Blade Runner’s Big Unanswered Question Was Kept A Secret From Harrison Ford
Warner Bros.
By Michael Boyle/May 6, 2022 11:00 am EST
Turns out, the science behind replicants has advanced to the point where they can be installed with fake memories, making them believe they’ve lived a long, event-filled life. When Deckard explains this to Rachael later, proving his point by bringing up a memory Rachael’s never told anyone about, she quietly cries and leaves the room, but not before throwing the fake photographs of her fake childhood on the floor. The idea that someone might not know they’re a replicant, that something as solid as their own personal memories can’t even be trusted, is something that raises another question for the audience: Is Deckard himself a replicant? He doesn’t think he is, sure, but Rachael didn’t think she was, either.
When it comes to this idea, however, Harrison Ford was not a fan. “I felt that the audience needed to have someone on screen that they could emotionally relate to as though they were a human being,” he explained to Vanity Fair. Making Deckard a robot would, in his view, undercut that connection. But Ridley Scott had other ideas.
What it means to be human
Although it’s understandable why Ford would find this storytelling decision annoying — over 30 years later, this kind of twist has certainly been run into the ground — the movie at least leaves enough wiggle room for audiences to conclude that Deckard’s a normal human. The ambiguity raised by the origami unicorn serves as a pretty smart emphasis on the questions the film raises about what it really means to be human. Deckard spends the whole movie chasing down and killing a group of rogue replicants. The replicants, while often scary and violent, are ultimately treated as sympathetic figures. They may not be human by the textbook definition, but they certainly seem to feel genuine human emotions. They fear death like a real person would, and they long for companionship in much the same way.
“Without telling his star, [Ridley] Scott started inserting visual clues that Deckard was non-human. Midway through the film, Deckard has a drunken daydream of a unicorn galloping through a forest. In the last scene, he finds that Gaff, a fellow blade runner, has left an origami unicorn at his front door — a sign that his innermost thoughts were actually implanted. When they shot the scene, according to Sammon, [Harrison] Ford realized what was happening and yelled, ‘Goddammit, I thought we said I wasn’t a replicant!’”
