Nexus.00: Plot Summary of Blade Runner

Blade Runner (1982 / Setting: 2019)

The year is 2019. Los Angeles is covered in smog, with acid rain falling eternally due to environmental destruction. It is a dystopia where artificial humans known as “Replicants,” manufactured by the immensely powerful Tyrell Corporation, are exploited in the shadows of human society. Designed for slave labor, combat, and as objects of amusement in the harsh Off-world colonies, they possess physical abilities and intelligence that far surpass those of humans. However, to prevent them from developing emotions through accumulated experiences and rebelling against humanity, an absolute limitation (a failsafe) of a “four-year lifespan” was built into them.

One day, three of the masterpiece “Nexus-6” models—Roy Batty, Pris, Zhora, and Leon—stage a mutiny Off-world and escape to Earth. Their objective is to extract a method to extend their lifespans from their Creator. To identify and “retire” (execute) them, the Los Angeles Police Department recalls Rick Deckard, a retired specialized investigator known as a “Blade Runner.”

Visiting the Tyrell Corporation during his investigation, Deckard meets Rachael, a state-of-the-art model (Nexus-7) who has received a memory implant from the CEO’s niece and firmly believes herself to be a real human. Deckard uses the “Voight-Kampff test” to discern that she is a Replicant, but as he witnesses the tears she sheds in despair upon learning of her false memory, he gradually finds himself drawn to her.

Deckard guns down the fleeing Zhora in the acid-rain-soaked streets and is nearly killed by an enraged Leon, but his life is saved in the nick of time by Rachael. Meanwhile, the Replicant leader, Roy Batty, uses genetic designer J.F. Sebastian to finally achieve a face-to-face meeting with his Creator, Eldon Tyrell. Resisting the impending terror of death, Roy demands, “I want more life,” but Tyrell informs him that extending his lifespan is physically impossible. Driven by despair and rage, Roy gouges out Tyrell’s eyes and brutally murders him.

At the story’s climax, Deckard dispatches Pris in Sebastian’s apartment but is immediately cornered on the roof by the arriving Roy. After a desperate struggle, Deckard nearly falls to his death, only to be pulled up and saved by Roy in the final moments before the Replicant’s lifespan expires. Leaving behind the poetic monologue, “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain,” Roy quietly passes away, and the white dove he had been holding takes flight into the sky. Surviving the ordeal, Deckard returns to his apartment and discovers an origami unicorn left by the watcher, Gaff, as if seeing right through his personal dreams. Confronted with the possibility that he, too, might be a manufactured existence, he chooses the path of fleeing into an unknown future with Rachael.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017 / Setting: 2049)

Thirty years after the previous film, the year is 2049. Following the bankruptcy of the Tyrell Corporation and a Blackout that erased all electronic data, the world has reached the extremes of further environmental collapse. The new Creator, Niander Wallace, manufactures a new model (Nexus-9) with absolute obedience to humans engineered at the genetic level, thereby dominating society. The Los Angeles Police Department Blade Runner “K” (Joe) is also a Nexus-9, created to hunt down older Replicant models. Forced to undergo regular “Baseline tests” to suppress his emotions, K lives a solitary existence, finding emotional solace only in “Joi,” a holographic AI manufactured by the Wallace Corporation.

One day, beneath a dead tree on the farm where he “retired” the older model Sapper Morton, K discovers the skeletal remains of a woman. They belong to Rachael, who had once fled with Deckard, and serve as evidence of a miracle that fundamentally overturns the world’s order: a Replicant, supposedly devoid of reproductive capabilities, had “given birth to a child from her womb.”

While receiving orders from the police to “erase the child” and being pursued by Luv, an assassin dispatched by Wallace—who fancies himself a god—K proceeds with his investigation. At the ruins of an orphanage in San Diego, covered in radioactive dust, K discovers a wooden horse engraved with the date “6-10-21.” Because this matches a memory implanted within him, he comes to believe that he is that “Miracle child.” When Dr. Ana Stelline, a memory creator confined to a sterile room, tearfully affirms that the memory is “real,” K’s existential belief becomes absolute.

K tracks down Deckard, who is living a reclusive life in the radioactively contaminated ruins of Las Vegas. However, Luv launches an assault, abducting Deckard and completely destroying Joi—who had tried to love and protect K—by crushing her Emanator underfoot. Rescued from the depths of despair by the Replicant freedom movement, K learns the cruel truth: the true Miracle child is Dr. Ana Stelline, his memories were an implant from her, and he himself was nothing more than a decoy.

Having lost the illusion of being the “chosen one” and realizing he is a nobody, K defies the freedom movement’s order to “assassinate Deckard” and resolves to save him out of his own pure will. After a fierce, mortal struggle at the massive breakwater (Sea Wall), K defeats Luv and delivers Deckard to his daughter, Ana Stelline. With everything finished, K lies on the snow-covered steps of the research facility. Though a manufactured life, he has acquired a soul through his own choices, and feeling the undeniable coldness of the snow falling onto his palm, he quietly passes away.