Blade Runner 2049: We take the Voight-Kampff test

In anticipation of Blade Runner 2049 we went over to the Tyrell Corporation and put the Voight-Kampff test on a new prototype film critic. This is a transcript of what happened.

Blade Runner: Response time is a factor so please pay attention and answer as quickly as you can. Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind when you think about Blade Runner?

Critic: Replicants. Rain. Harrison. Hauer. Hannah. Noir. 1982. November. AA. Is this like an IQ test? I think I’ve already had one of those.

Just don’t move. What’s AA? Are you an alcoholic?

AA was the certificate Blade Runner received at the time. Under-14s couldn’t get in to see it. I was ten. Not even close, but a huge fan of Harrison Ford. Han Solo in Star Wars; Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981. I even saw Force 10 from Navarone and Hanover Street. Britain’s answer to Evel Knievel – Eddie Kidd – did a motorcycle stunt. Unable to see the movie, I got the tie-in edition of the Philip K. Dick novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The book is dark and confusing. Rick Deckard is a schlub, a working stiff with a mad wife. He worries about his electrical animal and wears a lead codpiece because of radiation. There were no photographs in the fanzines of Harrison Ford, or an electric sheep for that matter, but I couldn’t wait to see the film.

It’s your birthday. Your mother buys you a calfskin wallet and an ex-rental VHS cassette of Blade Runner.

I wouldn’t accept it and I’d report her to… No, wait. It was a chunky Warner Bros cassette: the home entertainment equivalent of a hardback book. After tanking at the box office and being roundly flattened by the critics, it was on VHS the film would attain a cult status.

Cult? Why cult?

Although Warner Bros wanted a Star Wars scale success, Ridley Scott’s film had more in common with The Conversation. A brooding film of moral ambiguity starring a man in a raincoat was going up against ET. Watching it today, the film is so small. Nothing is at stake. Harrison Ford has to take out four androids. If he doesn’t do it, someone else will. Maybe the police will bully him a bit – "You know the score pal" – but none of it is a compelling rationale for shooting a woman in the back four times. He shoots two unarmed women. It’s brutal. He’s a slave catcher with a drink problem, who falls in love with a runaway. About the halfway mark, the film hinges and Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) takes over as the main character. His Blake-misquoting punk is a truly tragic figure, working out the value of life even as he faces his own accelerated doom.

You're watching television, suddenly you notice a wasp crawling on your arm.

I’d kill it. I mean, I wouldn’t. Oh damn it. I’ve failed, haven’t I? The Voight-Kampff test is supposed to work out if you’re human or replicant by measuring emotional response through physical reactions…

Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response... fluctuation of the pupil... involuntary dilation of the iris.

Exactly. And all this is central to the question of the film. What does it mean to be a human being? What defines our humanity? Dick believed it to be empathy. And not just empathy to each other. That would be a form of projected narcissism. Think of the "Golden Rule" Jesus was always banging on about – do unto others as you would have others do unto you. There’s a see-saw of reciprocity and self-interest. The empathy tested in Blade Runner is about something else: our treatment of animals.

You're watching a stage play – a banquet is in progress. The guests are enjoying an appetiser of raw oysters. The entrée consists of boiled dog.

In 2019, most of the animals are dead which means they have such economic and sentimental value that what you just said would shock a human being. The answer I give isn’t really important. It’s my emotional response. A replicant would be “so what?”

Is that your answer?

But the irony of the film is that the audience watching the film for the most part are likewise unmoved by calfskin wallets and spiders outside the window – orange body, green legs etc. The whole question about whether Rick Deckard is a replicant is irrelevant. The real secret is we are all replicants trying to pass as human.

Wait. Is that an admission?

The whole film is a Voight-Kampff test and we all fail. Except we don’t.

What? Now I’m confused.

The Voight-Kampff test is for empathy and animals are chosen because they are not human, and yet are capable of suffering. The same could be true of replicants themselves. So if at the end of Blade Runner we feel sorry for Roy Batty, the Nexus 6 Replicant something that is not human and yet capable of suffering, then we have proven our humanity and made this whole Turing Test utterly irrelevant.

One last question: You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see Ryan Gosling. He’s walking toward you. You reach down, you flip Gosling over on his back. Gosling lays on his back, his belly baking in the hot sun, beating his legs trying to turn himself over, but he can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?

Gangster Squad.

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Blade Runner 2049 is released on 5 Oct via Sony.