Aditya Sinha: Exploring what it means to be human

The weirdest scene in Blade Runner 2049 is a sex scene Blade runner K is an uncannily humanlike and selfaware android he knows his memories are implants and thus he is not human His only companion is his computer Joi who wants to consummate their relationship She summons a sex worker and projects a holographic image of herself onto the sex workers body She becomes the ghostinthesexmachine At the peak of passion their fingers hair and faces slide out of synch Its surreal and compelling At the moment of their most humanlike interaction she appears ghostlyBlade Runner 2049 is beautiful to watch the slow pacing allows your eyemind to linger over the images as with a gorgeous paintingIts been a few weeks since I watched the film Since then Ive been conflicted Its beautiful to watch the slow pacing allows your eyemind to linger over the images as with a gorgeous painting HoweverThe first problem is that the original Blade Runner wasnt all that great to begin with It was visually engrossing in a 1980s way and the villain Rutger Hauer was more attractive than protagonist Harrison Ford also Sean Youngs selfdiscovery was heartbreaking However it was more noir and less science fiction the way that director Ridley Scotts earlier Alien was more horror and less science fiction it was like a monster movie trapped on the sets of 2001 A Space Odyssey I watched the original film in the cinema irritated by Fords superfluous narration a directors cut over two decades later did improve things but the damage had already been doneWorse Philip K Dicks novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was superior to the film Grab a hold of this science fiction As with Dicks novels its a mindtwister In it blade runner Rick Deckard the hero is married Their banal marriage is made tolerable by emotionenhancing devices that have no effect on the replicants the androids Deckard also adores his pet electric sheep Hes still on Earth been made toxic by nuclear war though most of humanity has moved to Mars and other worlds where replicants are slave labourWhile pursuing six replicants escaped from Mars Deckard meets Rachel He is advised by a colleague to have sex with her before terminating her It turns out that Rachel far from being traumatised has had sex with half a dozen other blade runners in order to throw them off track or kill them The novels sexual politics are obviously more complex than the filmsAnother bizarre plot twist is the discovery of a parallel police HQ that Deckard never knew existed It turns out that the replicants have constructed this HQ as a trap for blade runners The parallel police chief himself is a replicantThere is a mexican standoff not with guns but with the devices to detect replicants The novel explores not just what it is to be human both films main concern but also the nature of perception the ethical treatment of subnormal humans and of animals and the definition of intimacyDicks novels are psychedelic rollercoasters that usually dont translate well to the screen I didnt care for Minority Report the short story it is based upon is far better also Steven Spielberg makes mediocre science fiction In Dicks story the protagonist is arrested because he tries to amend the minority report thereby fulfilling its prophesy The original Total Recall based on the short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is tolerable because it chooses to be camp I have postponed watching The Man in the High Castle because the novel impressed me in my youth Set in an alternative postWorld War II America where victorious Germany and Japan have divided up the US a man sets out looking for a banned book of an alternative history in which America was a winner Yes a mindfullFans have said Blade Runner 2049 is the best sequel ever they may say a movie should be seen on its own terms They may even point out that director Denis Villeneuve made better science fiction with Arrival True and one has to acknowledge the artistry of the landscapes and the colours in Villeneuves film And then theres the sex scene Im among those who believe nongratuitous intimacy scenes best define or even reveal a character that alone is worth the price of admissionBut if youre one of those who believe in Ray Kurzweils coming technological singularity when machines will gain humanlike consciousness then a more interesting meditation on what it is that separates humans from machines is Westworld a TV serial based on the 1973 film written by the late novelist Michael Crichton The Andromeda Strain Jurassic Park TV showrunners Jonathan Nolan and spouse Lisa Joy state that the paradoxes of the TV serials drama are mined from the novels of Philip K Dick He would have enjoyed that maze of ironyAditya Sinhas crime novel The CEO Who Lost His Head is available now He tweets autumnshade Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom