Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? vs. Blade Runner

Comparison of Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Differences:

The film and the novel are very similar in many ways. They follow the same premise and have very similar characters. However, like most novels made into films, there are many differences between the two. This section will focus on ways in which they are different.

The setting in the movie and the book are very different. The book takes place in the year 2021 in San Francisco after World War Terminus has taken place. The city has become very desolate from the radioactivity and there is very little life left. There are very few animals living freely in the wild. The animals that do remain are owned as pets. Those humans that were able to leave Earth moved to Mars. However, the movie is set in 2019 in Los Angeles. Although the landscape has also become almost uninhabitable, there was no war that caused it. The city is filled with pollution because of the major industrialization that occured. The natural landscape has disappeared due to the futuristic city turning everything natural into an industrial wasteland. Again, there are very few animals that exist but the people are not concerned with owning them. The people that left Earth went to the off-world colony, which is given no specific planet name.

The androids in the film are also very different than those in the book. In the book, they are called androids and they are being hunted by bounty hunters. Also, the androids are created by the Rosen Association. There are eight androids that arrived on Earth in the book, including Max Polokov, Luba Luft, Garland, Pris Stratton, Roy and Irmgard Baty, and two others that Holden got before Deckard was given the assignment. There is no apparent reason as to why the androids decided to kill their masters on Mars and come to Earth.

In the film, the androids are called replicants and they are produced by the Tyrell Corportaion. They are hunted by Blade Runners and there are only five that arrive, one of which is killed before Deckard is given the cases. The replicants come to Earth with the intension to extended their lives, due to the automatic "fail-safe" device that ends their lives after four years. The remaining four replicants are Leon Kowalski, Pris, Roy Batty, and Zhora. The androids themselves are also different in the book and the movie. Even though Pris is a very similar character in both, she has a few different qualities. For example, in the book, Pris is identical to Rachael and lives in the building where Isodore lives. In the movie, Pris looks very different from Rachael and hides outside of Sebastians building until he offers to let her come up to his apartment. Also, in the film Roy doesn't have a wife but appears the have romantic feelings towards Pris whereas he has a wife, Irmgard, in the book.

Other characters are different between the book and the movie as well. In the book, Deckard is unhappily married and very focused on buying an animal. He also received the assignments because the man above him was shot by an android. In the movie, Deckard is single, doesn't own an animal or desire one, and retired from the business. He goes back to being a Blade Runner because he is the best in the business and the man that was on the case, Holden, was shot. They need Deckard to take over. Another difference between the Deckard in the book and the Deckard in the movie is the idea of him potentially being an android himself. In the book, Deckard has taken the Voigt-Kampff test and is indeed a human, even though he sometimes questions himself. However, in the movie, Deckard never takes the test and could possibly be an android. It is never known for certain that Deckard is a human in movie.

J.R. Isodore is a character in the book (named J.F. Sebastian in the movie) that is a "chickenhead" and is mentally disabled. He was not allowed to leave Earth because his I.Q. is too low. He works for a vet company and drives the truck to pick up mechanical animals that need to be fixed. However, in the movie, J.F. Sebastian is a genetic designer who builds mechanical toys for the Tyrell Corporation. The reason he is not allowed to emigrate to the off-world colony is because he has a disease called Methuselah Syndrom and was unable to pass the medical test.

Another difference between the film and the novel is the belief in Mercerism. The book is strongly focused on the idea of Mercerism as a religious-type way of life but Mercerism does not exist in the film. Also, the characters in the book use their empathy boxes and mood organs often to give them false emotions but these do not exist in the film.

Analysis:

There are many obvious differences between the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the film, Blade Runner. Although the two are based on roughly the same premise, they portray very different themes and problems in society. According to Maria Carreon in her article, "Blade Runner vs. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "While the Novel illuminates a wide range of topics from humanity, relationships, technology, and religion to environment, war and animal extinction, the Film focuses primarily on artificiality, romance, relationships, and mortality," (1).

The film and the novel differ greatly in their portrayals of androids and humans. "In the Film, the differences between humans and androids are stripped away and by the end, we see almost no distinction at all," (Carreon 4). The viewers sympathize much more with the replicants than they do with the androids in the novel because the replicants are seen as much more human-like. Unlike the replicants, the androids of the novel still have their distinguishing characteristics that make it possible to tell the difference between them and the humans. As Kevin McNamara points out in his article, "'Blade Runner's' Post-Individual Worldspace", "It may be that the film's replicants continue to fail the Voigt-Kampff empathy test, but they nevertheless manifest an equal claim to occupy the emotional Real. After all, the test does not measure feelings; it detects only the physical manifestations from which emotion may be inferred," (440).

Replicants have real emotions and can have real relationships with humans, unlike the androids in the book. This is seen most clearly in Deckard's relationship with Rachael. "In the Novel, the attraction between them results in Deckard committing adultery, while Rachael turns out to be a conniving android wholly devoid of empathy or real emotion and poised for vitriol and revenge. In the Film, their relationship is sweet and Rachael has no ill intensions - only precious vulnerabilities," (Carreon 2). It is clear in the novel that Rachael only pretends to have feelings for Deckard, as Dick portrays androids of being incapable of real emotions. Not only does she sleep with him only to prevent him from killing future androids, she also kills Deckard's goat, his most prized possession. However, in the film, Rachael and Deckard have an actual relationship and she is seen as having true feelings for him, something that the Dick's androids were not able to possess.

Like Rachael, Roy also "...appears to be sensitive to emotions and to have a heightened conscience...During his final scene, before his death, Roy spares Deckard's life and expresses a desire to live - as he does throughout the Film. This desire does not seem to be based in pure selfishness and lack of empathy, but in a belief that his human experience has been worth no less than Deckard's," (Carreon 3). There are few distinguishing factors between humans and replicants, causing the viewers to be sympathetic towards them, much unlike the novel.

In the novel, "...it is very difficult to feel that replicants are truly indistinguishable from humans, because they always seem to act without ever having a compassionate instinct," (Carreon 3). Every time the reader begins to identify with an android in the novel, the android does something to create a void. There are "'a number of incidents, including their torture of the spider, their attempts to undermine Mercerism, and their inability to participate in that empathic experience [that] all make clear in the novel that the androids are meant to be understood as evil and inhuman,'" (McNamara 435). It is nearly impossible to truly relate to the androids in the novel with their complete lack of real emotions.

Another reason it is easier to relate to the replicants than it is to the androids is the way in which they die. According to McNamara, "An android, if shot, may 'burst and parts of it [fly]' (195), or its 'brain box bl[o]w into pieces' (82), but it will not bleed-as Scott's replicants will," (433). This again shows the human side of the replicants that the androids lack. The fact that they bleed when killed and never appear to be robotic makes the replicants seem much more relatable and the viewers feel sorry for them when they are killed. The death of an android, on the other hand, seems much less real since robotic parts are exposed. There is a disconnect from them when their non-human nature is revealed and their death is easier to justify given their lack of human characteristics. It is easier to rationalize the death of a machine than the death of something nearly human.

Not only does the viewer relate more to the replicants in the film than to the androids in the novel, but Deckard does also. "Scott's Deckard increasingly identifies himself with the replicants as another victim of social and economic exploitation and as someone who experiences feelings he is not supposed to have. While Dick's Deckard also undergoes his moments of doubt, he overcomes them in a manner that relegitimates the order he has served and that serves him," (McNamara 432). Deckard in the film relates much more to the replicants and eventually falls in love and runs away with one in the end. Deckard's feelings towards the androids/replicants are also seen in the reasons that he carries out his assignment. In the novel, Deckard has the motivation to keep working of earning money to buy a real animal. However, in the film, Deckard was given an order. In fact, he was a retired blade runner in the beginning of the film. As Douglas Williams explains in his essay, "Ideology as Dystopia: An Interpretation of 'Blade Runner'", "...he had retired as a replicant hunter because the machines he was obliged to destroy had become so much more life-like with each passing model that he could no longer hide behind the Orwellian euphemism of 'retiring' them," (386). Due to the incapability of Deckard's colleagues to retire the replicants, he was called in to finish the job and wasn't given a choice. While Dick's Deckard did develop somewhat of a moral conscience against his job, Scott's Deckard seemed more concerned overall with being a killer. He saw fewer and fewer differences between himself and his targets, making it much more difficult for him to kill them. "At the heart of the Film, the only thing that Deckard considers his enemy is also the only thing that means anything to him. The android. This differs from the Novel, where androids represent nothing aside from the negative entities whose motives we cannot ultimately relate to," (Carreon 4).

Many critics, including Jonathan Cowie in his article "Blade Runner vs. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", have suggested, "that Rick Deckard may unknowingly be a replicant," (4). Although it is known in the novel that Deckard is indeed human, since he passed the Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test, the film never confirms nor denies his origin. In the film, Deckard never takes the Voigt-Kampff test, although it is suggested to him. He is also told, in his briefing with Bryant, that six replicants escaped from the off-world colony, however, only five are mentioned (one that was previously killed and the four that Deckard has to retire). Some critics believe that the sixth replicant is Deckard and, like Rachael, he has no idea that he is a replicant because he has false memories planted in his brain. One proof given to this idea is the tune that Deckard plays on the piano. While alone and back at his apartment, Deckard plays a short tune and later in the film while Deckard is asleep, Rachael plays the same tune. Many speculate that both Deckard and Rachael were implanted with the same memory of the tune when they were produced (Dirks). If Deckard is indeed an android, it could explain why he identifies with the replicants more in the film than he does as a human in the novel.

It is clear that there are many thematic differences between the film and the novel. "Ridley Scott chose to make a love story and a commentary on mortality instead [the novel] is a story about what it is to be a man in a decrepit, war-ravaged world that is filled with reminders of death, and a real apocalypse," (Carreon 5). The film focuses much more on the idea of mortality. This is the reason that the replicants came to earth in the first place, to extend their lives, and Deckard is more concerned with his mortality than in the novel. He also has to focus more on mortality given that he is in love with Rachael and she only has a set amount of time left with him. On the other hand, "the issues addressed in the Novel weigh far heavier on a global conscience than those of Ridley Scott's Film, which takes place on a smaller scale due to the lack of questions concerning the fate of humanity and earth itself," (Carreon 5). As Carreon points out, the novel is set in a post-war world that focuses on death, extinction, and the global world ending as we know it, whereas the film barely hints at any of these issues. "Dick's own explanation that 'the theme of the book is that Deckard is dehumanized by tracking down androids,'" (McNamara 434). In the novel, Deckard becomes detached from his emotions by retiring androids but in the film, that same job forces him to become more human and more in touch with his emotions. All of these differences make for two very different stories focused around a similar basis. While the film and the movie are distinct in their own ways, both Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? have been very successful.

*****

Created by Allison Jones, Depauw University

Questions/Comments? Email:

allisonjones_2013@depauw.edu

Last Updated November 23, 2009