Does Blade Runner 2049’s Teaser Hint That Rick Deckard Is Not A Replicant?

Blade Runner 2049’s announcement trailer was unleashed onto the web the other day, which excited many of us fans, but I’m starting to wonder whether Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard will be confirmed to be a replicant in this sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 science-fiction masterpiece.

According to Ridley Scott the answer’s pretty simple, in his eyes Rick Deckard is a replicant. If you’ve seen the subsequent cuts of Blade Runner, the filmmaker’s made this point very clear. There’s the dream sequence with the unicorn and then the fact that Deckard picks up an origami unicorn near the end of the film, which is supposed to confirm that Harrison Ford’s replicant hunter is in fact one himself. There are also the glinting eyes, which is supposed to affirm that Deckard is not human after all. However, will Denis Villeneuve’s movie go along with this fact? After having seen the teaser and hearing what the Quebecois director’s been saying, things might not quite as clearcut as Scott made them out to be. Check out the trailer below.

I did your job once, I was good at it.

During an interview with the French website Allociné, Denis Villeneuve was asked whether the fact that Harrison Ford’s Deckard was in Blade Runner 2049 confirmed whether he’s a replicant or not, to which the filmmaker replied,“Not necessarily.” Think about it logically, we know that Tyrell Corporation’s Nexus-6’s life span only lasted four years. Judging by this trailer, Deckard’s been able to last a bit longer than that and has visibly aged, no CGI trickery here to make Ford look younger. So this got me wondering whether Villeneuve and Scott decided to make Deckard human, which would solve a lot of those issues.

Denis Villeneuve, Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling all discussing Blade Runner 2049.

Things were simpler then.

Another possibility is that Deckard is a different model entirely, one which can live as long as a human. Or, this might not even be the Rick Deckard we knew from the movies… Think about that for a second. Whatever ends up happening in Blade Runner 2049, I have complete faith in Denis Villeneuve and believe that he’ll make an outstanding movie. After having seen his incredible film Arrival, and the other films he’s made such as Sicario, Prisoners and Incendies, there’s no denying that he’s a very talented filmmaker. If Blade Runner 2049’s trailer is anything to go by, he’s certainly captured the look, feel and sound of the original.