BLADE RUNNER II – Harrison Ford
Posted by sochmaKer
Deckard goes to see Tyrell, and meets his latest version of a Replicant, Rachael (Sean Young), who does not realize she is a Replicant. (They are supposedly outlawed, but let’s go with the film’s inconsistencies.) Meanwhile, Batty and Leon strongarm their way to get information on how to confront Tyrell. Batty, however, can sense his life is nearing its end. After some encounters that leave lots of humans and Replicants dead, Deckard and Batty face off in a rooftop melee over L.A. But instead of a final battle, Deckard watches as Batty’s life fades away. Before his last breath, Batty utters a cringe-worthy soliloquy:
"I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain….Time to die."
Here is where the original film works far better. In the final version, this soliloquy is left hanging, invoking not empathy but chuckles for the android who believes himself deep and profound in its grasp of its plight. In the original version, however, we immediately get Deckard’s voice-over after Batty’s words, which, in its faux 1940s hardboiled style, leavens the soliloquy’s unintended humor with its own almost self-knowing silliness. Thus, the original version helps the viewer to more readily accept Batty’s spew without guffawing.
Blade Runner ends with Gaff finding Deckard and Batty, as Gaff refers to Rachael (who has improbably fallen in love with Deckard): "It’s too bad she won’t live; but then again, who does?" Deckard returns to his apartment, and finds Rachael sleeping. As they leave, with him fearing she might be targeted for retirement next, he sees an origami unicorn left by Gaff. He’s been there, but let Rachael live. Here is also where the final and original versions diverge. Gaff’s last words clearly show that he knows about Rachael, but won’t kill her, so the scene with the unicorn is superfluous. The film (all versions) would have best ended there. It sums up that Gaff knows Deckard’s love should be killed, but he will allow Deckard a chance with her.
The final version ends with Deckard holding the unicorn and entering an elevator with Rachael. Now, the unicorn refers to an earlier scene where Deckard dreams of a unicorn. Fans claim this proves Deckard is a Replicant, lest how would Gaff (who seems to know more than any other character) know of his dream’s import, unless he had knowledge the unicorn was implanted into the Replicant Deckard? Of course, this makes little sense, and in the original version of the film there is no unicorn sequence, so that the origami unicorn is simply another self-important marker that Gaff was there and spared Rachael — not that he knows anything of depth regarding Deckard’s identity.
Posted by IvanHernandez
In the original version, Deckard’s voice-over speaks of Gaff as he sees the unicorn. That is followed by scenes showing Deckard and Rachael driving in a pastoral countryside (reportedly outtakes from Stanley Kubrick’s opening shots for The Shining). Deckard then explains that Tyrell had told him that Rachael had no fail-safe four-year limit built into her, so she can live a ‘normal’ life span (whatever that is for her kind). He echoes a version of what Gaff said, stating that he does not know how long they will have together, but who does? It’s ironic that, while neither version is near a great film, the original voice-over version is clearly superior, even though both Scott and Ford objected to it.
Now, fans of the film (and many of them border on fetishism) insist the "Final Cut" is better because it implies Deckard is a Replicant. Film critic James Berardinelli concurs:
"While the director’s cut removes the unfortunate voice-over from the original and eliminates the sappy happy ending, it also raises a question that has divided fans: Is Deckard a replicant? The answer appears to be yes, and Scott has subsequently confirmed this. The evidence is brief but seemingly conclusive. Deckard dreams of a unicorn. Later, he finds an origami image of the animal created by Gaff. This is viewed as proof that someone knows about Deckard’s dreams and memories, meaning they are implanted, not real. Only special replicants have implanted memories. It makes sense, but there are those who don’t buy it, including Harrison Ford. Ultimately, the determination of who and what Deckard is must be left to the individual viewer."
This is a wan interpretation, as it is unsupported by what is found even in the final version. Yet, it has been uncritically accepted in many cribbings of the film and expounded as fact. Never mind that the unicorn sequence is rather superfluous — and it is just a dream. The fact that Gaff knows about it can be explained as something he recalled from conversations with Deckard that the latter simply forgot, as the film implies this is an important recurring symbol to the man and it is something he may likely have expounded upon to others — a very ‘human’ thing to do, especially since he is not a particularly reticent guy when in the company of his peers, with whom he seems to be quite collegial.
In the original, the origami unicorn has no extra significance because it is merely one of a number of bizarre figures Gaff leaves as calling cards. Aside from that, how and why a dream of a unicorn — and Gaff’s knowledge of it — still does not explain why a unicorn dream would in any way imply Deckard’s synthetic reality. Are unicorns somehow a symbol of artificial life that the film lets us not know?
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Tags: Blade Runner, Film Reviews, Harrison Ford, Ridley Scott, Rutger Hauer
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