Bladerunner: the Final Cut

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Okay, so probably most of you have seen this, but I hadn't. Until today, when, for some reason, my local cinema had a one-off showing of it in the early evening.

Blown away all over again, not least by my own nerdiness about this film.

Spoilers behind cut.



Not sure if I've mentioned ever that I'm a big Bladerunner fan? Have been since it first came out in 1982, in the version with the voiceover and the tacked-on happy ending. I loved it - so much, in fact, that I went to see it at the cinema ten times, dragging everyone I could think of to see it with me (even my mum, who later confessed to my sister that she'd hated it), and when I couldn't find anyone, going by myself.

I loved it so much that it inspired me to write fanfic. I wrote three stories set in my own take on the Bladerunnerverse, which at the time I was very pleased with (no idea what happened to them, btw, I suspect the only copies are on an old 5 and a quarter inch floppy disc).

In short, I knew the film inside-out.

Which is something that added an extra layer to tonight's experience. Yes, I've seen the original Director's Cut, but never this final version. And I could see every single thing that had been changed or improved. The only change I wouldn't call an improvement is the added footage of Batty's murder of Tyrell. That was too horrific for me twenty two years ago, let alone now when I'm a lot more squeamish.

Still and all, at least knowing the film as well as I do, I knew when to look away.

(Must admit, too, that the Deckard/Rachael love scene, though unchanged, is pretty disturbing, very much verging on non-con (and yes, I did realise this all those years ago too). Now, I think that Scott directed the scene the way he did because he had this idea that Deckard, too, was a replicant, and wanted to make it look like neither Deckard nor Rachael really knew what they were doing.

Maybe not. The whole Deckard-as-replicant never worked for me anyway).

But everything else that was changed - yeah, an improvement, and it's still a fantastic looking film with beautifully realised world-building and great special effects that don't rely on CGI at all, and yet still look magnificent.

So, so impressed still.

Comments

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

I love Bladerunner too! And no, Deckard as a replicant doesn't work. If he's a replicant, he should be a lot tougher. What was your fanfic about? Was that your first ever?

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If he's a replicant, he should be a lot tougher.

Yeah, he should have been able to hold his own a bit better against Zhora, Leon and Pris. I really don't know why Ridley Scott was so hung up on the idea of Deckard being a replicant. I'm glad he didn't take the opportunity of doing this final cut to make it explicit, because for me that would have spoilt it a bit.

What was your fanfic about? Was that your first ever?

Yes, it was. The first story was about how Batty and the others got to Earth and was told from Batty's POV. The second and third were from the POV of a replicant Pris-lookalike, who meets a Batty-lookalike, and they then try to discover who keeps re-making them the same.

Actually, one thing this final cut does is to 'Joss' my fanfics. Don't know if you remember the original version of the scene where Captain Bryant is showing Deckard who he's up against? In that, Bryant says there were originally six rogue replicants, three male and three female, but 'one of them got fried running through an electrical field' and now there are only four. Well, of course there was one missing, and my stories featured this missing replicant. However, in the final cut, the 'one' who got fried running through the electrical field has been changed to 'two', so there isn't a missing one any more.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he should have been able to hold his own a bit better against Zhora, Leon and Pris. I really don't know why Ridley Scott was so hung up on the idea of Deckard being a replicant.

I think it may have something to do with the Philip K. Dick upon which it was based? (googles)

No, apparently just implied in the novel - which is about the nature of humanity.

Deckard ponders the meaning of humanity, morality and empathy following an attempt to retire an android opera singer. He is arrested and taken to a police station where he is accused of being an android before escaping with fellow bounty hunter Phil Resch after deducing that the station was fake and staffed by androids. His moral quandary deepens after working briefly with Resch, whom Deckard first believes is an android but then learns is a particularly callous fellow human bounty hunter.

I vaguely remember reading an interview with Scott on the topic some time ago, where he said that he liked the idea of Deckard being a replicant because of the irony - you have this bounty hunter retiring replicants, yet is one himself and doesn't even know it. Which I think sort of went against Philip K. Dick's view that humans could be colder and more callous than replicants.

Scott changed the character of Rachel Rosen from the book and got rid of Deckard's wife Iran, he also combined the Isidore store and the Deckard story, which are more separate in the novel. In the book - Rachel Rosen is a femme fatale who is not nice and seduces Deckard, using him. She's oddly more complex in Scott's version.

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Which I think sort of went against Philip K. Dick's view that humans could be colder and more callous than replicants.

Well, not exactly. The androids in the book are all pretty cold and lacking in empathy, the way you describe Rachael in the book.

Dick's point was that some people, who look human, are less than human and have no empathy, his starting point being the diary of an SS officer from WW2, who complained about being kept awake by the crying of starving children from the ghetto - not because the children were starving, but because they were keeping him awake. The androids in the book were like the SS officer - question them for long enough, and you soon find they are incapable of feeling for other people, let alone animals.

In the film, however, the replicants' actions, while brutal, are coming from a place where they are the persecuted. "That's what it means to be a slave," Batty says, after telling Deckard it's quite a thing to live in fear. Ultimately, we understand why they do what they do. They've been badly treated, and they want to live. It's the humans who have behaved badly by creating them in the first place.

And that's why I think it makes far more sense for Deckard to be human. What's the use of Batty using Deckard as a sounding board in that final scene if he's just talking to another being like himself?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I'd have to agree - it didn't work for me for Deckard to be a replicant either.

Scott has some odd ideas and doesn't make the best...writer. He needs someone to reign him in a bit. Noticed that with a lot of directors and filmmakers. They require editors. The director's cut isn't necessarily the best cut of the film. (*cough*GeorgeLucas*cough*)

[shapinglight]

True, though I think on the whole (apart from the added violence) this probably is the best version of this film.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

Sounds like those stories would have been a good read - I love all those replicants. Zhora's death was brutal.

I guess that "One got fried" was a mistake in the original that probably bugged RS all this time ... how annoying that he changed it!

[shapinglight]

I love all those replicants. Zhora's death was brutal.

Yes, it is. Quite horrible. Have you seen this version of the film? Did you know that Ridley Scott re-shot the sequence where Zhora crashes through all the plate glass windows? In the original version (and even the original Director's Cut) you can see that it's not Joanna Cassidy but a stunt woman. But Scott re-shot it with Joanna Cassidy herself, and it looks much better.

She was pretty cock-a-hoop about being able to look good in the costume still, given that she's in her sixties.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Have you read the Philip K. Dick novel upon which it is loosely based:
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"? The two are very different by the way - talk about "loose adaptations". I prefer the movie to the book, in the book - Deckard is a replicant, no just sort of loosely implied. Outside of that the book isn't that memorable - or I didn't find it so, because I can't remember much of it.

I own the Director's Cut of Blade Runner on DVD. It's my favorite science fiction film. My mother and I saw it in the theater when it first came out and loved it. Rutgur Hauer is amazing in that film - so amazing, that he inspired Anne Rice's vampire Lestate (who is based heavily on Hauer's performance in Bladerunner). Actually, I found his character in some respects more interesting than Deckard.

I've mixed feelings about the voice over narration. Apparently, Ford was forced to do it by the studio and neither Ford nor Scott wanted it. But it worked for me in the film, the film also works without it.

Ford and Scean Young didn't really get along, apparently. Although to be fair - Scean Young didn't get along with anybody. My brother worked with her on a the film Love Crimes and said she was a bit on the wonky side - to prepare for a scene, she wanted to be in a bathtube of ice cold water - on the set, which was highly dangerous for all involved.
So some of the coldness of that love scene was in part Scean Young's acting style - she's like that in all her films, but Scott may have deliberately cast her with that cold detachment in mind.

Yeah, anyhow, agreed - Bladerunner is only Ford film or Scott film that I own on DVD and the only sci-film that I've bothered to buy on both VHS and DVD. It's also amongst the few that I still vividly remember. By far the best film that Ridley Scott ever made.

[shapinglight]

Have you read the Philip K. Dick novel upon which it is loosely based:

Yes, I have. And loosely based is right. The film turns the message of the book completely on its head. The book also goes far more into the question of the loss of non-human life forms on the planet, which the film barely touches on, so that some of Rachael's answers to Deckard in the Vogt-Kampf test are hard to understand, if you haven't caught on to the fact that in the world of the film there are very few real animals left.

Not surprised to hear that Sean Young was a little...let's say, difficult. She doesn't seem to have had that much of a career apart from Bladerunner.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

You remember the book better than I do. Actually I think you remember both better...of course I read the book over 10 years ago.
And I did not enjoy it. Philip K Dick is hit or miss for me. I liked The Three Stigmata of Palmer K. Eldritch but Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep felt sort of..dull? Odd, since I liked the movie.

Yeah, according to Wiki's plot synopsis, the book had a huge section on animated pets and Deckard's desire for a pet, which does pop up in the movie, but doesn't make sense, since that part was edited out or not explored. Rachel apparently kills the pet that Deckard finally manages to obtain in the book.

Regarding Young? Oh she had quite a bit of a career in the 1980s, but sort of crashed and burned in the 1990s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Young

Nasty business. Nasty, nasty. Possibly the worst industry you can work in next to the publishing and gaming industries. Weird. My brother and his wife have some harrowing stories, as do many of my friends who work or have worked in it.

[shapinglight]

Actually I think you remember both better...of course I read the book over 10 years ago.

Probably. As I said, I'm a complete nerd about this film.

I like some of Dick's novels quite a lot, some a lot less. This one is sort of in the middle. My favourite is probably The Man in the High Castle.

As for Sean Young, oh dear. As you say, nasty business, and an awful lot of very unstable people working in the field.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always felt sort of sorry for Scean Young. The more I learn about the studio exec's and Directors...(shudder). My brother told me once not to take up screenwriting - to stick with novel writing or theater. Theater is actually the best of the collaborative mediums, mainly because, unless you are doing Broadway or West End, it doesn't tend to be as commercial or marketing oriented. So you have more freedom to play...and a lot more positive interaction. As with all things - bring lots of money into the picture and things go south in a jiffy.

Haven't read Man in the High Castle - which I've heard good things about and I do happen to own. Have read a few of the short stories, which are quite good, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer K. Eldritch...along with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which admittedly disappointed, it was more philosophical and speculative than noirish. And I was expecting something closer to the one of the film. Not sure what I'd have thought of it, if I'd read it first. (shrugs). )

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There are several others of his novels I like very much, including Clans of the Alphane Moon (and what a great title), and Doctor Bloodmoney, but all the novels post-The Man in the High Castle are worth a look, I think. Not so much the earlier ones.

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

It really is a great film. I enjoy the Director's cut versions very much but I agree with you about the Deckard/Rachael 'love' scene is verging on non-con.

[shapinglight]

Yeah, it's pretty unpleasant. The best you can say about it is that by the end of the scene Rachael does appear willing after all.

Ironic, though, that, apart from the final scene where Deckard goes back to his apartment and finds Rachael sleeping, the most tender scenes in the film are those between Batty and Pris.