Blade Runner: Is Deckard a Replicant? The old argument

I don’t know how many times I have watched Blade Runner, but I remember distinctly the first time I saw it. I would have been about 10 years old and my baby sitter had rented the video. Up till then I had been a die hard Starwars fan, but this dark and beautiful film captured me and even now it has never lost it’s edge no matter how many times I watch it.

The first time I came to Japan I took the limousine bus from Narita airport into the centre of Tokyo, it would have been late November when the days were short, so the sun set early and the blue sky was replaced by an orange black glow, punctuated with neon and the strangely shaped shadows of skyscrapers crowned with communications antennae. I truly felt as if I had driven onto the set of Blade Runner, with the spaghetti like expressways giving the trip the illusion of flying through the futuristic cityscape.

Ridley Scott has called Blade Runner his most personal and complete film and originally both he and Harrison Ford denied that Deckard was a Replicant. I always found this hard to believe, as for me the numerous clues in the original version made this a certainty. The glowing eyes, dreams of unicorns and the script etc. I was inclined to believe that this ambiguity had been worked into the movie by choice and that the subsequent ruminations about it made for good press worthy material, possibly pushed by the studio (who had fought long and hard for more of an Action movie and a stronger ending).

The directors cut and more recent comments by Ridley Scott have completely set the record straight on the matter and there can be no doubt that Deckard is indeed a Replicant in this version of the movie.

So Why the Question?
Last night I watched the old version of the movie again by chance, with perhaps more objective (from age) eyes. I am now of the opinion that the hinting in this movie is an accident that that wishful thinking had me convinced otherwise.

So to anyone who may have had me pushing this point down their neck at 3am after a couple (or few) nightcaps (you know who you are!) I apologise, I now consider the case closed. It’s only taken me 27 years.