to this movie. The Frank Lloyd Wright house was an interesting touch.
Jesus, making a reaction video and picking the wrong version :D
Sorry you guys watched the original release , that stupid VoiceOver ruins the whole film.
This is the worst version of the film.
You chose the worst version lol. Nobody watches theatrical version
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" " G R E A T R E A C T I O N ! ! ! " "
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