This Future Looks Familiar: Watching Blade Runner in 2017

I watched Blade Runner for the first time this week. Since I have apparently been living in a cave for the past few decades, I thought that Blade Runner was kind of like Tron but with more Harrison Ford, and less neon, and maybe a few more tricky questions about What Is The Nature Of Man.

That is the movie I was expecting.

That is not the movie I saw.

I mostly enjoyed this writeup from a person who’d never see Blade Runner. Mostly.

You should go read what Sarah Gailey wrote before reading what I wrote below.

Go now, back up… ↑

So what I didn’t like is how she used the words human and murder. Over and over again. To drill home how cruel Deckard’s character was. How almost inhumane and devoid of caring after shooting Pris in the back. The author all but begged for me to feel my own empathy for the “slaves.”

But the thing is they weren’t slaves. Not in the human sense anyway. They were robots who lived beyond their slated life span and came to Earth after an off-world bloodbath. These guys were far more dangerous than your average Jetson Rosie. All the Nexus 6s that Deckard needed to retire were combat models. More or less.

Watch them in the movie. They’re not fragile and frail slaves just wanting to escape the plantation and “live.” They’ll snap you in two. Without skipping a beat.

I did enjoy the article though, very well written. And it also made me wonder when artificial life begins to have its own rights.

#movies #bladerunner