Just happened to stumble over an airing of “Blade Runner” on IFC, which I haven’t seen in years. It was the Director’s Cut, made quickly obvious by the lack of Harrison Ford’s obviously recorded-under-protest voice over narrative. Ariel was watching it with me as I tried to explain to her that a lot of stuff you pretty much take as standard tropes in SF and movies first turned up in “Blade Runner.”
I still remember when I first saw it: At an advance screening for licensees, since Marvel published a “Blade Runner” tie in comic book. The volume was cranked up to the roof and beyond, and I came out of the theater so deaf that it put me off the film for years because I associated it with ringing in my ears. But I finally caught up with it again when the DC came out on laserdisk, and boy, was it a revelation once I could truly appreciate the film itself.
I still remember when they first introduced a gigantic screen in Times Square that had huge commercial images on it. I stood there looking up at it, and I heard more than one person muttering around me “Blade Runner” before shaking their heads and walking away. One step closer to a dystopian, bleak society of perpetual rain and darkness?
PAD
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Funnily enough, I was just thinking about Blade Runner as well. Last night, I did a talk for the North Jersey Science Fiction Society and somebody asked me what my favorite behind the scenes/making-of book was, and I mentioned Paul Sammons’ Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, which examines the film in exhaustive detail, right down to explaining the various versions of Blade Runner. It’s still in print, and I would suggest anyone who enjoys the film should pick it up.
Like most Director’s Cuts (The Abyss anyone?) Blade Runner is far superior in that version. The bad narration that the studios demanded take away any character arc for Harrison Ford. Without the narration, he is a killer of replicants who is burned out, but still views them as inhumans who need to be removed. By the end he has fallen in love with one and is escaping the city with her.In the released version the narration gives him a disdain for his fellow cops and has him acknowledge the parallels with todays racism. He is always a “good guy” who sees the evident preludice around him. So there is no growth in his character when he falls for Sean Young or sees the humanity in Rutger Hauer.
I think it’s the directors cut that gives you;
The fact that Decker is, indeed, a replicant himself (the origami Unicorn left by the detective at the end of the film. Decker had been dreaming about the Unicorn in a scene earlier in the movie but never tells anyone about it).
THAT alone is worth the whole film to me.
It’s not that he identifies with Roy Batties humanity as much as Decker identifying with humanity as a whole. And not just as a human. But as the films antagonists.
Something I don’t think I’ve seen since.
One of the “bad guys” identifying with humanity.
‘Blade Runner’ is still one of the best s.f. adaptations from book (or comics, for that matter) to film. No it isn’t faithful to Phil Ðìçk’s novel in every detail; but the changes (especially in the Director’s Cut) maintain the integrity of the book. As far as Decker being a replicant goes, the possibility is suggested; but it is up to the individual audience member to decide for himself/herself whether he is or not.
BLADERUNNER broke my heart-I walked out of the theater ready to gush with joy at this amazing movie and one of the people I was with said something like “Boy did THAT suck!” and almost everyone agreed. I never felt such a disconnect with how I felt about a movie and how most of my friends did. I still think I’m right and they were wrong but the film’s failure ensured that the opportunity we had for lots of adult science fiction films died on the vine.
“As far as Decker being a replicant goes, the possibility is suggested; but it is up to the individual audience member to decide for himself/herself whether he is or not.”
Ridley Scott has stated in recent interviews that Decker was a replicant. It caused a minor sitr when he announced it because so many people liked the ambiguity, but he was always intended to be a replicant.
I’ve never seen the “Director’s Cut” of this movie. I don’t need to. The version I saw, with the supposedly superfluous narration, was fine by itself.
Perhaps it’s because I’m a fan of film noir, where the detective often tells his thoughts in voiceover in film, or asides on paper. I didn’t think there was ENOUGH voiceover, or the RIGHT voiceovers. He could have explained his disdain for the police in greater detail. He could have commented on the utter mess that society had become, and why he felt the need to keep working in it. How can a moral man work in a business that is basically immoral, if not out of financial need?
The Marvel Comics Adaptation by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson is my favorite.
…although the moral is that it doesn’t *matter* whether he’s a replicant.
(See also PKD’s short story “Human Is”.)
What the f-? Deckard’s a replicant?! Now I have to see this director’s cut!
Even funnier, is that it’s Edward James Olmos (Commander Adama in the new Galactica) who let’s Deckard know that he’s a replicant.
A cylon who doesn’t know he’s a cylon telling a replicant who doesn’t know he’s a replicant. 🙂
BLADE RUNNER gets lots of ink for being a first in a dystopic, bleak future. Odd, I thought that was SOYLENT GREEN which I enjoyed a lot and which came out nine years before BLADE RUNNER.
I envy you guys some time. You know. All you old guys. 🙂
I like Blade Runner but lose a lot of what you’re talking about. I didn’t see it in 82. I was too young. By the time I saw it there were already other things out there building on what it helped start. The “never seen anything like this” thing was lost on me.
I was a bit then like the people who found B5 when it jumped to TNT. Some of the magic of being in on it as it happened wasn’t there. It’s easy to forget what kind of impact the film had in a before and after way when I really wasn’t old enough to remember the before bits fully.
But it should be a credit to the film that so many people find it now, with all the clones and rip offs as well as the like minded originals that have come down the pike since then, and see it as a great film and enjoy it so much. It should also be a credit to the film that so many who did see it way back when still love it and don’t look at it as many do a Model-T. You know, “it’s nice and all but how did we ever get around in that thing?”
Blade Runner rules. It’ll be remembered decades from now when a whole lot of bigger films will have been forgotten.
Modle T.
I thought the Director’s Cut left the original version in the dust, but I’ve always been a bit leery about Deckard-as-replicant.
Fanboy nitpick: fighting the other replicants, he didn’t come across as “physically enhanced replicant” as much as he did “human fighting odds.”
Sentimentalist nitpick: Blade Runner is as much a noir movie as it is anything else, and the noir hero should be a common human being except for his integrity.
[b]Ridley Scott has stated in recent interviews that Decker was a replicant. It caused a minor sitr when he announced it because so many people liked the ambiguity, but he was always intended to be a replicant.[/b]
Well, it’s a shame that Ridley got it wrong.
“BLADE RUNNER gets lots of ink for being a first in a dystopic, bleak future. Odd, I thought that was SOYLENT GREEN which I enjoyed a lot and which came out nine years before BLADE RUNNER.”
I saw SOYLENT GREEN at the drive in when I was a kid. (I’ve now crossed the line from “old” to “older than dirt”). Dated, obviously, but I loved the suicide chamber sequence and Edward G Robinson in general. Heston was heston, doing Heston better than anybody. Man, I haven’t seen that in a dog’s age.
For dystopic, bleak future it’s hard to beat A BOY AND HIS DOG.
For dystopic, bleak future it’s hard to beat A BOY AND HIS DOG
“She had good taste…”
I suggest you read the two Blade Runner novels that were “official” (as official can be) continuations of the movie…K.W. Jeter wrote them…and yeah, he’s a replicant, but there’s SO much more…
Jeter’s books – didn’t care for the first one – quit about 3/4s of the way thru. And I hardly ever don’t finish a book no matter how much I don’t like it.
When the director’s cut came out in theaters I saw it at this great place with some extreme stadium seating. Extreme as in the heads of the people in the row in front of us were around the level of our feet. We had center seats just about directly across from the center of the screen and there was absolutely nothing around to distract from the film. Very nearly an IMAX quality to the experience. Very cool.
Between “Future Noir” and some other articles, Ridley has constantly struck me as one of those “wouldn’t it be cool” director’s with little concern as to the the effect on the story. Great visual style, but that’s about it. For *me*, making Deckard a replicant takes away a lot of the impact of the film. And as has been noted, he sure didn’t seem very replicanty.
“I suggest you read the two Blade Runner novels that were “official” (as official can be) continuations of the movie…K.W. Jeter wrote them…and yeah, he’s a replicant, but there’s SO much more…”
Oh my GOD! JETER is a REPLICANT? I have to admit, I never saw that coming. And yet…it explains so much…
PAD
Well, if you want to go to an ORIGINAL source, how about the original novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and the late Phillip K. Ðìçk? I’d say that HE trumps Ridley Scott and HE never made Decker a replicant. HA!
I saw Batman Begins at an advanced screening last Tuesday and without posting any spoiler I have to say that this movie more than makes up for the horrible writing and directing that David Goyer did for Blade Trinity.
Great action scene, the dialog flowed…I absolutely loved the film.
Hëll my Batman tattoo was glowing when I left the theatre.
True Batman fans will not be disappointed.
Regards:
Warren S. Jones III
Decker being a replicant makes no sense. It ruins the theme and arc of the story. It destroys the idea of the everyman going up against these superior beings. It makes the ending in which Rutgar Hauer beats him, but then saves him to show who actually has true humanity completely worthless. Plus the idea that Sean young is special and can live beyond the five years is wasted if he is also a replicant.
“Decker being a replicant makes no sense. It ruins the theme and arc of the story.”
Not if they aren’t telling the story of an ordinary man who faces down superior beings, but of a weapon who learns how to love as a man.
“It makes the ending in which Rutgar Hauer beats him, but then saves him to show who actually has true humanity completely worthless”
It still shows that Hauer has the compasion to not destroy something special, as Decker has obviously become.
“Plus the idea that Sean young is special and can live beyond the five years is wasted if he is also a replicant. “
This idea isn’t in the director’s cut. She’s fated to die too. As Edward J Olmos says; “It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again, who does?”
Jim
This film left me in awe of Rutger Hauer’s creepiness. Watching the Hitcher shortly thereafter solidified that sensation for me. I still shiver at the thought of him in those films.
Dystopian science fiction films which predate Blade Runner (1982)?
How about:
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Silent Running (1972)
Soylent Green (1973), as someone already mentioned
Logan’s Run (1976)
Alien (1979), also directed by Ridley Scott
I’ve always thought Silent Running was an underappreciated film.
Whether Planet of the Apes (1968) is a dystopian film I guess depends on whether you identify with the humans or the apes. 🙂
Actually, my dictionary’s definition of “dystopia” is “an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad” (emphasis added). By that measure I don’t think the world of Blade Runner – or those of several of these other films – are true dystopias.
PAD: “Oh my GOD! JETER is a REPLICANT? I have to admit, I never saw that coming. And yet…it explains so much…”
Red Sox fans have long suspected that Derek Jeter is a replicant. 🙂
It cracks me up each time I see Soylent Green that the actor playing the technician who is operating the suicide chamber is Ðìçk Van Patten.
I guess Mr. Bradford never had a shortage of Soylent Green at his house. 🙂
I saw the movie, but I read “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” first and greatly preferred the book. For some reason, the movie came off as just a little too weird for me. Especially a lot of the stuff that the replicants who were being hunted did. (didn’t that one guy shove a nail through his hand). My suggestion: read the book. Even if you’ve seen the movie. The book is very good.
A true dystopia? Hmm. How about ‘Batman and Robin’?
PAD: “Oh my GOD! JETER is a REPLICANT? I have to admit, I never saw that coming. And yet…it explains so much…”
Ðámņ… not quick enough. Now I have to start keeping up on the weekends…
I don’t know. I’ve seen both versions of the film, read the original “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep” and the Jeter sequels, and read a lot about the behind-the-scenes of the filming. I can’t pull a solid winner out of all of it. Granted, each of the films stans on it’s own merits, but ever since the advent of Scott’s ‘Director’s Cut’ I’ve felt that the two films are two sides of the same coin… as if the films worked better as a reflection of the other than as a stand-alone. Perhaps it’s due to the ‘he’s a replicant!/no way he’s a replicant!’ dichotomy of it, but I have to argue that you can’t fully appreciate either film until you’ve seen the other. The original release never felt complete to me until I saw the Director’s Cut, but now simply watching the Director’s Cut isn’t enough… I have to go back and watch the original release as well.
Is it just me?
My dream DVD release of Blade Runner would have the “Director’s Cut” (it’s actually not a director’s cut, as Paul Sammon makes clear in Future Noir), the domestic theatrical release, and the international theatrical release. You’d have all the bases covered here.
For people, like myself, who like the narration, you’d have that in the domestic and international cuts. For everyone else, there’s the “director’s cut.”
It won’t happen. The film’s producers can’t stand Blade Runner, and they seem to think that the current release suffices.
Blade Runner. Great film.
The sequel novels? Not so great, though I need to import Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon from the UK.
In response to the billions… well, millions… well, thousands…well, several… O.K., zero requests for my thoughts on _Blade Runner_, I’ve decided to share some observations I made in an essay comparing the movie with the book, _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_ for a college science fiction class.
Sherman, set the WABAC Machine for April 28, 1986.
Was the film a worthy adaptation of the book?
“Yes and no.
“More no than yes, actually.
“Where the book and the film differ significantly is in their respective approaches to how the story is told, and what is involved in it. While the book gives us an in-depth look at the moral crisis Rick is undergoing, as he grapples with many questions concerning humans and androids… the movie gives us a much more shallow look at Rick’s doubts, showing us only that the hardened cop is feeling emotions of some sort. In the book, Rick’s moral dilemma is central, while in the movie it is downplayed.”
Another difference between the book and movie addressed in my essay was that the isolation of the characters in the book has an effect. With Rick specifically, it has an effect on his thoughts and actions regarding his job and his future, as well as his conceptions of what is truly human.
One of the major themes of the book was the question of what makes one truly human. In the beginning, Rick’s attitudes are similar to Resch’s in that he feels no sorrow or empathy for the androids, but simply hunts down and destroys these organic machines. As the book progresses, however, he begins to have doubts, especially when he sees empathy in the android Luba, and lack of it in the human Resch. At the end, Rick seriously considers resigning, as he can no longer be a bounty hunter.
The closest the movie comes to this is at the end, when Rick supposes Batty let him go because, as Batty was dying, he saw the beauty of life- any life.
My conclusion: while _Blade Runner_ was a well-done film, it was but a faint shadow of its inspiration.
I am assuming that when I watched the video of the film in 1986, in order to compare it with the book, I was watching the original release version, and not the director’s cut. I no longer remember. Would I reach a different conclusion about the book vs. the movie when comparing the book to the director’s cut? Perhaps. I’d have to take the time to refamiliarize myself with both (I own both), however.
Oh, and in case you wondered, I got a B on the essay.
I wasn’t wondering what your grade was. I was wondering why in God’s name you still have a twenty year old college essay at your disposal.
PAD
I wasn’t wondering what your grade was. I was wondering why in God’s name you still have a twenty year old college essay at your disposal.
PAD
Would you believe that like Rick Jones’ parachute, it can come in handy when escaping from an exploding Skrull saucer?
Actually, I keep copies of everything* I write, whether they’re published articles or unpublished essays, or early drafts of short stories and novels. Most of these things are packed away somewhere, as was the case with the _Blade Runner_ essay; but they’re in my files, nonetheless.
And the grade information was along the lines of an ironic statement, since I know that _nobody_ was actually wondering.
Well, they might have been mildly curious, but they wouldn’t have cared.
Rick
* Grocery lists not included.
PAD:
>I wasn’t wondering what your grade was. I was wondering why in God’s name you still have a twenty year old college essay at your disposal.
I don’t know how typical this is, but I can say that I also kept a paper from college (19 years ago) that I entitled something along the lines of “In Colonial America Two Slave Ships Would Come Into a Paradox”. It was a paper from my first year at school and is kinda fun to read the passion that I wrote it in from the viewpoint of an 18 year old kid.
Fred
Okay, this is a really late addition, but I’ve got a good BLADE RUNNER-related story.
LA, early ’90s. Lisa and I go to the director’s cut. Opening night at some huge theater in Westwood (don’t remember which one, but in that area they’re pretty much ALL big and good theaters). The crowd is very interested to see this.
Lights dim. Trailers start.
The first one seems appropriately grim, if heavily action-oriented. Some sort of terrorist/hostage situation going on.
Voiceover: “And only ONE MAN can save them…”
Zoom in … on Steven Seagal.
And the entire audience erupts … into utterly derisive laughter.
One of the single best cases of a mis-aimed trailer that I’ve ever seen. 🙂
TWL