I recently acquired the 4-disc reissue of Blade Runner, which looks gorgeous in its newest iteration. The set, of course, contains several versions of the film, including the much-loved/hated (depending on to whom you discuss it) theatrical cut, with the voiceover, the happy ending, etc. I was watching this version (which wasn't as bad as I'd been led to believe, although the narration is not really that necessary and kinda dopey at times) and it occurred to me that the whole "Is Deckard a replicant?" argument is pretty much a non-starter in the original version, since we're in his head for much of the time, hearing his non-android thoughts, and the notorious pieces of evidence (i.e. the unicorn dream) are not in attendance. And I think that the movie is better for it.
Let's be honest--if Deckard is a replicant (and that is very strongly implied in the more recent cuts), then there really isn't a central human character in the story. It's a hell of a twist, but it's crappy storytelling, because if the film is about the differences between humans and androids (which contributes to the usual Dickian argument about what makes a person a person), that contrast doesn't work with the most important human suddenly becoming an android in the new cuts. Much better to have him act in a mechanistic, robotic fashion and have the robots act in surprisingly human ways--that's where the contrast should take place. I think the best way to move the interpretation of the "final" cut in that direction is to say that the unicorn imagery is not so much literal as symbolic and figurative--an extension of the animal-free Earth depicted in the movie--that is, to say that the unicorn is just as mythical as other animal life, existing only in imaginary and synthetic forms, not unlike the rest of humanity, no?
