Slashdot Mirror
'Final Edition' of Blade Runner to be Released
gevmage writes "CNN reports that a
new version of Blade Runner
will be released by Warner Home Video in a few months, for the 25th anniversary of the original film's release." From the article: "After a limited theatrical release, the newly spruced-up "Runner" will be released in a multidisc special edition DVD that also will include the original theatrical cut, the expanded international theatrical cut and the 1992 director's cut. Warner said specifics about the two DVD editions will be announced later."
Keep in mind that that only includes DVDs. HD-DVD will, of course, be available in the future. You can purchase your entire movie library all over again, just like going from LPs to CDs.
I really missed the Voiceover when I watched the directors cut, there was more meat to the "was Deckard a replicant" theory but I felt that it lost some of the 1940's detective movie in the future grittiness. The first time I watched the original version I was watching it in Black and White and could almost have seen Humphrey Bogart playing the lead. Still I'm definately going to get it - I only hope that there's some stuff on Philip K. Dick there, I've seen one or two fascinating TV documentaries on him.
Not sure there needs to be, there's precious little of his stuff in the film. Not that this makes it a bad film of course - in fact I think it's an excellent film. But the main points of "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?", specifically the caring for live creatures and the collective shared belief in Wilburism transcending the reality of the origins of Wilburism are completely gone.
Enjoy the film. Enjoy the Philip K. Dick story. But never think they are even vaguely about the same subjects.
Cheers,
Ian
I'm usually a huge fan of "director's cut" editions of movies. Often times, the stuff cut out of the original is really awesome stuff, such as John Lee Hooker's outstanding performance of "Boom Boom Boom" in "The Blues Brothers" (most of which was purged from the final theatrical release as being "too ethnic" for audiences of the time.) The restoration of that scene is a delight, and I no longer want to view the movie without it.
That said, there are five films where I strongly believe that the original is worth owning (if you plan on owning any version at all, that is):
Blade Runner. Yes, I know Ridley Scott hated having to add the film-noir style overdubs. But we're talking about the asshole who made "Legend" here. He's far from perfect. The pacing in the "Director's Cut" makes it quite obvious that it was filmed to make room for those dubs, and rather than actually re-edit those scenes, he simply removed the offending dub track. Probably because he didn't have enough other footage to keep a worthwhile run-time, especially after chopping off the ending he didn't like. The so-called Director's Cut feels like an unfinished movie, because that's kind of what it is. It's almost the film he would have made, had he not lost a few arguments with his producers.
Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi While the DVD re-edits of these are slightly better than the theatrical re-edits from a couple years before, they are still deeply flawed. Han still "dodges" a laser. The Jabba scene is still redunandant, still repeats dialog from the Greedo scene, and still has that stupid slapstick moment of Han stepping on Jabba's tail. Empire's re-edit fares slightly better, but syncing the Emperor with the one from Jedi and the prequels was, I feel, a bad choice, necessitated only by a need to keep things consistant with the prequels. The new ending sequence in Jedi was a mess... The Death Star effect was changed for the worse, and the tribal festivities of the corny "Yub Nub" song was replaced with something considerably less inspiring.
Blood Simple Nothing wrong with the Director's Cut of this one. You could argue that the pace was slightly better, but most of the changes the Coen Brothers made were actually cuts from the original. The first release is totally worth seeing, if you get the chance.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
No human could survive the beating he takes. Don't need the director to spell it out.
we will end no whine before its time
Harrison Ford, however, have stated that Deckard is human.
Of course he would say he was human. If the characer never knew that he was a replicant, why tell the actor? It makes the performance more authentic if the actor doesn't know either.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This is the only true cyberpunk movie that captured the spirit set mainly by Gibson in e.g. Neuromancer and by others. Stuff like the Matrix is pale in comparison, a riduculous mix of cyberpunk and tech-singularity concepts, aimed at providing cool but even more ridiculous fighting scenes (no, the computer will NOT fight you by generating a character aimed at your perceptive brain). What's particulary interesting about Neuromancer was, apart from the fact it was a book on many levels such as romatic or 80ties gloom thinking, it was also a warning or investigation in what tech can do to humanity. But in the nineties, when the internet needed jargon words such as cyberspace or matrix, much stuff was modelled and named after Gibson cyberspace concepts, because of the "coolness" factor, in fact turning his warning into a self-fullfilling prophecy. Yuck. Back to Blade Runner, it was a brave attempt at capturing some of the spirit. It is sometimes shallow and clearly the same issues play as with other movies after books, e.g. the Da Vinci Code, and I think it was handled particularly well here on a whole. How cynical it is, that the choices they have made (voice-over etc.) now endlessly hount us in "final" and "director" cuts and other such marketing ploys aimed only at getting my money. Guys, it is JUST a movie, no ones live will get any better by watching the same story told a bit different, except the guys who are selling it.
Seriously I am getting tired of this "Is he human or replicate" crap. For the story to work, he needs to be human. Otherwise all kinds of plot problems open up. Like if he was a replicate, how come he sucks so much in a fight? All the other models kick the shit out of him--including the so called pleasure models. And does not explain if he escaped with the other models on the spaceship, why don't they know him? And if he is a special model like Rachel, why the hell does Tyrell not know this? As great as certain writers/directors/artists are, editors/media engineers exist for a reason. There are times when the "creative vision/crack pipe dream" needs to be reeled in to make something work. For Blade runner, seeing Deckard as human is critical because it explores the question more deeply of what it is to be human. Putting in Ridley's directory cuts takes away the internal dialogue of the voiceover and makes Deckard some kind of action hero. Really changes the movie too much in my opinion. Personally I think voice over adds a lot to the story, I would even go far as to say it makes the real crux of the story possible with the internal dialogue we have of the characters. The editing done to the original film makes it what it is. It will be the only version of the film for me. Nice that I can finally buy it a decent format. Film is a collaborative process, and in this case the sum did indeed produce something better than the single vision of the director. Ridley needs to let it go at that and stop stirring the shit.
This IS important, slashdot worthy news, and the reissue most likely WILL be worth buying.
Blade Runner has been practically MIA for years. The DVD was extremely poorly made, and had very few if any extras, meanwhile a ton of extras exist on various VHS and laserdisc editions. Not to mention an archival quality definitive digital film transfer that was made for this project several years ago but not released due to legal issues. And of course the original vs. the Director's Cut are such different movies they both have their merits. A lot of people like the voiceover and "happy ending" in the original cinematic release. To have both in one disc set softens the contentious "which is best" issue - now it's a question of which version are you going to select from the DVD menu this time.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe
I think the voiceover is useful when seeing the film for the first time because it helps you get into the story a bit more. There's a lot going on and I think the average movie-goer doesn't pick up on it without a helping hand.
Now that having been said, I think the non-voiceover version is better for later viewings. The problem is that you subconsciously identify with Deckard a bit more because he is narrating and "helping" you along. But Deckard is not really a "hero" in any real sense. He may be the main character but he is a drunk who kills escaped slaves -- hardly a noble profession. My feeling is that the voiceover tends to shift the story more into a good-guy-bad-guy dynamic when the point of the story is really that there aren't any good guys or bad guys -- just guys who do what they can to survive. Batty isn't evil; he's desperate. He does terrible things but that's because he's on the edge and trying to find a way to keep himself and the others (Pris) alive in a society where they are viewed as objects instead of beings. Deckard is much the same way. He knows his job is evil and yet he continues to do it because he can't make a living any other way. Deckard and Batty are remarkably similar and the voiceover prevents you from seeing this since you tend to sympathize with someone who's thoughts you can hear.
GMD
watch this
Can you really give a spoiler for a movie that's been out almost 25 years? I mean, c'mon--how long do we give Harry Potter books before we remove their spoiler alerts in discussions? 2 months, max. It's a bit of a given that something this old won't contain many surprises, especially considering that Blade Runner's an underground cult film and has semi-iconic status in pop culture. Also, on a slightly different note there's a pretty easy to discern that Deckard is a replicant: all replicants have "animal eyes" (the way eyes reflect at night or with a flash of light), and Deckard's eyes get shown a few times like that in the Director's cut.
It only took about three days (and one badass rainstorm) for the city of New Orleans to descend into a state of lawless chaos.
Imagine what a more prolonged disaster (meteor strike, plague, nuke/bio/chemical attack, etc) could do to a major metropolitan area in a very short span of time.
The voiceover cemented the fusion of film noire and sci-fi. The removal of the voice changed the voiceover in a way many people find preferable, but I still think that one of the things that made bladerunner such a pivotal movie was that meshing of the genres. It's a different movie without them- whether that movie is better or not is a matter of preference. I prefer the original.
The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. -Yeats, The Second Coming
After seeing the director's cut I still wasn't convinced. If you assume that he is a replicant, you can find a few 'clues' to support that, but it seems intentionally ambiguous to me. for example, the unicorn dream and unicorn origami are not super convincing. an alternate explanation is that a unicorn is a symbol of Rachel's uniqueness. The fact that it is expressed by two different characters may just be the heavy handed expression of that theme throughout the movie.
Deckard being a replicant really opens up more questions than it answers. How did Gaf know? What about the other bladerunners? are they replicants? what about the other cops? why do they have replicants hunting replicants on earth? Isn't that illegal? Aren't these new memory implanted replicants pretty new and experimental? Doesn't it seem like Deckard has been around for a while? Even if most of his memories are implanted, he seems to have relationships with a few characters that took a while to form. It upsets the whole universe of the movie. Which is fine, but we need to know more for it to be a satisfying and convincing twist.
In the end, by far the strongest argument for Deckard being a replicant is: "But wouldn't it be sooo trippy if he were!?" It just seems so ironic - a replicant who's only task is to kill other replicants. For now, I'm just not sure.
not everything is a science experiment!
Well, that, and it probably wasn't given the detail work necessary to have it examined at such large magnification.
I couldn't deal with the only IMAX blowup I've ever seen because the animator's lines were swimming in space instead of clean-looking like they were in the 35mm distribution print.
If you want an IMAX film, you need to shoot it as such.
Gentoo Sucks
Of course. He had a dream about a unicorn. That means he's either a robot, or Dave the lighting guy from Orgasmo. Yeah, there's a test and he didn't take it. He also didn't take any pregnancy tests, aids tests, purity tests, driver's license exams. Maybe he's a slutty, pregnant, bad driving AIDs-bot. You're a moron if you didn't know that.
Of course there is also the possibility that this was intentionally left ambiguous, or merely hinted at, as a way of enforcing the idea that we are all biological machines, and that, if we have souls, we cannot feel them, and therefore have no way of knowing if we are "natural" or "fabricated" (and maybe that the difference is irrelevant).
The DVD you already own has certain issues: it's not anamorphic (it was one of the first DVDs), is stereo, and is the 1992 DC only. Since Blade Runner is the best SF movie of all time, and was filmed for six-track Dolby, we need an anamorphic surround version badly. We should have got this set years ago, but the rights holders have blocked it until now.
The point of the new edition is quite simple: to give us BR fans a choice, in the way that Lucas won't give Star Wars fans a proper choice. The new edition should make everyone happy - do you like the voiceover? Then you've got the American theatrical and extra-violence Eurocut on disc 3. Do you prefer the 1992 DC to the new Final Cut (and some will, I'll hold off until I see it)? Then it's on Disc 2. All should be properly restored and anamorphic, and there will almost certainly be no new CGI cut into the original negative a la Coppola/Lucas. It is what Blade Runner has always needed and will, hopefully, finally get.
That only makes sense if being-a-replicant alone wouldn't affect his behavior at all. It implies that a real human is indistinguishable from a replicant-that-thinks-its-human -- but there is a difference.
But you really lose a very powerful comment on the human condition if Deckard is a replicant. That the human seems to be the coldblooded, unfeeling killer while the androids are the ones that are filled with the desire to live and fully experience the full range that life has to offer is quite the ironic statement, and certainly in keeping with Dick's themes.
Dick, more than any other SF author, repeatedly asked what it meant to be human, what was identity, what was free will (vs. programming, rather than fate), what was true, what was false, what was a doppelganger of the real.
The ambiguity in Bladerunner (DC) is what makes the film true to Phillip K Dick; it is otherwise very different from Dick's handling of the material. It's not so much an adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep as it is Ridley Scott's collaboration with the text and his response to Dick.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
If you don't mind my tweaking, I think "you really lose a very powerful comment on the human condition if Deckard is a replicant" or a human. I think the point is to *not* know; to ask "is Deckard a replicant?" is to ask "am *I* a replicant?". Take that to it's logical conclusion and one has to ask "am I human?" (and if I think so, prove it).
People trying to draw solid conclusions out of Dick's work or any adaptations thereof are going to go as mad as the genius himself, or simply can't stomach the unknowingness of it all and clutch at an answer where one doesn't, shouldn't and can't exist.
Dick didn't write answers, he wrote questions.
-- Religion is not an exact science
It's the laserdisc master: SD video sourced, non-anamorphic with stereo sound only (when Star Wars is 2.35 with six-track 70mm audio). That's not a proper choice, you can actually get better on bootleg. At least with E.T. Spielberg stuck an anamorphic, 5.1, remastered version of the 1983 cut on Disc 2 of the collector's edition; Lucas isn't even trying.