Central to the story of “Blade Runner” and its sequel, “Blade Runner 2049,” are Replicants. In the movies’ future, Replicants are artificial beings created to serve as slave labor in a variety of roles.
What exactly are Replicants, though? Their exact nature is never quite discussed in either movie, although things are made a bit clearer in “Blade Runner 2049.” By and large, Replicants look like regular people, but they’re genetically engineered and created artificially. They’re considered “machines,” but they’re not quite robots in the sense we usually think of the term.
In the original movie, Replicants were used for tough jobs that humans couldn’t handle or didn’t want. That mostly concerned colonizing other planets, participating in combat, and the like. The Nexus 6 model Replicants, the ones seen in the movie, are stronger than regular humans and at least as smart as their designers.
We know for sure that Replicants are biological creatures who are manufactured, but not robots inside, as seen in movies like “The Terminator.” When people like Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) call them machines, they’re referring to the fact that they’re manufactured. The Replicants in “Blade Runner” have a limitation on their lifespans of four years in order to keep them from rising up against their creators, and to limit issues with their emotional development.
Since Replicants are born fully formed, they don’t have the time to develop emotions as humans do when they’re children. That gives them emotional problems that get worse as they age. It also means they don’t fully develop empathy, which is why Deckard and other Blade Runners use an empathy test (called “Voight-Kampff” after its creators in the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” on which “Blade Runner” is based) to tell Replicants from regular humans.
In “Blade Runner,” Replicants are illegal on Earth, and special police officers called Blade Runners are tasked with finding, identifying and “retiring” (killing) them.
The Tyrell Corporation, the business that created Replicants, is trying to make Replicants more stable and more human-like by giving them false memories. We find out in “Blade Runner 2049” that Rachael, a prototype Replicant Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel) had given the memories of his niece, wasn’t a Nexus 6 (with a short lifespan), but rather a new Nexus 7. The last model created by the Tyrell Corp. was the Nexus 8, which had an open-ended lifespan and implanted memories. That made the Voight-Kampff test obsolete, and new Replicants instead had a serial number added to their eyes to make them easier to identify.
The Tyrell Corp. went out of business after Replicants were declared illegal everywhere following more violence and uprisings (Tyrell himself was killed by the Replicants in “Blade Runner”). Industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) bought the company and convinced the government to lift sanctions against Replicants. He created the Nexus 9 model, which is designed to be more obedient than previous Replicants.
In “Blade Runner 2049,” Replicants are still genetically engineered humans, but they’ve been tweaked to make them less likely to resist human control. They’re still considered second-class citizens by society at large, and their use as slave labor in colonizing other planets has led humanity to expand to nine new worlds.
Like “Blade Runner,” the question at the center of “Blade Runner 2049” concerns what it means to be human, and whether Replicants are, in fact, people.
15 'Blade Runner' Callbacks in 'Blade Runner 2049' (Photos)
Though they're separated by 30 years in the movies' universe and even more time in our world, "Blade Runner 2049" includes lots of callbacks to the original "Blade Runner." From plot points that directly reference the original 1982 film, to visual Easter Eggs scattered throughout, "Blade Runner 2049" scatters its references pretty liberally. Warning: Spoilers within!
Blade Runners
Both films are named for special police officers called Blade Runners that specialize in identifying, hunting down and "retiring" renegade Replicants. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) was a particularly good Blade Runner in the original movie, and Officer K (Ryan Gosling) picks up the mantle in the new movie.
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Replicants
Genetically engineered humans known as Replicants (which aren't actually robots, but they are artificial people) are used for slave labor, combat and difficult, dangerous jobs in the "Blade Runner" universe. In the first movie, their lifespans are limited to keep them from violent uprisings and developing nascent emotions. Replicants were banned after uprisings and violence after the first movie, but Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) developed a way to make them more obedient, reviving the business and creating a new model of more obedient Replicants, the Nexus-9s.
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Memories
Memory is a major plot point and theme throughout both "Blade Runner" movies. In the first, the Tyrell Corporation was beginning to use implanted false memories to help Replicants develop human emotions -- he gave Rachael the memories of his niece. In "Blade Runner 2049," implanted memories are standard in all Replicants, but the use of real human memories (as opposed to manufactured ones) is illegal.
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Rick Deckard
The Blade Runner from the original film is a central figure in the mystery of "Blade Runner 2049." Ford reprises the role, as trailers have made clear. Deckard still has a penchant for whiskey even 30 years later.
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Tyrell Corporation
Back in 2019, Tyrell was the company responsible for first creating Replicants. The company had created six different iterations by the time of "Blade Runner," but eventually collapsed after Tyrell was killed in the first movie and Replicants repeatedly went renegade. The company was bought, and the Replicant business was salvaged by Wallace in the 2030s. Tyrell's iconic pyramid is still a major part of the L.A. skyline, and the company's motto, "More human than human" is referenced as well.
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Rachael
In “Blade Runner,” Rachael (Sean Young) worked for the Tyrell Corporation but turned out to be a Replicant. Apparently, a prototype made by industrialist Eldon Tyrell, Rachael had implanted memories that made her believe she was human, rather than a Replicant. She and Deckard fell in love and escaped L.A. together. “Blade Runner 2049” reveals that Rachael was a Nexus-7 model, which means she might not have had the limited four-year lifespan of the Nexus-6 Replicants (among other changes, like her implanted memories).
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Gaff’s origami
When Deckard returned to the job in “Blade Runner,” he was paired with Gaff (Edward James Olmos), another officer. Gaff didn’t talk much, but he often communicated by creating origami animals. He does so again when he appears briefly in “Blade Runner 2049,” creating an origami sheep that references the Philip K. Dick novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, from which “Blade Runner” is adapted.
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Cityspeak
The weird language spoken by various people throughout Los Angeles is a hybrid known as Cityspeak. The person who primarily speaks it in “Blade Runner” is Gaff, and Olmos invented most of it during the course of filming. The language pops up from time to time in “Blade Runner 2049” as well.
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Artificial animals
Environmental calamity (or maybe nuclear war — it’s never really clear) has ruined the world of “Blade Runner,” resulting in the endless rains and suffocating fog surrounding Los Angeles in the films. Another casualty: animals. Genetically engineered artificial animals are mentioned a few times in “Blade Runner.” K pointedly asks whether a dog is real in “Blade Runner 2049,” showing things haven’t gotten much better on the environmental front.
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"Skinjob"
The derogatory term used for Replicants refers to the fact that they look human but technically are not. In “Blade Runner,” Deckard’s lieutenant in the LAPD first uses the term. In “Blade Runner 2049,” another officer slings the slur at Officer K early in the movie. (The term also shows up in the 2004 "Battlestar Galactica" reboot, which features genetically engineered artificial people and stars Edward James Olmos, as a "Blade Runner" reference.)
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The wasp
Empathy toward other living creatures is a key point in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and "Blade Runner." During Rachael's Voight-Kampff test in "Blade Runner," Deckard asks her what she would do if she saw a wasp crawling on her arm. "I'd kill it," she quickly replies. In "Blade Runner 2049," K has a moment in which a bee lands on his hand, and he pointedly watches it without hurting it. It's not quite a wasp, but the similarity doesn't seem like an accident.
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Eyes
Both "Blade Runner" and "Blade Runner 2049" use close-up shots of eyes early in the film -- while not revealing exactly whose eyes are being shown, or whether they belong to humans or Replicants. In "Blade Runner," Replicant Roy Batty visits a genetic designer who created his Nexus-6 eyes. Replicant characters in the first movie are also often lit so their eyes shine.
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Pan Am
Pan Am was once the largest international airline carrier in the U.S. The airline collapsed in 1991, but when the future of “Blade Runner” was imagined in 1982, the company still existed in 2019. And it persists even further into the future in “Blade Runner 2049.”
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Atari
Video game publisher Atari came into prominence in the 1970s and was a big deal in the burgeoning gaming market by 1982. Since then, the company has been split up and acquired numerous times. It hasn’t fared as well as it did in the “Blade Runner” universe, where its huge ads appear both in 2019 and 2049.
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The wooden horse
K spends a lot of “Blade Runner 2049” trying to figure out the importance of a wooden horse, which is a particular clue in his investigation. It’s not a stretch to see the horse related to the unicorn that featured prominently in later cuts of “Blade Runner.” In the director’s cut and “Final Cut” of “Blade Runner,” Deckard saw a vision of a unicorn throughout the film, and the movie ends with him finding an origami unicorn left behind at his apartment by Gaff. It’s the unicorn that forms the main evidence that Deckard might have been a Replicant in the first film.
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The sequel to ”Blade Runner“ makes plenty of sly and overt references to the original
Though they're separated by 30 years in the movies' universe and even more time in our world, "Blade Runner 2049" includes lots of callbacks to the original "Blade Runner." From plot points that directly reference the original 1982 film, to visual Easter Eggs scattered throughout, "Blade Runner 2049" scatters its references pretty liberally. Warning: Spoilers within!
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