Harrison Ford Changes His Stance on Blade Runner’s Biggest Debate
Written by on June 1, 2023
Blade Runner star Harrison Ford has changed his public stance on the biggest debate surrounding the 1982 sci-fi film, admitting he “always knew” that Rick Deckard was actually a replicant.
Blade Runner director Ridley Scott has long maintained that he believes Ford’s protagonist is indeed a replicant. In contrast, Ford has long pushed back on this idea. However, the 80-year-old actor changed his tune during a recent video interview with Esquire. “I always knew that I was a replicant,” Ford said. “I just wanted to push back against it, though. I think a replicant would want to believe that they’re human. At least, this one did.”
Is Blade Runner’s Rick Deckard a Replicant?
Much of the “Is Deckard a replicant?” debate centers around the “unicorn daydream” scene featured in the 1992 director’s cut and the 2007 Final Cut of Blade Runner. Scott has gone on record saying his intention was for the scene to hint that Deckard was indeed a replicant, and that the daydream had been implanted. The film’s star, on the other hand, didn’t originally see it that way.
“That was the main area of contention between Ridley and myself at the time,” Ford said in 2006. “I thought the audience deserved one human being on screen that they could establish an emotional relationship with. I thought I had won Ridley’s agreement to that, but in fact I think he had a little reservation about that. I think he really wanted to have it both ways.” In a 2009 interview, Scott suggested that Ford may have changed his mind on the matter. In 2017, however, Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve claimed that Scott and Ford were still arguing about it.
Of course, the debate regarding Deckard’s true nature goes well beyond Scott and Ford. After all, 1982’s Blade Runner is based on the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Dick wrote Deckard as being explicitly human in the book, though it should be noted that Scott’s adaptation takes a fair amount of liberties with the source material. Even so, the 1982 film’s screenwriter, Hampton Fancher, says he wrote Deckard as a human as well. Fancher has since doubled down on the Deckard’s humanity, calling Scott’s idea for the character “too complex.”
While Ford has apparently come around to Scott’s vision, a number of other people involved in the making of Blade Runner have sided with Fancher. These include art director David Snyder, Bryant actor M. Emmet Walsh and late Roy Batty actor Rutger Hauer, who have all said that they think Deckard is human. Meanwhile, joining Scott and Ford in the “Deckard is a replicant” camp is late Blade Runner designer Syd Mead.
Source: YouTube
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