Tylrell: But this -all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
Roy: But not to last.
Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly, Roy. Look at you. You're the prodigal son. You're quite a prize!
Roy: I've done questionable things.
Tyrell: Also extraordinary things. Revel in your time!
Roy: Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for.
I finally had a chance to see Blade Runner.
It's pretty dark science fiction. Both figuratively and literally dark. Much of it takes place at night. The cityscape is futuristic and eerie, which I liked. Apparently Earth is no longer the place to be. Other off-world colonies are more up-scale and Earth is the slums. People can now engineer all sorts of things, from animals to people. Creating bio-engineered human "replicants", as human look-alikes with superhuman abilities are called, is illegal, and "Blade Runners", such as Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard, track existing replicants down and kill them. That's just what he's been pulled out of retirement and assigned to do at the start of the movie: track down and kill ("retire") a small group of replicants who have reached Earth and are hiding
There's another replicant named Rachael, who doesn't initially realize that she is a replicant:
Deckard: She's a replicant, isn't she?
Tyrell: I'm impressed. How many questions does it usually take to spot them?
Deckard: I don't get it, Tyrell.
Tyrell: How many questions?
Deckard: Twenty, thirty, cross-referenced.
Tyrell: It took more than a hundred for Rachael, didn't it?
Deckard: She doesn't know.
Tyrell: She's beginning to suspect, I think.
Deckard: Suspect? How can it not know what it is?
She is the assistant to Tyrell, head of the Tyrell Corporation, and creator of the replicants. I found this a little confusing. The beginning titles said that bioengineering humans was now illegal, and that all replicants were to be killed, so why didn't Deckard kill Rachael? He is only assigned to kill her after she learns that she is a replicant and flees, but shouldn't he have taken her out right when he discovered what she was? So maybe I misunderstood and only certain replicants are illegal, or replicants that have gone rogue? She had a cool look, sleek and futuristic (with the exception of the horrible 80s shoulder pads) initially, but then she ends up taking her hair down in all its puffy glory and we are thrust back to the 80s.
 |
| Deckard discovers Pris hiding. |
Rick Deckard, for all his renown as a great Blade Runner, doesn't really seem all that great at it. Of course, he's provided no backup, which seems strange considering how powerful and dangerous the replicants are supposed to be and how important it is to kill them. He does take down a stripper replicant, and eventually the Daryl Hannah relicant, named Pris, but neither kill is very smooth, and he suffers injuries. Another replicant would have killed him if Rachael hadn't saved him, and he gets his butt handed to him by the lead replicant, Roy (As Roy himself says, "I thought you were supposed to be good. Aren't you the "good" man? C'mon, Deckard. Show me what you're made of."). Luckily for him, Roy decides not to kill him, and then expires on his on. The replicants only have 4-year life spans, and Roy sought out his creator, Tyrell, to find out if he can expand his and Pris's lives:
Tyrell: I'm surprised you didn't come here sooner.
Roy: It's not an easy thing to meet your maker.
Tyrell: What could he do for you?
Roy: Can the maker repair what he makes?
Roy then murders the idiot when he insists it can't be done. I saw that coming a mile a way, so what was Tyrell thinking? If he had thought to say "Sure, let me see what I can do," he could have escaped and avoided having his head squeezed to smithereens.
I can't say Deckard's character was fleshed out at all. He was a Blade Runner, now he's been called back to duty. He has some bossy sex with Rachael after she saves his life and he decides to spare her life in return. Otherwise, I don't know much about him. I thought I had heard that he turned out to be a replicant himself, but then there was nothing indicating that when I actually watched the movie. Perhaps in another version?
The ending was pretty open. Deckard is taking Rachael somewhere, and he spots a little origami thing indicating (I think) that his fellow law enforcement officer was there and might be suspicious?
The whole movie was pretty vague, and I admit to being a little disappointed, though I was impressed with the sets, the camerawork and the imagination that went into the story. I guess I was just expecting a little more considering how famous the movie is.
Addendum: Okay, so after doing some reading, it seems that there are different versions of the movie out there, and extended editions seem to clear more things up. For example, here is a quote that makes the ending more clear from a different version:
Deckard: Gaff had been there, and let her live. Four years, he figured. He was wrong. Tyrell had told me Rachael was special. No termination date. I didn't know how long we had together...Who does?
The version I saw was the Final Cut. The director preferred the vague ending.
Here is an article on Wikipedia about the different versions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versions_of_Blade_Runner
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