"They don't advertise for incompetent policemen in a newspaper..."

[pyat]

HEY!

In Blade Runner, Bryant shows Deckard profile data on the Replicants, including photos. So... um... why were they worried about the VK Tests not working? And why didn't Holden just walk into Tyrell Corporation with a photo of Leon and say, "Hey, have you seen this guy around? 6' 3" and a weak chin?"

And why was Deckard so coy when interviewing Zhora at the strip club? He had a positive ID! No need for the lame cover story and questions. Just retire the darn replicant, Rick!

That actually woke me up at 3 AM this morning. Stupid good movies being stupid and good. Like with Indiana Jones - why are all those Nazis running around British-ruled Egypt in 1937?

Also, velvetpage is home.

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I always presumed it was because the replicant models were all cloned and so looked the same, so it was not finding Leon that was the issue, it was finding /that/ Leon. But I don't think there's much in the movie to support that assumption.

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

It would explain the amount of time he spent IDing the snake tattoo, which was done to THAT Zhora after she came to Earth.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, he needed to that to track her place of employment, but once he was there, and he'd seen her...

[thebitterguy]

But weren't replicants banned on Earth? So any Leon would be a criminal in need of retirement?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Exactly! "Hey! It's a Leon! Shoot him!"

Though, in my GURPS Blade RUnner game, there was a plot wherein the players were chasing the orginal Roy Batty, a human career soldier who'd served as the template for the Replicants.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I thought it was more like the Replicants were cleared only to be in the place where they were assigned, but, then again, I don't think there's any direct evidence to support that in the film. I cannot remember if there's anything specific in the film that says that all replicants are banned from Earth, or whether it's just these replicants who have escaped off the plantation and therefore are illegal here on Earth, as it were...

[feywild.livejournal.com]

*cough*nitpicking*cough*

Roy WAS a replicant. Deckard's first name wasn't Roy.

But yes, you're right. :)

BR is one of my all-time favorites.

[feywild.livejournal.com]

There's also a hypothesis that Deckard was a replicant himself.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Ridley Scott has said that this is so.

Also, fixed Roy to Rick.

[feywild.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but what would PKD say about it, I wonder.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Something about the Pink Beam, I bet.

More seriously, in the novel Deckard is definitely a physical human, since he can use the Mercer empathy dealie, and androids cannot.

However, he is also unable to feel much of anything without the dial-a-mood, suggesting that he is not entirely human in a more metaphorical sense.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

The Mercer box is IN the movie, it's one of the little devices in Deckard's apartment. At least, it's a video screen depicting a desolate rocky field.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Can you point me to a screen shot?

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

I'll have to make one myself. not sure if my computer can read HD-DVDs though

[pyat.livejournal.com]

If you tell me the scene, etc, I can do it. :) Thanks!

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I take Scott's statement with a huge grain of salt. There's evidence to the contrary in the original source material, and there's very little in the actual movie to support the assertion. Sure there's the silly vision of the unicorn, and the little origami unicorn that the cop leaves behind to taunt Deckard with, but I'm also completely willing to ignore Scott as spouting bumpf in attempt to add "depth of meaning" to a film that just isn't there.

Frankly, I think the film's narrative plays better if Deckard isn't a replicant, but that's a long discussion...

The clues are all there.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

The Bradbury Building (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradbury_Building).

"Demon with a Glass Hand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_with_a_Glass_Hand)".

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

Nevermind that, why does Deckard say, of the Replicants returning to Earth, "why would they do that, that's unusual?"

It can't be that unusual because it's your job!

There are quite a number of holes in the script, really...

On the other hand, there really were Nazis crawling all over Egypt in 1937 - it's the same thing that's referred to in _The English Patient_. In theory, they were looking for routes into Egypt that they could use to flank and so undermine the English occupation of Egypt to open up access to the Middle East - but then again, that's only what the historians want you to believe!

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that most Replicants Deckard retired were previous non-offworld replicants who were, in all likelihood, trying to get offworld and escape in the first place (like most everybody else on Earth). So a Replicant who had escaped their command in space and was trying to get onworld would be like an escapee trying to sneak back into prison; rather uncommon.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in the opening credits it says an offworld uprising prompted the government(s?) on Earth to outlaw Replicants on Earth.

Batty et el. going to Earth is sort of like Americans sneaking into North Korea.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Ah! Yes. I had been cleverly ignoring that silly plot-point for years. It's amazing how many of the changes made to the original source's narrative to "streamline it" basically make no sense when you look at them closely.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, they did have a reason - they wanted more life and stuff. So, it's like Americans sneaking into North Korea because they needed something badly, but no one expected them to want it, or something... I dunno.

Sneaking into North Korea to ask Kim Jong Il for the secret of Juche, maybe. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It's a fair cop! Indiana Jones, I mean.

The "unusual" line meant that Deckard previously dealt with Replicants on Earth. In my GURPS Blade Runner game, the Replicant uprising in the offworld colonies prompted their being outlawed on Earth. And, checking just now I see the opening credits say that explicitly.

So, Deckard is wondering why they came to Earth.

[thebitterguy]

This regarding RotLA.

[mwbard.livejournal.com]

Replicants are unusual to return. However, they do exist on Earth already. Or, if there is a line somewhere saying they've been outlawed on Earth, then it is unusual they return, and Decker has the unusual job of terminating the unusual ones.

As to why he has to ID them properly, there are non-sensical laws in place that require it. Or, plastic surgery is common and easily attainable, the replicants were just stupid enough to not bother.

The Nazis in Egypt have already been documented.

So, how about the "gaseous survey equipment" on the Excelsior in ST VI that mysteriously moves over to the Enterprise between the beginning and the climax?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

The "unusual" line meant that Deckard previously dealt with Replicants on Earth. The Replicant uprising in the offworld colonies prompted their being outlawed on Earth.

And those are both fair points, re: ID, but still, you'd think the first thing Holden would have done is look at Leon and call for lots and lots of backup, arrest him, and THEN do the VK. Same with Zhora.

I'd not noticed that in ST>:VI!

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

For that matter, if replicants' skin tissue is different enough from ours that they can comfortably reach into boiling water, why do the BRs need to run a damn Turing test to detect them?! :)
I love that film to death, though. My mother took me to see it when I was 9, after a friend pranked her into thinking it was a good movie to take your kid to. Well, it was, if your kid was bright, male and alienated. I've never properly thanked that friend of hers.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Oooh. Dunking in boiling water. Very Medieval.

"So, if the water scalds you badly, you're a human, and innocent. But if it DOESN'T scald you, then we shoot you."

[paka.livejournal.com]

1. Yeah, I guess that does get into the territory of "well, are there any Replicants on Earth or aren't there?"

2. A while back I noticed the initial exchange between Deckard and Tyrell about "On you?" "Try her." In initial drafts - and there are storyboards for it - there's a part where Deckard wanders into the depths of the Tyrell pyramid and finds a cryogenic chamber with the original Tyrell - the current Tyrell is a replicant. So I figure that bit of the script is a holdover, like the flickering screens behind Deckard and stuff - Tyrell knows he's a replicant, so he wants to test the artificial personalities thing on Rachel instead.

Which brings up the next "hey, this is dumb" point. Okay. If you're basically the fictional version of Bill Gates, heading up the fictional version of Microsoft, and all you really need to test out a possibly legally dodgy thing is to have some cops show up and run tests on a few Replicants, wouldn't you have done that already? I mean, why wait until a detective just happens to show up on your doorstep with a Voight-Kampf machine?

3. As regards Nazis in Egypt; Raiders is pretty well thought out compared to the other movies in the series. The Nazis truly were interested in the occult, though probably they'd have no interest in the Ark; the NDSAP had its origins in the Thule Society. Tanis is associated with Shishonq and was the site of pre-war digs organized by a French archaeologist (that's why you never hear about the excavation; all the published material is still in French). I figured they just combined 'em. And you can't just have random German researchers show up in a pulp film, that'd be like having relatively peaceful if completely delusional anthropologists show up at the beginning of Bulletproof Monk.