3. Roy Batty – Blade Runner (1982)
Roy Batty is a pretty menacing guy. He’s a big man who has the confidence to rock bleach-blond hair and the sort of penetrating gaze that only hypnotists and maniacs usually possess.
Batty seemingly falls into the latter category, but actually, by reframing the narrative of Blade Runner, he’s hardly the villain he appears to be.
A combat model replicant manufactured specifically to be physically superior (but still entirely subservient) to humans, Batty is Rick Deckard’s target for having gone rogue with a small band of other replicants. His reason: he wants to live a little longer.
As a replicant, Batty is programmed to live for just four years. So, not only was he made to be as physically and intellectually capable as the most impressive humans, but he was also born into the world knowing he’d only live for four short years as little more than a slave. It’s not hard to see why he resorts to such drastic measures to try to secure a little more life for himself, particularly as he’s served mankind for almost all of his remarkably short life.
When you look at Blade Runner from a slightly different perspective, Rick Deckard spends the movie hunting and killing four-year-olds – whose biggest crime is possessing the will to live – at the behest of an ultra-powerful corporation.