‘Blade Runner’ Actor Edward James Olmos Still Believes The Fan Theory Debunked By ‘2049’
Veteran character actor Edward James Olmos’s most defining role, at least of the 1980s, is arguably in Blade Runner. Before he was Jaime Escalante or Admiral William Adama, he was Gaff, the streetwise cop and ally of Harrison Ford’s Deckard.
Gaff is a pivotal character in the story, but Olmos believes there is a lot more to him than the film lets on. To the actor, Gaff is unique because of his humanity, and he takes this a step further. Olmos says Gaff is the only real Blade Runner, as the profession of pursuing and neutralizing cyborg Replicants takes a genuinely human touch. In other words, Gaff is human, and Deckard is not.
Olmos’s evidence, backed by Ridley Scott’s own interpretation, is Gaff’s infamous origami unicorn. Olmos declared, via MovieMaker, at the Santa Fe International Film Festival, that this, combined with Deckard’s dreams of unicorns, symbolizes his longing to be the human he believes he is, but is unaware that he isn’t.
Claimed Olmos, “That’s how we found out that [Deckard] was a damn replicant – and I’m the only Blade Runner in the movie!”
Harrison Ford also echoed this proclamation in interviews discussing the film. “I always knew that I was a replicant. I just wanted to push back against it, though. I think a replicant would want to believe they’re human. At least this one did,” he told Esquire via Inverse.
But that was in 2013, and since then, there have been significant developments in the lore of Blade Runner that pose problems for the long-held belief about Deckard. In 2017 came the legacy sequel Blade Runner 2049, a film that holds more weight as established canon than any private interpretation or Reddit forum.
The Denis Villeneuve project disregarded the doubters and not only confirmed Deckard is human, but that he is miraculously the daddy of a child with his Replicant lover. If you’ve seen it, you know that kid isn’t Ryan Gosling, but that’s the direction the studio went with.
You might love or hate 2049 for that, but if you’re Razorfist, you think it’s a pathetically glorified fan film either way.
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