The Movie Book

252 BLADE RUNNER

00:07

Leon shoots the blade

runner Holden, who has

been testing him to see

if he is a replicant.

00:31

Rachael visits

Deckard at his

apartment. He

tells her about her

memories to show her

that she’s a replicant.

01:02

Rachael shoots Leon

to save Deckard. Back

at Deckard’s apartment,

they make love.

01:44

After a chase across

the rooftops, Batty saves

Deckard from falling. Batty

then sits down and dies.

N

ear the end of Blade

Runner, Roy Batty (Rutger

Hauer), a fugitive at large

in a near-future Los Angeles,

delivers his last words to an ex-cop

called Deckard (Harrison Ford). “I’ve

seen things you people wouldn’t

believe,” he says softly. “Attack

ships on fire off the shoulder of

Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in

the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.

All those moments will be lost in

time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

The speech strikes at a moral

dilemma, because Roy Batty

isn’t human—he’s a “replicant,”

an android bioengineered by

industrial scientists at the

all-powerful Tyrell Corporation.

Replicants are supposed to be

machines, yet Batty’s desire to live

and questioning nature prove that

he has consciousness. For Deckard,

a specially trained detective (blade

runner) whose job it is to hunt down

and liquidate rogue replicants, this

realization is particularly relevant.

If Batty can feel sorrow and longing,

then how is he any different from

his creators?

A hanging question

Science-fiction cinema is often

memorable for its unforgettable

visual images, from the robotic

Maria sparking into life in Fritz

Lang’s Metropolis (1927) to the

mysterious black obelisk that

bookends Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A

Space Odyssey (1968). While Blade

Runner also shimmers with visual

poetry, it is Batty’s lament, a few

lines of semi-improvised dialogue,

that truly cements the movie’s

place in movie history. The words

articulate a question that hangs

over Scott’s enigmatic masterpiece:

what does it mean to be human?

Blade Runner is set in 2019, a

long way off to the audiences who

first lined up to see it in 1982.

At the time of its release, the movie

presented a new kind of future, a

weird fusion of familiar elements:

corporate buildings the size and

shape of Babylonian ziggurats; the

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Science fiction, thriller

DIRECTOR

Ridley Scott

WRITERS

Hampton Fancher, David

Webb Peoples (screenplay);

Philip K. Dick (novel, Do

Androids Dream of

Electric Sheep?)

STARS

Harrison Ford, Rutger

Hauer, Sean Young,

Daryl Hannah

BEFORE

1979 Ridley Scott’s first foray

into the future is the science-

fiction horror Alien.

AFTER

2006 Philip K. Dick’s novel

A Scanner Darkly, about a

future in the grip of an all-out

war on drugs, is adapted as

a partially animated thriller.

2012 Ridley Scott returns

to science fiction with

Prometheus, a prequel to

the Alien franchise.

00:17

Deckard tests Rachael

and discovers that she is a

replicant. Tyrell tells him

that she does not know

what she is.

00:50

Deckard tracks down

Zhora to a bar where she

performs with a snake.

He chases her and

shoots her dead.

00:00 02:00

01:22

Sebastian helps Batty

get an audience with

Tyrell. Batty asks Tyrell

for more life, but is told

that it is not possible.

01:52

As Deckard and Rachael

leave his apartment, he picks

up an origami unicorn. Does

Gaff know his dreams? Does

that make him a replicant?

Minute by minute

00:15 00:30 00:45 01:00 01:15

As poignant as any sci-fi film

I know... a film noir that

bleeds over into tragedy.

David Thomson

Have You Seen...?, 2008

01:30