80 Years of Robots in Hollywood

ROBOT: Rachel
QUOTE: "Replicants are like any other machine — they're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit it's not my problem."
—Blade runner Rick Deckard speaking with Rachel before either realized the truth about her.

Very often robo-plots go like this: A group of humans discovers that an artificial look-alike lurks among them and they have to determine if it's dangerous, trustworthy or lovable. (see Alien, Terminator, Stepford Wives). But in the Los Angeles of 2019 created by director Ridley Scott, the characters face the opposite scenario. The humans know who the robots are, but the robots themselves, called replicants, are the ones kept in the dark. Admired by their inventors but neglected by the rest of the world, replicants are deemed unfit for society, declared illegal and targeted to be "retired" by special cops called blade runners.

The replicants' Dr. Frankenstein is Eldon Tyrell and his Tyrell Corporation; the stiff but beautiful Rachel is Tyrell's latest and greatest experiment. Her makers implanted her brain with a lifetime's worth of memories — memories that in reality belong to Tyrell's niece. She also falls for none other than the blade runner assigned to kill her, raising questions about the human element of love, and the love element in humans.

—Malik Singleton