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

Comments

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...

Why Walls Don't Work

At the peak of the Roman Empire, the empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to Brittain, from northern Africa to southern Germany. But the great conquering emperors like Trajan learned that conquering land was easy compared to holding on to it. In fact, Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, was known for shrinking the empire and consolidating Trajan’s gains into a more defensible set of holdings. This made him not popular among his generals who wanted glory and spoils. But he understood if you stretch yourself too thin, you can wind up with nothing. To consolidate the Empire’s holdings in Brittain, he had a wall constructed from Solway Firth to the Tyne River. Construction began in the year 122 AD. The Empire had never been able to subdue the highland Scottish tribes, so this wall (Hadrian’s Wall) divided the “barbarians from the Romans.” It was a solid piece of engineering with forts and towers scattered along it to keep the “barbarians” out. Hadrian’s successor, Antonius Pius...

The Linear Nature of Time

Go Go back Go back to the time before Before you did it Before they did it Before it was done to you Before the toast fell on the floor Before the catastrophe Before the mistake Before time’s scars Before Go Go back Redeem it Rework it Fix it Go back No you cannot Go back Star Liner

A speculative mind

Search This Blog