Here we are, first adaptation critique. And it’s a goodun. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the selection of the day, along with it’s cinematic counterpart Blade Runner. Both are legends of their mediums and are stand alone successes.
The book mainly focuses on two characters: Deckard and Isidore. They are the only two characters whose thoughts are shared in the book. The two characters are complete opposites but internally they have a lot of the same motivations. Eventually their story lines converge at then climax of the book where they almost meld into the same character for a moment.
The movie follows both Deckard and the Replicants (known as Andys or Androids in the book). Even though the main character seems to be Deckard, he serves mostly as a driving device for the plot with the emotional center being around the replicants and their struggle to find a way to love longer. They are literally fighting for their lives. In the end you are left with the question of humanity. The replicants were not human beings but their struggle for life shows their humanity, you kind of sympathize for them.
Now the question is, what kind of adaptation was Blade Runner? I feel it was an intermediate adaptation. It had a lot of elements from the book, but also a lot were dropped. More elements were added to the film as well. Some of the elements kept was the main action storyline. Deckard is hired to track down the remainder of a group of escaped androids that hurt a fellow android hunter. That is the action that drives the film and the book. From there you start to see the changes. Mercerism, kipple, mood machines, empathy boxes etc. are dropped, they more than likely didn’t contribute to the story or distracted from the story the film wanted to tell. An added element was motivation for the replicants. They didn’t really have one in the book, they escaped to earth and that was about it, they didn’t really explain why. In the film, they know about their short life span and are determined find a way to live longer.
We determined that it is an intermediate adaptation they type of adaptation could be classified as an Analogy. It maintains the basic plot but changes elements to tell a different story. Like I said above they kept the main action of the book but changed the focus from Deckard and Isidore to the Replicants and their struggle.
I feel most of the changes made for the film were production driven. Changes forced to fit the medium of film rather than a book. In a movie its difficult to show internal conflict and the thoughts of a character without using a voiceover and that would not have worked well in a movie like this. The book was in the minds of two character for a majority of the book and that would have been difficult to pull off in the film. I think because of this they changed their focus from deckard to the androids. Their story in the book was the most undeveloped so it lent for the most room to make changes. Also the main focus of the film is the visual world created by Ridley Scott so the story was stripped to its bare bones and streamlined for the moviegoer. Overall it was a great adaptation in that it didn’t take away from the source material and it became a stand alone success.
Bonus hypothesis: Deckard was a replicant. Brought in after one replicant hunter was killed. They couldn’t risk another human to go after the dangerous Nexus-6s so they brought in a replicant and give him the false memory of a replicant hunter and set him loose after they escapees. He seems weaker than the others because he belives hes human and keeps his strength in line not knowing how strong he really is. Just a fun thought.
