BladeRunner

Recently I caught the long-awaited sequel to 1982’s “Bladerunner”, thankfully including Harrison Ford back as Deckard, though by now long-retired from the replicant-retiring business.  I’ll try to avoid spoilers for those of you who haven’t yet seen the new film and intend to see it.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  The original Philip K. Dick story.  Mostly identical in plot to the movie, but the book has several elements missing from the movie: this whole business of robot animals (real animals are so rare as to be priceless, and even synthetic animals are valuable enough that a catalog of values – like the Blue Book – exists with regard to them) and Mercerism.  I should re-read it again, now that I’ve finally finished reading all of PKD’s scifi novels.

Original.  Ford stars as Deckard, an LAPD cop whose job it is to take out rogue replicants.  Apparently the replicants off-world achieved self-awareness and returned to earth, hiding out among humans.  The most deadly are Roy (Rutger Hauer) and Pris (Daryl Hannah).  Roy in particular is trying to find out from Tyrell, who originally designed them, if there is a way around their hard-wired life span.   Note: if Deckard could simply keep these two away from everyone else, they would expire on their own.  But how exciting would that be?

Sequel.   It’s thirty years later and a new replicant (Ryan Gosling) is trying to track down rogue older models, none of whom resemble Rutger Hauer or Darryl Hannah.  Clare Underwood is his boss.  He even has a virtual GF who keeps him company in his apartment.  Tyrell Corp is gone, replaced by Wallace (let’s see Neil Fallon wear that on a t-shirt at the next Clutch tour), led by an equally enigmatic CEO (Jared Leto).   In this particular case, what he’s got on his hands is evidence that Rachael, the replicant originally played by Sean Young in the first film, had a child – theoretically impossible for a replicant.  Who would design a female replicant with a uterus, ovaries, etc. and allow it to actually conceive a child?  Then again, Tyrell indicated that Rachael was different.  So it would seem...

Overall I’d say it’s a good sequel.  Gosling’s replicant is sympathetic.  Deckard is back - and just as crusty and badass as you would expect him to be 30 years later.  Lots of action and wastelands.  Pretty much what we’d want from a sequel.  Thank you, Denis Villaneuve (director of “Arrival”), for not messing around.  He did his job properly and didn’t let his ego turn this into something stupid. 

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Here’s an issue loosely raised by both films.  Some people believe that Deckard is actually a replicant.  That theory should be conclusively shot down as he appears in this film taking place 30 years later.  Mind you, Dick himself addressed this issue during his lifetime and confirmed that Deckard is human after all.  Ford said the same, and only Ridley Scott advocates this – plus useful idiots on Facebook who love to cling to provocative but stupid ideas.

Humans have to eat, sleep, pee, poo, vomit, get sick, age, and die.  Female humans have menstrual cycles and give birth.  A replicant doesn’t have to do any of that and – unless programmed otherwise as the original series was in the first film and PKD’s book – effectively have eternal youth.  So for a replicant to truly emulate a human, it would have to be programmed to do all these things.   A huge pain in the ass for what?   

Moreover, the original series was expressly designed as workers.   You created robots so you couldn’t have to hire unreliable humans.  Why create unreliable replicants?  That makes no sense.  Moreover, K (Gosling) appears to have self-awareness:  he knows he’s a replicant.  Logical, as Roy and Pris (Hauer and Hannah) did too.  If I were a replicant, I’d be happy that I don’t have to eat, drink, pee, poo, get sick, and eventually age and die.  If I ever got tired of living, I could just kill myself.  Well, so long as I wasn't hardwired to die...

Can we combine the two?  Remember “Robocop II” where the bad guy was created by removing his brain & nervous system and implanting them into a robot.  The prior two specimens went nuts and killed themselves, as turning into a full-on robot was too nuts.  But how about implanting them into an expressly humanoid and/or replicant body?  Get working, people. 

Then take opposite scenario:  a replicant who is really human.  Huh?  The replicant wouldn’t need to sleep, eat, pee/poo, etc. any biological functions.  How would a human survive without doing all these things?  Unless some dumbass was creating replicants which did all this stuff, the sole purpose of which would be to pass them off as humans.  WHY? 

Bottom line is that anyone/thing expressly identified as human is 99.999% likely to be human, and anything expressly identified as a replicant is 99.999% likely to be a replicant.