Harrison Ford has pulled a sudden about face over a major plot disagreement with Blade Runner director, Ridley Scott. And it’s only taken 40 years.
A major, major spoiler for Blade Runner follows.
Harrison Ford has built a legendary career out of playing immensely-watchable grumpy fellas and more power to him. He’s also known to be a little on the grumpy side himself sometimes, and never more so that when it comes to chatting about the iconic movie, Blade Runner, the 1982 film that he made alongside director, Ridley Scott.
The pair famously fell out during the rather problematic production, with a fair few bones of contention between them. One particular point of argument was that they couldn’t agree whether Ford’s character and the film’s protagonist, Deckard, was a human being or a synthetic replicant. When your leading man and your director can’t even agree on the fundamental existential nature of the film’s leading character, that’s something of a problem, we’d imagine.
In the years since the original film’s 1982 release, Scott has kind of ‘won’ that argument by going back and tinkering with the movie on a couple of occasions, releasing recut versions that reframe Ford’s character squarely as a replicant. In the past, when he’s been persuaded to talk about it (which isn’t often), Ford has unsurprisingly taken the opposite view.
Until now, some 40 years after the fact.
Ford has been working with Marvel lately and perhaps he’s stumbled across the idea of a retcon (retroactive conversion) for the first time, something Marvel Comics has been doing for decades. Because now, the actor is contradicting his previous statements and claiming that he always knew Deckard wasn’t human. “I always knew that I was a replicant,” he told Esquire whilst promoting the new Indy movie, Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny, “I just wanted to push back against it though. I think a replicant would want to believe that they’re human. At least this one did.”
Harrison Ford walking something back? Perhaps he’s been replaced by a replicant, we wonder? Should this news be shaking the foundations of your worldview, fear not. It will probably only be a few years before Scott tinkers with Blade Runner all over again and the fevered speculation can begin anew.
Esquire
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