BLADE RUNNER
(US, 1982)
Now available on DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray
Five-film boxsets include the original US version, the International version, the Workprint (all 1982), the Director's Cut (1992), and the new Final Cut (2007).
Well, wow. It’s about time I talked a little about my favourite film. The perfect opportunity has arisen with the new boxset releases that include a new Final Cut of the film. It's not a review of the film, but thoughts on the new version.
After a delay of five years for legal haggling, the 20th anniversary release has become a 25th anniversary. While the wait has been unbearable, hopefully the extras have had time to be almost perfect! But I was expecting more of a fanfare, aside from all the advertising. The tenth anniversary gained a wide theatrical release, and this version is much more different than the so-called 'Director’s Cut'.
For years I’ve been fuming about the Director’s Cut eclipsing the original International Version that I first saw in 1982 (a much more violent version than was seen in the States). The Director’s Cut lost the violence, the narration and the happy ending. But it was little more than an intermediate edit for the new Final Cut and deserves to be ditched in the scheme of things as little more than a castrated reissue. Of course, it’s now had a shelf life of 15 years and been the only version ever available on DVD, versus the original’s 10 year reign which only made it to VHS panned and scanned, only ever widescreen on laserdisc. The Director’s Cut has been the most seen, but least interesting version. The unicorn shot was the only additional footage, lifted from out-takes from Legend (which was filmed after Blade Runner, fuelling rumours that Ridley had made up the scene afterwards).
I’m obsessed with many films, but this one has preoccupied me the most. It’s so dense, layered in meaning, visuals, music... I love the production design of the film, the cast, the special effects, the accurate-looking future, the emotions, the richness of the cinematography… I could go on.
It was released at a time when journalism was starting to provide accurate behind-the-scenes coverage about film production, and here was a subject that deserved to be written about, most notably the Cinefantastique double issue and the Cinefex issue dedicated to the special effects. When the Directors Cut was released, the crucial Video Watchdog article listed the differences between all versions and highlighted the Workprint as being far more interesting – finally we can see that too in the 5-disc disc release.
Entire books have been devoted to the film, best of which was an authoritative expansion of the CFQ article written by Paul Sammon – Future Noir. Though it's likely to have been pillaged for all the best anecdotes to go into the extensive documentary and DVD extras.
Added to this, along the years, several indepth websites continued to update props whereabouts, interview the cast members, log alternate early scripts, and even post missing chapters from the Sammon book.
So after pouring over images of lost scenes, sounds and anecdotes, we finally get to see an update of the film, with the most annoying special effects and continuity errors of the film corrected digtially. Wire removal now makes the full-size Spinner car fly, a stunt woman in a bad wig has now morphed back into Joanna Cassidy, Deckard’s tell-tale bruise has been removed (it appeared beofre his fight with Leon because a dialogue scene got the number of surviving replicants wrong). Countless other dialogue tweaks in the soundtrack explain the unexplained, yet the much talked about narration remains missing, leaving the film treading water in places. I liked the narration – I miss it’s poignancy as well as background exposition – it still echoes in my memory as the new versions of the film play without it.
Anyway, hopefully there’ll be no more variants. Besides the fixes, there is little additional footage - three scenes are very different, jarring to someone who’s seen it many times – the unicorn, the dove, the hockey masks...
The whole debate about Harrison Ford’s character, Rick Deckard, being an artificial replicant like the ones he’s hunting down, is a complete red herring, but it's the storypoint that everyone now talks about. Scott fixed it in the Director’s Cut to lead us towards that conclusion (why didn’t he do that originally?). He’s now nailed it in interviews, but in the film the unicorn scene and it's pay-off are oblique references open to interpretation. To me, Deckard is more human than the replicants, he loses every single fight with them, even the pleasure model! The story has him teaching a non-human to love – that scene is meaningless if he too is artificial.
One scene has his eyes subtly ‘glow’ the same way as the replicants – I always thought that was a clever red herring placed halfway through the story to send the audience in the wrong direction. Harrison Ford didn’t play Deckard as artificial, while the other actors take great pains to portray something child-like and different in the replicants. Zhora’s killing machine anger and strength, Pris’s four-year old vulnerability, Leon’s twitchy ignorance, Roy’s race against the clock – all masterly performances of replicants, very different from Ford’s.
The film for me is about the contrast between human and artificial human. The irony, the humour and even the plot falls falls down if he’s one of them too. It’s a cheap twist ending, more abrupt and “huh?” than the original ‘happy ending’ which I prefer. In the Channel 4 documentary, many other members of the cast and crew were equally divided about this point – it should be open to opinion, not ‘fixed in post’.
But now on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, an impeccable futureproof 4K telecine transfer now gives us a glorious new version to be studied, rendering far more background detail – sometimes too much. Spinners can now be seen flying around in the far distance of the cityscape – an astonishing detail.
To me there’s little that dates the film. The themes of genetic replication, overpopulation, artificial intelligence, fucked weather, are all as relevant as ever. The vision of a future that will be mucky, wet, and dangerous and that humans will escape and discard the dying planet to look for new ones seems more likely than ever.
For me, the future hasn't arrived until we get flying cars.
Now for the other four discs...
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As brilliant a film as Bladerunner is, I've realised over the years that this is because of Syd Mead and the lighting director and the costumes and the actors and the music... pretty much everything except the director. The documentaries on this feature-packed edition pretty well prove my case. Ridley Scott really doesn't have a clue about the subtleties in the screenplay or the original book. By re-inventing Deckard as a replicant, he misses the entire point of the script, as you so carefully point out.
ReplyDeleteAnd Scott certainly did not have this in mind originally. He said nothing about this aspect until many years after fans started throwing the idea around. As I am not a fan of the voice-over, I think the Final Cut may be the perfect version... if you delete the unicorn dream.
I'm glad someone agrees! So many people are hanging on Ridley's every word, which I would normally do too. But I was hoping the new boxsets would have included the Channel Four documentary. It's also required viewing, with a brilliant closing montage of many of the cast and crew answering the question, "Is Deckard a Replicant?". I'll have to dig it out and add the answers a postscript...
ReplyDeleteIt becomes more and more obvious that Ridley Scott doesn't really know what he's doing. He made 2 superb films in a row (Alien and Bladerunner), and that really was it. Nothing else he's done even comes close (the only Oscar Gladiator deserved was the one for visual effects, which were stunning).
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that many directors are like this - They produce a brilliant movie or two, and then gain more control than they deserve and go on to create rubbish. The shame of it is that this rubbish is all too often commercially successful, which means they keep producing more and more crap!
Having seen the recent recut of Alien, I was extremely reluctant to watch yet another cut of Bladerunner, but I guess I'll have to check it out sooner or later.
Regarding the voiceover and the "happy ending" in the original theatrical release, these were both forced by the producer, and were not in the original script. While I can take or leave the voiceover (I really enjoyed it, but it wasn't necessary), the tacked-on ending was very much out of sync. This was my major criticism of Minority Report, also. The abrupt ending of the Director's Cut was much more like a typical Phillip K Dick story, and thus made much more sense within the bleak context of the rest of the film.
If you really want an accurate adaptation of the feel of a Phillip K Dick story, everyone out there should check out Screamers. This is wonderfully bleak, and epitomises the atmosphere of his works.
Oh, and the unicorn? Stupid, irrelevant, and indicative of Scott's obsession with the creatures. The inclusion of this scene is completely out of place, regardless of the later reference. I think it was only included to give some credence to the idea that Deckard is a replicant. As you point out, if he is, he's certainly poorly constructed!
I stopped watching Ridley Scott movies after Hannibal - I am not averse to gore (quite the opposite!), but I believe this film crossed the line into "gore-pornography", especially the "meal" (trying not to spoil here, for those silly enough to want to watch this crap). Just because you can do something in film, that doesn't mean you should.
Ha. Not many comments here, but I am amused to see that all contributors share my opinion. I've always felt like a bit of an outcast with regard to my feelings toward this film, and my feelings toward Ridley Scott in general.
ReplyDeleteI just bought the 5-Disc Blu-Ray and have yet to watch the Final Cut... I have been debating whether to watch that or re-visit the Theatrical Cut, which is the only version that I know for certain that I like, warts and all.
I've always liked the VO. I thought it added texture in many places ('he was the kind of guy that used to call black men "niggers"') but it needed to be pruned back in other places (such as Roy's death, where Frank Darabont rightfully bemoans its presence).
I suspect that there is no cut of the film that will make me totally happy, which is the weird thing about Blade Runner - it comes so close to being great, but each attempt to fix it has introduced a different flaw.
I never really felt like the ADR bits, or the stunt double detracted much from the film. Choosing to fix those things is kind of cool, but mostly just a nice perk, a polish for an "anniversary restoration."
As far as quibbles go, one of the things that always bugged me is the expository dialogue in the scene where Bryant and Deckard review the files on Batty and crew, and later when Deckard gives the VK test to Rachel. If Deckard has already been a Blade Runner, shouldn't he know already about 4 year life-spans and implanted memories? Aren't these the very things that make it difficult to spot replicants in the first place, making the VK test necessary? Or were Nexus 5 models retired without a VK test and granted longer life spans?
This type of detail never bothered me enough to take away from the film.
But I did laugh aloud at Ridley Scott's comments in the documentary - his certainty that Deckard IS a replicant (!) and his pride with this new edition which apparently proves it, definitively. I agree wholeheartedly with Reg Langford. It seems that with each new movie Scott makes (or each new comment issued forth from his mouth about his existing good films), he only tarnishes his legacy further. There seem to be too many filmmakers who are venerated as auteurs simply because they have an impeccable eye for camerawork or production design (which I cannot take away from Scott). Blade Runner, like THe Wizard of Oz and Casablanca, seems to work as great proof against the auteur theory.
Ha. Not many comments here, but I am amused to see that all contributors share my opinion. I've always felt like a bit of an outcast with regard to my feelings toward this film, and my feelings toward Ridley Scott in general.
ReplyDeleteI just bought the 5-Disc Blu-Ray and have yet to watch the Final Cut... I have been debating whether to watch that or re-visit the Theatrical Cut, which is the only version that I know for certain that I like, warts and all.
I've always liked the VO. I thought it added texture in many places ('he was the kind of guy that used to call black men "niggers"') but it needed to be pruned back in other places (such as Roy's death, where Frank Darabont rightfully bemoans its presence).
I suspect that there is no cut of the film that will make me totally happy, which is the weird thing about Blade Runner - it comes so close to being great, but each attempt to fix it has introduced a different flaw.
I never really felt like the ADR bits, or the stunt double detracted much from the film. Choosing to fix those things is kind of cool, but mostly just a nice perk, a polish for an "anniversary restoration."
As far as quibbles go, one of the things that always bugged me is the expository dialogue in the scene where Bryant and Deckard review the files on Batty and crew, and later when Deckard gives the VK test to Rachel. If Deckard has already been a Blade Runner, shouldn't he know already about 4 year life-spans and implanted memories? Aren't these the very things that make it difficult to spot replicants in the first place, making the VK test necessary? Or were Nexus 5 models retired without a VK test and granted longer life spans?
This type of detail never bothered me enough to take away from the film.
But I did laugh aloud at Ridley Scott's comments in the documentary - his certainty that Deckard IS a replicant (!) and his pride with this new edition which apparently proves it, definitively. I agree wholeheartedly with Reg Langford. It seems that with each new movie Scott makes (or each new comment issued forth from his mouth about his existing good films), he only tarnishes his legacy further. There seem to be too many filmmakers who are venerated as auteurs simply because they have an impeccable eye for camerawork or production design (which I cannot take away from Scott). Blade Runner, like THe Wizard of Oz and Casablanca, seems to work as great proof against the auteur theory.