I also saw Blade Runner in its original theatrical release, and it's still the version I prefer. In this case I think the studio heads did Scott a backhand favor by ending the film as they did.

Spoilers:

If, as depicted in the original release, Deckard is human and Rachael is a replicant, then the movie is a true love story. The message of a true love story is that the Other is as deserving of love and dignity as I am. It's the message of Romeo and Juliet, Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird, to name three offhand.

Whether your allotted lifespan is four years or threescore and ten, if you understand that you don't know how much time you really have, then you are entitled to the full measure of decent regard and respect the melancholy of that understanding earns. Batty bought that respect for Deckard and Rachael's sake. Thus the original ending is moving, and completes the film's overall themes.

If Deckard is also a replicant, as subsequent versions try to establish more and more explicitly, then of course he's going to want to be with Rachael. It's a no-brainer, it's no sacrifice, and there's no moral revolution of the characters. In which case I don't really know what the movie is supposed to be about. Boy robot meets girl robot, boy robot loses girl robot, boy robot gets girl robot? Boring. Definitionally cliché.

I suppose the realization of it is supposed to be some kind of shocking twist, but to me it simply empties the film of meaning.

I also don't like late-hour attempts to suggest that Deckard is a replicant. It cheapens Batty's finest act of forgiving him and sparing the life of his enemy who was trying to kill him.

even if Deckard is, I don't think that Roy would necessarily know - there's no indication that they can recognise their own (and if they could, that should be the basis of any test, rather than the psychological test they have to use).

I think i heavily disagree given the entire point of the movie is "what is life anyways". Roy choosing to spare deckard isn't becaus of some programming, he's real. He's a person. And like wise so is deckard and rachel, even if they are/aren't human.

It's a really fascinating look at tech that's gone so far we really don't know how to identify the difference, or it's more than possible at that point there isn't one. The sentient AI isn't some super machine that's going to build the singularity. It's "artificial" people forced into short lived slavery in a world that couldn't begin to give a damn about it.

We know he's a replicant, but I don't think he knows with any confidence: all he knows is that Gaff has an uncanny degree of insight, and that a definite replicant thought he was a man and spared his life to share the end of his own life with him. So he faces even more puzzles than them: if he isn't human then he had less free will than the other replicants since then he was created to unquestioningly retire them. Is he now going to enjoy that freedom and flee with Rachel, since he "owes her one", does he even know what his plan is as the lift doors shut?

The BR that I watched was more that an atmospheric sci-fi flic. It was an epic parable of the human condition. In the beginning it juxtaposes humans and replicants, but what you're supposed to realise along the way is that the life of a replicant is just an accelerated version of a human life: However long or short a lease on life you have been given, the common factor is that it is limited, and what matters is not what species you are, but how you approach life. Deckard, who is a coward unable to live the life that he has, has a life lesson to learn from the replicant who "does not go gently into that good night".

Of course, if Deckard is a replicant, then that interpretation goes out the window, and BR is just another forgettable sci-fi plot twist movie. And since Ridley Scott seems to think so, the movie is now ruined for me -- I have never watched the sequel, because it is just too painful to watch the original movie that I loved be destroyed.

I saw a movie that wasn't just a new visual style for 80's cyberpunk, it was so much more.

In the sequel, Deckard is human. I feel it reinforces your take on the first.

I'm glad to hear it. I may watch the sequel now. Maybe the rumors I heard was an intentional mislead.

The reply saying Deckard is human in the sequel is wrong. In the sequel Deckard says he does not know if he is human and does not care. That is the only time the topic comes up.

Might be a case of Deus Ex Syndrome, where a hardcore fanbase preemptively smears all sequels because they're not the original.

The article mentions the earlier influence of Alien to this genre, at least in the sense of this future dystopia. But even if we accept the premise that BR was groundbreaking, groundbreaking != good.

Larry Niven, for example, was a pioneering sci-fi author over many books but most of these books aren't great. Ringworld, for example, was one of the earlier works to talk about megastructures and the efficiency of living area per unit mass. The structure itself doesn't make sense (ie it would be torn apart by centrifugal force) but it's an important idea.

Neuromancer gets mentioned a lot in this particular genre. It too was groundbreaking but it's actually not that great of a book. Still, the groundbreaking aspect feeds into nostalgia, particularly if you read it when it came out. I feel like a lot of the BR hype falls into this same bucket. That's really all I'm saying.

And Neuromancer! although the movie is 1982 and the book is 1984 - I put these two together as the founding fathers of cyberpunk entertainment, albeit the FATHER of Cyberpunk is PK Dick...

BR created the visual dystopian cyberpunk world of the future without focusing on internet/online things...

Neuromancer changed and set the tone for the internet to come.

The thing is, that at 47, MANY MANY MANY of my contemporaries and peer grew up in the 80s with these concepts for which they said "wouldn't it be cool if...." <--- and then we went about building all this shit.

Its the nerds of the 80s that have all worked to make the cyberpunk-esque current systems we have, and the evil corps as described in both have come to pass.

It is a curious thing that science fiction and science-that-comes-to-pass influence each other.

This is why I like the idea of solarpunk. And yet, cyberpunk brings conflict/struggle which makes it interesting.

Solarpunk so far seems like a boring utopian dream. While I'd rather that in my future, it won't sell or interest people.

I think it's a telling condemnation of our society that a utopian dream for everyone is considered "boring", and impossible to motivate people around.

> BR largely created that bucket.

Combined with William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It was a combined effort.