The Missing

Okay, so I shouldn’t be the only who noticed a lot of the great stuff that was missing from the novel. But from all of the things that they took out, they filled in the spaces with some awesome goodies, though I do dislike that most of the twists were taken out.

When Deckard was sent to the Tyrell (technically Rosen) Corporation headquarters, we get exactly what was taken out of the book except for the best part about the scene: When the company tried to trick him into thinking that the VK test didn’t work on the new Nexus 6 models. I mean, that was gold! People watching it would’ve been putting their hands on their head in awe of what happened.

Throughout the film, I’ve been waiting for my favorite part, and probably the biggest twist in Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep? So when I do get to 1:27:00 of the film, Rick Deckard is sitting in his car looking over a paper, when a police patrol comes down, and says that he was about to be arrested. At that moment, I was thinking to myself that this must be that fake Android police squadron scene in the book; the best scene ever (I’ve imagined it in my head at least 20 times). But then I hear the words, “checked and cleared,” coming from the patrol car… wait, what? How can you take such a huge twist like that out of the book?

Honestly, after seeing that, my 10 out of 10 movie rating went down to 8.5.

Also, something else I’ve noticed. There was no mercer or religious figure of any kind spoken about throughout the story. But to be honest, I am kind of happy about that. I think the movie editors concluded from the book that Mercer would be too confusing if introduced into the movie, so they just decided to simply not go along with it. I don’t think they made the wrong decision, because we all know that Mercer was hard enough to understand as he is in the novel.

The Replicants

In the film, I believe that the Replicants don’t just simulate emotion, they actually feel them. An example of this can be made with Roy Batty. During the film at roughly 1:36:00, as he breaks Deckard’s fingers, he says, “this was for Leon, this was for Pris…” and so on. After that, he proceeds to go to Pris’ body, kissed her dead corpse, and begins to tear up. This can’t be him trying to keep up a disguise of a human because Deckard already knows that he’s a Replicant, so why go on with it?

Then we have Rachael. Man, it is really, really hard to classify her. Throughout the entire film, it was difficult for me to keep thinking that she was a machine because if I was ever placed in Deckard’s position, it really could have fooled me.

Oh, and something I realized about our friend Roy Batty. He seemed more aggressive in the movie than what we’ve been described through Philip K. Dick’s novel. In “Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep?” Roy seemed weak when he didn’t put much resistance at the end of the story, but in Blade Runner, he was somebody you’d never want to mess with; he killed Tyrell by popping his eyes in, god dammit. That’s enough for me to be afraid of the guy. Then at the end, he turned into a pure psychopath. Fantastic.

And let’s end this with my rating: Out of everything I’ve seen from the movie Blade Runner, I’d give it an 8 out of 10.