The Humanity in Blade Runner

     What is human? This question defines Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and even more so in The Final Cut (2007), from which the content of this reading is pulled. Early in the film the argument is made that the boundaries between human and non-human (in the film they are referred to as “replicants”) are crystal clear. The humans are the good guys, the ones who deserve to live and are legal and free to do so on Earth. The replicants are stated to be none of these things. They are not born, they are made. They are illegal on Earth and any of them that come to Earth are marked for extermination. As the film says in reference to this process: “This was not called execution. It was called retirement.” These quasi-humans are not considered to have the ability to die. They are not human; they are essentially machines that are created for a singular purpose. However, as the plot of the film progresses it becomes increasingly clear that the lines between what is and is not human have been blurred. The protagonist of the film, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), is tasked with retiring a rogue group of replicants who have made their way to Earth. Through his eyes the audience bears witness to the systematic extermination of the fugitives, but through this process it is illustrated that even though the replicants are not human, they demonstrate more human characteristics than the actual humans that inhabit the film. This does not make them human, however, but their shared fate with humans, death, allows them to become essentially human.
     Throughout the film the human characters display few traits that would identify them as humans as opposed to the alternative. Deckard spends the film following the orders given to him, which are to terminate the replicants. Though he does initially show resistance to these orders, simply for the fact that he does not want to do them, he does eventually follow them almost all the way to completion. He needs only to be pointed in the right direction and he relentlessly carries out his orders to terminate the imposter humans. He only questions these orders after he meets a replicant that initially fools him into thinking that she is a human. This replicant, Rachael (Sean Young), also furthers the image of replicants as more human than human.

     Rachael’s introduction comes early in the film when Deckard travels to the Tyrell Corporation headquarters to see whether or not the standard replicant test is effective on the newest generation of them. The Tyrell headquarters are gigantic, pyramid-shaped buildings that tower over the entire city of Los Angeles. Within them dwells Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), the man who essentially created the quasi-humans. From the pyramids that house the practical god of the replicants, the sun can be seen. This is the only time in the entire film that the sun is visible in any way, and Tyrell is constantly bathed in it’s light. The other characters in the scene, Rachael and Deckard, are only ever partially in the light at most; there is always some sort of shadow covering part of them. Tyrell is not immune from the shadows, but he experiences more light than the other two characters and he is never completely immersed in shadow. The only character that experiences this is Rachael, whose back is toward the sun as Deckard administers the replicant test. As the test begins the light is removed from the room almost entirely. Rachael is made to be as human as possible, but when her humanity is tested the light vanishes from the one place in the entire film where it is present. After her in-humanity is proven, Rachael leaves the room, and, on a greater scale, the pyramid entirely. Her lack of humanity results in her leaving the house of the god. The light vanishes from the place of creation after it is proven that the god (Tyrell) cannot create a perfect false human. Deckard leaves the pyramid, never to return, and Tyrell stays, only to later be killed by one of the replicants he created. This follows the iconography of death that pyramids traditionally resemble and it follows with the overall tone of the inescapability of death. Rachael, who is said to be as close to human as possible, is also said to still have an expiration date. Despite the great efforts to grant her humanity by her creator, Rachael will still die.

     Rachael demonstrates the humanity of the replicants in a different way from the others in that she has been given the memories of a human. In this, Rachael breaks the fundamental boundary between the synthetics and the humans. Rachael has gained memories of emotions and as the film progresses she is shown to demonstrate emotions herself. Anger, after a dispute with Deckard. Fear, when Deckard explains that she will be hunted. This transcendence of the boundary between humans and replicants essentially make Rachael a human in almost every ways except for the fact that she was made and not born and that she has a premature expiration date.

     The core difference between Rachael and the other replicants, Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), Leon (Brion James), Pris (Daryl Hannah), and Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), is that Rachael’s quasi-emotions are given to her through the experiences of an actual human being. In contrast, the emotions that are demonstrated by the other four fugitive replicants are solely products of their own experiences. They have come to Earth in search of their creator in the hope that they can prolong their rapidly expiring lifespan. This motivation alone shows some degree of fear, the fear of losing their lives and their memories. As Roy says, in reference to his memories as he dies: “All these moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain…” It is inferred, through Batty’s referencing to his memories, that these memories and experiences have gained value for Batty and that he fears the loss of these things. This fear alone pulls Batty towards the side of humanity.

     Deckard’s choice of weapon is a pistol, which is used on Zhora, Leon, and Pris. Each time it is used by Deckard there is a significant blood spray from the victim. In this the replicants are uniquely distinguished from the humans in the film, especially Deckard. When Zhora is shot there is a significant blood splatter as her shoulder practically explodes. The second time she is shot, which is the fatal shot, there is even more blood and by the time Zhora is lying dead on the ground her transparent jacket is streaked with a significant amount of blood. With Leon’s death there is significantly less blood, though his head does blow open as he is shot. This is interesting in that Leon is not actually killed by a human, but rather, by Rachael. His bloodless death puts him more in line with a machine than a human. Death by a human hand grants the replicants an essential trait of humanity: the ability to bleed. Death by anything else denies them this human ability and Leon is unceremoniously (his death is granted the least screen time of the four replicants and it is the only one not shown in slow motion) killed off.

     The final replicant death, Pris’, occurs with a significant amount of blood as she is shot in the abdomen three times. After the third shot Pris’ final death throngs are shown in slow motion as blood practically covers her chest and stomach as it flows from her wounds. The blood from Pris’ death alone is far more than the total amount of blood shown in the film that belongs to human characters. Even the opening scene, in which Leon shoots blade runner Holden, no blood is shown. The other two central characters deaths, those of Dr. Eldon Tyrell and J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson), respectively, show minimal amounts of blood. As Roy crushes Tyrell’s head blood is briefly shown flowing across Roy’s hands. The death of J.F. Sebastian occurs off-screen and none of his blood is shown. Deckard himself is never shot or stabbed, he is simply punched, kicked, and the sort, all injuries that result in a minimal amount of Deckard’s blood being spilled. When Roy later attacks Deckard he choses to break his fingers, a bloodless injury.

     The fight between Deckard and Roy is the most interesting confrontation in the entire film. Instead of choosing to kill Deckard outright, Roy, realizing that his own life is about to end, choses to give Deckard a fighting chance. He beings by breaking Deckard’s fingers and giving him back his gun. He then gives Deckard a head start as proceeds to hardly take his pursuit with Deckard seriously. This is mostly due to Roy’s fading life and his preoccupation with it. As he stands in the window and he loses feeling in his right hand, Roy drives a nail through it in order to maintain feeling, control, and to prolong his life. As he does this blood flows from the wound. Shortly after pushing a nail through his hand, Roy uses the same hand to grab Deckard and save him from falling to his death. As Roy lifts Deckard back on to the building rooftop the nail is still present in his hand with blood still flowing from the wound. In this, Roy has demonstrated the ability to not only take life, but to save it as well.

     Roy’s saving of Deckard’s life is significant in that he has performed an action that Deckard himself never performs. Roy has saved the life of a human being, something that Deckard never does. Throughout the film Deckard is simply a killer. He almost the entirety of the film hunting the replicants and he never deviates from this activity. His single-minded nature does not allow his to pursue any other path than to kill the synthetic human as quickly as possible. The same can be said for all of the other human characters in the film. They simply perform their assigned tasks. Hannibal Chow makes eyes, J.F. Sebastian designs the genetics, and Rick Deckard hunts to kill. The replicants, however, perform many different tasks, from interrogation, to making friends, to finding jobs, and gathering information. And by using these skills they are able to manipulate humans to gain what they want and need. In this way, the replicants, not the humans, are the more versatile of the two.

     “Humans are greater than the machines they create.” This at first appears to be the thesis of Blade Runner. What the film demonstrates, however, is a meditation on the failure of humanity. The creations of humanity are murderous creatures that long to be like their creators. But, it is this longing that gives way to the replicants gaining their humanity. They fear their own premature deaths and they are willing to go to any lengths to extend their own lives. The fear of death that drives them grants them emotions, an essential trait of humans. As these emotions are played out, they develop the ability to pass for normal humans in practically every single way. And still death looms over them. When death is revealed to be inevitable, these synthetic humans first respond with violence, but this eventually gives way to a meditation on living and dying, and finally, acceptance. Death comes to the replicants and grants them their wish: to be human. Zhora and Pris die, and through the blood they spill, appear to be human as they die. Roy choses to give life to another before accepting his death, and in doing so achieves something none of the human characters could. Death unifies the two groups, but it is the replicants who show acceptance for the fate of all living things.