10 Movie Moments You've Always Misunderstood

4. Deckard Isn't A Replicant - Blade Runner

What Everybody Thinks

The true identity of Blade Runner's protagonist Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is perhaps the most agonising question in all of sci-fi cinema - is he a human being or a replicant hiding in plain sight?

For many fans, Ridley Scott's re-edits of the movie seem to make a persuasive case for Deckard indeed being a replicant.

The primary evidence is Deckard's unicorn dream sequence and Gaff (Edward James Olmos) subsequently placing an origami unicorn in his apartment, suggesting that he knows what Deckard dreams of, as would only be possible if Deckard was a replicant with implanted memories.

For all that his opinion is worth, Scott himself claims he directed the film with the implication that Deckard was a replicant.

The Truth

We're going to invoke some good 'ol Death of the Author here and say that Scott is wrong about his own movie.

The unicorn imagery is certainly a neat provocation but in no way conclusive, and more to the point, if Deckard isn't human then it betrays a lot of the film's climatic pathos and general thematic heft.

Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) saving Deckard at the end means a lot more if Deckard isn't "like him", as does Deckard's romance with Rachael (Sean Young), helping blur the line between what truly is human and what isn't. These scenes are all a lot of less interesting if we're just seeing two replicants interact.

Though Blade Runner 2049 quite sensibly refused to definitively confirm Deckard's status either way, the "origami theory" isn't quite the silver bullet Scott or many fans would like to think it is.

If we're looking at the richest extrapolation of the film's story, characters and themes, then Deckard has to be human.