Pajiba

It was never stated clearly that Deckard is a replicant, so they could just ignore all of that for this film.

I do like the idea of setting the film shortly after the original and having Deckard age rapidly though.

csb: Considering Ridley Scott has said that his intention was for Deckard to be a replicant and Blade Runner is one of his favorite/most personal films, I would be really surprised if they ignored that in a sequel. Essentially, from his perspective, doing that would alter the original.

"Romney" already has a definition as a verb: To defecate in terror.
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Romney

I'm willing to accept your definition of "ridley" but it seems awful close to lucassing.

@Blake Shrapnel and Jay

How so? Many stories deal with notion that those who are persecuted and enslaved will find more to appreciate and value in life than their jaded masters who take things for granted. Finding more humanity and compassion within machines built for servitude than within their creators isn't a surprising theme to find!

The fact that Deckard, though not aware of his true nature, and who started out as jaded and disinterested in his task as you would expect from one who had no personal stake in it, began to seek reason in his orders, and in the end, openly rebelled against them, is a solid theme and hardly destructive to the narrative.

In fact I always kinda took that as a principal point of the movie!

@Jay
Because if Deckard is a replicant his transformation, as well as Roy's are "Profound, but technically meaningless". Deckard and Roy are simply sympathizing with and saving their own kind, not learning the value of life as a whole. Also It would mean that Roy has not let go of his anger and has not reached peace at the end of his life.

But Roy has no idea Deckard isn't human. His personal journey and that last act of mercy are pure, regardless of whatever Deckard turns out to be. That coupled with Rachel challenging the Voit-Kampf test past what had been previously been thought possible shows that empathy isn't beyond the reach of replicants. That they're capable of achieving humanity.

@MurderBot, Boscobarbell
Yes, but the converse of this is that Deckard's execution of of the replicant girl in the middle of the film shows that cruelty and (mostly) senseless violence are not solely replicant traits, but human as well. Up untill that point in the film, every act of violence has been committed by a replicant. Deckard's retirement of the girl, which verges on cold blooded murder, smashes our preconceptions about humans and replicants, and sets up the film's climax. This would be lost if Deckard was a replicant

@Blake Shrapnel

But what it shows instead is a pattern of human behaviour possibly worse than direct violence. "Got a dirty job that needs taking care of, make a replicant do it!"

Have to disagree Blake Shrapnel - I think the central theme is more about self-knowledge and how that informs behavior. The line "how can it not know what it is" is echoed throughout the film. That Deckerd thinks he is human is what intially allows him to hunt his own kind. Rachel of course complicates his self-knowledge.

The poignancy of the film is that the Deckerd (and the audience) comes to see that the Voit-Kampf test is ultimately meaningless because, as Deckerd unravels the thin line between human and replicant, humanity isn't necessarily as reductive as being human.

Good lord I hope Sir Ridley doesn't ruin this. If he does, that will simply be further proof that this is the darkest timeline.

I have very low hopes for this if Harrison Ford is attached. Your two ideas that would allow him to be a replicant still living in the film are not bad.

As for the debate here, if one of the points of the film is to imbue humanity with appreciation of life by way of machines that have attained an appreciation for life, thus essentially rendering them equivalent, then doesn't the question of whether Deckard is human or not become moot? We still learned the lesson over the course of the film because we thought he was human at the time. Making him a replicant is just a cool twist/reminder that in this universe it truly *doesn't* matter if he is human or not.

I myself like to think of him as a replicant, but I prefer the version of the film that leaves the question ambiguous (i.e., the unicorn dream is an o.k. coincidence, but replicant-glistening eyes are a little much). The ambiguity reiterates that the answer is not the point.

If Deckard is a replicant, then old Harrison Ford could be a different Deckard, or even a different character all together. They could have covered up his escape, and replaced him periodically with older models.

I'm surprised you haven't reported on the other Harrison Ford related news. Please, allow me.

The long-awaited sequal to Air Force One is finally being released. President Marshall is back, but this time in space! After overturning the 22nd amendment and being elected to the presidency for the sixth straight term, our glorious benefactor President Marshall finally oversees humanity's expansion into the great beyond. We colonize the moon and harness the infinite power of the sun. But all is not peaceful in the Expanded Galactic Republic of Earthmerica. During our colonization of Mars, we exposed the native martians to too many diseases, nearly wiping them out entirely. And one fateful day, a militant martian corsair takes over the President's lunarch sub-light schooner and tries to fly it into the sun. Luckily for all aboard, and indeed for all of humanity (who will perish when the resulting gravo-gamma radiation from the ship's core reacts with the sun's fission beacon), President Marshall is on the scene. He uses his robotic cyber-enhancements and beats back the amorphous martian tyrant, saving himself, all of humanity, and most importantly Anna Maria his precious daughter (played by Megan Fox). It's going to be called Air Force Two: The Sequel and it's due to be released Christmas of 2013.

Harrison Ford: murdering his legacy one sequel at a time.

I thought only Nexus-6 models had the truly limited lifespan due to them being supermen. Tyrell hints that lower models of replicants sometimes come to him and he can remove the limits on their lifespan. I've always assumed Deckard was one of these.