Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies and I now consider it a classic film. Some thoughts from older threads:Masha wrote:Blade Runner: The Final Cut (2007)
I watched: Blade Runner (1982) several times soon after its release and I liked it very much.
It has been perhaps fifteen years since I have watched it so I am sorry to say that I do not remember such details that I can compare the original to this version.
I do have a sense that this version is more linear and would be easy for a non-science-fiction person to follow and understand. This is in particular true of the ending.
I would normally hesitate to recommend: Blade Runner (1982) to a non-science-fiction person because of necessary knowledge of certain tropes but I will recommend this version because all is very plain in it.
One thing that has remained the same for me in watching the movie after such a long absence is the desire to administer the Voight-Kampff Test to certain people.
There are actually four different cuts of the film. When Ridley Scott's original workprint was shown at previews, many people (who only came to see Ford because of Star Wars) could not understand the film at all and the depressing ending really upset viewers.
Remember, these newer Ford fans had latched on to his successful works with Lucas and Spielberg, which were more simplistic and upbeat. Therefore, the studio (which had invested 20 million and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears) demanded changes. The film's unicorn dream sequence was cut, a "happy ending" tacked on, and a voice over (which Ford hated and performed badly, hoping it would be unusable), was added, which seemed to fare better at the previews.
When the film played in theaters, it bombed, but the new medium of VHS and Laserdisc created a rediscovery and cult-like status. In 1992, someone found Ridley's original cut workprint and started showing it in theaters (this workprint did not have the unicorn). Ridley got permission to clean up the print, add the unicorn, and issue a new VHS/DVD as the official Directors Cut.
There had been an International Cut floating around also. This print was like the original, but had a bit more gore (the scene where Roy Batty shoves a nail through his hand [obvious allusion to crucifixion] is more graphic) and Ridley wanted to add these elements while fixing some original problems, such as the scene where Batty releases the dove into a blue sky instead of the rain soaked night (they discovered doves couldn't fly when they were wet!). Thus, the Final Cut came into being. So what should you see? I recommend the Directors or Final cut (the differences are minimal).
Blade Runner is a film that has its feet in two worlds (along with Godard's Alphaville [1965]), where the dark humanity of film noir collides with the heavy morality of science fiction, creating a synthesis that is futuristic, but familiar. This same concept applies to Vangelis incredible scoring, where he combines acoustic and electronic instruments in allusion to the movie's "real" and "artificial" characters. Above all, Ridley's film questions the idea of what constitutes person in an eroding society of creators and their creations.
[youtube][/youtube]
For those who don't mind a little reading, I highly recommend these two books:
Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner
http://tinyurl.com/y3hkqsx
Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
http://tinyurl.com/y2dwoh6