As if we needed more reason to fear the replicants, this short film shows that they are just flat out determined and a lot tougher than we originally believed. Where the original Blade Runner became memorable with its use of replicants and their continued struggle against humanity and those that hunted them, the upcoming Blade Runner 2049 is set to spark an all out war between the replicants and the human race. This anime short film, set in 2022, only three years after the original Blade Runner, is a chilling look into the escalating difficulties that have emerged between humans and replicants.
In all the years between the ending of the original and the beginning of the next chapter, you would think that people had learned their lessons when it came to replicants. But then you remember that Hollywood feeds off of conflict and without someone else to pick up the bare bones of a program run dry then there would be no film and there would be no way to entertain the masses yet again. Blade Runner also had to return because of Deckard. He was the one that made off with another replicant after all, and whether he was a replicant or not Deckard was a man of note in his own time.
Replicants are kind of an odd bunch really. Give them life and they might be thankful, give them respect and they will be obedient. Give them nothing but chains and they will attempt to break them, and then break the one that attempted to dominate them. Replicants are not feeble or easily controlled in any way in the original Blade Runner, though during the Blackout they are absolutely murderous in their bid for survival. Like any other organism ever given a sentient thought they are capable of self-actualization and thus are able to decide just what it is that they want from life.
During the blackout they made life very difficult for humanity, but like the replicants, humanity is tenacious and does not go down easily. Human life as people knew it came back, and as a result the cycle began anew. This time however, replicant technology was outlawed for fear that a repeat of the past would come back to haunt the realm of human kind. But lo and behold, someone decided to meddle with replicants once again, and the job of the Blade Runner became necessary once more.
But this time there is something inherently wrong with the replicants, as they are uniquely loyal to their creator and will do virtually anything that is demanded of them. They are deadlier than ever before, and are bent on bringing down the world of humanity that spawned them, an imperfect place run by an imperfect race that has had many upon many chances to change, but has never done so.
Blackout shows a grim truth that humanity doesn’t like to own up to. We are often the architects of our own demise through one means or another. What we create tends to become the destruction we reap.
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