Blade Runner: The Final Cut

A futuristic cityscape at night features towering skyscrapers lit by neon lights and digital billboards. A flying vehicle hovers mid-air, contributing to the scene’s cyberpunk atmosphere.

In the future year of 2019, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a blade runner, a member of the LAPD who specializes in tracking down rogue bioengineered humans known as replicants. After another blade runner is killed in the pursuit of four replicants, Deckard is assigned the case in his stead and must now “retire” the fugitives.


Based on the Phillip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the film deals both with issues of class and existentialism. With the collapse of Earth’s environment, many of the richest humans have paid to move off-world, oftentimes buying replicant servants—produced for commercial sale by the Tyrell Corporation—to further improve their quality of life. Despite the artificial production of the replicants, they are, however, completely sentient and visually indistinguishable from humans. Deckard’s chase of the replicants calls into question the morality of producing and selling human simulacra, as well as whether or not Deckard’s experiences are more real than those of the replicants he pursues.


Part of our "Human Resources" series. Courtesy of Warner Bros. and Swank Motion Pictures.

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