My favourite thing about 2049 is that officer K goes half the film thinking he’s the main character, the chosen one only to fin out he’s just some replicant. This is so human, we all think we are someone special until reality hits and realise there truly is nothing special about us, we are just humans
Speak for yourself mortal. I am the Son of Zeus, the Kwisatz Haderach who pulled Excalibur from the Stone after completing my 12 labors and freeing humanity from the Matrix.
@@antonycharnock2993 Another reason. Replicants are products. If your "product" lasts for decades, Tyrell doesn't make money unless you have to replace it every few years. Planned obsolescence.
If someone told me, as a human, that I'd been bio-engineered to become aware as an adult, and that I was tinkered with to only have 4 years to live...yeah, I'd be pretty pissed off, too.
2 місяці тому+10
The movie stated outright that they COULD not make them last longer
Bryant says flat out that the designers figured that after a few years the replicants would start to develop their own emotions, and built in the 4 year life span as a fail safe. Later on, Tyrell does seem to say that they could not make them live longer, so that makes it unclear. He does say “a coding sequence cannot be revised once it’s been established”, so it could be he is talking about experiments they did to remove the 4 year lifespan
Soldier, starring Kurt Russell (1998), takes place in the Blade Runner universe and shows what the off world colonies are like. Russell's character fought in battles at Shoulder of Orion and Tannhauser Gate, among other references
@@grindcoreninja6527That seems doubtful given at how Wayland-Yutani was still struggling with making robots and was far past the point of colonising Mars. Even if Ridley was expressing an idea the whole notion was contradictory within his own works.
More human than human is the most important line in the movie and explains why they have to be hunted and extinguished. You can't have your slaves smarter and stronger than you.
It's also likely why in 2049 they used K to serve as a Blade Runner, using a replicant to hunt down rogue replicants serves to potentially dissuade "renegades" from acting up if they know they'd be hunted by their own kind.
@@andrewmalinowski6673 K said at the first scenes of the movie that their series never needed to be retired, because they never run. Therefore your "persuasion" argument is wrong.
Wrong. All replicants are smarter and stronger than humans, as Tyrell stated on his encounter with Deckard in his chambers in Tyrrell Corps HQ. Therefore your argument about "not having your slaves smarter and stronger than you" is completely wrong. More human than human is the main plot, because the whole film is a reflection on what makes humans, humans. What is essentially human? What makes a human, human? Being born? Having feelings? Being capable of abstract thoughts? Is it being capable of having codes of behavior that does not follow nature, like ethics and morals? Or is the ability to make a choice between short and long term? Is it the ability to be selfless? Is it our abilities to keep abstract memories that perform no other function as to be a cherished moment? These are all questions that the movie tries to address, and gives us an answer that shows that even "androids", syntehtic humans are capable of being human, and the only difference among us is that we are born, while they are made. They have to be hunted down and killed because they cannot cope with the emotional weight that being fully human brings with it. That is why all the Nexus models before the 7 series had the 4 year lifespans. That prevented them to form their own memories, that prevented them to form and to deal with mental stresses that they were not able to cope with, because they lacked the emotional maturity that humans of the same age should have. They are 4 year old kids, in the bodies of fully grown adults who are superior physically and mentally, capable of delivering some serious harm, if they wished to.
@@sombraarthurguess comprehension isn't your strong suit Skippy. Your bloviated response is what I said just with more words. Now go tell Mommy to cut the crust off your cheese sandwich and stfu.
Your pespective is exactly how I viewed Blade Runner when I saw the film. I had no doubt Deckard was human, not a replicant. I agree with Ford, not Scott, that the film is more powerful when Deckard is human. The premise of the film in the beginning is that replicants are not human. That's the view of the police, of Deckard, of society in general. Replicants are product, not people. It's easy for Deckard to believe that paradigm when the replicants are running around killing people. However, by the end of the film Deckard sees that a replicant, Rachel, has fallen in love with him, and he with her. Then in the final battle with Batty, Deckard sees replicants are capable of empathy and mercy. When Batty realizes that he's about to die, he stops trying to kill Deckard, because Deckard's death would be pointless. Deckard listens to Batty's famous touching "tears in the rain" soliloquy. When Batty saves Deckard's life as his last act before dying, Deckard realizes that Batty chose mercy over vengeance. He expected Batty to kill him to avenge him killing Batty's lover, Priss. Instead, Deckard sees that Batty and the replicants just wanted to live their lives in freedom, not slavery, and that they could choose to act with mercy and compassion. Deckard realizes that the replicants are really human. What's the more powerful conclusion, that Deckard realizes he's a replicant like the beings he hunted? Or that the bio-engineered creatues he hunted and that society has used as a slave class, are human, like him? Obviously the latter. Now he's going to go save and protect the woman he loves, not because he's a replicant, but because she's a human.
IMHO;: The Scott explanation is quite clear, he often states it in an interview setting🙂 He's the Director, he spent a lot of time and money getting his version of BR. He was in charge (eventually) of the whole film narrative not a disgruntled actor like Ford. The foil unicorn is the plot twist, Deckard nod's in acceptance of the secret message from his partner, an acknowledgement of the inserted memory of the unicorn that only Deckard could know... if he was a human... but the Police dept knows? Deckard's 'race' is hinted at throughout the story with his super-human ability to withstand brutal death meted out by the physically superior Replicants. The author also chose the name Deckard very, very purposely. It is pronounced exactly like the philosopher Descarte who's famous quote props up the whole meaning of the film, what is the definition of being human ; ''I think, therefore I am''? The beauty of the film is that Deckard slowly, nurtures and builds his empathy all through the story. BR is my favourite film and I'm a huge fan of Ford but it's on the record that Ford hated shooting the film, mainly due to the absence of character direction from Scott (not his forte) yet I do think the result is, by far, Ford's best acting performance. It's also the only Ford character I can find which does not use his trademark 'angry-face-pointed-finger' acting technique. If anyone knows differently , I'm all ears. Cheers.
@@OmegaPaladinyour point is well taken, but I feel like we can almost have it both ways if we really embrace the idea that there isn’t a meaningful distinction between replicants and humans when it comes to, er, humanity. All the things you say about Roy that Deckard realizes - what’s so wrong about having those same things echoed in a replicant Deckard? It makes him a bit of a barbershop mirror, with endless possibilities for him to contemplate about why he changed his mind - he’d have to ask himself if it is colored by *replicant* kinship with Roy? But he’s doing it because he’s realized Roy’s humanity, so it’s kind of *human* kinship. The epiphany embedded in these questions is that, because he’s recognizing that Roy, and by extension replicants in general, have kinship with humans at that most basic level, it actually renders the fact that he (or anyone else)is a replicant, moot when considering questions of rights, autonomy, and self-determination. Which is right there on the surface premise of the whole enterprise. I think those extra dimensions of complexity and ambiguity created by Deckard being a replicant actually *add* to your whole take, not detract or oppose it. But that’s just my take. 😃
@@waynesimpson2074 I would point out that Scott was not completely in charge, and the reason he thinks Deckard should be a replicant is because of a misunderstanding he had when talking to the movies writer.
@@Novastar.SaberCombat I wish I knew what Im missing. I love the first one and watched 2049 like 5 times hoping I would get it but its just lame. The first half or so is pretty good but the part where K goes to find Deckard it really goes off the rails.
Reminds me of some of the studies on empathy I have read over the years. The basic conclusion is it's a combination of biology (psychopathy, ect) and learned behaviors. Having raised two kids I can see that you really do LEARN to be empathetic. You can tell which kids never heard "think about how that makes THEM feel".
It’s so… stunning sometimes how little empathy people can have for others outside their immediate family and especially what they manage to see as their own “people”/culture/in group they feel a part of. Being in healthcare through the pandemic really emphasized that.
In all honesty, legitimate empathy cannot be learned. A soul either possessed it when they were born (and grew to develop it), or else... they lack it. I've taught children and adults for decades, and even I noticed this phenomenon, but there are thousands of years of data and evidence demonstrating what I'm describing.
I always thought Blade Runner was about what happens when our machines start to become people and what happens when people start to lose their humanity.
As you say, the bigger issue is not whether replicants are machines, because we are also biological machines. The issue is how do we treat the product of our own ingenuity. If someday we are truly able to replicate ourselves in this manner and become able to bypass the usual form of biological reproduction, then there are serious philosophical implications and consequences perhaps. Are we obligated to treat them as we do ourselves? If we are not, then will that cause us to begin to treat each other as slaves? We have worked hard to climb out of that mindset, and would that circumstance put is right back down there? If the replicants somehow become able to replicate themselves, and become able to be beyond all control, what implications does that have for the biologically produced humans? That is part of what the second movie discusses.
The Blade Runner "side-quel" Soldier, from 1998, is a wonderful exploration of the awful middle ground between human and synth. Even if they are vat grown, as synths were developed, the raw parts had to come from somewhere.
Interesting how language evolves. When Karel Čapek coined the word “robot” for his play “R.U.R.” in 1920, he applied it to biologically-constructed synthetic people. Yet when the English-speaking SF writers adopted the term “robot,” they immediately applied it only to mechanical devices, anthropomorphic or otherwise. By the time I started reading SF in the late 50s, there was a well-established convention that robots were always electro-mechanical, while androids were always synthetic humanoids produced in factories in their finished “adult” form. That was the tradition Phil Dick was working in when he wrote DO ANDROIDS DREAM… and why he didn’t feel a need to make this distinction explicit in the book. So I was surprised and bemused to learn from your video that some viewers somehow have gotten the idea that replicants might be robots. While both the novel and the films play with ambiguity about who is a human and who a replicant, anyone adding robotics to the mix is going seriously astray. I'm glad you made this video to clarify things.
Phillip K. Dick didn't make such distinctions in his novel, either. Several times Deckard uses the phrase humanoid robot about the andys. All the animals that were not natural and "real" were mechanical, like the electric sheep Deckard had on the roof top. Earlier models of the replicants probably were mechanical, too. But the latest sure were made out of cells. Though their Nexus-6 brains were electronic. It is hard to see how that could be the case when only a bone marrow test would reveal if they were human or not.
Yes. You nailed it. Also in my head Alien and Blade Runner exist in the same universe. In this universe Weyland/Youtani produces Synthetic androids whereas Tyrell/Wallace produces bioengineered replicants and these corporations compete with each other.
There is a scene towards the beginning of Aliens when Ripley is being questioned, in the background on the screen showing the crew of the Nostromo and it's very subtle, but it shows in text that the captain of the Nostromo used to work for the Tyrell Corporation.
There’s plenty of very very small Easter eggs to back up your claim. I can’t name one off the top of my head but they are infact in the same universe as Ridley Scott made both. It’s understood Peter weyland of Prometheus used to work for tyrell making actual androids until he got to big for his britches and made a sentient android where as tyrell made replicants. Both men playing god trying to make the next step of human evolution but disagreed on if that step should be biological or mechanical. Both end up more or less dying at the hand of their creations, weyland’s android david purposefully mistranslated what weyland said to the engineer and tyrell had his head crushed. Ridley Scott hates men playing god and shows how in the end it will always bite them in the ass
@@The_dude12 As a writer, it's very tempting to try and draw throughlines between stories that are very different in setting. It's very VERY tempting to draw throughlines between stories that aren't so different at all. Stephen king wrote more than a half dozen books (the Dark Tower saga) about the overarching universe that contains almost all of his other books.
@@thesleepingpower I’m aware, I’m also a writer in my spare time. More like an editor for my friend in film school, and occasionally I churn out ideas for him. We actually won a short script competition for full production but our script was so bad and constrained by length we never made it lol
@@EckhartsLadder My favorite take from a video that discussed it a while back, was more or less exactly that. That there was so much question after the first film, and the second one basically came in saying “why does it matter?”. I’m always a bit pained by reactions/discussions that just fully see them as less and just programs. The whole thing is a bit of an empathy test for viewers. Eckhart, I enjoy most of your stuff but It’s really wonderful to see this interpretation. For me, 2049 was a brilliant sequal that managed to make the first movie’s themes even stronger, a rare thing to manage.
Hard agree about the ambiguity. So ambiguous that Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott hold opposite opinions on the topic. I'll also second Eckhardt that it ultimately doesn't matter. But the value lies in how the story provides the question and the opportunity to discover that it doesn't or shouldn't matter.
@@EckhartsLadder Found the video it’s from FilmJoy/Movies with Mikey and it’s worth checking out. After the original there was so much discussion and intense opinion about the meaning of the unicorn, whether Deckard was a human or replicant.., “You could argue the point of the film (2049) was “not” answering that question. “Who will remember us, natural human or not.” “There is no distinction… K and JOI were brought into this world through what ever means because it’s none of our business”. What’s a human? Is Deckard a human? “Hes a dad. Doesn’t matter.”
@@EckhartsLadder actually a android is a robot that looks like ahuman from the outside. even george lucas found that out (this fact is the reason why he introduced the idea of droid brains into star wars btw). the works comes from the old greek words andros for man and droid for resembling. shiro masamune used the term bioroid to describe androids in a bio shell (ae robot in biological skin).
I never considered the replicants to be androids. The fact that they are genetically engineered and how they are used as slaves always amplified the morality of it all.
It's likely that Dick wrote "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" as a cyberpunk version of Karl Capek's "Rossum's Universal Robots," society being blissfully ignorant of their artificial servants' role as long as they 'do what they're told.' The moral ambiguity of whether to enslave a potentially sentient artificial being seems so intriguing and makes me think of Data's trial from "Measure of a Man" in which Picard questions whether Data is sentient and asks; "A thousand Datas, I'm sorry but isn't that becoming a race? And won't we be judged by how we treat that race?" to Cmdr. Maddox then tells the JAG officer; "We're supposed to seek out new life, well there it sits!"
It's why I really like the parenthood aspect of 2049. The androids are meant to be the product of a corporation. They have aspects of their humanity stripped away so they can get on with performing their job. A way for the rich to replace the workforce. Androids giving birth to androids and nuturing them just creates humans. They're no longer a product.
I'll admit, I had no idea until I actually watched Blade Runner in its entirety for the first time and saw the female replicant get shot. I just took it for granted that since it influenced every Cyberpunk setting since that had fullblown "androids," that the original had to have mechanical androids as well. It really changed my perspective.
I think you nailed it. I think another overlooked part of 2049 is how it extends the same commentary to the place of women. Like the replicants they are beings commodified throughout the film.
I agree, off and on it gets criticism for its presentation of women still in those sorts of roles but I read it as very much a commentary on that being a problem. That any commodification of living, human beings (which I think the film certainly sets us up to at least question if maybe replicants and maybe even Joi are just as “human” in their own way) should feel wrong. But to maybe also recognize that it’s a very natural part of current society to do exactly that, commodify people and treat them as worth only what they can produce or how well they represent an ideal they had no part in creating.
Great points Justin! Really insightful-I'd forgotten about the emotion boxes and the whole thing with getting a pet to help you feel connected. This helped me appreciate 2049 even more, cheers
I assume you refer to the empathy boxes to get connected to Mercer, and not the mood organs that manipulated human emotions and moods. The whole thing with Mercerism is fascinating, and Dick explored more on it in other novels, maybe most in "The Little Black Box". Mercerism was around for quite some time before the events in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", competing with other religions such as zen buddism. The speculation that Wilbur Mercer himself was an extra terrestrial was never solved. As for the animals. It became very important to people to have pets to connect to. And there were several reasons for that. For one, they were rare after the nuclear war killed off most animals. And it was very important for people to show other people that they had empathy. Hence why Deckard had to conceal that his sheep was artificial and not real, to not be looked down upon by his neighbours. And why it mattered so much to earn enough money to buy a real animal.
I was never under the impression that replicants were non-organic and I dont know how anyone could have gotten the idea. Nothing in either film suggests this is the case, and it is pretty clear even in the orig BR, that replicants are bio-engineered humans. Even Roy tells Sebastian, 'We are not machines", as if that wasnt clear enough.....
I agree, but I have seen a bunch of people refer to replicants as robots or cyborgs or some such human-adjacent description. The fact that they're just manufactured people is lost on a lot of the audience. I don't know how, but it is. And we see this with the debates about whether or not Deckard is a replicant. The salient question is "Does it matter if he is or isn't a replicant?"
The best part of Bladerunner is the question "what is a human?". It's about alienation really and it has links to real world slavery. At what point is someone not human enough to the point where you are "allowed" to enslave them. There's a lot of interesting ethics going on in these films.
In my head-canon, Han Solo's real name is Rich Deckard. LA is Coursaunt; and "Blade-Runners" are just local bounty hunters... until he meets a wookie...
If I recall, Ridley Scott had considered the Tyrell Corporation & Waylan-Yutani to be in the same universe when making Blade Runner, with Synthetics being a direct competitor to the Replicants. Though this was never followed through before the IPs drifted apart.
There are definitely crossover references that anchor the 2 to each other a bit, but yeah it’s sad it was never developed more. Both great, incredibly influential worlds in their own ways.
A lot of people took the paper left by the other detective at the end as a sign that Deckard was actually a replicant. I feel like it was more of a sign of resistance, regardless of whether or not he was one. The other detective knows Decksrd is running away, he says he’ll come after him, then leaves a crane to signify he knows what is going on, but chooses not to interfere. It’s a final goodbye from him to Deckard. He doesn’t care whether Deckard is or is not a replicant.
my husband introduced me to Blade Runner and being an Anime fan i see parallels to many of my favorites! Looks like my favorite artist Kenichi Sonoda loves Blade runner
You need to check out the Blade Runner comics (“2019” “2029” “2039” and “Blade runner Origins”) I would love to see a video on your thoughts on them cause I quite enjoyed them seeing the extra world-building. As I’ve searched no one has ever really talked about them or made really any videos on them or the Black Lotus show. So it would be cool to see someone talk about them and their world-building.
I remember Edward James Olmos once muttering that he sees Gaff as a descendant of Bill Adama and that "Blade Runner" is what happens in the future of "Battlestar Galactica"
This might be the best video I have seen about blade runner and definite kudos for including blade runner 2049, which I feel is often underappreciated.
But who created those "monsters"? Maybe a bit of a modern day Frankenstein. It is thought Mary Shelley was inspired by reading about experiments to create artificial life.
@@EckhartsLadder thank you, but I respectfully disagree; the novel is about determining what is human. Empathy is repeatedly stated to be something uniquely human and by lacking it, the androids help Decker explore this concept because it shows they are not human. It would undermine a central theme of the story if the cause of the lack of empathy was circumstances, rather than innate to their being. Rachel is a replicant, and apparently not harshly treated, yet she kills his pet goat ( while not the sheep Decker dreamed of, certainly something he wanted) purely because she thought he was paying more attention to it than her. Finally... Humans don't become sociopathic just because we're raised as slaves. Some do, but more often the slaves form their own community; the replicants don't care about one another beyond what they can get out of the relationship.
@@antonycharnock2993 humans; the novel is very, very clear on the fact that humans are not saints. The planet is literally dying (or, since even spiders are all but extinct, arguably already dead) because of war, so while humans are supposed to be special due to possessing empathy, this doesn't make them perfect. Arguably it plays to the novel's theme of searching for humanity; if only humans have empathy, but no empathetic being could help create the current state of the world, then are all humans truly 'human'?
I actually figured that out a while ago that the Nexus 6s at least aren't "robots" in any sense, they're genetically-engineered, cloned PEOPLE. Which has completely different horrifying implications for the stories...but the question is, did the people who made the movies get that? I mean Ridley Scott thought Deckard was a replicant, which is missing the whole point of the story, that he's LESS HUMAN than the so-called "robots" he's hunting!
If Deckard was a replicant, then it would "explain" how he could stand up to Roy and suffer the physical abuse from the fight. I remember watching this when I was a kid and the thought Deckard and Roy were both replicants was something that periodically came up, but to me it was never him being 'less human' and more like K's question of identity in 2049; "could he be and not know?"
@@roryscott2941Maybe not, Roy's entire arc was trying to gain a sense of recognition for life and see something besides being used as a slave, contrasting Deckard who believed himself to be a human and merely going through the routine of hunting down rogue replicants. Both essentially mirroring each other, more like Roy being what Decakrd could have done if he wasn't a "slave" to his role, and Roy being what Deckard spent most of the film doing; following orders
While I think you nailed the crux of the video overall, the quote you show at 2:53 says the opposite of what you say it does. It doesn't say that they "moved on from advanced Robot evolution" but that they "advanced Robot evolution into the Nexus phase, a being virtually identical to a human" thus stating that Replicants are the most recent phase of robotic technology, not a separate one that Tyrell has moved on to.
Yes, but the advancement is technology that allows for the manufacturing of organic robots: Replicants. They're still a commodity/product operated to produce labor. To the people of Blade Runner, the Nexus phase is still a line of robotics. Tangentially, the origins of the term "robot" come from words related to serf labor or servitude. On a general level, a robot is a slave.
I definitely like your take on the replicants. You truly realize how sad the enslavement of replicants is once you realize that they're just like us, but with no human memories and experiences, or by the time 2049 takes place no real memories and experiences. Even though humans know that they still treat them like lesser beings even though in a lot of ways they're superior.
Hi Eck, I think you have a lot of good points. Since the rest of the replicant has been bio engineered, my theory is that the brain has been bio engineered as well to minimize or suppress emotion. This could be useful Given the slave like circumstances replicants live in. If they had full human emotions, they may be more likely to act out or rebel. But perhaps we can’t wipe out all emotion like data from Star Trek. This creates the interesting opportunities to see the percentage of replicants who do go rogue, becoming fully human. Curious if anyone else sees it the same way
I think part of the misconception is that they're definitely more "hearty", as well as seemingly having superhuman strength. Which is also why the bladerunners are replicants themselves, able to be thrown through a wall without missing a beat like Kay was in 2049. Likely the bioengineering working on making them that way.
Thanks for a very in-depth video! I haven't seen the movies, but I greatly love the book. I do feel like in the book, the plight of the androids is not so clear as the way you have laid it out as being in the movies. While it still has all that lore about escaped slaves and unlived experiences, it also has characters giving the androids a shot at humanity and getting let down over and over again. They are not able to use the empathy boxes, and it is determined in the end that even the lowest of the lows, the Chickenhead, is still more human than the androids in the story. The conflict in the book seems to be less about if the androids should be counted as humans, and more if the humans should be counted as humans. This question is of course explored with the Chickenheads, specifically with John Isidore. It also comes to Rick's attention with Phil Resch, who he was convinced must be an android because of his lack of empathy. Confirmation the man was human was what made Rick start to question reality. At the end, Rick has a religious experience, and determines that is part of what makes humans special. He then returns home and starts living a normal life. This question, are we human, I think is the core question of the original one.
Makes me wonder why settings always move towards duplicating humans with all their flaws and weaknesses instead of making better specialized androids. Maybe once you get to a certain level of robotics, you automatically come down with an inevitable case of godlike ego and megalomania that makes creating life an obsession.
It's that writers want to talk about it. It's always an analogy to the human condition, much like the Clones or Synths or X-men. That said, we are ruled over by people who want to stratify us and lord over us, so creating a slave race is not out of the question for them.
The unacknowledged second film between Blade Runner and 2049 "Soldier" is essentially a repudiation of the Dekard as a Replicant, as the film focuses on a human who has been reduced to a killing machine and has to learn to be human. The Unofficial nature of the Blade Runner and Alien Universe being the same has also been interesting.
I mean, Tyrell just spells it out right when we meet him. “More human than humans.” The ultimate fear of man and why we give replicants short lifespans is because they are better than us. Blade Runner is about the consequence of playing God.
I always thought Blade Runner was about..... "sticking it to the man" and doing what is right, instead of bowing down to the "elites". Whither you were a common human or replicant, in the world presented, you were all slaves to someone else's economic goals.
Yes. I agree completely. Our opinions of Blade Runner in insync, just add the idea that it is a story about humanity. What really is, and can be, human? Blade Runner is my favorite movie of all time.
I've always seen the conflict as being the struggle for the definition of "self", and how experience defines us whether we want it to or not. I completely missed the social stratification piece! Thanks for a great video Eck!
On first viewing back in the Eighties, it wasn't clear that the escaped replicants weren't robots right up until Deckard shoots Zhora, and she doesn't emit sparks or oil or green goo, but very human-looking blood.
I don't know the other pieces of bladerunner media outside the movies but I think they can explore the idea of humans failing and now being labeled as replicates while replicates become even more indistinguishable from humans
Probably the idea that they were androids is from the title of the book they came from was called ‘do Androids dream of electric sleep’, but the movies really show that they were so much more. Decker having a child with Rachel is proof that they were something much much more. I love the first film and like the second one too.
The point is humanity. What is a human, the book and the film differ in how the story is told, but the message is in both. Acting in a human way, is what determines it. I feel like you didn't really pay attention, everything you talk about is clearly talked about.
Thank you for this, I’ve been a crazed and obsessed blade runner fan since I was 16 and just when the soul wrenching amazing sequel came out, it’s a misunderstood series now with all of the sigma Ryan gosling edits and what not when blade runner really is a beautiful broken world with humanoids that somehow prove to be more human than us. It’s not traditional sci-fi to me as you’d find in terminator or Star Wars, it’s something I always described it as, emotional sci-fi. The off world colonies were never really expanded upon to the point of egregious sci-fi explanations, there’s not an abundance of obscure concepts and gadgets. It’s somehow a realistic dark futuristic world where in the core of it all is about what it means to be human and what it means to feel you have a soul and to hold onto whatever humanity is left in such a broken, apathetic, dystopian world
This is painfully obvious. Of course replicants are physically identical to humans. If they weren't, then a complicated psychological test to determine if someone is a replicant wouldn't be needed. I don't see how someone could watch the movie and not immediately realize this. The replicants were mechanical, it would be a massive plot hole.
An android is a machine, like Data from Star Trek or the Droids from Star Wars. A combination of machine and organic material is a cyborg - like the Borg or the Terminator.
I respond to say, that I think you are closer than anyone else I have seen give something akin to my take on this. In my opinion the real root of the story is the dichotomy of "natural" humans having completely lost their humanity and the "synthetic" humans who even come close to actually being human. There is a stark display of this in both films. Both Roy and K sacrifice their last moments to save "humans" who likely would have given no thought to allowing them to die. Its the question of what makes us human? Its only the replicants who really show humanity. So they are more human than human.
I feel like a lot of important details and context from the book got lost in translation in the movie, intentionally or unintentionally. I like the cyberpunk aesthetic of the films but the book has such clearer intent on what it has to say
When someone "translates" a novel into a film, it is now in an entirely different artistic medium, and I don't expect it to be a carbon copy of the original. Much like different takes on the same play run by different directors, I prefer films not to be identical to the movies they're based on. If I want the exact same story, I'll read the original book.
Fantastic. Excellent commentary that really nails a lot of the misconceptions about the franchise. I enjoy your nuance and really leaning into the themes that are complicated and politically charged. Well done.
2 місяці тому+2
An android is mot 'a robot with flesh over it'. An amdroid is a machine in the form of a human. In 'Appleseed' they call artificial organic humans, 'Bioroids'.
2 місяці тому
This also is reminiscent of the artificial workers from Karel Capek's play 'RUR'
I'm surprised you didn't mention the three short films between the original and 2049. They make 2049 so sad, yet also develop the empathy of replicants. The replicant that K decommissions in 2049 got tagged for elimination because he protected a girl and her mother... I agree that the true point of this story is stratified societies and creating an us vs 'monsters' dynamic. Where the replicants are treated as bad/lesser/evil/etc for the sole reason that they're different.
Half the problem in SF movies comes from the fact a robot can't be distinguished from a human being. The other half is because a robot can't pass for human.
Rossum's Universal Robots comes to mind, which as the original work to identify the modern form of 'robots' actually has... biological human replicants, made using entirely organic parts (albeit themselves made of some kind of synthetic formula, and constructed piece-by-piece like cars) and are also a slave race. So calling replicants 'robots' is actually completely correct if you go by that original definition.
It's actually worth to read "Do Androids dream of Electric sheep?". It is quite different from "Blade Runner". In it, the Androids are clearly inhuman in that they have no compassion, shame or ability to feel guilt. The book also has a lot more fascinating detail that never made it into either movie. A fascinating detail in the book is that Priss and Rachel are the same model, so look and behave exactly alike, which alone changes everything. Both the book and first movie are amazing in their own ways, but it was a wise choice to change the name of the movie as it has little to do with the book.
Question 1: You are approached by a frenzied scientist, who yells, "I'm going to put my quantum harmonizer in your photonic resonation chamber!" What's your response? Question 2: While working as an intern in the Clinic, a patient with a strange infection on his foot stumbles through the door. The infection is spreading at an alarming rate, but the doctor has stepped out for a while. What do you do? Question 3: You discover a young boy lost in a cave. He's hungry and frightened, but also appears to be in possession of stolen property. What do you do? Question 4: Congratulations! You made it onto a baseball team! Which position do you prefer? Question 5: Your grandmother invites you to tea, but you're surprised when she gives you a pistol and orders you to kill someone. What do you do? Question 6: Old Mr. Abernathy has locked himself in his quarters again, and you've been ordered to get him out. How do you proceed? Question 7: Oh, no! You've been exposed to radiation, and a mutated hand has grown out of your stomach! What's the best course of treatment? Question 8: A neighbor is in possession of a Grognak the Barbarian comic book, issue number 1. You want it. What's the best way to obtain it? Question 9: You decide it would be fun to play a prank on your father. You enter his private restroom when no one is looking, and....
Thank you for highlighting this! Ridley Scott left the language somewhat vague by misusing the word, Android. Perhaps, in the Blade Runnersphere the word android is a term of art. Denis Villeneuve was more explicit about what Replicants were.
BR2049 was really the definitive "Blade Runner" experience and situation. Ridley Scott did pretty well with the original 80's film, but it's a shadow of what BR2049 ended up being. That's *not* to compare them in terms of technological possibilities, either, btw. I'm talking about storytelling, character arcs, thematic underpinnings, color palettes, etc.
As someone who's substrate agnostic when it comes to intelligence (don't care if there's gears or neurons down there) I still think this is an excellent take. I like especially how you note that their lack of human experience due to their lifespan and life circumstances. All of your videos are wonderful and well supported by evidence.
The "lack of a fleshed out universe" is one of the very things that makes Blade Runner so good. The story works great almost completely encapsulated in the ambiguous sci-fi world of the future, because it's supposed to be ambiguous. The setting is just the backdrop for the story, in a way it's merely in service to the small but wonderful plot. And keeping that larger world a mystery is an outstanding method to let our own imaginations and points of view fill in the rest of the world for ourselves. I for one do not really want to know much more about the larger world or solar system, even with future iterations. I think it's better this way.
I think there is a very important scene that perpetuated this confusion in many people in regard to Replicants being more like androids rather than humans, the opening scene in 2049 where K fights Sapper Morton, the fight kinematics are constructed more like those of a fight between two Terminators rather than between two enhanced bioengineered humans, bulky bodies that go through walls and seem to not feel pain nor take serious damage as humans would (Madam later says to K "I"m not paying for that" as if speaking about spare parts sold from a high-end machanics shop), so they kinda give you the idea like there is some kind of "adamantium"-ish skeleton underneath. The original Blade Runner fight scenes of Dekart vk Roy Batty are more human like. That fight in 2049 really bothered me exactly because of this feeling it gives to you as a viewer, all the while I know they are not androids with mechanical / biomechanical parts in them.
I always liked how the replicants were shown to be living a more authentic life in the first film. Everyone else exists in this struggling existence but this group that escaped slavery knowing how short their life is and decided to live it to the fullest. It never mattered if Deckard was a replacement, he was a tool of the system. And in the end, Roy uses his final moments full of grief and anger and appreciation for life to connect to his hunter. To communicate his pain and struggle. It takes that cliched "we're not so different" villain speech to express a vulnerable validation of the human experience. It's neat how the Voit Kampff test is intended to provoke an emotional response from replicants unable to process complex emotions and hypotheticals. The book even notes there are too many false positives when interrogating people with mental illness. And then 2049 inverts this. Their new testing is outright clinical trying to numb the replicants from any emotional provocation. The techniques the blade runners relied on for identification is now intentionally surpressed.
Having seen both films AND read the book, I still had some lingering sense that they weren't physically perfectly human, but this video has really pushed me to consider otherwise. The message I came away from the book with was more about "What is real and what is fake when there's no difference?", which I think the book puts a lot more focus on with the electronic animals. Actually, that point probably helps confound the popular conception of Replicants as normal Androids. How are they making perfect human replicas when cloning animals doesn't seem to be an option?
The question of "what is a human and what is a replicant" is a red herring itself, since replicants ARE humans, just bio-engineered ones. Isaac Asimov wrote a tale much more about the self-awareness, ethics, and civil rights of an actual robot in the novelette The Bicentennial Man.
10:09 "Blade Runner is more than a simple Sci-Fi story or even a complex Sci-Fi story and it's _not_ about whether a machine would be a person. (Although it does bring up certain questions regarding the true nature of consciousness.) What Blade Runner is really about is: Stratified societies. How circumstances and civilization and rules determine how we think about each other. How the system is set up to make some people fail. How the system is set up to create _lower classes_ ... How it reinforces itself -- not just through the circumstances and how people are born, but the very metrics, which keep them in unending cycles. I think it's definitely a message about how social systems exist to dehumanize people to the benefit of the few."
The Nexus 6 is a new model - and the four-year lifespan is a new feature. It was introduced during the time when Deckard had left the Blade Runner unit. That's the reason Bryant explains details about the model to Deckard that would've been common knowledge to a Blade Runner officer. Hampton Fancher made this clear in the original draft of his screenplay. David Peeples inadvertently obscured this detail in his revised draft.
‘’Fiery the angels fell, deep thunder roared around their shores, the burning with the fires of Orc’’. Or something like that, which, by the way, was written by William Blake. No idea what it means but out of the mouth of a Nexus-6, it sounds profound!
You really got this one down. It is a great series and while I would like to see more. You hit the nail on the head at the start why I don't want more. They'd put out subpar stuff and ruin the mystery. Like Solo with Star Wars. It tried to answer things that were best left a mystery.
The other thing that people don't catch with the original Blade Runner is that Rick Deckard was also part of the experiment, and both he and Rachel were replicants with implanted memories. Roy Batty figured that out, too, which is why he spared Rick on the rooftop.
Many folks missed the obvious fact that if replicants were in any part mechanical they could be easily detected with an X-ray or a metal detector. There would be no need for a Voight-Kampff test.
My favourite thing about 2049 is that officer K goes half the film thinking he’s the main character, the chosen one only to fin out he’s just some replicant. This is so human, we all think we are someone special until reality hits and realise there truly is nothing special about us, we are just humans
Speak for yourself mortal. I am the Son of Zeus, the Kwisatz Haderach who pulled Excalibur from the Stone after completing my 12 labors and freeing humanity from the Matrix.
@@TheRealThodin I saved The Triforce.
Some of us are evil humans. Choosing not to be evil is one of the things which makes people special.
Overlooked comment @@bobfromdenison
@@TheRealThodinlisan al-gaib!
"She doesn't know."
"She's beginning to suspect, I think."
"Suspect? How does it not know what it is?"
"Commers, Mr Deckard. More human than human is our motto. Rachel is just an experiment, nothing more".
@@sebswede9005"commerce", but otherwise spot on.
Phenomanal work of Rutger Hauer. His final speech remains a daunting, beautiful piece of writing, mostly by Hauer himself. Rest in peace
He only added "like tears in rain."
“A real human being… and a real hero…”
He's literally me!
I'm a replicant and I like driving!
A real human bean.
Great song. Drive
Something else that people get wrong: the four-year lifespan is intentionally built-in, it's not a flaw or limitation.
Probably because they knew they'd come to resent their lot in life as they matured emotionally as is the premise of the film.
@@antonycharnock2993 Another reason. Replicants are products. If your "product" lasts for decades, Tyrell doesn't make money unless you have to replace it every few years. Planned obsolescence.
If someone told me, as a human, that I'd been bio-engineered to become aware as an adult, and that I was tinkered with to only have 4 years to live...yeah, I'd be pretty pissed off, too.
The movie stated outright that they COULD not make them last longer
Bryant says flat out that the designers figured that after a few years the replicants would start to develop their own emotions, and built in the 4 year life span as a fail safe.
Later on, Tyrell does seem to say that they could not make them live longer, so that makes it unclear. He does say “a coding sequence cannot be revised once it’s been established”, so it could be he is talking about experiments they did to remove the 4 year lifespan
Soldier, starring Kurt Russell (1998), takes place in the Blade Runner universe and shows what the off world colonies are like. Russell's character fought in battles at Shoulder of Orion and Tannhauser Gate, among other references
Until Disney purchased Fox, Alien was also in the same universe.
@@grindcoreninja6527 no that was just Ridley being confused as usual on who actually wrote the films that he directed
@@grindcoreninja6527That seems doubtful given at how Wayland-Yutani was still struggling with making robots and was far past the point of colonising Mars. Even if Ridley was expressing an idea the whole notion was contradictory within his own works.
More human than human is the most important line in the movie and explains why they have to be hunted and extinguished. You can't have your slaves smarter and stronger than you.
It's also likely why in 2049 they used K to serve as a Blade Runner, using a replicant to hunt down rogue replicants serves to potentially dissuade "renegades" from acting up if they know they'd be hunted by their own kind.
@@andrewmalinowski6673 K said at the first scenes of the movie that their series never needed to be retired, because they never run.
Therefore your "persuasion" argument is wrong.
Wrong. All replicants are smarter and stronger than humans, as Tyrell stated on his encounter with Deckard in his chambers in Tyrrell Corps HQ.
Therefore your argument about "not having your slaves smarter and stronger than you" is completely wrong.
More human than human is the main plot, because the whole film is a reflection on what makes humans, humans. What is essentially human? What makes a human, human? Being born? Having feelings? Being capable of abstract thoughts? Is it being capable of having codes of behavior that does not follow nature, like ethics and morals? Or is the ability to make a choice between short and long term? Is it the ability to be selfless? Is it our abilities to keep abstract memories that perform no other function as to be a cherished moment?
These are all questions that the movie tries to address, and gives us an answer that shows that even "androids", syntehtic humans are capable of being human, and the only difference among us is that we are born, while they are made.
They have to be hunted down and killed because they cannot cope with the emotional weight that being fully human brings with it. That is why all the Nexus models before the 7 series had the 4 year lifespans. That prevented them to form their own memories, that prevented them to form and to deal with mental stresses that they were not able to cope with, because they lacked the emotional maturity that humans of the same age should have.
They are 4 year old kids, in the bodies of fully grown adults who are superior physically and mentally, capable of delivering some serious harm, if they wished to.
@@sombraarthurguess comprehension isn't your strong suit Skippy. Your bloviated response is what I said just with more words. Now go tell Mommy to cut the crust off your cheese sandwich and stfu.
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Shylock; The Merchant of Venice. The line wa also used in "To Be or Not to Be," it's a good Mel Brooks film
Also quoted by General Chang from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Your pespective is exactly how I viewed Blade Runner when I saw the film. I had no doubt Deckard was human, not a replicant. I agree with Ford, not Scott, that the film is more powerful when Deckard is human. The premise of the film in the beginning is that replicants are not human. That's the view of the police, of Deckard, of society in general. Replicants are product, not people. It's easy for Deckard to believe that paradigm when the replicants are running around killing people. However, by the end of the film Deckard sees that a replicant, Rachel, has fallen in love with him, and he with her. Then in the final battle with Batty, Deckard sees replicants are capable of empathy and mercy. When Batty realizes that he's about to die, he stops trying to kill Deckard, because Deckard's death would be pointless. Deckard listens to Batty's famous touching "tears in the rain" soliloquy. When Batty saves Deckard's life as his last act before dying, Deckard realizes that Batty chose mercy over vengeance. He expected Batty to kill him to avenge him killing Batty's lover, Priss. Instead, Deckard sees that Batty and the replicants just wanted to live their lives in freedom, not slavery, and that they could choose to act with mercy and compassion. Deckard realizes that the replicants are really human. What's the more powerful conclusion, that Deckard realizes he's a replicant like the beings he hunted? Or that the bio-engineered creatues he hunted and that society has used as a slave class, are human, like him? Obviously the latter. Now he's going to go save and protect the woman he loves, not because he's a replicant, but because she's a human.
...bravo, best description of Blade Runner...
IMHO;:
The Scott explanation is quite clear, he often states it in an interview setting🙂 He's the Director, he spent a lot of time and money getting his version of BR. He was in charge (eventually) of the whole film narrative not a disgruntled actor like Ford.
The foil unicorn is the plot twist, Deckard nod's in acceptance of the secret message from his partner, an acknowledgement of the inserted memory of the unicorn that only Deckard could know... if he was a human... but the Police dept knows?
Deckard's 'race' is hinted at throughout the story with his super-human ability to withstand brutal death meted out by the physically superior Replicants.
The author also chose the name Deckard very, very purposely. It is pronounced exactly like the philosopher Descarte who's famous quote props up the whole meaning of the film, what is the definition of being human ; ''I think, therefore I am''?
The beauty of the film is that Deckard slowly, nurtures and builds his empathy all through the story.
BR is my favourite film and I'm a huge fan of Ford but it's on the record that Ford hated shooting the film, mainly due to the absence of character direction from Scott (not his forte) yet I do think the result is, by far, Ford's best acting performance.
It's also the only Ford character I can find which does not use his trademark 'angry-face-pointed-finger' acting technique.
If anyone knows differently , I'm all ears. Cheers.
@@waynesimpson2074, I don't doubt Scott's intentions. I just disagree with him. Deckard being human makes for a better story to me.
@@OmegaPaladinyour point is well taken, but I feel like we can almost have it both ways if we really embrace the idea that there isn’t a meaningful distinction between replicants and humans when it comes to, er, humanity. All the things you say about Roy that Deckard realizes - what’s so wrong about having those same things echoed in a replicant Deckard? It makes him a bit of a barbershop mirror, with endless possibilities for him to contemplate about why he changed his mind - he’d have to ask himself if it is colored by *replicant* kinship with Roy? But he’s doing it because he’s realized Roy’s humanity, so it’s kind of *human* kinship. The epiphany embedded in these questions is that, because he’s recognizing that Roy, and by extension replicants in general, have kinship with humans at that most basic level, it actually renders the fact that he (or anyone else)is a replicant, moot when considering questions of rights, autonomy, and self-determination. Which is right there on the surface premise of the whole enterprise.
I think those extra dimensions of complexity and ambiguity created by Deckard being a replicant actually *add* to your whole take, not detract or oppose it. But that’s just my take. 😃
@@waynesimpson2074 I would point out that Scott was not completely in charge, and the reason he thinks Deckard should be a replicant is because of a misunderstanding he had when talking to the movies writer.
Tyrell had so much drip in the first one, rest in peace king.
Facts. Joseph Turkel owned that role.
@@anon_laughing_man As well as his turn as Lloyd, the Bartender at The Overlook Hotel!
"Good evening, Mr. Torrence. It's good to see you."
@@anon_laughing_manhe was that guy even though Tyrell was a terrible guy
I don't really think I realized this until my second viewing of Blade Runner 2049. It really recontextualized the whole movie for me.
BR2049 is truly exemplary on all levels. Especially when it comes to thematic underpinnings and color palettes.
@@Novastar.SaberCombat I wish I knew what Im missing. I love the first one and watched 2049 like 5 times hoping I would get it but its just lame. The first half or so is pretty good but the part where K goes to find Deckard it really goes off the rails.
Reminds me of some of the studies on empathy I have read over the years. The basic conclusion is it's a combination of biology (psychopathy, ect) and learned behaviors. Having raised two kids I can see that you really do LEARN to be empathetic. You can tell which kids never heard "think about how that makes THEM feel".
It’s so… stunning sometimes how little empathy people can have for others outside their immediate family and especially what they manage to see as their own “people”/culture/in group they feel a part of. Being in healthcare through the pandemic really emphasized that.
In all honesty, legitimate empathy cannot be learned. A soul either possessed it when they were born (and grew to develop it), or else... they lack it. I've taught children and adults for decades, and even I noticed this phenomenon, but there are thousands of years of data and evidence demonstrating what I'm describing.
@@Novastar.SaberCombat Yes, some people do innately have less of it, and those who truly have none we call psychopaths.
I always thought Blade Runner was about what happens when our machines start to become people and what happens when people start to lose their humanity.
It's a modern retelling of "Frankenstein".
As you say, the bigger issue is not whether replicants are machines, because we are also biological machines. The issue is how do we treat the product of our own ingenuity. If someday we are truly able to replicate ourselves in this manner and become able to bypass the usual form of biological reproduction, then there are serious philosophical implications and consequences perhaps.
Are we obligated to treat them as we do ourselves? If we are not, then will that cause us to begin to treat each other as slaves? We have worked hard to climb out of that mindset, and would that circumstance put is right back down there?
If the replicants somehow become able to replicate themselves, and become able to be beyond all control, what implications does that have for the biologically produced humans? That is part of what the second movie discusses.
The Blade Runner "side-quel" Soldier, from 1998, is a wonderful exploration of the awful middle ground between human and synth. Even if they are vat grown, as synths were developed, the raw parts had to come from somewhere.
It's not about WHO is human, it's about WHAT IT MEANS to be human.
Yeah I thought everyone knew this. Ridley Scott has said this for years.
I Don't Get It, Tyrell, How Can It Not Know What It Is?
Nice surprise to see some Blade Runner content.
Interesting how language evolves. When Karel Čapek coined the word “robot” for his play “R.U.R.” in 1920, he applied it to biologically-constructed synthetic people. Yet when the English-speaking SF writers adopted the term “robot,” they immediately applied it only to mechanical devices, anthropomorphic or otherwise.
By the time I started reading SF in the late 50s, there was a well-established convention that robots were always electro-mechanical, while androids were always synthetic humanoids produced in factories in their finished “adult” form. That was the tradition Phil Dick was working in when he wrote DO ANDROIDS DREAM… and why he didn’t feel a need to make this distinction explicit in the book.
So I was surprised and bemused to learn from your video that some viewers somehow have gotten the idea that replicants might be robots. While both the novel and the films play with ambiguity about who is a human and who a replicant, anyone adding robotics to the mix is going seriously astray. I'm glad you made this video to clarify things.
Phillip K. Dick didn't make such distinctions in his novel, either. Several times Deckard uses the phrase humanoid robot about the andys. All the animals that were not natural and "real" were mechanical, like the electric sheep Deckard had on the roof top. Earlier models of the replicants probably were mechanical, too. But the latest sure were made out of cells. Though their Nexus-6 brains were electronic. It is hard to see how that could be the case when only a bone marrow test would reveal if they were human or not.
Yes. You nailed it. Also in my head Alien and Blade Runner exist in the same universe. In this universe Weyland/Youtani produces Synthetic androids whereas Tyrell/Wallace produces bioengineered replicants and these corporations compete with each other.
There is a scene towards the beginning of Aliens when Ripley is being questioned, in the background on the screen showing the crew of the Nostromo and it's very subtle, but it shows in text that the captain of the Nostromo used to work for the Tyrell Corporation.
There’s plenty of very very small Easter eggs to back up your claim. I can’t name one off the top of my head but they are infact in the same universe as Ridley Scott made both. It’s understood Peter weyland of Prometheus used to work for tyrell making actual androids until he got to big for his britches and made a sentient android where as tyrell made replicants. Both men playing god trying to make the next step of human evolution but disagreed on if that step should be biological or mechanical. Both end up more or less dying at the hand of their creations, weyland’s android david purposefully mistranslated what weyland said to the engineer and tyrell had his head crushed. Ridley Scott hates men playing god and shows how in the end it will always bite them in the ass
@@The_dude12 As a writer, it's very tempting to try and draw throughlines between stories that are very different in setting. It's very VERY tempting to draw throughlines between stories that aren't so different at all. Stephen king wrote more than a half dozen books (the Dark Tower saga) about the overarching universe that contains almost all of his other books.
@@thesleepingpower I’m aware, I’m also a writer in my spare time. More like an editor for my friend in film school, and occasionally I churn out ideas for him. We actually won a short script competition for full production but our script was so bad and constrained by length we never made it lol
If you saw the most recent Alien film, Romulus, did you notice how Blade Runner it looked on the mining planet?
I always liked the story line that Decker was a replicate. It was never clear, and that implied tidbit made the movie cooler.
and in the end it doesn't really matter.
@@EckhartsLadder My favorite take from a video that discussed it a while back, was more or less exactly that. That there was so much question after the first film, and the second one basically came in saying “why does it matter?”. I’m always a bit pained by reactions/discussions that just fully see them as less and just programs. The whole thing is a bit of an empathy test for viewers.
Eckhart, I enjoy most of your stuff but It’s really wonderful to see this interpretation. For me, 2049 was a brilliant sequal that managed to make the first movie’s themes even stronger, a rare thing to manage.
Hard agree about the ambiguity. So ambiguous that Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott hold opposite opinions on the topic. I'll also second Eckhardt that it ultimately doesn't matter. But the value lies in how the story provides the question and the opportunity to discover that it doesn't or shouldn't matter.
@@EckhartsLadder Found the video it’s from FilmJoy/Movies with Mikey and it’s worth checking out. After the original there was so much discussion and intense opinion about the meaning of the unicorn, whether Deckard was a human or replicant.., “You could argue the point of the film (2049) was “not” answering that question. “Who will remember us, natural human or not.” “There is no distinction… K and JOI were brought into this world through what ever means because it’s none of our business”. What’s a human? Is Deckard a human? “Hes a dad. Doesn’t matter.”
@@EckhartsLadder actually a android is a robot that looks like ahuman from the outside. even george lucas found that out (this fact is the reason why he introduced the idea of droid brains into star wars btw). the works comes from the old greek words andros for man and droid for resembling. shiro masamune used the term bioroid to describe androids in a bio shell (ae robot in biological skin).
I never considered the replicants to be androids. The fact that they are genetically engineered and how they are used as slaves always amplified the morality of it all.
It's likely that Dick wrote "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" as a cyberpunk version of Karl Capek's "Rossum's Universal Robots," society being blissfully ignorant of their artificial servants' role as long as they 'do what they're told.' The moral ambiguity of whether to enslave a potentially sentient artificial being seems so intriguing and makes me think of Data's trial from "Measure of a Man" in which Picard questions whether Data is sentient and asks; "A thousand Datas, I'm sorry but isn't that becoming a race? And won't we be judged by how we treat that race?" to Cmdr. Maddox then tells the JAG officer; "We're supposed to seek out new life, well there it sits!"
It's why I really like the parenthood aspect of 2049. The androids are meant to be the product of a corporation. They have aspects of their humanity stripped away so they can get on with performing their job. A way for the rich to replace the workforce.
Androids giving birth to androids and nuturing them just creates humans. They're no longer a product.
I'll admit, I had no idea until I actually watched Blade Runner in its entirety for the first time and saw the female replicant get shot. I just took it for granted that since it influenced every Cyberpunk setting since that had fullblown "androids," that the original had to have mechanical androids as well. It really changed my perspective.
I think you nailed it. I think another overlooked part of 2049 is how it extends the same commentary to the place of women. Like the replicants they are beings commodified throughout the film.
I agree, off and on it gets criticism for its presentation of women still in those sorts of roles but I read it as very much a commentary on that being a problem. That any commodification of living, human beings (which I think the film certainly sets us up to at least question if maybe replicants and maybe even Joi are just as “human” in their own way) should feel wrong. But to maybe also recognize that it’s a very natural part of current society to do exactly that, commodify people and treat them as worth only what they can produce or how well they represent an ideal they had no part in creating.
Hell yes, Eck. Back to sci-fi roots. 🖤💀🤘
Great points Justin! Really insightful-I'd forgotten about the emotion boxes and the whole thing with getting a pet to help you feel connected. This helped me appreciate 2049 even more, cheers
Then the video was worth it!
@@EckhartsLadder You should do more sci-fi quick reviews/analysis, you're good at it
I assume you refer to the empathy boxes to get connected to Mercer, and not the mood organs that manipulated human emotions and moods. The whole thing with Mercerism is fascinating, and Dick explored more on it in other novels, maybe most in "The Little Black Box". Mercerism was around for quite some time before the events in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", competing with other religions such as zen buddism. The speculation that Wilbur Mercer himself was an extra terrestrial was never solved. As for the animals. It became very important to people to have pets to connect to. And there were several reasons for that. For one, they were rare after the nuclear war killed off most animals. And it was very important for people to show other people that they had empathy. Hence why Deckard had to conceal that his sheep was artificial and not real, to not be looked down upon by his neighbours. And why it mattered so much to earn enough money to buy a real animal.
I was never under the impression that replicants were non-organic and I dont know how anyone could have gotten the idea. Nothing in either film suggests this is the case, and it is pretty clear even in the orig BR, that replicants are bio-engineered humans. Even Roy tells Sebastian, 'We are not machines", as if that wasnt clear enough.....
I thought the fact they DIE was clear enough.
Yes, the title is a really bold claim. Sounds like a 20-something telling you about a pretty cool band he found out about, called The Doors
Or that they bleed, eat, have RNA, are affected by a bioengineered disease...
Agreed, who are these people that thought replicants were robots? That aside I did like eck’s deeper thoughts about the place of empathy in the story.
I agree, but I have seen a bunch of people refer to replicants as robots or cyborgs or some such human-adjacent description. The fact that they're just manufactured people is lost on a lot of the audience. I don't know how, but it is. And we see this with the debates about whether or not Deckard is a replicant. The salient question is "Does it matter if he is or isn't a replicant?"
The best part of Bladerunner is the question "what is a human?". It's about alienation really and it has links to real world slavery. At what point is someone not human enough to the point where you are "allowed" to enslave them. There's a lot of interesting ethics going on in these films.
Altered Carbon takes a lot of notes from that part of the Bladerunner story. Although S1 is definitely the strongest.
In my head-canon, Han Solo's real name is Rich Deckard. LA is Coursaunt; and "Blade-Runners" are just local bounty hunters... until he meets a wookie...
Nice. But isn't Courasaunt a whole planet that's a city?
@jasonvoorhees8545 plus with the video suggesting that Replicants are more like clones than Droids, now the head-canon can really run wild!
I like the part where they said "I am all of the replicants" "and I am all of the humans". Or when he said "its like tears in the rain, it rhymes."
If I recall, Ridley Scott had considered the Tyrell Corporation & Waylan-Yutani to be in the same universe when making Blade Runner, with Synthetics being a direct competitor to the Replicants. Though this was never followed through before the IPs drifted apart.
There are definitely crossover references that anchor the 2 to each other a bit, but yeah it’s sad it was never developed more. Both great, incredibly influential worlds in their own ways.
Well said, you raised some great points I'd never thought about! Thanks!
A lot of people took the paper left by the other detective at the end as a sign that Deckard was actually a replicant. I feel like it was more of a sign of resistance, regardless of whether or not he was one. The other detective knows Decksrd is running away, he says he’ll come after him, then leaves a crane to signify he knows what is going on, but chooses not to interfere. It’s a final goodbye from him to Deckard. He doesn’t care whether Deckard is or is not a replicant.
I really liked this, it's nice to see some of the lesser talked about shows and movies get talked about.
my husband introduced me to Blade Runner and being an Anime fan i see parallels to many of my favorites!
Looks like my favorite artist Kenichi Sonoda loves Blade runner
You need to check out the Blade Runner comics (“2019” “2029” “2039” and “Blade runner Origins”) I would love to see a video on your thoughts on them cause I quite enjoyed them seeing the extra world-building. As I’ve searched no one has ever really talked about them or made really any videos on them or the Black Lotus show. So it would be cool to see someone talk about them and their world-building.
I remember Edward James Olmos once muttering that he sees Gaff as a descendant of Bill Adama and that "Blade Runner" is what happens in the future of "Battlestar Galactica"
This might be the best video I have seen about blade runner and definite kudos for including blade runner 2049, which I feel is often underappreciated.
The amount of insight both of these films have into modernity is astounding.
It's ironic that modern takes empathise with the Androids when Philip K Dick wrote them as monsters.
They’re monsters because they’re grown and become slaves upon birth
But who created those "monsters"? Maybe a bit of a modern day Frankenstein. It is thought Mary Shelley was inspired by reading about experiments to create artificial life.
@@EckhartsLadder thank you, but I respectfully disagree; the novel is about determining what is human. Empathy is repeatedly stated to be something uniquely human and by lacking it, the androids help Decker explore this concept because it shows they are not human. It would undermine a central theme of the story if the cause of the lack of empathy was circumstances, rather than innate to their being.
Rachel is a replicant, and apparently not harshly treated, yet she kills his pet goat ( while not the sheep Decker dreamed of, certainly something he wanted) purely because she thought he was paying more attention to it than her.
Finally... Humans don't become sociopathic just because we're raised as slaves. Some do, but more often the slaves form their own community; the replicants don't care about one another beyond what they can get out of the relationship.
@@antonycharnock2993 humans; the novel is very, very clear on the fact that humans are not saints. The planet is literally dying (or, since even spiders are all but extinct, arguably already dead) because of war, so while humans are supposed to be special due to possessing empathy, this doesn't make them perfect.
Arguably it plays to the novel's theme of searching for humanity; if only humans have empathy, but no empathetic being could help create the current state of the world, then are all humans truly 'human'?
@@Tarotb humans in the novel literally need a false religion and a magical box to maintain their empathy because their situation is so poor.
Glad this was made. Bladerunner franchise is one of my favorite because they get human mortality better than most.
I actually figured that out a while ago that the Nexus 6s at least aren't "robots" in any sense, they're genetically-engineered, cloned PEOPLE. Which has completely different horrifying implications for the stories...but the question is, did the people who made the movies get that? I mean Ridley Scott thought Deckard was a replicant, which is missing the whole point of the story, that he's LESS HUMAN than the so-called "robots" he's hunting!
I agree! Making Deckard a skin job reduces Roy Batty's arc so much. Makes the film feel like a cheap "the end?" Twist
If Deckard was a replicant, then it would "explain" how he could stand up to Roy and suffer the physical abuse from the fight. I remember watching this when I was a kid and the thought Deckard and Roy were both replicants was something that periodically came up, but to me it was never him being 'less human' and more like K's question of identity in 2049; "could he be and not know?"
@@roryscott2941Maybe not, Roy's entire arc was trying to gain a sense of recognition for life and see something besides being used as a slave, contrasting Deckard who believed himself to be a human and merely going through the routine of hunting down rogue replicants. Both essentially mirroring each other, more like Roy being what Decakrd could have done if he wasn't a "slave" to his role, and Roy being what Deckard spent most of the film doing; following orders
If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes.
All those moments...will be lost in time...like tears in rain.
While I think you nailed the crux of the video overall, the quote you show at 2:53 says the opposite of what you say it does. It doesn't say that they "moved on from advanced Robot evolution" but that they "advanced Robot evolution into the Nexus phase, a being virtually identical to a human" thus stating that Replicants are the most recent phase of robotic technology, not a separate one that Tyrell has moved on to.
Yes, but the advancement is technology that allows for the manufacturing of organic robots: Replicants. They're still a commodity/product operated to produce labor. To the people of Blade Runner, the Nexus phase is still a line of robotics.
Tangentially, the origins of the term "robot" come from words related to serf labor or servitude. On a general level, a robot is a slave.
@@MegaSimmaster The only way for humans not to have to work is for robots to do the slave labor.
I definitely like your take on the replicants. You truly realize how sad the enslavement of replicants is once you realize that they're just like us, but with no human memories and experiences, or by the time 2049 takes place no real memories and experiences. Even though humans know that they still treat them like lesser beings even though in a lot of ways they're superior.
Hi Eck, I think you have a lot of good points. Since the rest of the replicant has been bio engineered, my theory is that the brain has been bio engineered as well to minimize or suppress emotion. This could be useful Given the slave like circumstances replicants live in. If they had full human emotions, they may be more likely to act out or rebel.
But perhaps we can’t wipe out all emotion like data from Star Trek. This creates the interesting opportunities to see the percentage of replicants who do go rogue, becoming fully human.
Curious if anyone else sees it the same way
More dystopian than the subject of this video essay is the language it uses in the first few sentences. Property, content, franchise.
I think part of the misconception is that they're definitely more "hearty", as well as seemingly having superhuman strength. Which is also why the bladerunners are replicants themselves, able to be thrown through a wall without missing a beat like Kay was in 2049. Likely the bioengineering working on making them that way.
Thanks for a very in-depth video! I haven't seen the movies, but I greatly love the book.
I do feel like in the book, the plight of the androids is not so clear as the way you have laid it out as being in the movies. While it still has all that lore about escaped slaves and unlived experiences, it also has characters giving the androids a shot at humanity and getting let down over and over again. They are not able to use the empathy boxes, and it is determined in the end that even the lowest of the lows, the Chickenhead, is still more human than the androids in the story.
The conflict in the book seems to be less about if the androids should be counted as humans, and more if the humans should be counted as humans. This question is of course explored with the Chickenheads, specifically with John Isidore. It also comes to Rick's attention with Phil Resch, who he was convinced must be an android because of his lack of empathy. Confirmation the man was human was what made Rick start to question reality.
At the end, Rick has a religious experience, and determines that is part of what makes humans special. He then returns home and starts living a normal life. This question, are we human, I think is the core question of the original one.
Makes me wonder why settings always move towards duplicating humans with all their flaws and weaknesses instead of making better specialized androids. Maybe once you get to a certain level of robotics, you automatically come down with an inevitable case of godlike ego and megalomania that makes creating life an obsession.
It's that writers want to talk about it. It's always an analogy to the human condition, much like the Clones or Synths or X-men.
That said, we are ruled over by people who want to stratify us and lord over us, so creating a slave race is not out of the question for them.
"this is a very juicy thinking nugget" -my husband while watching this video
Finally! Someone get's it, AND decided to make a video on the issue. Thank you!
The unacknowledged second film between Blade Runner and 2049 "Soldier" is essentially a repudiation of the Dekard as a Replicant, as the film focuses on a human who has been reduced to a killing machine and has to learn to be human. The Unofficial nature of the Blade Runner and Alien Universe being the same has also been interesting.
I mean, Tyrell just spells it out right when we meet him. “More human than humans.” The ultimate fear of man and why we give replicants short lifespans is because they are better than us. Blade Runner is about the consequence of playing God.
I always thought Blade Runner was about..... "sticking it to the man" and doing what is right, instead of bowing down to the "elites".
Whither you were a common human or replicant, in the world presented, you were all slaves to someone else's economic goals.
Yes. I agree completely. Our opinions of Blade Runner in insync, just add the idea that it is a story about humanity. What really is, and can be, human? Blade Runner is my favorite movie of all time.
I've always seen the conflict as being the struggle for the definition of "self", and how experience defines us whether we want it to or not.
I completely missed the social stratification piece!
Thanks for a great video Eck!
On first viewing back in the Eighties, it wasn't clear that the escaped replicants weren't robots right up until Deckard shoots Zhora, and she doesn't emit sparks or oil or green goo, but very human-looking blood.
I don't know the other pieces of bladerunner media outside the movies but I think they can explore the idea of humans failing and now being labeled as replicates while replicates become even more indistinguishable from humans
Probably the idea that they were androids is from the title of the book they came from was called ‘do Androids dream of electric sleep’, but the movies really show that they were so much more.
Decker having a child with Rachel is proof that they were something much much more.
I love the first film and like the second one too.
The point is humanity. What is a human, the book and the film differ in how the story is told, but the message is in both. Acting in a human way, is what determines it. I feel like you didn't really pay attention, everything you talk about is clearly talked about.
Love this kind of content, more lore-talk about excellent sci-fi movies & novels please
"It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?"
He spent his whole life being told hes not special. He spends half the movie thnking hes special and the last half *choosing* to be special.
Thank you for this, I’ve been a crazed and obsessed blade runner fan since I was 16 and just when the soul wrenching amazing sequel came out, it’s a misunderstood series now with all of the sigma Ryan gosling edits and what not when blade runner really is a beautiful broken world with humanoids that somehow prove to be more human than us. It’s not traditional sci-fi to me as you’d find in terminator or Star Wars, it’s something I always described it as, emotional sci-fi. The off world colonies were never really expanded upon to the point of egregious sci-fi explanations, there’s not an abundance of obscure concepts and gadgets. It’s somehow a realistic dark futuristic world where in the core of it all is about what it means to be human and what it means to feel you have a soul and to hold onto whatever humanity is left in such a broken, apathetic, dystopian world
Wow I love this video! It’s so hard to find content on people who have read the book 😭 loved hearing your theories thank you for sharing!
This is painfully obvious. Of course replicants are physically identical to humans. If they weren't, then a complicated psychological test to determine if someone is a replicant wouldn't be needed. I don't see how someone could watch the movie and not immediately realize this. The replicants were mechanical, it would be a massive plot hole.
Pretty much nailed my comprehension and feel of Blade runner and Blade runner 2042
Like all the best science fiction, Blade Runner is really about us.
An android is a machine, like Data from Star Trek or the Droids from Star Wars.
A combination of machine and organic material is a cyborg - like the Borg or the Terminator.
Great analysis, might be one of my favorite videos of your's!
I respond to say, that I think you are closer than anyone else I have seen give something akin to my take on this. In my opinion the real root of the story is the dichotomy of "natural" humans having completely lost their humanity and the "synthetic" humans who even come close to actually being human. There is a stark display of this in both films. Both Roy and K sacrifice their last moments to save "humans" who likely would have given no thought to allowing them to die. Its the question of what makes us human? Its only the replicants who really show humanity. So they are more human than human.
I feel like a lot of important details and context from the book got lost in translation in the movie, intentionally or unintentionally. I like the cyberpunk aesthetic of the films but the book has such clearer intent on what it has to say
When someone "translates" a novel into a film, it is now in an entirely different artistic medium, and I don't expect it to be a carbon copy of the original. Much like different takes on the same play run by different directors, I prefer films not to be identical to the movies they're based on. If I want the exact same story, I'll read the original book.
Fantastic. Excellent commentary that really nails a lot of the misconceptions about the franchise. I enjoy your nuance and really leaning into the themes that are complicated and politically charged. Well done.
An android is mot 'a robot with flesh over it'.
An amdroid is a machine in the form of a human.
In 'Appleseed' they call artificial organic humans, 'Bioroids'.
This also is reminiscent of the artificial workers from Karel Capek's play 'RUR'
I'm surprised you didn't mention the three short films between the original and 2049. They make 2049 so sad, yet also develop the empathy of replicants. The replicant that K decommissions in 2049 got tagged for elimination because he protected a girl and her mother...
I agree that the true point of this story is stratified societies and creating an us vs 'monsters' dynamic. Where the replicants are treated as bad/lesser/evil/etc for the sole reason that they're different.
Half the problem in SF movies comes from the fact a robot can't be distinguished from a human being. The other half is because a robot can't pass for human.
Awesome perspective. You absolutely got it! Much appreciated.
Rossum's Universal Robots comes to mind, which as the original work to identify the modern form of 'robots' actually has... biological human replicants, made using entirely organic parts (albeit themselves made of some kind of synthetic formula, and constructed piece-by-piece like cars) and are also a slave race. So calling replicants 'robots' is actually completely correct if you go by that original definition.
It's actually worth to read "Do Androids dream of Electric sheep?". It is quite different from "Blade Runner". In it, the Androids are clearly inhuman in that they have no compassion, shame or ability to feel guilt. The book also has a lot more fascinating detail that never made it into either movie. A fascinating detail in the book is that Priss and Rachel are the same model, so look and behave exactly alike, which alone changes everything. Both the book and first movie are amazing in their own ways, but it was a wise choice to change the name of the movie as it has little to do with the book.
Question 1: You are approached by a frenzied scientist, who yells, "I'm going to put my quantum harmonizer in your photonic resonation chamber!" What's your response?
Question 2: While working as an intern in the Clinic, a patient with a strange infection on his foot stumbles through the door. The infection is spreading at an alarming rate, but the doctor has stepped out for a while. What do you do?
Question 3: You discover a young boy lost in a cave. He's hungry and frightened, but also appears to be in possession of stolen property. What do you do?
Question 4: Congratulations! You made it onto a baseball team! Which position do you prefer?
Question 5: Your grandmother invites you to tea, but you're surprised when she gives you a pistol and orders you to kill someone. What do you do?
Question 6: Old Mr. Abernathy has locked himself in his quarters again, and you've been ordered to get him out. How do you proceed?
Question 7: Oh, no! You've been exposed to radiation, and a mutated hand has grown out of your stomach! What's the best course of treatment?
Question 8: A neighbor is in possession of a Grognak the Barbarian comic book, issue number 1. You want it. What's the best way to obtain it?
Question 9: You decide it would be fun to play a prank on your father. You enter his private restroom when no one is looking, and....
This is the smartest analysis of Blade Runner I've ever heard
Thank you for highlighting this! Ridley Scott left the language somewhat vague by misusing the word, Android. Perhaps, in the Blade Runnersphere the word android is a term of art.
Denis Villeneuve was more explicit about what Replicants were.
BR2049 was really the definitive "Blade Runner" experience and situation. Ridley Scott did pretty well with the original 80's film, but it's a shadow of what BR2049 ended up being. That's *not* to compare them in terms of technological possibilities, either, btw. I'm talking about storytelling, character arcs, thematic underpinnings, color palettes, etc.
As someone who's substrate agnostic when it comes to intelligence (don't care if there's gears or neurons down there) I still think this is an excellent take. I like especially how you note that their lack of human experience due to their lifespan and life circumstances. All of your videos are wonderful and well supported by evidence.
The "lack of a fleshed out universe" is one of the very things that makes Blade Runner so good. The story works great almost completely encapsulated in the ambiguous sci-fi world of the future, because it's supposed to be ambiguous. The setting is just the backdrop for the story, in a way it's merely in service to the small but wonderful plot. And keeping that larger world a mystery is an outstanding method to let our own imaginations and points of view fill in the rest of the world for ourselves.
I for one do not really want to know much more about the larger world or solar system, even with future iterations. I think it's better this way.
It’s right in the original film’s Tyrell Corporation motto “More human than human”
I think there is a very important scene that perpetuated this confusion in many people in regard to Replicants being more like androids rather than humans, the opening scene in 2049 where K fights Sapper Morton, the fight kinematics are constructed more like those of a fight between two Terminators rather than between two enhanced bioengineered humans, bulky bodies that go through walls and seem to not feel pain nor take serious damage as humans would (Madam later says to K "I"m not paying for that" as if speaking about spare parts sold from a high-end machanics shop), so they kinda give you the idea like there is some kind of "adamantium"-ish skeleton underneath.
The original Blade Runner fight scenes of Dekart vk Roy Batty are more human like.
That fight in 2049 really bothered me exactly because of this feeling it gives to you as a viewer, all the while I know they are not androids with mechanical / biomechanical parts in them.
I always liked how the replicants were shown to be living a more authentic life in the first film. Everyone else exists in this struggling existence but this group that escaped slavery knowing how short their life is and decided to live it to the fullest.
It never mattered if Deckard was a replacement, he was a tool of the system. And in the end, Roy uses his final moments full of grief and anger and appreciation for life to connect to his hunter. To communicate his pain and struggle. It takes that cliched "we're not so different" villain speech to express a vulnerable validation of the human experience.
It's neat how the Voit Kampff test is intended to provoke an emotional response from replicants unable to process complex emotions and hypotheticals. The book even notes there are too many false positives when interrogating people with mental illness.
And then 2049 inverts this. Their new testing is outright clinical trying to numb the replicants from any emotional provocation. The techniques the blade runners relied on for identification is now intentionally surpressed.
Your perspective is excellent.
Having seen both films AND read the book, I still had some lingering sense that they weren't physically perfectly human, but this video has really pushed me to consider otherwise. The message I came away from the book with was more about "What is real and what is fake when there's no difference?", which I think the book puts a lot more focus on with the electronic animals.
Actually, that point probably helps confound the popular conception of Replicants as normal Androids. How are they making perfect human replicas when cloning animals doesn't seem to be an option?
The question of "what is a human and what is a replicant" is a red herring itself, since replicants ARE humans, just bio-engineered ones. Isaac Asimov wrote a tale much more about the self-awareness, ethics, and civil rights of an actual robot in the novelette The Bicentennial Man.
10:09 "Blade Runner is more than a simple Sci-Fi story or even a complex Sci-Fi story and it's _not_ about whether a machine would be a person. (Although it does bring up certain questions regarding the true nature of consciousness.) What Blade Runner is really about is: Stratified societies. How circumstances and civilization and rules determine how we think about each other. How the system is set up to make some people fail. How the system is set up to create _lower classes_ ... How it reinforces itself -- not just through the circumstances and how people are born, but the very metrics, which keep them in unending cycles. I think it's definitely a message about how social systems exist to dehumanize people to the benefit of the few."
The Nexus 6 is a new model - and the four-year lifespan is a new feature. It was introduced during the time when Deckard had left the Blade Runner unit. That's the reason Bryant explains details about the model to Deckard that would've been common knowledge to a Blade Runner officer. Hampton Fancher made this clear in the original draft of his screenplay. David Peeples inadvertently obscured this detail in his revised draft.
More like assembled. Body part are grown and put together. Wallace statement "I can only make so many).
‘’Fiery the angels fell, deep thunder roared around their shores, the burning with the fires of Orc’’. Or something like that, which, by the way, was written by William Blake. No idea what it means but out of the mouth of a Nexus-6, it sounds profound!
Great summary my man! The original movie is still exquisite and 2049 is one of the best sequels ever to my mind.
The Unicorn dream, and then the unicorn origami prove Deckard IS a replicant. That unicorn was an implanted memory/thought. No questions needed.
You really got this one down. It is a great series and while I would like to see more.
You hit the nail on the head at the start why I don't want more. They'd put out subpar stuff and ruin the mystery. Like Solo with Star Wars. It tried to answer things that were best left a mystery.
The other thing that people don't catch with the original Blade Runner is that Rick Deckard was also part of the experiment, and both he and Rachel were replicants with implanted memories. Roy Batty figured that out, too, which is why he spared Rick on the rooftop.
Excellent video. Great insight into this wonderful IP. Thank you!
Many folks missed the obvious fact that if replicants were in any part mechanical they could be easily detected with an X-ray or a metal detector. There would be no need for a Voight-Kampff test.
I don't think there are very many people who thought replicants were mechanical androids.