h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I may be wrong here, but I'm sure that Descartes said 'I think, therefore I am', and that Deckard is phonetically similar to Descartes. I haven't read the short story, but I think that the film's 'moral', if you like, is that if we create 'machines that think', we will have to treat them as living entities. You have the dove flying from Batty at his death, similar to his 'soul' or 'spirit' leaving his body, for instance.

Sounds reasonable, just another phase of evolution.

Yeah, theres loads and loads in there about xenophobia and humanity, theres probably enough for a whole other entry just about what morals Blade Runner attempts to portray. The continual repetition of "more human than human" is a great indicator that you're right about the evolution and robotics

And that's just before you get into looking at how the characters are portrayed in the book compared to the film.
Good article Tinks

*grins*
Might that be a compliment OP? OOOh
Thankyou

Oh yeah, I forgot to say it was a great entry...

*grins*
Cheers!

I think one of the morals is that the law is not neccisarily right. I personally found Roy to be the 'hero' and Deckard to be the 'villain.' Roy just wanted to live, and Deckard wanted to deny Roy of that which he himself had for no good reason.

*grins*
Yes there's a moment where Bryant explains that if Deckard doesn't take the job he'll end up as one of the 'little people'. There are lots of references in it to dominating power being seen as a negative thing. However, Deckard was extremely reluctant to 'retire' the replicants as he saw the humanity in them so whilst his main retirings were all women and done in extremely cowardly ways, at the end of the film he see's the 'kinship' with Batty and doesn't kill him even though he could which partly redeems him.

Actually, I think the redemtion is on the part of Roy, who obviously was willing to kill, but chose to spare Deckard.

I think it is an interesting point to ponder, that Roy killed Tyrel, but saved Deckard. To me this sends an interesting message: The creator is worse than the destroyer.

Wasn't Deckard the name of the character in Philip K Dick's original novel? I don't remember hearing he was a replicant in that

Apparently the original shooting script contains the following ending:

"I knew it on the roof that night. We were bothers, Roy Batty and I! Combat models of the highest order. We had fought in wars not yet dreamed of in vast nightmares still unnamed. We were the new people ... Roy and me and Rachael! We were made for this world. It was ours!"

While that quote may indeed be from the end of the original script I personally believe it is not as literal as you make out. Deckard is recognising Batty as a "brother-in-arms". As with a large proportion of Dick's work the main theme is the differentiation of reality and fantasy - Dick never resolves explicitly it in his books and Scott's interpretation acurately recreates this "what do you think?" feeling. As I say - this is just MHO.
SF

I thought the same as you when I first read it, but then on re-reading I thought about the reference to Rachael. If it were just Roy and Deckard, I think I would agree, but putting Rachael in there....

Fair point - (veering slightly off the topic) the ambiguity in "We can remember it for you wholesale", another Dick novel made into film, is a more generalised confusion between reality/fantasy as opposed to the real-life/artificial-life argument here.

i seem to remember that in the book deckard takes this one last assignment in order to buy himself a real animal, hence the line from the film about the owl being expensive, the point being that real animals are rare and therefore expensive. i think we should view the film as ridley scotts version of the book and not as a film based on it, if you know what i mean. i think the book deals with entirely different themes from the film and as such needs to be approached in a different way.