Do Androids Dream of Purloined Unicorns? by chrisisall

OTHER SCIENCE FICTION SERIES

Do Androids Dream of Purloined Unicorns?

POSTED BY: CHRISISALL
UPDATED: Saturday, January 31, 2009 18:48
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VIEWED: 2579
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Friday, January 30, 2009 5:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Come to think of it, I can't remember if the payback in his head is in the director's cut.

I think it is.
When I was younger, so much younger than to-day-ay-ay, I couldn't see the sence in such redundancy in any way.
[/Beatle riff]
But now I see it's the depiction of boring, meticulous detective work, and I appreciate it as such.
(BTW, love the new title, whoever

)

The laughing Chrisisall

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Friday, January 30, 2009 5:43 PM

CHRISISALL

Ughh, my post replicated.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:46 PM

JONGSSTRAW

I saw the movie the first weekend it came out almost 30 years ago. The movie has many themes, and a strong one for me is that there's a clear stupidity and irony to man for making a superior copy of himself, and then to have to fight and kill each other to survive. Deckard's near futility in fighting Batty and Leon shows the ultimate weakness of man's claim to dominance of all things, and how heroes and anti-heroes are the same sometimes. The ending always felt to me that they were heading off into an unknown and mysterious future, and maybe they had a decent chance at a life together.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 6:03 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I saw the movie the first weekend it came out almost 30 years ago.

I saw it at a test screening a month before the general release, I walked out blown away.

Quote:
The ending always felt to me that they were heading off into an unknown and mysterious future, and maybe they had a decent chance at a life together.

And I always felt that Gaff putting the origami unicorn there meant that his life with Rachael was a fantasy because they were gonna get caught somewhere or something. Of course, LATER there came the scene with the unicorn from Legend to supposedly say that Gaff knew Deckard's dreams, and that he WAS a replicant. Hmmph. I don't buy it.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 6:58 AM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
CIA
(BTW, love the new title, whoever)

Thanks, or you're welcome :), guilty as charged.

Quote:
CIA
I saw it at a test screening a month before the general release, I walked out blown away.

You defeated my opening night geek creds! Argh!

Just out of curiosity, was it any different from the final theatrical release?

Quote:
And I always felt that Gaff putting the origami unicorn there meant that his life with Rachael was a fantasy because they were gonna get caught somewhere or something. Of course, LATER there came the scene with the unicorn from Legend to supposedly say that Gaff knew Deckard's dreams, and that he WAS a replicant. Hmmph. I don't buy it.

On the latter, we're in agreement. I would tend to suspect Deckard was a replicant. Rachael "passes" and so others might not notice. As I said, if you watch it without the voiceover and look for the very subtle clues, it's going to lead you to that conclusion, imho. The rewrite of the unicorn with the Legend clip was just bogus, because not only did it hit you over the head with the idea, and nix the question. (Pet peeve of mine, I like questions, not answers.) But also it tells you that Gaff knows. There's no reason for Gaff to know, or is there...?

You've done a man's job, sir.

See... Now that's subtle. There are about a dozen of them.

I know this seems silly to put a spoiler warning for a movie we've all seen a dozen times, but watch without voice over, you catch it.
Just a couple hints:

Select to view spoiler:

Does anyone ever call Deckard. Does he have friends? Family? Does he have any connection to this world that predates the film, other than what his bosses tell him? Or is he just a collection of pictures on the mantle, like Rachael :) <-- this was clever.

The unicorn dream sequence is just blatant and dumb. It's an answer to an interesting question.

But seriously, I think that the original intent of the unicorn was, sure, maybe chosen for some sort of symbolism of fantasy, but it eclipses the main story point: Gaff was there. They figured out Deckard wasn't going to kill Rachael, and so they sent Gaff to do it instead. He found her sleeping, and couldn't do it. We know this because there's an origami figure here. That's why Deckard is surprised to see it. To me, this is the completion of the story arc, to see at the beginning, Leon as an angry psycho, and gradually, victims become more sympathetic.

Here's another angle: Consider the whole thing as an animal kingdom. Prey flees. Predators attack. How does even a replicant deal with the animal which does neither? What if Pris had approached Deckard the way she did JF Sebastian?

The way they react to humans and to Deckard, each other, is interesting in the different animal behavior. On taking damage, what about the whole "Wake up. Time to die." scene?

Just a Nexus 7 with Nexus 6 envy :)
I think it's the fashion sense...

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 7:08 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:

Just out of curiosity, was it any different from the final theatrical release?

No, it was precisely the same. I hadn't walked out of a movie so stunned since 1978 (Superman The Movie).

The laughing Chrisisall

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 7:11 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:

You've done a man's job, sir.

Yeah, there's plenty to point you in that direction, very cool.
BTW, Mal is also a replicant. In Serenity, did you see his eyes when Simon put River asleep in the Maidenhead? Glowed just like Rachael & Deck's.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 8:45 AM

DREAMTROVE

I liked the River is a Reaver idea :) BDM screwed that one.

Select to view spoiler:

You know that Voight-Kampff test of yours... Have you ever taken that test yourself, Mr. Deckard?

Pretty spartan living arrangements you have here. Do you know who the spartans were?
Wild stab - a bunch of guys from Spart?

But here's a bothersome thing which just struck me: In the book, Rachael Rosen and Pris Stratton are twins. Rewind. Neither of them is married, so...

Do the girls get last names in the movie? I'm trying to find the image of those ID profiles at the beginning where they identify the targets.

It's obvious that they won't be twins if they're not even in the same series in the movie, but why lose the names? I read that the grizzly murder of Dorothy Stratton and the jewishness of Rosen were reasons to remove those names, but Dr. Rosen is simply renamed Dr. Tyrell.

Female replicants don't have last names on the imdb page. Oh, and it's zhora, but nobody ever calls her zhora, they say zora. Fenetix?

I might make pris my avatar if I can figure out how.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 1:56 PM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

I've answered this question quite a few times here, and probably each time was in a thread started by Chris.

I prefer the non-narrated version, but I don't care for the unicorn dream sequence. If Scott had left that out my choice would be the '92 Director's Cut rather than the Final Cut. In the latter he overdubbed Baty calling Tyrell "father" instead of "fucker." The original conveyed Baty's anger and petulance so much better.

Even though there are quite a few clues that might lead you to believe Deckard was a replicant, he wasn't in the book so that's my answer too, although it is quite okay to enjoy the ambiguity.

BTW, I believe it was Dreamtrove who said that Dick had a hand in the screenplay but I don't think that was the case. He may have been consulted but it was written my Hampton Fancher and David Peoples.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 2:23 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
In the latter he overdubbed Baty calling Tyrell "father" instead of "fucker." The original conveyed Baty's anger and petulance so much better.

That's a travesty.
So many versions; so little time.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 2:46 PM

DREAMTROVE

ECGORDON,

Story and screenplay, not the same thing. The story for a movie is written first, and shows general flow, few specifics. Screenplay is the blow by blow, it's derived from the screenplay.

I read some time ago that Dick intentionally wanted to change it. I think he wasn't happy with the book's conclusion, or wanted to try something new. The book's ending is somewhat of a let down compared to the height that it reaches. Same could be said for the movie, but less so.

Basically I agree, I haven't seen the Final Cut, but "Father?" Please. What is this? A touchy feely moment where I poke your eyes out?

I like the *is* theory because it changes this from a story about cop kills "bad" guys, with the twist that the villains are sympathetic, and the hero is less so. But the ambiguity is better. Questions give you many possibilities, answers only one.

No one has yet mentioned the very early chinese american hybrid civilization. And on a Firefly forum. I suppose it doesn't touch on version. Unless there's a really dumb version I haven't seen. Bladerunner, the animated holiday special :)

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 2:46 PM

DREAMTROVE

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 6:36 PM

COZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:There are so many differences between the book and the movie that it's not even the same story.

Doesn't matter. The tensions created from all our wild grasps at deriving meaning in Dick's stories merely provide the fuel that sustains his existence in the afterlife. Y'know, as in: we believe he was writing profound stories, and Dick gets the last laugh on all of us stooges. The very absurdity inherent in actually attempting to resolve the ambiguities in his stories is exactly what Dick was counting upon to make them interesting to generations of future readers. Thus he cleverly created a franchise that's made money for the owners of his copyrited works, based upon nothing more than generating speculative examinations about his contradictory and amphetamine fueled plot lines.

For a hack, Dick was a helluva writer. Too bad he didn't live long enough to write a Firelfly teleplay or two. Dick could have gone to town on a River arc, leaving all of us FF fans perpetually confuzzled, and perpetuating a nearly infinite stream of internet forum analyses.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 6:48 PM

CHRISISALL

Cozen, an excellent comment!

The Darkly scanning Chrisisall

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