Blade Runner — Ultimate Edition
Blade Runner is an empthy test for the audience
Strange but true — there are people who like the 1982 theatrical release of Blade Runner, with the voice over and happy ending.
For these people Blade Runner is a detective movie set in the future. Rick Deckard gets given a mission to track down some rogue replicants, along the way he gets the girl and they escape together.
The voice over was added by the studio when they realised that Blade Runner did NOT tell that story at all. But with the VO, if you squint and ignore all the evidence, you can kinda pretend it does.
There are many levels to Blade Runner. Let’s dig down through a few of them:
- Replicants Are Identical To Humans — this is Philip K Dick’s thought experiment. Identical means identical. Replicants don’t have plastic skin, or a metal skeleton. They are genetically human in every way. Except a lack of empathy, hence the Voight-Kampff test.
- Replicants are limited to a 5 year lifespan or they develop emotional responses IE empathy. Every replicant you see in Blade Runner is a child. They only lack empathy because they haven’t lived long to develop it.
- Replicants are slaves. They are used as soldiers, labourers and sex toys.
- Rick Deckard is a slave hunter. His job is to hunt escaped slaves for bounty payments. Deckard is the antagonist of this story.
- Roy Batty is the protagonist. It’s Roy who is taking actions to create change in the world, by rising up against slavery, and killing the slave masters. Deckard is just the henchman sent by the slavers to kill the escapees…
- …except Deckard is also a replicant. He has been activated just moments before we see him at the noodle stand. He has been given Gaff’s memories, as indicated by the origami unicorn.
- Rachel fails the empathy test, but Deckard passes. Tyrell is “fascinated” by the result because Deckard is an experiment to make replicants who are “more human than human”.
In my Ultimate Edition video essay on Blade Runner I try to piece together the full meaning of the theme of Empthy that the movie explores. In many ways Blade Runner is an empthy test for the audience. It’s possible to watch it and think Deckard is a standard heroic police officer. Or with some empathy the layers of slavery and self knowledge open up.
