Bill R Boggess
Member
It doesn't change a thing. In a way it strengthens the end. Batty passes the empathy test. One of the questions at the start to Leon is paraphrased as "You see a tortoise flipped over, its belly baking in the hot sun, and it can't flip over, not without your help...but you're not helping." What do we think that Batty views a man dangling on the edge of a building? He doesn't care if its a human, animal, robot, etc. he just saves it.
I didnt say it changed anything.
My point is that Deckard being human serves the overarching thematic better because the film is largely rooted in the question of what it means to be human.
Roys decision to save Deckard is still poignant, regardless of whether Deckard is a skin job, but if Deckard is human and Roy knows this and saves him regardless, he is acting with more empathy and subsequent humanity than the human being who has been hunting him and his kind.
I dont think Deckard being a Replicant destroys the ending, as some have posited, but I certainly feel that his decision to help a human carries more significance than helping a fellow Replicant who has been fooled into working against his own kind.