Replicants In The Film 'Blade Runner'

Empathy: Blade Runners are supposed to test the replicants emotional responses to questions. Since replicants do not feel empathy. Rachael and Roy who are both replicants in the film, both start to show signs of some complex emotions including empathy after saving Deckard’s life. Dystopia: Since Blade Runner was set 40 years into the future, it made Los Angeles look unpleasant and run down.

In a depiction of Los Angeles set in 2019 A.D., former police officer Rick Deckard is apprehended by active officer Gaff, who brings him to see his previous supervisor, for whom Deckard worked as a “blade runner.” A blade runner’s occupation is to hunt down artificial organisms referred to as “replicants” and retire them (kill them). It is explained to Deckard that four such replicants have made their way to Earth, and he is tasked with retiring them. Replicants were engineered by the Tyrell Corporation, and used as an expendable labour resource. Replicants have a fixed four-year life span.

Blade Runner, the classic sci-fi noir movie by Hampton Fincher and David Peoples, is a futuristic perspective on slavery, humanity, and the rights of thinking beings. In the movie, Deckard, a blade runner and the main character of the story, hunts down Nexus 6 replicants: androids imposed with superhuman strength and nearly human intelligence who have gone rogue (2, 10). These androids are given a four-year lifespan to prevent them from developing human emotions which way throughout the movie to further complicate the balance between androids and humans (6). Throughout the movie, the line between humanity and inhumanity becomes thinner and better, causing problems for Deckard and Tyrell Corporation. In its entirety, Blade Runner is attempting to get the audience to decide whether replicants deserve the same freedom and rights as humans. To help the audience in their decision, the movie proved information about the supposedly "inhumane" replicants and their human creators.

Scott’s Blade Runner demonstrates a world that neglects nature in order to accomplish technological and scientific advancements, which has instigated irreversible consequences on the environment. the opening panoramic shot of blazing smokestacks which, together with the haunting synthetic pulses , give the viewer a technological overload, adding further to the film’s nightmarish dystopian tones. This then portrays the notion of unrestrained economic freedom through the focus on consumerism as an insidious form of oppression. Advertising slogans are repeated throughout the film to creates a constant

"Blade Runner" develops the notion of an android or replicant quite well, and it is the depiction of the android that calls into question the meaning of humanity. The viewer is constantly challenged to evaluate how human the androids are and how mechanical the humans are. This distinction is not easily made, as the androids are not simply robots. They are, in fact, artificial people created from organic materials. The robot now "...haunts the human consciousness and stares out through a mask of flesh". They have free will and some of the same emotions as humans, such as fear and love, but lack empathy, the ability to identify with the sufferings and joys of other beings, namely animals. However, in both the novel and the film the empathic ability of certain human beings such as Deckard is called into question. Aside from this, physically and behaviorally androids and humans are indistinguishable. Androids may even believe that they are human because of implanted artificial memory tapes, as is the case with Rachael.

We are also shown the idea of humanity and compassion in the film ‘Blade Runner’. The replicants are only seen as objects. This is shown through the repetition of the reference to replicants as ‘it’. It shows the lack of compassion and humanity and to have quality of life you need a certain degree of this. Blade Runner also illustrates that it may not be the replicants fault for their need to survive but lacking of the quality of life. The film noir expresses the films artificial and ‘depressing’ world with dehumanized buildings and dark eerie environments. This makes you ask is this world forgetting about humanity? Their quest for survival is only one step into gaining quality of life as the world they live in now does not contain all elements needed to acquire this.

The question of what makes something truly alive and human has been hotly disputed for an incredibly long time. Different viewpoints have different criteria, but all roads eventually lead to the same conclusion. Humanism is, at it’s most basic form, the ability to objectively think and make decisions based upon one’s past experiences and moral compass. Blade Runner and Frankenstein both confront the issue of non-humans displaying human characteristics. Replicants and the Monster both are on the very outskirts of humanity, but they are capable of rational thought and compassion, along with the pursuit of happiness. This has created a sort of creepy feeling, with our modern perspective of humanism encroaching on the progressive views of the two stories in question. Blade Runner and Frankenstein have a warped concept of “human” life in the way of the place of science in the creation of life, the prejudice of xenophobia, and an uncomfortableness with one’s values of true humanism.

The film we have chosen to write about called Blade Runner is a fictional world were there is a new kind of human. They are called Replicants. These Replicants are created by a man called Tyrel who owns the company that makes these machines. This is a futuristic world were machines and humans live together and these machines were created by man to do very difficult or very dangerous work. The movie was made in 1984 but the ideas of the movie are still important today and we should talk about these ideas.

Ok, I know what you’re saying “Blade runner deals with Harrison Ford shooting Robot-Human-replicants”, but bare with me…

The replicants are robot creations who have begun to develop human emotions and desire a long life like humans. Deckards job is problematic because he realizes, through his replicant love interest Rachael, the lines between “them and us” aren’t clearly defined. Rachael questions whether he is also a replicant which causes him to reflect on his own identity and the nature of his job. Blade Runner acts a medium of self-reflection; Americans had defined and identified who they thought the other was and used that definition as a basis for poor treatment of them. By forcing Deckard to second guess his identity and purpose, Americans are forced to reflect on their identity as individuals in a multicultural society.

When Blade Runner was released in 1982, it was greeted with a lukewarm reception by general movie-goers and critics alike. Director Ridley Scott's film -- a futuristic tale about a group of renegade "replicants" (android slave labor banned on Earth, used in the colonization of space) and the police officer (Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford) hired to kill them - was criticized for being too gloomy and too dense. However, since its dismal box office run, Blade Runner has emerged as one of the most thematically and stylistically influential science fiction films in recent history.

According to this philosophy, a society which has advanced technologically further than another is inherently better and therefore has a right to rule (Wilkins). The most visible philosophy found in Blade Runner is that known as existentialism. The film brings forth many questions surrounding the meaning of human life, and exactly what constitutes human life to begin with. Within existentialism, a human exists first, and determines for him or herself what the meaning of that existence might be. Even though the replicants appear to be fully human, and are even capable of developing complete human emotion given a long enough lifespan, the fact that they are created for a purpose, thereby having an essence before their existence, could be what excludes them from being truly human according to existentialism.

Throughout the novel Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley builds upon the theme that one must take responsibility for the actions and well being of their creations. Protagonist Victor Frankenstein consistently toils with the degree of responsibility he owes to the monster he created. Initially, Frankenstein completely abandons his creation, as the creature notes when he says, “Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature…”(Shelley 83). When the monster pleads for a female counterpart, Victor says, “I refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion... He showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends...”(Shelley 200). Victor fails to sympathize with his creation and fails to understand that all creatures desire something from their creator. A parallel theme of the disasters that occur when a creator doesn’t take responsibility for its creations can be found in the 1982 film Blade Runner. In this film, Eldon Tyrell, the creator of the rogue Replicants, takes absolutely no responsibility for the danger he has created when he relegates the job of

In the film “Blade Runner”, replicants are made perfectly like human beings through a well-done ‘skin jobs’ and genetic engineered. They can demonstrate the abilities to perform and work like human: they can talk and they can also have feelings and emotions. These replicants are stronger, faster, and smarter than humans; however, they are only genetically programmed for a designated life span of four years. Replicants are created to use as a slave labor, which is used in “off-world colonization”. Somehow, they return to Earth and confront their creator for a longer living life, but unfortunately the creator can’t make their life longer.

The definition of humanity and the true meaning of being human will be furthered explored in relation to the film. The classification of being human is complicated as replicants and humans display many similarities. The ethical aspects of the film contradict the