If he was a replicant...

My assumption: his skills as a Blade Runner are largely derived from implanted memories — like Rachel's — and being aware of his nature would introduce doubt that (a) would impair his performance and (b) potentially make him dangerous to his superiors because his ethical foundation for doing what he does is that replicants are different and destroying them is justified, a view that would be compromised by the knowledge that he was one himself.

Well that's a risk when a non-writer injects a gimmick into a writer's story. If the film had stayed closer to the novel, many of these forum conversation/debates wouldn't exist. Scott's gimmick was actually a misunderstanding. Scott misunderstood a scene description written by People's. Scott thought People's was implying Deckard was a replicant, but People's clarified that was not his intent.

Too late, Scott ran with that gimmick without thinking how it changes the dynamics of the story. P.K. Dick was shown 20 minutes of footage and gave his endorsement, but he died before knowing Scott turned Deckard into a replicant.

The reason it took so long for DADOES to migrate to film is because Dick had witnessed other authors having the core of their stories changed by Hollywood. So for years, Dick turned down script after script proposals. We will never know what he would have thought of Scott's gimmick. Would he have liked Scott's gimmick, or would he see it as the betrayal he feared for so many years?



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One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces.