Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy

The film’s overall message here is that we have lost our humanity, the ability to feel and love; replicants should be designed around human values like empathy and love, and that they should be treated like humans

Capitalist realism, according to Mark Fisher, is a kind of capitalist exceptionalism, a widespread sense that “not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it” (Capitalist Realism, p. 2)

Blade runners need to use the Voight-Kampff Test to gauge replicants’ emotional reactions, showing just how little biology shapes their identity (remember, Deckard nearly fails to identify Rachael as a replicant). As Bryant tells Deckard, “They were designed to copy human beings in every way except their emotions”—and even their emotional immaturity is not exceptionally non-human, given their youth and inexperience.

Blade Runner is more purely constructivist. Unlike other prominent artificial beings in science fiction, such as Data in Star Trek and the T-800 in Terminator 2, Blade Runner’s replicants are presented as nearly indistinguishable from humans. There is no metal or wiring underneath their skin.

Identity is complicated and multifaceted.

The bigotry K faces in his apartment complex suggests that even humans without access to advanced police tools can find ways to uncover a replicant’s true identity

Both the power structures of society and individual prejudices reinforce the boundaries between replicants and humans.

Perhaps more importantly, both films treat replicant identity like an ethnic identity.

Replicants come across as fundamentally human, save for their persecution by humanity.

Such strong emotion renders him too unpredictable, too dangerous, and useless as a cold-blooded killing machine