Blade Runner

I thought Blade Runner was a great film and tied in very well to the texts Frankenstein and R.U.R. In Blade Runner, much like R.U.R., robots are created to do jobs that humans would not have wanted to do. So these replicas become slaves of humans, and with their human like qualities, revolt against humans. The main character, Decker, is a blade runner, which means he hunts down and kills replicas that have revolted and killed humans. This ties into my essay topic much like it does with R.U.R. and Frankenstein, if the humans had treated the replicas with more respect instead of treating them like slaves, they wouldn’t have needed to revolt and conform to killing their creators.

There were many other similarities I saw that tie these three works together. For example, the relationship Batty and Pris had reminded me a lot of the relationship between Primus and Helena at the end of R.U.R. Two robots so much in love with each other, they seem very human in their interactions. In R.U.R. the very threat of having one of the lovers killed triggered a reaction that humans didn’t expect, both lovers would rather they die instead of their mate. And in Blade Runner, when Pris dies, you can see the emotions fill up in Batty, and it really makes him seem human.

I think Batty spares Decker at the end of the film because he thought that Decker was a replica, just like him and Pris. Decker put up a really good fight against Batty, a replica whom is known for having strength superior to humans. Also at end of their fight scene, Decker manages to pull himself up and exert a lot of strength despite how damaged and hurt he is from fighting Batty. I think when Batty sees this he realizes that a human being wouldn’t be able to do that, so he talks to Decker about living in fear, being a slave, and how his lifespan would too be only 4 years. I think Batty’s observation could be true in this movie; Decker could have been a replica for all we know. A replica designed to hunt and find other replicas, not a bad idea considering Decker didn’t know he was a replica, much like Rachel. If Decker were a replica, the love scenes between him and Rachel would make a lot more sense as well.