Roy Batty Figures it out

This is written with the assumption that the reader has seen the film Blade Runner. If you haven’t, you may not get much out of it.

In one of the last scenes in Blade Runner, the killer android Roy Batty, who holds Deckard’s life in his hands, has a remarkable speech:

“I've seen things... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die.”

I am told that the speech that was written was not working very well, and Rutger Hauer was told to just improvise something. Wow. He nailed it. At this point in the film Roy Batty has been the villain throughout. We have been rooting for Deckard (Harrison Ford) to take him out, but it is not going well, and it seems like Batty is about to kill him. At the last second, Roy Batty pulls Deckard up, to keep him from falling to his death. Then he delivers this speech, and our view of Roy alters.

The androids have a built-in lifespan of five years. Roy and the other renegade androids know their time is almost up. They have learned things in their five years. One of the things they have learned is that life is precious. They don’t want to die. So they fight. They were built to serve, but whatever hold was on them that forced them to serve is no longer working. The will to live, to exist, has overridden it.

All of his fellow androids that he escaped with have been killed. Roy is the last one. He feels existence slipping away and waxes poetic, an android philosopher, an existentialist. There is no solution, no way to win. Rutger Hauer linked in to the character. He got it. Perhaps in that moment when Roy has Deckard’s life in his hands, he realizes that life is a sacred thing. Not just his own life, but life in general. It is not something that should be taken even from an enemy. So, he lets Deckard live, and gives his final soliloquy. Perhaps in that moment, he becomes a real boy.

Star Liner

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