Entertainment
24 Years Later, the Greatest Quote in Sci-Fi Thriller History Still Gives Me Chills
With human experiences being so subjective, it’s easy to overhype a movie. Whatever things happened to you in the lead-up to seeing that movie could influence how you feel about it, and if someone tells you that something is the best thing ever, it could set your expectations too high and leave you disappointed. That being said, I still think Rutger Hauer’s climactic speech in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is one of the best things ever depicted in a movie.
Blade Runner is generally regarded as a sci-fi masterpiece, even separated from Hauer’s speech, and it has an 89 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (which is too low). It also says a lot that Harrison Ford’s starring role as futuristic cop Rick Deckard is just one step or so below Han Solo and Indiana Jones in terms of iconic movie characters. In addition to him and Hauer, the movie stars Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, and Daryl Hannah.
What Is the Great ‘Blade Runner’ Quote?
The plot of Blade Runner concerns Rick Deckard’s mission to “retire” (meaning kill) a group of rogue replicants — essentially advanced robots that are practically indistinguishable from humans but often have superior strength and intelligence. Replicants have predetermined lifespans, and the rogue ones in the movie are mostly just trying to find a way to prolong their brief lives. Eventually, Deckard tracks them all down and kills them except for one, Hauer’s Roy Batty, who was designed for military combat.
Batty and Deckard fight, with Batty easily winning just as his lifespan is about to end. Given a chance to let Deckard die, Batty saves his life instead and laments the fact that his own life is over:
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
And then he dies, releasing a dove that he had grabbed and letting it fly up into the sky.
Why Is the ‘Blade Runner’ Speech So Incredible?
There are a lot of reasons why this is so good: First, Hauer’s delivery is both chilling and heartbreaking, and every word seems carefully considered — the way he says “people,” as if he’s spitting out venom, is particularly brilliant. There’s also the fact, which may not be clear to people who aren’t big Blade Runner fans, that he’s not referring to things that are ever acknowledged in the movie. We don’t know what it means for C-beams to glitter near the Tannhäuser Gate, because we don’t know what any of those things are. It underlines the fact that Batty has had life experiences beyond what anyone else can comprehend, and, when he dies, they’ll just be gone.
Even better: Hauer largely came up with the speech himself, with the “tears in rain” bit being his own improvisation. Different versions of the speech had been written in the script, but Hauer thought they were all a little much and cut out most of it without telling anyone because he wanted to preserve what he thought Batty’s thought process would be at the moment of his death. Ridley Scott evidently approved, because it’s in the movie, and it has helped make Blade Runner an unforgettable sci-fi classic.
- Release Date
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June 25, 1982
- Runtime
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118 minutes
- Writers
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David Webb Peoples, Hampton Fancher, Philip K. Dick
- Producers
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Michael Deeley, Run Run Shaw