Spoiler Warning and the Short Answer
Spoiler warning. This video gives away the whole ending of Philip K. Dick’s novel, and the plot of the film Blade Runner. If you want to come in fresh, pause now and come back later.
Here is the short answer. The film kept the chase: a weary bounty hunter, a test that tells humans from machines, and a group of escaped androids. It dropped much of what made the book strange: a religion built on pain, a wife with a mood dial, and a hunt for a real animal. In my view, it is a different story in the same coat. That is my opinion.
Which Film I Mean
First, the film, as of October twenty twenty-six, and everything about it is reported, not my own viewing. Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner, from a script by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. It came out in nineteen eighty-two, with Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and Sean Young.
There is more than one cut. When I say the film, I mean the nineteen eighty-two American theatrical cut, which has Deckard’s voice-over narration and a happy ending that the studio added. The nineteen ninety-two Director’s Cut and the two thousand seven Final Cut both remove them. I will say when a cut matters.
The book came first, in nineteen sixty-eight. It has twenty-two chapters and, by my own count of the text, about sixty-two thousand words. I read every one of them, and I checked each book detail here against the page. So the book side is read, and the film side is reported.
The Book in One Minute
Rick Deckard wakes to a Penfield mood organ, a box that dials a feeling into you. His wife Iran dials despair on purpose. On the roof grazes their sheep, and it is electric. The real one, Groucho, died of tetanus, and Rick had a replica built.
After a world war, living animals are the great status symbol, and owning a fake is something people whisper about. Rick wants a real animal badly, and he hunts androids for money, a thousand dollars each. Eight Nexus-six androids have escaped to Earth. The senior bounty hunter, Dave Holden, got two before he was shot, and that leaves six for Rick.
Mercerism, the Religion the Film Dropped
Now the first big cut. Almost everyone in the book follows Wilbur Mercer. You grip the two handles of an empathy box and fuse with an old man climbing a barren hill while rocks hit him. The pain is real enough to cut your arm. Mercer’s rule is that you shall kill only the killers, and Rick tells himself that fits his job.
The word Mercer, counting Mercerism, appears one hundred twenty-seven times in my count of the text. Reported summaries say the film leaves the whole religion out. Two separate sources agree on that, and it is the single biggest cut. The empathy boxes, the hill and the rocks are all gone from the story.
Late in the book, the TV host Buster Friendly claims Mercer is a fraud. He says the hill is painted, the rocks are plastic and the blood is catsup, and that Mercer is an old actor named Al Jarry.
Then Mercer appears to the character Isidore and admits it. He says I am a fraud. But nothing changes, because the people who need him are still here. To me, that is the book’s boldest idea: belief survives the exposé. That is my reading.
Electric Animals and the Goat
The second cut is the animal plot, which is the book’s main quest. Sidney’s catalogue lists every animal, and an italic price means none in stock. The word extinct is printed in the book again and again.
Rick finally gets his chance. He spends his whole bounty, three thousand dollars, as the down payment on a black Nubian goat. Iran is thrilled. Then the android Rachael pushes the goat off the roof.
The book also treats cruelty to small life as an alarm bell. Isidore finds a live spider, and Pris cuts its legs off with scissors to see what it will do. Isidore begs her to stop, and nobody listens. In my view, it is the cruelest small scene in the book.
Reports say the film drops this quest. It keeps only background touches, such as an owl in the Tyrell office that Rachael confirms is artificial. The book has an artificial owl too, and the owl is the one animal the film kept.
The Empathy Test
Both stories hinge on a test. In the book it is the Voigt-Kampff scale. Rick sticks a patch on your cheek, shines a light in your eye and watches two needles while he asks about a calfskin wallet, a butterfly killing jar and boiled dog.
The idea is simple. Humans feel something for animals, and Rick thinks of androids as solitary predators. The test is also imperfect, because the book mentions psychiatrists who fear some humans could fail it.
The film keeps the test, but it spells it Voight-Kampff. Reported plot summaries open with the bounty hunter Holden testing a man named Leon, who shoots him. In the book, Holden is shot before the story reaches us, by the android Polokov. So both versions begin with a hunter already down.
The test also does something the film never needed. Rick begins to feel for the android singer Luba Luft, and after she dies he asks his colleague Phil Resch whether androids have souls. The book’s hunter starts to doubt his own empathy.
Rachael and the Corporation
The book’s Rachael Rosen belongs to the Rosen Association, the company that makes the androids. Rick tests her, decides she is an android, and her uncle Eldon admits they programmed her completely. She did not know.
Then she seduces him. She says it is a company tactic she has used on bounty hunters nine times, and she wants to stop Rick from retiring any more androids. When it fails, she pushes the goat off the roof.
The film changes the company to the Tyrell Corporation. Its Rachael is also an android with implanted memories, but reports describe her as tender, and she falls in love with Deckard. Her coldness and spite are gone.
A Clock the Book Never Sets
There is another change. Reported summaries say the film gives its replicants a built-in four year life span. The book is vaguer. Rachael says she has existed two years and will wear out, and Rick guesses about two more.
The word replicant is the film’s own. Two sources say it is unique to the film, and the novel says andy instead. The film also reduces the escaped group. The book has eight escapees and six to hunt, while reports name four replicants for Deckard to retire: Leon, Roy, Zhora and Pris.
In the book, the last three are Roy Baty, his wife Irmgard and Pris Stratton, who is the same model as Rachael. Rick thinks of Rachael as the prototype, used by her maker to protect the others.
How the Book Ends
Here is the book’s finish. Rick tracks the last three to the building where Isidore lives. Mercer appears and warns him that the hard one is behind him on the stairs. It looks like Rachael, but it is Pris, and Rick shoots her. Then he kills Irmgard and Roy.
Six today, he thinks. Isidore watches it all and sobs. Rick phones the police and then heads home. On the roof Iran meets him and tells him the goat is dead.
Rick flies north into the desert and climbs a hillside. A real rock hits him, and for once he feels Mercer’s pain alone. Then he finds a toad that was believed extinct, and he carries it home in a box.
Iran opens its belly and finds a control panel. The toad is electric. Rick says he would prefer to know, and that the electric things have lives too, paltry as they are. So that is where the toad went: nowhere, because it was never alive.
How the Film Ends
The film ends differently, and it depends on the cut. In the theatrical cut, reports describe a happier ending that the studio added, with Deckard narrating over it. The director’s cut and the final cut drop that ending.
I am only giving the outline. I have two sources for the broad shape, and I will not describe scenes that I cannot confirm. If you want the full film ending, watch it and judge it for yourself.
Notice the gap. The book ends on grief and a fake toad that Rick chooses to cherish. The theatrical film ends by offering escape. That is a real difference in what each story wants you to feel.
Kept, Cut and Changed
Here is the table. Kept: a bounty hunter named Deckard, a test for spotting androids, escaped machines, an artificial owl and Rachael with false memories.
Cut: Mercerism and the empathy boxes, Iran and the quest for a real animal. I found no sign of Buster Friendly in the reported plot, so I will not call that a confirmed cut. Treat these lines as the reported shape of the film, not my own viewing.
Changed: androids become replicants, the Rosen Association becomes the Tyrell Corporation, and Isidore becomes a different character named J. F. Sebastian. Rachael turns warm, and the eight escapees become four. Those are the reported changes, row by row.
What the Film Added
The film also added things the novel never had. There is Deckard’s voice-over, in the theatrical cut only. There is the four year clock. And there is the question of whether Deckard himself is an android.
Two sources say that last question comes from the film makers, not from Dick. In the book, Rick tests Phil Resch and finds him human, and I found no sign that anyone doubts Rick. The book simply never raises it about him.
My Verdict and the Sequel
Now my opinion, and it is a draft. If you want ideas, read the book. It has the religion, the electric animals, the wife and the toad. If you want a streamlined chase, try the film.
If you want the cut closest to its director’s wishes, reports say that is the Final Cut. If you want the studio version, that is the theatrical one. That choice is yours, and I mean it.
A sequel, Blade Runner twenty forty-nine, followed in twenty seventeen, and that is all I will say about it. I have not read or watched it for this video, so I will not guess.
Your Turn
That is the novel against the film. Tell me in the comments: was the toad the right ending, or would you have kept the film’s escape?
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