Wlos: Blade Runner

The 1982 American film Blade Runner is an adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick.  The movie is based off of the book, but it is still very different, Philip K. Dick expressed his distaste for the movie script by saying “When I read it, I thought ‘I will move to the Soviet Unoin where I’m completely unknown. . .” (Pfeiffer 120).  Rick Deckard, a skilled and versatile figure, who is the main character in both plots is a blatant showcase of the differences between the film and movie.  It may seem as if Deckard may appear as the same person in both the film and the book, but this is scarcely true.  The fact is that the Rick Deckard of Blade Runner is considerably different from the Rick Deckard of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.  We see this through the three major points of his motivation for hunting android, his relationship with his wife, and the way in which his android hunt ended at the close of each story.

            A strong dissimilarity is observed in the motivation that Blade Runner Rick Deckard (Film Rick Deckard) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Rick Deckard (Book Rick Deckard) have in hunting replicants.  Book Rick Deckard is driven to hunt androids because he desires the monetary payout he will receive for doing so.  He hopes to use his reward money to advance his life into a circumstance that is more ideal for his society.  Film Rick Deckard, on the other hand, is forced to hunt for androids by a threat.  This changes the way the audience perceives the significance of Deckard’s actions.

            Another apparent asymmetry between to two Deckards is the fact that a major part of Book Rick Deckard’s character action revolves around his wife, Iran.  The absence of this type of character action in Film Rick Deckard makes him a different type of character.  The audience doesn’t see him as the man with wife problems back at home.  How does this change their perception of him as a total person?  It makes him a less busy individual.

            One of the biggest contrarieties we see between the two Deckards is the way in which their android hunt ends.  Book Rick Deckard retires all of the androids himself while Film Rick Deckard finds himself nearly killed by Roy, but then saved at the end (before Roy runs out of life and dies).  When the audience sees Film Rick Deckard’s life spared, it changes the way he is perceived.  Suddenly, he’d been given a gift, he’s lucky to be alive. 

            Although the two Rick Deckards are sharply different, similarity does exist between the two.  One obvious conformity is the fact that both Rick Deckards develop some type of deep and complicated feelings for the android Rachel.  Such an occurrence gives audience member who have studied the book and the film the notion that the two Rick Deckards are indeed like-minded.

            The plenteous differences but subtle similarities between the two Rick Deckards showcase an exaggeration of the word adaptation.  The two Deckards are not replicants of each other but are adaptations, they are similar but totally different.  When one considers the fact that Blade Runner is an adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it makes absolute sense to think the characters would be adaptations of each other.  Rick Deckard proves this.

Andrew Wlos