Critical Analysis of Blade Runner

The Determination between Man and Machine
The 1982 film Blade Runner has become a science fiction icon over the last two decades. Starring Harrison Ford as “Rick Deckard,” the film was directed by Ridley Scott, a magnificent director who ultimately guided the production of the hit film Gladiator. Blade Runner depicts the city of Los Angeles in the year 2019 as a dirty, overpopulated, and rundown megalopolis that is being abandoned by its inhabitants. Off world colonies is where these citizens have begun an exodus to, and is also where replicants are meant to legally reside. Because it is illegal for replicants to remain on Earth, a special branch of policemen, called blade runners, have been tasked with the duty of exterminating, or “retiring” all the replicants remaining on Earth.
Rick Deckard is one such blade runner, and as he catches suspected replicants throughout the course of the film, he interrogates each one. Using a retinal monitor of sorts, he proceeds to ask questions of each suspect that are meant to evoke a specific emotion. Replicants in Blade Runner are machines that are physically identical to humans and who have preprogrammed memories making they themselves think they are human, but who evoke a different emotional attitude than a normal human would be expected to. When a suspected replicant shows limited or no emotion, or blushes in an odd manner when asked a question, Deckard knows he has found a replicant.
As the film progresses, an ironic paradox results regarding this test known as the Voight Kampff test. The real humans that Deckard is testing seem to be showing signs of replicants, most likely because they have been forced to live in the traumatizing and cold-hearted world of 2019 Los Angeles. Because of this, Deckard has a difficult time identifying humans as really humans. On the contrary, when Deckard comes across a woman known to be a replicant, it takes almost four times as many questions to identify her as being a replicant than it ordinarily should have. In other words, she was feeling emotion, and therefore showing signs of being human. Ultimately what is discovered is that the replicants have begun to feel emotions for their fellow replicants that are being retired. In this way, the replicants seem more human than they actually are.