Blade Runner is a science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott in which Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a retired blade runner, a cop specialized for hunting down replicants, robots that are as smart as and look like humans but only have a four year lifespan, has to hunt down four replicants who escaped enslavement. Deckard finds Racheal, who is revealed to be a fifth replicant who was given human memories as an experiment. After hunting down and “retiring”, with bullets, two of the replicants it is revealed that they are looking to cure their four-year lifespan. The movie ends with a final fight scene with Roy Batty ending when he dies as his four-year lifespan ends. The movie ends with Racheal and Deckard running away together to escape the
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If something looks like a human and can think like a human than what makes in inhuman? If memories can be planted in the heads of replicants to make them think they are human then what how can we trust our own existence is as it appears? In Blade Runner, the replicants are shown to have intelligence similar to and at the level of humans. The Voight-Kampff test, a test meant to test whether someone is a replicant or human, works by judging reactions to emotional stimuli as replicants, being alive for so short a time, do not have the proper emotional memory to react to situations similar to humans. This is shown in several places in the movie, in the beginning of the film as a doctor is testing a replicant he says “This test is meant to provoke an emotional response.” And later when Deckard is testing Racheal it takes him much longer to figure her out because she’d been given false memories as emotional padding. What separates the replicants from humans is not lack of emotion or something of a similar nature, but experience being alive. If all that separates them from humans is how long they have been around, a temporary variable, then could it not be said that replicants are human? In Blade Runner they are not given any rights and enslaved and forced to work out in space, if they are murdered for returning to Earth it is called retirement. They are viewed as below human but many years …show more content…
The ideas present in this film and the deeper philosophies that can be extracted from them stand in opposition to what Rene Descartes theorized about our world. Descartes said that only humans have the ability to rationalize, that machines and animals are mindless, whereas Blade Runner showed replicants, machines, were capable of human-level intelligence and the ability to rationalize. Descartes tried to prove the existence of the Christian God, whereas Blade Runner showed that humans are capable of creating beings with the ability to think, or as Descartes thought, the ability to have a soul. Blade Runner asks many interesting questions about thought. If something can think on the level which humans think, if that thing looks and acts like humans do, if it has a limited lifespan and doesn’t know when it’ll die, then what separates it from being human? Blade Runner shows that memories can be planted in your head and that they can lead to you living a false life. How can we trust our lives if our memories can be compromised? At the end of it all Rene Descartes, like all of us, liked to think. Unlike him though we have to live in fear that one day, as we think, we could learn something life shattering, something that could lead to a most permanent
If something looks like a human and can think like a human than what makes in inhuman? If memories can be planted in the heads of replicants to make them think they are human then what how can we trust our own existence is as it appears? In Blade Runner, the replicants are shown to have intelligence similar to and at the level of humans. The Voight-Kampff test, a test meant to test whether someone is a replicant or human, works by judging reactions to emotional stimuli as replicants, being alive for so short a time, do not have the proper emotional memory to react to situations similar to humans. This is shown in several places in the movie, in the beginning of the film as a doctor is testing a replicant he says “This test is meant to provoke an emotional response.” And later when Deckard is testing Racheal it takes him much longer to figure her out because she’d been given false memories as emotional padding. What separates the replicants from humans is not lack of emotion or something of a similar nature, but experience being alive. If all that separates them from humans is how long they have been around, a temporary variable, then could it not be said that replicants are human? In Blade Runner they are not given any rights and enslaved and forced to work out in space, if they are murdered for returning to Earth it is called retirement. They are viewed as below human but many years …show more content…
The ideas present in this film and the deeper philosophies that can be extracted from them stand in opposition to what Rene Descartes theorized about our world. Descartes said that only humans have the ability to rationalize, that machines and animals are mindless, whereas Blade Runner showed replicants, machines, were capable of human-level intelligence and the ability to rationalize. Descartes tried to prove the existence of the Christian God, whereas Blade Runner showed that humans are capable of creating beings with the ability to think, or as Descartes thought, the ability to have a soul. Blade Runner asks many interesting questions about thought. If something can think on the level which humans think, if that thing looks and acts like humans do, if it has a limited lifespan and doesn’t know when it’ll die, then what separates it from being human? Blade Runner shows that memories can be planted in your head and that they can lead to you living a false life. How can we trust our lives if our memories can be compromised? At the end of it all Rene Descartes, like all of us, liked to think. Unlike him though we have to live in fear that one day, as we think, we could learn something life shattering, something that could lead to a most permanent