Ridley Scott himself has put an ‘end’ to one of the most infamous nerd arguments of all time – is C3PO gay? Ha, ha, ha! No, I’m just kidding. In fact, I recall seeing and immediately favoriting a YouTube.com video of Ridley Scott saying ostensibly “Yes, Deckard is a Replicant.” How many versions of Blade Runner exist that can attest to the idea that on this one insignificant point, director Scott could not make up his mind, wavering back and forth? Many.
I myself have only seen the Director’s Cut, but am looking forward to the Theatrical Cut, especially for when Ford’s narration obliterates the drama of the final scene – one the best moments in SF movie history.
Of course, to do what many, many others have already done – put in my two sense about the matter – I should probably have seen all of them. However, I honestly don’t want to get mixed up, not just yet. I want that one essential vision, the one that from what I understand reading a few books on the movie, represents the best of the collective interests of all the crew, not just Scott.

Two people thought up and published under the title Blade Runner before the movie. Smart guys, that title is amazing
The director of course gets the final final say. That is, after Blade Runner made its money (lol) during its initial run, the studios were like “yeah sure” twenty years later when Scott was like, “let’s change this.” So Ridley Scott picks apart his masterpiece and makes Harrison Ford’s character what he cannot be, a robot.
The question was initially raised among nerds when Rick Deckard, Ford’s character, has a dream about a unicorn – you read that right – and Edward James Olmos later on makes a unicorn origami. The thing is, the character Rachel is introduced to the universe as an experiment – she’s a replicant with implanted memories, and doesn’t know she’s a replicant. But Deckard knows it, and knows all her memories, even the deepest ones. So if Olmos, a fellow Blade Runner, knows that Deckard dreamt of unicorns – why not electric sheep? – he’s a replicant with implanted memories. He has to be.
I liken this to those ‘theories’ about Inception I hear about, only indirectly. Apparently somebody thinks that Leonardo is being incepted at the whole time by Michael Caine and Juno to make him let go of Leonardo’s wife, and the evidence is there, man. Yes, the evidence for that is there, and that argument can be made and supported. But was that the director’s intention? I haven’t heard it from Nolan’s mouth, but I can say beyond a doubt, “no.”

I've only read this very long ago... I honestly don't really remember it
All the elements that make up the evidence found in paragraph 6 are more important than the fans let on. In Inception, the point of the movie wasn’t Leo getting incepted at, it was ‘cool heist story.’ Blade Runner is a bit deeper than Inception, and the whole point, as PKD put forth in the original source text, is dehumanization. I read that the inspiration for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was Nazi stuff that Phillip K. Dick was studying. He was fascinated by the utter inhumanity on visceral display during these times, and decided to study that further in the book.
What if we were put on the level of things that aren’t human? But wait, what is human? Could you kill something that isn’t human, but looks, sounds, acts, and thinks human? In the end, perhaps you could become one? Yes, Deckard does become a replicant by the end of Blade Runner. But not in the way that Scott thinks, it’s in the way that Phillip K. Dick thinks. You take the idea of the Replicant and break it down to its constituent parts: genetically engineered artificial person – devoid of ‘humanity.’
Deckard has killed four of these, after retirement. Zhora and Pris’s deaths are heavily dramatized (that’s not the right word, is it) and frankly pretty disturbing. When Deckard is looking down at the retired Zhora in the shattered glass of the shop front window, he’s seeing a dead woman with two gaping bullet holes in her back – she died running for her life. Does it matter whether she was robot or human technically?

She quickly saw through Deckard's disguise, and then beat him up, and then donned a transparent rain coat and ran away
As he continues his journey, the movie continues to hint that Deckard is maybe a replicant, culminating in the movie’s final moments, where he discovers the unicorn origami. But if this means that Deckard is a replicant the whole time? What’s the point? That was ultimately the greatest argument put forth against Scott’s cause that I heard. What’s the damn point?
Let’s humor this for a second. Deckard is a replicant. He’s a replicant who was told to kill some replicants, and he’s been given fake memories of history of killing replicants. That’s cold, and could make a cool side-story, maybe a Blade Runner Gaiden or something, where a robot is programmed to kill other robots. Whatever, we got Soldier, which I enjoyed.
So we got it, he’s a robot. But when he sits down at the end with Roy Batty and the villain – the vicious replicant – is contemplatively looking back, and doing something almost more human than human in its humanness: accepting death… What does that mean? That scene was made very thoughtful and dramatic for a reason. The first time I saw this movie, I didn’t like it, but that scene certainly stuck out to me. I loved it. I thought it was so cool how this character went from level-headed leader to psycho to human like that [snaps fingers].
The character of Roy Batty is at the core of the movie, and if Deckard is a replicant, he defies what that character means, and ultimately, what the writers and even the director took from the source material to make: one of the greatest, most thoughtful science-fiction films of all time. Is that what Scott wants? Of course not. But then again, nowadays the poor guy is making inexplicable crap like Body of Lies and Black Hawk Down – seemingly gone are the days of Alien, Gladiator.
I like Ridley Scott, though he is kind of hit or miss. But Blade Runner is a work of genius. The problem is, it’s the work of too many geniuses, all vying for control of the creative aspects of it. Now, I’m all for people fighting for what they believe in in a movie’s story – that’s pretty cool. But it’s really too bad if they’re doing it to inadvertently subvert the entire ideal behind it.

To the left is Sigourney Weaver, to the right... Ridley Scott (Smile, you two!)
(Watch the final say here)
For more on Blade Runner, check out The Blade Runner Directory
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August 20, 2011 at 4:45 PM
Craig D.
Scott’s insisting belief that Deckard is a Replicant always amused me. It seems like he hasn’t thought about it much, that he just throught it was a cool twist, never realizing that it creates about a dozen plot holes and destroys a strong theme of the film: that Deckard, a human, has become more of a robot than these artifical people, and that he could learn a thing or two about humanity from them.
But then, I think it’s bullshit to say either “Deckard is definitely a human” or “Deckard is definitely a Replicant.” We all have our theories, but to answer the question with any certainty is to miss the point. I don’t interpret the unicorn thing as proof that he’s not human, but more like the Joe Chip coin at the end of Ubik. It’s another wrench being thrown into the gears to let you know that you can never know for sure.
As for the inhumanity, it’s presented differently in the book and the film. Dick portrays the androids as the villains: utterly amoral, cold-hearted, and emotionless. Scott portrays them as the underdog heroes: people with feelings and emotions and passions. The point is the same, though. Dick is saying, “Don’t be like them.” Scott is saying, “We should be more like them.” They’re both saying, “Don’t be a robot. Hang on to your humanity.”
August 20, 2011 at 8:54 PM
Jung-ho
Yes exactly – the unicorn is definitely the Joe Chip coin, which was later reincarnated as the spinning top at the end of Inception.
The only reason I would say definitively that Deckard is not a replicant is, while there is value in ambiguity here, because Deckard-as-Replicant is something of a metaphor; the question is meant to draw our attention to his dehumanization, but this means that he cannot be a Replicant, otherwise it’s, as the guy at the Greatest Movie Ever! Podast said of it, “sound and fury signifying nothing.
However, by Dick’s own admittance, the only two things he ever writes about are “What is real?” and “What is humanity?” While I think that the latter is certainly more prevelant in the 1982 adaptation of his material, the former does afterall play a role. They translate to questions of uncertainty for our hero, and that theme of never being sure – which does afterall extend to the audience – is in service of the movie’s atmosphere.
So while I don’t like never being sure, as ambiguity usually ruins things for me like Oldboy and the aforementioned Inception, does have purpose, but I’ll always look at it as Deckard’s a human
September 4, 2011 at 10:18 PM
Joe
It may seem complex but the fact is blade runners were used on previous generations of replicants that had an infantile ability to comprehend humamity. Human blade runners had gone past their ability to recognize and sucessfully terminate them. When Roy met the Dr. the Dr says I’m surprised you weren’t here sooner. Roy wasn’t given a past memory like Deckard, Roy experiences were always his own, his motives were pure, he loved Pris for what she was and for him to just let Pris die without trying was incomprehensible. Deckard had to be programmed to believe he was totally human. Roy was the Dr’s greatest creation an experiment in self conscientiousness and the Dr knew the danger and programmed them to die hence the need for Deckard with the same ability as Roy without the danger of self conscientiousness. Racheal was all of them but most definately not the same as Roy.
September 4, 2011 at 11:18 PM
Jung-ho
The only problem I have with that – and granted I’ve only seen three of the Cuts, which isn’t even half – is that Deckard as replicant was put in the movie, I feel, just to raise the question. It wasn’t really made explicit how advanced a Replicant he was, and I think that level of exploration into the idea is necessary for the movie’s endgame.
Of course, the movie’s endgame is anyone’s game
December 27, 2014 at 12:23 PM
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