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.
I always liked it. It wasn’t overwrought or overacted, and it was a nice subversion of the excessively violent battles that mark the conclusion of movies in this genre. The symbolism of the nail through Roy Batty’s hand and the dove imagery should be obvious, though a lot of armchair critics like to be clever and read too much elaboration where I don’t think further meaning was intended. Visually, Rutger Hauer ridiculously menacing stare while he watches Deckard struggle belies his peaceful turn of character.
Reading up on it, it’s a highly-regarded piece of cinema by most standards, and arguably the best in science-fiction film. One thing I noticed is that much of the monologue is world-building. Batty spends nearly half (21 words) of the total words (43) in the monologue what ends up being a bit of technobabble. Very well-written technobabble; without knowing anything more about Batty’s memories, you can visualize what he’s remembering. In this sense, Batty subverts usual monologue conventions by making the sentiment very particular to his character. Monologues tend to be universally understandable and “portable,” in the sense that one doesn’t need to know much more about the setting to understand it. Despite how easy it is to picture the scenes Batty describe, the monologue is forever branded as science-fiction because of his specificity. The strength of the writing, acting, and cinematography, I think, turned this specificity into an asset.