Blade Runner

Question: Does Voigt Kampff (sp?) mean anything?

Answer: Not specifically named for anything, but the following snippets of an essay called "Philip K Dicks Human Vision" by Kyla Bremner, shed some light on possible influences on the name: "The German and Italian names of these tests perhaps allude to the fascist regimes of Hitler (Mein Kampf perhaps?)...and the crimes against humanity which [were] perpetrated less than thirty years before Dick was writing this novel...Deckard and Bryant's discussion of Lurie Kampff, who modified Voight's scale to make the Voight-Kampff Altered Scale...[he] is deliberately portrayed as a psychiatrist in the mould of the likes of late nineteenth-century sexual psychologists such as Havelock Ellis or Richard von Krafft-Ebing, both of whom were instrumental in laying down the foundation from which Sigmund Freud developed his theories...The curious similarity between the name of the Voight-Kampff test, Krafft-Ebing's name, and Hitler's manifesto, Mein Kampf, seems to link the three in a manner that suggest they are all interrelated..."

Question: As Deckard is giving Rachel the VK test, her eyes have the golden glow to them when he asks the second question about the boy with the butterfly jars. Why does he not catch right then that she's a replicant just by seeing her eyes glow?

Quantom X

Answer: The glowing eyes phenomenon was actually an effect added by Scott, who probably thought it would look cool. Obviously he didn't think it through because it would make detecting replicants very easy indeed, and would make the VK test redundant. I believe he has said in interviews that it is intended as a cinematic effect, and is not intended to be a characteristic of the actual characters. This is one of several mistakes that the director made in the film, and which have subsequently passed into the folklore of Blade Runner.

Chosen answer: Deckard already knew that Rachel was a replicant before starting the VK test (Tyrell told him); Rachel was a new model of replicant who could supposedly beat the VK test. Deckard just wanted to see if this was true.

zendaddy621

Question: When Roy and Leon are trying to get answers out of Chew, why does Leon start rubbing eyeballs on Chew's neck and head? (00:30:45)

Quantom X

Chosen answer: To scare him. Leon's a psychopath.

CCARNI

Answer: Eyes are a major theme in the film and Chew created artificial eyes, one of which is placed on his shoulder as a strange and threatening token of his handiwork.

Answer: There doesn't appear to be any evidence for that. The names are vaguely similar, but, other than that, there's nothing to link the two.

Tailkinker

Question: Has there ever been an explanation given as to what purpose the fire belching towers seen in the initial opening scene of Los Angeles serve?

Answer: The suggestion in the future Bladerunner universe is that the planet is so over populated, that you have living areas and industry all in the same areas, hence the towers with fire.

GalahadFairlight

Question: Deckard has access to two sets of photographs, one from Leon's room in which he finds the lead to the replicant 'snake woman' and the other set belonging to Rachel. Yet Rachel's set also contains this same photograph - which is of an apparently empty room. I understand the reason for each to have their own 'precious' photos (as Roy calls them), but why would both Leon's set and Rachel's set contain the same empty room photo?

Answer: The only photo of Rachel's that Deckard has is the fake one of her family. The "empty room" photo is seen again as Deckard leafs through Leon's photos.

Grumpy Scot

Answer: Mostly it was personality clashes between Ford, Young, and also director Ridley Scott. Ford is not particularly congenial or talkative, and tended to be put off by Young's more hyper, off-beat personality. Young claims Scott wanted to date her, but she refused, and said he then treated her badly. Ford and Scott also had conflicts.

raywest

Question: Why do people in the film refer to replicants as androids and machines when (just like normal humans) they seem to be made of flesh and blood and are not mechanical?

Answer: This could start getting metaphysical but ultimately it's semantics. An android is a humanoid robot. A robot is "a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically". A machine is "a physical system using power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action". Note none of those definitions specify metal parts, or even being artificial. Human beings are machines, in the same way that human beings are animals, in literal terms, we're "just" biological machines, but we tend not to think of ourselves as such, because "human" is a more specific definition, and people like to feel that humanity confers a higher status of sorts. So it boils down to us vs. them, really - despite all of their many human traits, a lot of humans don't want to be conflated with replicants, so different terminology is used. There's also an argument to be made that as with a lot of dehumanising terms used in the present day, calling them machines helps to justify mistreatment, even though the replicants are just as capable of life and thought as humans are.

Answer: The replicants are indeed androids/machines; like Terminators, they are made to look human by adding human parts, such as skin and blood and even organs ("surrounded by living tissue", if you will). Unlike Terminators, however, they are not programmed simply to kill/destroy humans...they are simply "upgraded" versions of humans, who like all of us want to live with freedom and self-actualisation.

Audio problem: Deckard investigates the maker of artificial reptiles; an Abdul somebody. It's obvious that the dialogue was added as neither actor is in sync with the sound. The end of the scene has the storekeeper's voice telling Deckard the information he was seeking while Deckard's mouth is the one moving. Deckard's mouth continues to move even after Abdul's lines are finished and the scene cuts. This has been corrected in the 2007 Final Cut of the film, but exists in all previous versions. (00:48:45)

More mistakes in Blade Runner

Deckard: I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody's life, my life. All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.

More quotes from Blade Runner

Trivia: At the end, Batty gives his 'a time to die' speech on the roof. Rutger Hauer made up the speech himself, between an hour and half an hour before filming the scene. (01:46:15)

More trivia for Blade Runner

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