Look into my Eye: A Blade Runner Review

I know I am severely late the party, but I just finished watching Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford. It begins in Los Angelos in 2019. Strange to think that the city will be up in flames six years later.

That is a part of the strange experience of watching futuristic movies from the 1980’s in the present moment. No one can predict the future. According to Ridley Scott, Atari will still be around and smoking heavily will still be accepted. But it was an excellent movie that showed the subtle ways we, as humans, can differentiate ourselves from the impending creation of realistic robots.

It begins with the eyes, or at least, that is one of the many things that is tested during a Voight-Kampff test. The test is designed for “Blade Runners” to distinguish humans from realistic replicants, known as Nexus. According to the scrolling text detailing a quick synopsis of the history of Nexus v Humans, Blade Runners were a way to destroy the replicants that were deemed dangerous to humans after an uprising prior to when the film begins.

We are led into the story after a horrific gun death by a replicant named Leon against a Blade Runner named, Holden, who was performing the Voight-Kampff test. A former Blade Runner, Rick Deckard played by Harrison Ford, is forced out of retirement to take care of four replicants that arrived to Earth illegally. We learn later, through Rick’s investigations, that the CEO of the company, Eldon Tyrell, is experimenting with a replicant as his assistant, Rachel. They implanted false memories as an “emotional cushion” to sway her to believe she is human and not a replicant.

The idea that memories of our lives can imbue a sense of humanity is philosophically interesting. Our lives are a series of memories; can it be possible that, in the future, memories will be bought and sold to businesses to give credence to artificial humanoids? Given our current foray into artificial intelligence, it is a very interesting question. What does it mean to be human or a robot, as the technology progresses to new heights?

We learn the motivations of the replicants coming to Earth by two of the replicants, Roy and Leon, interrogate someone at an eye-replicating laboratory to get closer to Eldon Tyrell through J. F. Sebastion. The leader, Roy, plans to meet Eldon Tyrell, his creator, to extend their lifespan of four years. The replicants lifespan was artificially set upon creation to limit emotional development, leading to another philosophical conundrum. Is it right to limit the life of someone that closely resembles a human, especially as artificial intelligence matches or exceeds our own?

Rick Deckard, through some futuristic detective work, is able to find and kill one of the other replicants at a strip club. And with the help of Rachel, Leon is killed during an ambush, leading credence to the notion that she feels wants to be considered human and not a replicant. This is despite Rick explaining that her memories were implanted and not truly hers. They return to Rick’s apartment where he promises not to track and kill Rachel since she saved him from Leon’s ambush. Rick leaves Rachel in his apartment to find the other replicants.

When he finds Roy and another replicant, Pris, at Sebastion’s apartment, he is able to successfully kill Pris. With almost perfect timing, Roy’s body begins to fail as his lifespan ends, passing away with one final message, “his memories will be lost in time, like tears in rain". It is a powerful and human message about all of our lives. Our memories will be lost to time, unless we figure out a way to extract and implant them into artificial intelligence or record them with some other means, like writing or video recordings.

Rick’s old supervisor congratulates him for killing the illegal replicants as well as noting that Rachel will not live, saying in addition, “but then again, who does?” The final shot before the credits roll is Rick escorting Rachet out of the apartment to the elevator, signaling that they live out their lives together.

All in all, it was a good film, highlighting the philosophical dilemmas of artificial intelligence and a possible future if humanoids start to fight back control from humans. The ways that it portrayed what a 2019 Los Angelos would look like was fascinating, including the use of flying cars.