It's 2049.
It's dusty and red, and "Ryan Gosling", of course, has a cool jacket.
- I know.
- It's 'Blade Runner' time.
"Ridley Scott's" 1982 sci-fi classic gets a sequel this year.
So it's time to look back at the inspiration for the original,
"Philip K Dick's" 1968 novel 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'.
I'm "Clint Gage," I'm "Michael Trully".
And without further ado and no restraint on spoilers,
it's time to ask what's the difference?
(Music)
First of all, it should be noted there have been seven different versions of
'Blade Runner' released in some form.
>From the 1982 original theatrical release to the 2007 final cut,
which is the one we're using because it's supposedly the only one "Ridley Scott" had
complete creative control over.
And also because, why not?
Also, do 'Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' was turned into a comic book series
back in 2009.
But they literally put the entire text of the book in there.
Normally we like using the graphic novel stuff, but damn it,
there's too many words on there.
So we're looking at "Philip K Dick's" original novel.
All that to say 'Blade Runner' falls squarely into the category of inspired by
more than based on.
Actually the best way to put it might even be the screen writers were familiar with
the book.
The basic premise of the book and movie are the same.
A man hunts cutting edge androids who are illegally hiding out on Earth.
But there aren't many similarities beyond that, narratively speaking.
They do however share a lot of the same ideas.
But let's start with the obvious stuff, like the setting.
The book is set in a semi-post apocalyptic San Francisco.
A nuclear war known as, world war terminus,
has left the planet nearly uninhabitable and covered with irradiated dust.
Like so irradiated dudes even have to wear lead cod pieces when they go outside to
keep from going sterile.
It's changed people's physical appearance, their moods, and
some known as chicken heads have even had their brains addled by the radiation.
Most people on Earth either died during the war or
have immigrated to an off-world colony.
So, some neighborhoods are, you know, kind of lonely.
"Ridley Scott's" film strips away much of that way-out science fiction framework.
Instead, it takes place in Los Angeles in 2019.
It's just a dark, rainy, and overpopulated future that doesn't venture much further
down the sci-fi rabbit hole than that.
Then, we meet the 'Blade Runner' himself.
"Harrison Ford's" "Rick Deckard" is just minding his own business,
grabbing some Chinese food in the rain.
- Give me four.
(Foreign) - No, four.
Two, two, four.
(Foreign) - He's retired and I don't know,
maybe he's enjoying it.
Seems kind of crummy.
But point is,
he's not making his living retiring replicants as a blade runner anymore.
But soon enough,
his old boss strong arms him back into the job after "Deckard's" colleague gets blown
away by one of the replicants while administering a Voit-Kampff empathy test.
The test all blade runners use to identify replicants.
(Music)
In the book, however, "Deckard" is married.
The book opens with he and
his wife "Iran" getting into a spat about what to dial into their mood organs.
Which are little boxes that allow you to dial up the emotion of your choice.
That is some for real out there sci-fi stuff, dude.
Yeah, also, "Deckard" is not retired.
He's still hunting androids, still armed with a Voight-Kampff, but he works for
the SFPD, and he picks up the bounties on the androids after a colleague is nearly
lasered to death, and the terminology is different.
The term blade runner for example, doesn't appear in the book at all.
In fact, it's a term borrowed from a different book all together.
While this particular model is called the Nexus 6 and
both mediums, book "Deckard" refers to them as andys.
While the term replicants was an invention by the screenwriters.
Movie "Deckard" begins his investigation at the Tyrell Corporation
where he meets "Eldon Tyrell" and
"Rachel", a highly sophisticated replicant that doesn't know that she's a replicant.
It takes nearly 100 questions on the Voight-Kampff test for
"Deckard" to figure it out.
Way more than the usual 30 he claims it takes to spot a replicant.
- She's a replicant, isn't she.
- I'm impressed.
- In the book, "Deckard" meets with "Eldon Rosen" of the Rosen Association where he
also meets and tests "Rachel".
But after a few questions when "Deckard" is sure "Rachel" is a replicant,
"Eldon" and "Rachel" are like, ha, got you she's totally a real human.
She's just crazy because she was born on a spaceship.
The old I'm a human but
I was born on a spaceship routine, a dance as old as androids.
Yep, it was 14 years on a space-ship with minimal human contact that had her testing
like an android when she's just a sociopath.
But, "Deckard" doesn't buy it, and
a few leading questions later he's like (Sound) I got you.
The old jk, you were right all along, a dance as old as highly evolved androids.
But "Rachel", like her movie counterpart also didn't know that she's an android.
(Bleep).
Or at least claims not to know, which makes "Deckard" feel bad for her,
the same way his movie counterpart does.
Weird gotchas aside, this scene does bring up an important similarity between
the book and the movie, empathy, the very thing the Voight-Kampff test measures.
In the film,
meeting "Rachel" causes "Deckard" to look at replicants differently.
It's not quite so explicit, but "Deckard" feels sorry for "Rachel",
as well as the other replicants he's hunting.
Even drinking himself to sleep after tracking down his next target.
He clearly does not feel good about retiring replicants.
The book however, makes a much bigger deal out of empathy.
It's the cornerstone of the almost apocalyptic world of the book.
"Philip K Dick's" book dives into most more detail about the culture of the post
world war terminus world and it's all built around empathy.
People are obsessed with owning animals,
taking good care of them as a sign of just how empathic they are.
"Deckard's" main reason for getting the bounties on the escaped androids is to
afford to buy a real goat to replace the electric sheep he and his wife own.
Their religion known as Mercerism has people connect
to others taking part in the ritual through what seems like a VR simulation.
Then you watch old man "Mercer" climb a hill while being pelted with rocks.
He gets up to the top of the hill then falls back down,
then starts climbing up again.
You feel the pain of the rocks hitting "Mercer", but
you also feel the joy of everybody you're connected to.
"Deckard's" never cared much for it and always has trouble merging, but
his wife "Iran" digs it.
The point is it's a religion based around creating empathy for your fellow man.
The other point is, it's not in the movie at all.
What is in both the book and the movie is the rest of "Deckard's" investigation as
he tracks down the other fugitive androids.
The biggest difference however,
happens when "Deckard" runs into a fellow bounty hunter.
While tracking an android hiding in plain sight as a famous opera singer, "Deckard"
gets scooped up by a police officer who claims to have never heard of him.
The cop even takes "Deckard" to a police station "Deckard's" never heard of before,
to meet a police captain who also indicates that "Deckard's"
whole life has been imagined or hallucinated.
Or worse yet, implanted, and this starts a long series of events where "Deckard" and
I, the humble book half of this episode, began to wonder whether "Deckard" was
either an android himself or possibly just a man gon crazy in the semi apocalypse.
Turns out it's neither of those.
It was a whole pocket of androids who set up a closed loop system posing as a police
department in the middle of San Francisco, trying to pull a fast one.
But there's a decent chunk of the middle of the book dedicated to "Deckard"
wondering if he's a replicate or not,
even hooking himself up to the Voit-Kampff machine to make sure he's still human.
It's even how he discovers that he has indeed developed empathy for the androids.
The old hook yourself up with electrodes to see if you got the hots for
an android routine.
- Ahh, ahh.
- But, speaking of hot androids on the run,
replicants featured in the movie include "Leon", who's super strong.
- Wake up.
Time to die.
- Pris, who's all cartwheely.
(Noise) "Zora" whose a snake themed exotic dancer and
"Roy Batty", the combat ready model who doubles as their leader.
They've returned to Earth with plans to track down "Eldon Tyrell" and
force him to extend their four year life span.
They look, think and act like humans,
why should they not also be given the chance to live as long as humans?
- You were made as well as we could make you.
But not to last.
- In the book, it's "Polokov" a tough and
rough android posing as a Russian bounty hunter.
"Luba Luft", the aforementioned opera singer.
"Pris", the basically the same as the movie one.
And "Roy" and "Irmgard Batty".
Whereas movie "Roy" is a warrior, book "Roy" is a pharmacist.
He and his wife, "Irmgard" lead a fairly normal life on Mars before they decided,
nobody, not even androids should have to live in the conditions on Mars.
They thought they had as much right to see Earth before they expired as any humans,
so here they are.
Ultimately, movie "Decard" is able to track down the fugitive replicants.
He retires "Zora" then "Rachel" helps him out with "Leon" before he
moves onto "Pris" and a final confrontation with "Roy".
In the movie, the cat and mouse game through the old Bradbury building and
across its rooftops ends with "Roy's" iconic tears in the rain speech.
A speech that moves "Deckard" to fully understand how desperately these
replicants want to be human.
To live long lives and not be forgotten to history in such a short time.
- All those moments will be lost
in time, like (Sound) tears.
(Music)
In the rain.
- So, he goes back home, grabs his new replicant lady love, and
takes off out on the lam.
The final showdown with the androids in the book is a little less climactic.
"Deckard" finds them and retires them all with relative ease.
The only difficult one being "Pris" who was of the same model as "Rachel".
You know, his andy lady fling.
During his final hunt, "Wilbur Mercer" appears to "Deckard" in
some sort of hallucination, warning him that "Pris" was sneaking up behind him.
"Deckard", who again never put much stock in Mercerism,
is moved to give it another shot.
After retiring "Roy" in "Irmgard Batty", he takes off for
an uninhabitable part of the Pacific Northwest.
It's there he has a vision, thinking he himself is "Wilbur Mercer".
Even finds a live toad so high fives all around for "Deckard" I suppose.
because everyone thought they were extinct.
Chock full of the religious experience, "Deckard" hustles home to his wife,
proud of himself and his toad, only to find that "Rachel" had been
there just moments earlier and thrown his new goat off the roof.
To make things worse, his wife pretty quickly points out that the toad is
a fake, an electric simulation of the real deal.
So what does "Deckard" do when faced with all this hardship?
He goes to sleep.
He's just like, (Bleep) this, nevermind.
I got better things to do in my dreams where I can be (Bleep) anything I want.
And perhaps the most significant difference between the book and
the movie is evident in how they end.
In the book, "Deckard" is stripped of the empathy he's worked hard to foster,
making the whole novel about how being a human has largely become the same as being
an android.
You're programmed by a mood organ, the religion in your Mercer empathy box,
even the simple task of taking care of an animal, becomes your whole existence.
Just like an android.
The humans of the world in 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'
are imbued with no extra purpose than the very machines they are creating.
Boom, let that (Bleep) resonate in your soul, readers.
Meanwhile, 'Blade Runner' ends on the hopeful note of the dour "Rick Deckard"
finding some solace and some meaning in a relationship with a replicant.
But is he himself a replicant?
Unclear, "Harrison Ford" and "Ridley Scott" have differing opinions, and
maybe we'll find out in 'Blade Runner 2049', but in the meantime, who cares?
'Blade Runner' is a story of replicants wanting to be more like humans.
And a blade runner, human, replicant or otherwise,
who finally finds some human connection with one of them.
And 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' asks the reader if their own life is
any different than that of an android?
But interestingly,
"Deckard" may not even be the most clear example of this difference.
Let's look at the story of "John Isidor", a chicken head who lives alone in
an abandoned apartment building out in what used to be the suburbs.
His brain is scrambled by the radioactive dust and "Isador" just mindlessly goes
about his day to day with no real purpose until the androids show up.
Like his movie counterpart, "Pris" drops into his life and suddenly helping out
these persecuted androids gives him a job to do and a happier life because of it.
He's like a roomba, spinning around in the corner of your living room until you
spill some crumbs for it to come clean up.
And then you're like, (Sound) come here, boy.
Who wants to eat?
Are you hungry?
Eat it up? Meanwhile, in the movie,
"Isidore" is the inspiration for "JF Sebastian".
He lives alone in the Bradbury building, stuck on earth because he's got
Methuselah Syndrome, a glandular disorder that causes him to age too quickly.
The unnaturally short lifespan gives him something in common with the replicants
that show up at his door, so of course he takes them in.
- I don't think there's another human being in the the whole world who would
have helped us.
- So the change in this supporting characters mirrors the change in "Deckard"
and the real difference between the book and the movie.
Instead of a book about humans finding solace in robotic-like purpose,
we get a movie about isolated people finally finding comfort and
humanity in the company of androids.
That'll do it for this episode of What's The Difference?
Make sure to subscribe to Cinefix for more.
And truly, you mind hooking me up to a Voit-Kampff machine for a minute.
There's a chance I've got the hots for that robot over there.
Dude just go talk to her, it.
It slash her.
I have to know if it's real first.
(Sound) I should have stayed gone.