I watched Blade Runner for the first time last weekend. (The movie came out before I was born, so I feel like I should get a little bit of a pass on not having seen it).

The film plays with some of the themes we’ve seen in more recent sci fi, AI, and robot movies. I’m thinking specifically of Ex Machina. If forced to bin both films in the same category, I’d say these are two movies that take seriously the question, what if robots did have emotions?

One of the things I appreciated about Blade Runner is that there are scenes in which the bad robots—the “Nexus-6 Replicants”—seem literally overwhelmed by their emotions. (Though, I’ll admit, my interpretation might be heavily influenced of the phase of parenting I’m in).

The creator of this robotic world, Dr. Eldon Tyrell, had enough foresight to recognize that the replicants would behave even more like humans if they were given memories. So he gave them all memories.

What he (on my interpretation) failed to realize is that, in addition to a lifetime’s worth of memories, adult humans also have a lifetime’s worth of experience learning to manage their emotions—learning to feel without becoming crushed by those feelings.

That is, perhaps, the most relatable thing about the Nexus 6 Replicants. Their murder spree is, you know, less relatable.

It is worth noting that this imagined dystopia that Ridley Scott gave us back in 1982 was set in—wait for it—two thousand and nineteen. Needless to say, robotics technology has not developed at the rate that sci fi writers, directors, and even serious technology prognosticators of the early 1980s anticipated.

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