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Connection Tunnels Serpinski Seed Egg GROUP Synthetic Pleasures Brazil X Men Pisces at the Beach Highlight Quotes Deckard: "She doesn't know." Tyrell: "She's beginning to suspect I think." Deckard: "Suspect? How can it not know what it is?" Tyrell: "Commerce...." "I'm not in the business....... I am the business." -- Human Replicant Rachel Tyrell "It's to bad she won't live. But then again, who does?" "The facts of life. To make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once its been established." --Dr. Elden Tyrell Bryan: "They were designed to copy human beings in every way except their emotions, and the designers reckoned that after a few years they might develop their own emotional responses. Ya know hate, love, fear, anger, envy. So they built in a fail safe device." Deckard: "Which is what?" Bryan: "Four year life span."     -- Blade Runner       (The Directors Cut)

Highlight I love this movie, the story, the characters, the metaphors and the music. They mean a lot to me. They touch me and talk to me in many of the most cherished places in my life. Bye the way, the extended review below contains brief references to the film from beginning to end. I remember the first time I saw Blade Runner. I was young and it seemed so important to me. It provoked me to read my first Philip K. Dick novel: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The movie was great but I wanted to see The Director's Cut. I missed the core theme. I found out that one of the core themes central to any Phil Dick story was: "What is it that really makes us human?" The Director's Cut brings out that theme in a beautiful way. "What is it that really makes us human?" Deeper [A quick summary: A corporation called Tyrell makes their own human beings for profit. Are they really human? The "replicant" humans are not allowed on earth. They are worker slaves for off world work only. Four decide they want to live longer than four years. They kill a crew, steal a ship and come to Earth. Deckard the "Blade Runner" is a policeman tasked to kill these artificial humans. By the end Deckard must question his own humanity. Something potentially very benifitial, I think.] All the issues revealed in the story as relevant to the replicants are relevant to my feelings of humanity and I think to the human condition in general. To human beings. Why do we die? Why do we want to live longer? Not that I particularly want to be immortal but I don't want to die now either. Bryan: "They were designed to copy human being in every way except their emotions, and the designers reckoned that after a few years they might develop their own emotional responses. Ya know hate, love, fear, anger, envy. So they built in a fail safe device." Deckard: "Which is what?" Bryan: "Four year life span." I see the relationship of humans and replicants highlighted at every turn. "Its to bad she won't live. But then again....who does?" One of the main human characters even has a syndrome that causes him to age to fast. Humans are rebuilt on DNA code. Machines run on computer code. But how does the universe design the universal codes..... the core truths? The replicants want more life but their creator tells them: "The facts of life. To make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once its been established." - Dr. Elden Tyrell One replicant in the film was given false memories. When she finds out that she is a replicant she tells Deckard: "I'm not in the business............I am the business." Human Replicant Rachel Tyrell Sometimes I feel like a packaged product. Or rather sometimes I feel like I am viewed as just another commodity in a word of consumption..... I am too busy trying to make ends meet to take care of my friends and the things that are truly important to me.... too isolated from a world consumed with the struggle to keep up. Deckard: "She doesn't know." Tyrell: "She's beginning to suspect I think." Deckard: "Suspect? How can it not know what it is?" Tyrell: "Commerce...." I think species evolve but human beings evolve within one life time. As I search and grow I ask the questions that drive me forward, "What am I? What am I becoming? What do I want to be?" The film takes place in a dark dehumanizing city where everything is surrounded by corporate logos. Animals, humans, and environments are all artificial. Ads blare out relentlessly to give up on the Earth, "to begin again, off world." But the question of what makes us human in the film goes well beyond dehumanization. "Quite an experience to live in fear isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave?" - Human Replicant Roy Batty. Fear seems to be at the heart of so much of what I must transverse and transcend. It appears to me to be the case for the human race as well. The replicants are afraid to die. Roy has killed and watches all of his friends die and still he must die. It is very sad to me. But at the end of the film I smile and cry as life is appreciated, then cherished, then saved and then lost. "All those moments will be lost ... in time...like tears...in rain........ Time to die." In the end a life is highlighted as it is shown to be passing away ..... like a rain drop returning to an ocean. The ocean of the universe or life or consciousness or maybe even love..... from whence it came. -- Robert Carrillo Cohen Follow Ups