The book
[spoiler]We place ourselves in a catastrophic world, the year is 1992 where the Earth has result devastated product of the “World War Terminus”, a war so big that has spread the radiation all over the world, killing all the living things on it. The humans can still live there, but with the years the healthy is deteriorating. Also, the humans have emigrated to different planets all over the solar system, one of them is Mars. The only ones still on Earth are the ones too old to travel, the “specials” (dummy people) and others who don’t want to or are kind of obligated to stay and work, like Rick Deckard.
He is a bounty hunter in charge of retire the “Andys”, smart androids (physically are equal to humans because they were created with organic materials, but they have no empathy) that in the colonies help the human kind, but are forbidden on Earth, so they are fugitive and must be captured.
On Earth, just as in the colonies, and because of the radioactive war, the animals are almost extinct, and the humans wants to possess them because of the status that provide, and because of the fascination that living creatures produce (it's another way to express the empathy).
In this world, there is something called “empathy box” and when humans get connected to it, can choose to feel all the human emotions (from the other humans) and feel and see their leader, Wilbur Mercer, or can choose a feeling, like love, happiness, even sadness, and feel that way. [\spoiler]
This future world, at least on Earth, it looks really similar to what is Earth today, because it was abandoned, with the difference that exist flying vehicles, laser beams, and the empathy box. All the rest is the normal world, but worn out (at least, that's what the author tell us).
In the other hand we can ask ourselves “what is a human?”, because the androids physically are equal to humans, because of the organic materials that were used to be created. Nonetheless, they don’t have the capacity to feel empathy for others. But, all humans feel empathy for others? Or is it only a "machine" thing? Like I said, they're not machines.
We also can ask ourselves “do we want to choose our emotional states?” or do we want to take what it comes and do the best we can, learning from the mistakes and not simply just ignoring them. That’s what the empathy box, and the social thoughts tells you, to use the box and choose how you want or how you have to.
The movie
Here, the Earth was not a devastated place, and in terms of technology it was a very prosper place. There's no Isidore, no Mercer, no Buster, no Deckard's wife, etc. You can see a prosper but dark Earth, and of course, the "World War Terminus" never happened. There's no mention of the electric animals but in the androids industry, where Pris says the owl is artificial. The androids, as it's said in the introduction of the movie, are stronger than humans, but their intellectual capacities are similar to the engineers who created them.
I prefer not to speak more of the movie, I just didn't like it, at least not after reading the book.
Translation or Betrayal
Well, we could say that the movie adopts very much from the book, following the mission that Deckard has in the book, but in a way completely different. Also, the state of Earth is kind of advance, apparently there was not a war in here. There's no mention of the empathy box, nor Wilbur Mercer nor Buster Friendly. Deckard is the top "Blade Runner" (yes, he is not a bounty hunter but part of the police), a special police force.
The characters don't get to develop themselves very well, and by the way, yes, there are flying vehicles but no laser beams, just guns like the ones we know. The Voigt-Kampff test looks more like the Boneli test, and of course, this is not mentioned as very much details from the book. So, the movie is a translation very poor, and the authors do whatever they wanted on it.
This is not betrayal, is murder, at least to me.
Interesting......
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