A Golden Age for Sci-Fi Fans
As a sci-fi enthusiast, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed with excitement. Not only are we being treated to a new Guardians of the Galaxy, a new Alien, a new Star Wars, and a new Planet of the Apes all in the same year, but we’re also witnessing the emergence of fresh, innovative films like Life and The God Particle. However, the most anticipated movie for die-hard sci-fi fans like myself has to be the long-awaited sequel to 1982’s Blade Runner: Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049.
Initially met with mixed reviews, Blade Runner has since garnered a cult following due to its complex themes, stunning cityscapes, and the increasingly impressive director’s cuts released for home viewing. The film follows Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the tough-as-nails Blade Runner, a cop who specializes in identifying and eliminating Replicants—androids so advanced that they’re almost indistinguishable from humans.
Deckard’s Journey Through Neo-Noir L.A.
Over the course of two hours, we accompany Deckard through the neo-noir streets of a near-future L.A. as he hunts down a group of rogue Replicants who have come to Earth in an attempt to escape their planned four-year obsolescence, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. During his investigation, Deckard joins forces with Rachael, a cutting-edge Replicant capable of fooling even an experienced Blade Runner into believing she’s human.
One of the most enduring questions from the 35-year-old film is something that the sequel’s trailer promises to address: Is Rick Deckard a Replicant?
The Elusive Answer to Deckard’s True Nature
This seemingly straightforward question has baffled fans and film scholars for over three decades. Deckard tests suspected Replicants by asking them a series of questions designed to elicit an emotional response in ordinary humans, then measures their reactions using a Voight-Kampff Machine—a next-gen polygraph that monitors a person’s respiration, blushing, heart rate, and eye movement.
A major plot point in the film is the existence of Rachael, an experimental Replicant designed specifically to beat the Voight-Kampff machine. By implanting false memories into the adult Replicant—convincing her that she is human and has lived a full life up to the present moment—the Tyrell Corporation hopes to create a machine capable of empathic cognition: the ability to feel emotions just like a person.
To prevent this from happening in the wild, Replicants are designed with a four-year lifespan. It is believed that if they were to live longer, they would naturally develop emotions on their own, just like a child would.
The film intentionally leaves Deckard’s true nature ambiguous, offering only hints as to whether he is a Replicant or not. Even the film’s cast has failed to reach a consensus on the matter: its star and producer believe Deckard is human, its director insists he’s a Replicant, and its screenwriter opts for “none of the above.”
Will the Sequel Finally Reveal the Truth?
The latest trailer for the sequel, however, hints at providing fans with a definitive answer to this lingering question. When a young Blade Runner (Ryan Gosling) approaches an older Deckard, he tells him that he has come to ask him a series of questions. Gosling’s cryptic introduction and Ford’s defeated expression suggest only one possibility: that Gosling’s character wants to administer the Voight-Kampff test (or its 2049 equivalent) to Deckard to determine once and for all whether he is human or a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
More than anything else, this revelation promises to change everything: not just the context for 2049‘s narrative, but also the way the film-going world will look back on and remember a certified classic for decades to come. Whether Deckard is an improbably old Replicant, a fresh set of false memories in a new set of circuitry, or the real deal, Blade Runner 2049 is hinting at nothing short of rewriting decades’ worth of film scholarship and genre head-canon.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=gCcx85zbxz4%22+frameborder%3D%220%22+allow%3D%22accelerometer%3B+encrypted-media%3B+gyroscope%3B+picture-in-picture%22+allowfullscreen%3E%3C
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