Film Studies - Blade Runner Review

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Nonetheless, despite Blade Runner’s visual and thematic debt to film noir, the presence of replicants and the film’s fascination with the moral implications of genetic engineering lends the narrative greater weight, overshadowing any stylistic preoccupations.

Here, Tyrell (Joe Turkel) fulfils the part of the mad scientist or the creator who has been corrupted by his thirst for power. Meanwhile the boundaries between replicant and human are hard to define. As noted, the humans in the film seem to take life for granted and act emotionally numb, whereas the replicants behave fully alive, cherishing each moment and seeking more time due to their imposed short lifespans. In fact Deckard only begins to show emotion towards the end of Blade Runner, when he alters his opinion of those he is hired to kill. After all, it is the replicant Rachael who precipitates this change of heart, causing Deckard to feel love. Elsewhere the scientist J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) appears to have more in common with the replicants than the human race. Like them he is an outcast, suffering from “accelerated decrepitude” – the tendency to age prematurely. He also compensates for his lonely existence and inability to bond with other people by creating robotic toys for company.

The replicants embody the dual nature of technological progress. They free mankind of menial and dangerous tasks, yet their existence implies the threat of non-human control. They could overrule and annihilate humankind, or assimilate into the population erasing any distinction between man and machine. Blade Runner poses the question, is there experience any less valid than our own?

The Replicants non-humanity is propounded by the fact they have no memory, past identity, and thus no soul. During the film eye imagery seems to remind us of the replicant’s soulless existence. Not least in Roy’s famous “tears in rain” soliloquy which starts, “ I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…”. Indeed it is memory that is on Roy’s mind when he saves Deckard’s life. He doesn’t do so out of any inherent goodness, rather a very human desire to be remembered after death.