It's a question in every sci-fi aficionado's head...and one that Ridley Scott is still remaining tight-lipped about, 27 years after the initial release of what is now considered to be one of the best science fiction films ever made. When Blade Runner was released, it didn't meet with much success in theatres, and polarized critics on its merits. Some felt that it was nothing but an over-blown action movie, with a convoluted plot and a cardboard protagonist. Some felt that the film had no plot at all, and wondered how audiences were supposed to get anything out of a film with no real ending. Fans of the original novel (titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) were disparaged by the many themes left out of Philip K. Dick's original story. Even with Harrison Ford's explosive fame resulting from the first two films of the Star Wars trilogy, and Raiders of the Lost Ark the film only grossed $6.5 million on its weekend release. Today, however, with 5 different versions of the film on the market and 27 years' worth of processing, the film has been heralded as the stuff of science-fiction lore...the American Film Institute named Blade Runner #6 in its top ten list of science fiction films ever made, placing it on the same pedestal as A Clockwork Orange (#4), E.T. (#3), and 2001: A Space Odyssey (#1), and Rick Deckard is acclaimed as one of Ford's quintessential roles. So what happened? I could offer many reasons, including the idea that now that we are nearly through the first decade of this new millennium, we can use this film as a reference point in gauging how close we actually are to the 2019 Scott envisioned in his film. But with the adaptation of the novel, many of the 'sub-plots' were left out...including the one regarding Deckard's true identity...and thus, it is left up to the audience to determine it. The release of seven different versions of the film has provided different implications, but never many direct answers. In the original theatrical release, Deckard does not dream of a unicorn, and the film ends not with the close-up of the origami unicorn, but with an idyllic sequence, in which Deckard and Rachel escape to a pastoral landscape together. The director's cut (released in 1992) and only indirectly supervised by Scott was the first time that anyone had seen the unicorn sequence, and it was heavily implied that Deckard was a replicant, because Gaff's knowledge of the dream (and subsequent gift of the origami unicorn) implied that he had implanted the dream into Deckard's brain himself (or how could he possibly know?). This sequence of events remains in the Final Cut, released in 2007, but without the idyllic escape and minus a few lines of dialogue that place more emphasis on the idea of Deckard's being a replicant. So...the question still remains...for us and for film critics, whether or not Deckard is a replicant, and what is the significance of him being one way or another.
If he is a replicant, and, to me, Gaff's origami unicorn is a fairly strong indicator that he is, that would mean that the human race is using machines to hunt other machines, and keeping those hunting machines (the blade runners) ignorant of their 'real' identities. Some people (including my dad and Harrison Ford) are of a mind that Deckard is human...and it is important for him to be seen as human, because of the resulting optimism of the ending...if Gaff knows about the unicorn dream, that would mean that he had had the same dream, meaning that we all dream of that far-off place that modern technology and religion have dismissed, where unicorns exist among trees and sunlight and fields. Gaff subsequently becomes a sort of benevolent guide, showing Deckard and Rachel the place they should try to find before they are both killed.
So...I suppose we won't ever know...and perhaps that is one of the successes of the film, and a reason for its continued popularity. It is an amorphous plot...that can change and be changed as rapidly as technology.
