I love the film but for a long time I really disliked that Ridley Scott changed the plot.
To me Scott's idea that Deckard is a replicant but doesn't know it is just weak. Even the idea that they would make a replicant hunter that's weaker than the "basic pleasure model" it's designed to hunt doesn't work.
I think Scott shoe-horned his change in after the fact and he's had to keep releasing new edits because it doesn't really fit.
PKD's original plot themes are much richer and deeper:
The purpose of this story as I saw it was that in his job of hunting and killing these replicants, Deckard becomes progressively dehumanized.
At the same time, the replicants are being perceived as becoming more human.
Finally, Deckard must question what he is doing, and really what is the essential difference between him and them? And, to take it one step further, who is he if there is no real difference?
— Philip K. Dick
> Finally, Deckard must question what he is doing, and really what is the essential difference between him and them? And, to take it one step further, who is he if there is no real difference?
Honestly, that is still what I get from Ridley Scott’s version.
> I think Scott shoe-horned his change in after the fact
The effect used in at least one indoor scene, in which Harrison Food is filmed with his eyes glowing like the other replicants, is an in-camera effect and the decision to use it was made prior to filming.
> At the same time, the replicants are being perceived as becoming more human.
Surely this is what the acknowledged replicants in the film do, particularly Roy Batty when he saves Deckard?
I was a great PKD fan (collected his books), and was a little disappointed when the film first came out, but it does grow on you.
Absolutely, having Deckard be a "weak" replicant makes no narrative sense, and it also makes no sense thematically. It's about a human hunting machines and finding the humanity in the machines and discovering what humanity is lacking in himself. It's important that the line is blurred, but it's also important that he's not actually a replicant.
I just want a version that includes the prophet Mercer stuff.
felt like a huge component to drop out.
The other thing that always strikes me when rewatching Blade Runner, is just how much time to breathe every little scene is given. Maybe a little too much time in some of the longer director's cuts, but it's a really stark contrast to a lot of lesser films, that try and pack as many story beats as they can into their runtime.
Most new sci-fi/action movies are like that. Ones that cater to younger viewers are so bad I've had to walk out of movie theaters because I felt my senses were under assault. Fortunately there are traditional directors like Villeneuve.
Of the sci-fi genre for me it will always be #1. The whole thing is just perfect, there's no other movie that comes close to the world that is envisioned in Blade Runner.
There are some acting missteps that unfortunately flaw the film for me.
Harrison Ford is not very good in it—perhaps not a great actor generally. His pretending to be a nerd/fan in Zhora's dressing room is too cringey to watch it's so bad… I feel like I'm watching Mickey Rooney playing Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
And the actor that played Leon (Brion James) is also difficult to watch (he was a distraction in The Fifth Element as well).
My only complaints though.
I thought Brion James was fantastic in The Fifth Element because he's one of the few slapstick outlets. He comes off as sorta military-scary, and ends up frozen like a Looney-Tunes popsicle in the freezer a few minutes later , and dead-pan military is a kind-of-funny partner to Corbin being an outlaw bachelor. He then remains the dead-pan receiver of abuse from the president, etc.
I agree about Harrison Ford, though I don't know who would've done it better at that moment in history.
aside : The Fifth Element is considered to be one of the noisiest distracting sci-fi movies ever, so to hear your main distraction was Brion James made me grin.
Terminator #1 and #2 are probably more realistic though, despite the time travel.
But nowhere close to the emotional impact.
People usually do not remember what happened turn by turn but they do remember what it made them feel.
Funnily enough, in the movie, the humans have little no feelings but the androids do -- and that is the central question that the movie made me consider -- what makes us human.
I am ofcourse biased because Blade Runner (original) is not only on my top 5 scifi movie list but also on my top 5 movie list. So much so that I am reluctant to watch 2049.
> But nowhere close to the emotional impact
It may be trite but “Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too.” gets me every single time
I think Blade Runner and Alien helped destroy mainstream science fiction.
Before Blade Runner almost anything could be science fiction. After Blade Runner science fiction meant detective noir with #tech_upgrade - clones, memory implants, dystopia. Or it was US truckers and/or the military fighting nasty aliens in spaaaaaaace. (Star Wars and its magic space knights was always more fantasy with a science fiction stage set.)
Blade Runner did it far better than the others, but then we had decades of mostly mediocre book knock-offs, especially in the UK. (Gibson gets a pass for taking the new trope even further by being a brilliant stylist, mixing in some tech orientalism, and inventing cyberspace.)
It's a stunning, iconic masterpiece of a movie with an unfortunate chilling cultural effect.
And ironically the Philip K Dick original was... very different.
Pretty sure Star Wars destroyed mainstream science fiction in film.
> And ironically the Philip K Dick original was... very different.
True. Ridley Scott and Philip K Dick collaborated very closely to tell it like they wanted it to. Studios liked it ... not so much.
This came up about a month ago when someone posted a link celebrating the title cards in Blade Runner. I responded then the same way I will respond now: it’s not just the amazing visuals, it’s also the amazing auditory experience, an additional creative dimension to transport the audience into a dystopian future.
The audio consists of two parts: the wonderful minimalist score by Vangelis, and sound effects that include distant booms, twinkling computer notes, dripping rain, strange languages, the whoosh of futuristic vehicles, even small details such as the crosswalk warning. Along with the set design, photography, special effects, acting, and other visual elements, the audio effectively immerses viewers into this incredible world and story.
Keep in mind that a typical viewer entering the local cineplex in 1982 to watch Blade Runner might have just stepped out of a Chevy Nova with an 8-track cassette player loaded with Juice Newton and Kool & The Gang. The visuals, the score, the sound effects, and the story would have been completely novel, and totally mind-blowing.
I agree. The other week I saw this at a movie theater. I was blown away by the audio experience. So much better than watching it on my subpar home audio.
It was a cool experience to watch this on the big screen.
The highlight of my summer was Blade Runner Live At the Acropolis. The movie was shown in the ancient theater with a live orchestra performing Vangelis.
They may have a global tour of it in some places this fall.
Wow... The venue almost adds another layer to the movie. You're watching a 1982 vision of 2019, accompanied by live electronic-orchestral music, inside a theater built a couple thousand years ago...
Also Vangelis was pretty much inspired by Byzantine Greek Music which was inspired by Ancient Greek music which was played in the ancient theater 2 millennia ago.
Oh vow. Now jealous. My highlight that can even dare to come close would be a Roger Waters show.
Would love to experience the three *katsis in such a setting.
>audio
It's another of those movies which uses light extremely effectively, also.
In fact I've heard it said that every single shot in Blade Runner carefully deals with light specifically.
The sound is probably why the visuals feel so much larger than the sets actually were
I stepped in to watch it in 1982. Didn't like it much. But rewatching it over the years, it grew on me.
The re-cuts are definitely an improvement on the original theatrical release. It's a matter of taste, but for me Director's Cut is the better.
I wonder if part of that is that Blade Runner doesn't optimize for the first viewing. Once you already know where the plot is going, your attention is free to wander into the production design, sound, background activity
But it does! (Or did)
The first theatrical release had a drab narration by Harrison Ford. At places it makes it sound like a cheap film noir detective story.
The Directors Cut is the unbutchered version.
Maybe 4D chess by Ridley Scott. Most had seen the optimized version first and was prepared for the magic which is the recut version ;-)
I have the opposite feeling with Apocalypse Now. The Redux version killed the pacing and explained too much. The added scenes are by themselves worthwhile (and explains later actions) but makes the complete movie a bit heavy handed.
By comparison Blade Runner feels more ethereal even though the both cover dark subjects of human nature.
> The Directors Cut is the unbutchered version.
The Director's Cut (released in 1992) drops the narration and adds the dream sequence, but despite the name is not entirely approved by Ridley Scott.
The Final Cut (released in 2007) is the only version where Ridley Scott had full final cut approval. It re-masters the audio, fixes some of the effects (replacing faces on stunt doubles, removing wires, etc), and changes a few lines (most notably "I want more life, father" instead of "fucker"). The color is also re-graded.
Some people prefer the Director's Cut over the Final Cut, especially the color grading, although I saw the Final Cut in 35mm when it was released and it looked pretty spectacular. In any event the changes in the Final Cut are nowhere near as egregious as the Star Wars special editions or the AI remasters of James Cameron's films.
Yup. It's one of those weird and rare movies that grows on you the number of times you watch it. I have watched it at different ages. The later I have watched the better it seemed.
The audio was good but after I listened to it many times, I started to dislike it. On the other hand, for instance, the Conan the barbarian main themes I can always listen to numerous times.
I think Blade Runner stands out for the visual effects though. The dystopian future cities were great. It were these effects packed into a storyline why I did not want to watch the "sequel".
Many aspects have already been mentioned, all great in their own right, that lifts the movie into timeless greatness. I'd like to add one more. The stunning beauty and performance of Sean Young.
"Click on the picture to enlarge"
"COMPUTER. ENHANCE." WAS RIGHT THERE!
And bothered my engineer-mind because the "enhancements" revealed photographic details that were literally obscured by physical walls in the original photo.
> The movie even inspired Anders Ramsell to paint 3285 water colour prints, and then turn those into a remarkable short film.
I'm yet to see the movie. Are there any spoilers in this article?
Well, some characters are mentioned and images are shown, so this is a tiny bit of a spoiler. But your trade-off would be "shall I first watch Blade Runner before reading this article"; watch it today. And read the article anyway, as it is not just about Blade Runner but also e. g. Logan’s Run. Now, Logan’s Run is not as good as Blade Runner, but it has some elements that are quite interesting IMO. So it can also be recommended, even though I find it a bit dated now; Blade Runner is not dated though really. Probably one of the most important science fiction movie ever made. The book is also good, but different to the movie; I was disappointed because I found the movie was better, but the book is in many ways much more logical. It kind of explains why there are so few animals and so many artificial animals (even though from a biological point of view this makes no sense, humans are also animals after all), whereas in the movie, it is rarely explained why there are artificial animals. IMO the book was more intrinsically logical, and more desperate e. g. regular humans were drug addicts, that was totally cut in the movie. I still liked the movie more, even though I think the book had a stronger intrinsic logic; but the performance of Rutger Hauer really was epic there. IMO his best performance in his whole career.
K.W.Jeter was writing Blade Runner 2 in the office next to our small video game company. We were working on the entirely forgettable Dark Fiber title which was only published in Japan for the NEC PC-98.
https://archive.org/details/DarkFiberWindowsMac/(WIN+MAC)%20...
We talked a lot but I resisted asking him to help with the plot of the game. I probably should have!
I found the movie and the book so different in pacing and tone that they are hardly comparable. The book really has the ethical and sociological questions as the meat, and uses the plot simply as a backbone. The movie does the exact opposite, with the plot the driving force and the questions as food for further thought. You can still enjoy the movie without thinking too hard, if you wish, but the book will fall flat without giving it a lot of thought. As an example, the movie completely drops Mercerism, likely because it would be slow and clunky to try and explain it in an action movie. But it is an essential part of the book, without which PKD's explorations of the pain of the conflict between individualism and collectivism would be entirely missed. Similarly with the artificial animals, which are shown only in passing in the movie, but are a central tool in the book to illustrate hypocrisy and jealousy in people trying to grasp at what is "real". The titles of the two works encapsulate this difference of direction perfectly.
It’s one of the very few immersive masterpieces where all elements complement each other: script, acting, score, production design, lighting, cinematography. The core vision was so brilliant that even short-sighted studio bosses couldn't destroy it with a butchered edit.
Alien is the same imho, hard to believe two of the most iconic sci fi's were created by the same guy and only 3 years apart.
It's amazing that Blade Runner looks as good as anything that has come since. And sounds way better.
Genuine craft and human ingenuity can be a wonderful thing. Technology is a force multiplier and it's not always going to lead to better results in lesser hands.
In general there's also a problem that cinematography has gone to hell in filmmaking, because they want to be able to incorporate CGI more (cost) effectively and that means things like proper lighting and color grading is no longer utilized.
The sound especially feels almost impossible to date
My local Regal is playing it on September 12th. Can’t wait to see it again in theaters.
I watched it a week or two ago at my local Picture House (at FACT). Had a great time!
Ridley Scott is perhaps not quite as script-centric as Martin Scorsese or able to make a multi-faceted movie like Spielberg or visual effects heavy as George Lucas. However had, Ridley Scott has by far the best visual eye and is also able to draw like a professional designer, which the others can't. I think the best example for this can be seen in both Alien (first one) and Gladiator. In Gladiator he was much more professional from A to Z, but I think the first Alien is even more impressive if you look at it. The camera work is brilliant (Martin also has great camera work in Taxi Driver, but in Alien the effect is IMO much more profound) and the work around for visual problems (depicting the alien without it looking like garbage) was really epic. It is not easily possible to rank directors, but from a visual point of view, Ridley is probably the best individual (visual) artist as such (note: I refer to his abilities, not to the final product, which may not require as much individual artistic prowess, in other words, Martin may not be able to draw something with a pencil, but the end result movie has strong visual effects - see the desert scene in Casino or the "Do I amuse you?" scene in Goodfellas).
Bloody annoying POS. It was nothing like the book.
Star Wars looked just cheap flick for children.
Soviet Solaris (1972) was one and only true Sci-Fi. But Alien (1979) fixed this problem.
I really disliked Blade Runner for a long time because I love the book so much. It wasn't until a humanities class in college that I learned to appreciate Blade Runner separately from the book. Now, instead of hating Blade Runner, I love it, and I hate Blade Runner 2049 instead, because that movie seems to have zero respect for the message of the first movie, and zero respect for the intention of Ridley Scott (it's obvious to me they changed some things just to get Harrison Ford back in the film). I know I am in the minority, but we are a minority that has extremely good and valid reasons for being upset about it.
2049 is a pretty mediocre film that would be forgotten if it didn’t have the BR name.
I like both the 1984 film and the book though, but I primarily like the movie for the cinematography and atmosphere, more than the story, which is more interesting in the book.
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