Every now and then you get a movie where fans argue over which version you should watch. In most cases it’s just theatrical and directors cut. For Blade Runner there are seven versions (though two you probably won’t find anywhere) and three are in my view worth watching. So lets break down the differences and which ones are worth a viewing. Primarily there are two elements that divide the versions, first and most simply is the edgier content. Some cuts have a bit more graphic violence, while others kept them to a minimum. Generally speaking I’m of the view that you want the edgier stuff, none of it is over the top and it’s just extra content. As a result I don’t really find the US Theatrical release or the “Directors Cut” to be worth viewing since there are other versions that provide everything they do and that extra footage. The second and better known division is the voice overs and happy ending. These were effectively producer additions and as such are only in the theatrical versions. So let’s look at three versions worth watching.
The European Theatrical Cut (1982)
For many people this would be the first version of the film they would have seen. Not only was this the released format for theatres across Europe, it was also the version used in Australia and Asia and was used on VHS releases (as an unrated version) and is perhaps best known to American fans as the version on the Criterion Edition Laser Disc. It is different from the US theatrical release only in three slightly extended and more violent scenes. The US Broadcast version cut even more scenes, so outside of the unreleased San Diego sneak peak (Which had some additional footage that has never been seen since) this is the ultimate voice over/happy ending version.
While the voice overs rarely added anything of worth and in some occasions (such as Roy Batty’s death) actually detract from the scene, they do occasionally include some interesting nuggets of information that help frame the context in which the original release was offered. It’s also worth noting that in this version of the film I really don’t feel that Rick Deckard is a replicant. I’m not sure if that indicates Scott decided to push it in that direction later with the directors/final cut, if it was a concept rolled back by the studio or if it’s just a coincidence. There are some people that still prefer this version (Perhaps because Deckard seems more human), though they are in the minority. It is worth checking out. If you can’t find the European version, the US theatrical cut will do as the differences are inconsequential.
The Final Cut (2007)
This is regarded as the definitive version, though I feel that is a simplification. There is still merit and some additional context to be gained from some of the other versions. I also feel that over time Ridley Scott has changed how he wants to frame Deckard and where you stand on that may impact which version you prefer. This cut definitely pushes strongly in the direction of Deckard as a replicant and perhaps a lot of this was because Scott had in mind (at the time he was doing the notes for the Directors Cut at least) to do a sequel where Deckard was a replicant that can reproduce. This idea was somewhat taken up in Blade Runner 2049 but as many peoples response to that reveals, the idea wasn’t necessarily a winner and revealing Deckard’s status was always going to be divisive. To be clear though the Final Cut doesn’t directly address the idea that Rick is a Replicant, it just hint at it, but most people feel he is after viewing it.
The Final Cut makes significant changes to theatrical release. The most notable ones are that the voice overs are entirely gone as is the happy ending and a dream sequence about a Unicorn is added. These changes were also present in the 1992 Directors Cut, however, the Final Cut goes much further in ways that can only be seen as improvements (unless you are an effects purist), so for me the Directors Cut is no longer worth watching. Changes from that version include fixing a number of visual issues with the original, notably the death of Zhora (Where in all other versions it’s pretty clear it’s a stunt woman in a bad wig), the scene where Rick questions the mechanical snake salesman (which had terrible lip syncing) and the shot of the Dove flying off after Roy Batty’s death. On top of this it also adds in those extended edgier scenes from the European Cut. This is easily the best looking version of the film. However I’m not convinced it is the best version of the film for telling the story.
The Workprint Version
This is a bit of a wildcard and this version may be hard to find, but it walks a significant middle ground between the two main versions of the film and has somewhat legendary status. This is the version that was so hated by the original screener audiences in 1982 that they had to radically change the film with the voice over and happy ending for the theatrical release. But it’s the same version that when screened in 1992 as “The Directors Cut” (Which Ridley Scott quickly objected to) was so popular it actually led to the studio putting together the 1992 Directors Cut with Scott’s guidance and that led to the long journey to what would be the Final Cut. It’s fascinating how much difference ten years can make in the reception this version got.
But it’s also worth noting that while it doesn’t have the theatrical versions voice overs or happy ending (Both mandated by the producers after the negative reaction to this very version), it also doesn’t have the Unicorn dream sequence and for me that is a positive. While I don’t hate that sequence, it seems to exist for the purpose of suggesting Deckard is a replicant and frankly I prefer the ambiguity and always felt that dream sequence was out of place anyway.
This version is also notable in that it has one piece of unique voice over dialogue, after Roy Batty’s death and unlike in the theatrical release it actually adds to the scene instead of taking from it. The line is about how long it took Batty to die (all night) and how he died (fighting it all the way, like he loved life, even the pain). It makes the appearance of Gaff shortly after the scene make more sense (As hours would have passed) and the suggestion that Roy’s death was slow and painful makes his character even more tragic. I can only assume it was replaced with a different voice over on release for the same reason they threw in the happy ending, it was just felt to be too depressing.
Of course this is a workprint, so there are issues, but actually it’s more complete than you may imagine. The most notable change is in the music, Vangelis hadn’t quite scored everything and in the scene just after Zhora’s death instead of “One More Kiss Dear” we are treated to a bit of The Ink Spots. Interesting given how franchises like Fallout and Bioshock tend to use that groups music. Somehow they’ve ended up as the go to group for Tech-Noir and it seems it may have started with this workprint. Despite that absence, most of the soundtrack is actually in place along with the effects.
Not only that but the restored version from the Ultimate Box Set (Which is the version I watched) looks pretty much release ready. The Workprint does a good job of showing a third path between the theatrical and final/directors cut and it’s well worth watching if you can find it. Interestingly there has been a fan edit (The “Analogue Cut”) which uses the Workprint as a template but utilises elements of the final cut. I haven’t seen it but I highly approve of the concept.
The Universe Expanded
While Blade Runner failed in theatres on it’s original run, it went on to become a cult classic and became a huge influence on film makers and other creatives going forward. The world in which it is set seemed so real and so interesting that naturally people wanted to tell new stories in here. Some of it is worth checking out, others less so. In my view none of it is officially part of this universe, not even the so called sequel because it significantly reframes the original and in my view failed to understand what made that film. With that in mind let’s get that out of the way first as I have a lot to say about it.
The Replicant in the room – 2049
I’m not going to drop a synopsis or character analysis for 2049, so I’ll briefly cover how it relates to the original. Deckard is in the film (a long way into it) and he and Rachael somehow managed to have a child, though Rachael died in childbirth. Most of the plot follows an investigation to track them down by a new Blade Runner, Officer K, who is a Replicant himself. In theory a relatively simple plot and one that didn’t really need nearly three hours (46 minutes more than the original) to tell. But then the actual script is given a lot of needless complications that don’t really add much to the film except an excuse for David Villeneuve to push for that cinematography Oscar. The fact this movie costs double ($185m) the inflation adjusted ($92m) production budget of the original is really quite telling and while it made the film nice to look at it didn’t help recapture the magic. Ultimately the plot ends up revolving around a simple “Chosen One” mechanic with a fairly obvious twist thrown in. The movie takes twice as long to say half as much.
My biggest issue with the film is it seems to heavily push the idea that Deckard is a replicant. So much so that most people after watching assume it outright said he is. The film holds back from outright saying it is the case, but it’s pretty clear this is the intention. It’s strange enough for Rachael to randomly be able to bare children but it would be even stranger to be able to have a child with a Human.
In general the sequel answers a lot of questions that should never have been answered (and a few that shouldn’t even be questions), a common issue for franchise reboots these days and in doing so it actively diminishes the first movie (And there is no greater crime in my view for a sequel). The question about Deckard and what happened to him and Rachael was a question best left unanswered. It was definitely not a mystery worth discarding for the sake of a brief cameo in sequel. 35 years later that had it turned into a multi-film franchise in it’s own right, it was clearly not going to feature an 80 year old Harrison Ford in any kind of capacity that really matters. In short they burned down the original to prop up their own vision of the franchise.
To make matters worse Deckard is simply not Deckard in this movie. For some reason he seems to have switched personalities with Han Solo or Indiana Jones. One of the reasons Deckard stands out so well amongst Ford’s roles is that his personality is nothing like those characters. He doesn’t stand around wise cracking and goofing his way out of situations (Though he certainly gets lucky with them). He is a character built on the Film Noir template. Those elements are discard in 2049, hard to say if that is down to the writers or Ford himself. Either way I felt like Officer K was teaming up with Han Solo for the third act of the movie.
My second issue is it pushes aside the Tyrell Corporation and the original replicants for a duplicate corporation and only marginally different replicants (Another thing that seems to happen a lot with reboots and I suspect is something to do with merchandise rights). The new corporation is lead by a moustache twirling Jared Leto that is simply far less interesting and believable than Joe Turkel’s Tyrell.
A lot of this is due to Leto’s portrayal of the character that pushes it so far into comic book super villain that it is hard to buy the character as a creative genius. The role needed a more subtle approach and Leto simply doesn’t do subtle. Indeed at this stage there is not much getting around it, Leto simply isn’t that good. He just isn’t talented enough to pull off the method approach. He’s basically Nicholas Cage without the charisma. A good part of the problem though is that his motivation (Creating replicants that can have children) is basically only there to drive a plot that was a bad idea in the first place.
My third issue is that the protagonist is an empty shell whose story is largely a nihilists one, Early on it seems he is looking for purpose in life, for a while feels he is special, but ultimately must come to terms with basically his own unimportance. This theme largely replaces the theme of the original of what it means to be human and the nature of reality itself. Not that those themes aren’t touched on, but with a replicant protagonist dealing with other replicants there is no direct contrast with the human condition. As many of us that prefer Deckard as a human have pointed out this kind of story needs a central character that the can ground the audience. Perhaps Nihilists and Replicants can relate to K but I am neither of those.
More importantly the message of K’s journey seems to be to accept your lot in life, that you are not special and you are basically here to serve. Maybe there was meant to be a different message, but for me at least it didn’t come through. When Roy Batty discovered his fate, he fought it all the way and treasured every aspect of what lie he had. If you compare his screen time to K’s and consider how much more progress his character achieved it’s simply embarrassing. Officer K isn’t a terrible character, but he’s not one that should have ever been the lead.
It’s interesting to compare the opening scene of 2049 to the storyboarded opening of the original film. See Villeneuve was dropping an Easter egg with this by almost copying that unused scene (One he likely heard about the same place as me, from the documentaries on the ultimate collectors edition box set). The difference in the scenes is telling though. The point for Deckard was to both make him look a bad ass, but also to introduce you to the cold brutality of the job. K’s version however drags the scene out to a physical struggle (Deckard just shoots the guy straight away) and makes him look bad at his job. The scene is also used as the jumping on point for the main plot, but the truth is it could have been entirely skipped with minimal impact.
The one positive from K is actually his holographic AI companion “Joi” (Which is a hilarious name… if you know, you know) that pretty much is the sole interesting character in this movie outside of Edward James Olmos’ brief cameo (which was itself another misstep, losing further mystery from the original for the sake of a tiny bit of fan service).
Another problem is the reframing of the setting to be post apocalyptic. The world of Blade Runner was dystopian but it was a pretty unique feeling dystopia. The version shown in 2049 feels more generic. True the novel was set after a global nuclear war, but Ridley Scott’s version was not and when question on the subject he suggested the world was over populated and over polluted. He made no mention of War. In Philip K Dick’s world it was heavily under populated. World War Terminus wiped out most of humanity. Were Villenueve creating a new adaptation of Dick’s story that would be one thing, but he seems to want 2049 to be in both worlds at once and to me that feels disjointed.
On first viewing I really liked the cinematography of 2049, but when I re-watched I came to realise that the parts that weren’t post apocalyptic really feels like an imitation of the original. They for instance have tried to impersonate the street scenes with lots of people running around with umbrellas, but the scenes in the sequel lack the chaotic mismatch of cultures and styles that is in the original. In attempting to replicate those scenes they actually missed the entire point of them – a cultural melting pot ramped up to 11. The sequel wears the unique world of Blade Runner like a uniform.
A common problem for a lot of todays reboots is they make references and feel that is enough. The audience are expected to applaud because they repeatedly say things that should like Deckard’s instructions to his computer while examining Leon’ photo, that people have umbrellas or that they opened the film with a variation on the unused opening of the original. These are all meaningless. Set so many years after the original it made little sense to try and duplicate the street scene so closely, but perhaps the problem boils down to the fact this sequel did come so late. These kind of things are
The visuals and the soundtrack in 2049 are both great and terrible at the same time. In isolation they are beautiful but both are like an AI’s interpretation of the original. Created to look and sound like it but without the detail shown by the human understanding of context. Ironic given the franchise. Every time I re-watch this movie it feels less impressive, that is the opposite of how I feel every time I re-watch the original (And believe me I did that five or six times while writing this).
Where 2049 did follow the original was in failing at the box office. But it’s worth noting while Blade Runner had to deal with the success of E.T. and Wrath of Khan, 2049 hit the scene in October with the closest thing to real competition being the “Kingsman” sequel and the unwanted remake of “Flatliners”. With the original film having done the hard work already, the sequel didn’t really have any excuse. Half the people that watched the film loved it, the other half hated it but as a sequel it really needed to be less divisive amongst it’s built in fan base. Of course later that year “The Last Jedi” came out demonstrating that rule far better and more dramatically. Blade Runner 2049 is not a franchise destroyer like that movie, indeed I’m not sure I’d even call it a bad movie, but it was a major disappointment and a bad sequel. At least in this fans view.
Black Lotus – The Animated Nonsense
For all my issues with Blade Runner 2049, at least it attempted to be in the same universe as Blade Runner. Having watched half way through the recent animated Black Lotus series I struggle to see how it can really be considered a part of the same franchise. Of course technically Black Lotus is a spin off of 2049 and perhaps that added distance is part of my problem, but ultimately it is a generic cyberpunk story where androids are called Replicants and where it rains and people walk around with umbrellas (Because apparently that is all Blade Runner is now).
Super special cyborg ninja women with no memory may seem a cool concept (to a 13 year old anyway) but it’s a plot about as far removed from the world of the original as you can get and seems better suited in the Cyberpunk Franchise than Blade Runner. On top of this the soundtrack is basically energetic modern electronic dance music (Again something more in line with Cyberpunk).
One day I may give it another chance and just try to ignore that it claims to be a Blade Runner story, but the problem is we already have a Cyberpunk anime and it’s apparently quite good (So I’ll be watching that first). Ironically with some tweaks this story would have been much better suited in something like the Snow Crash or Neuromancer worlds, but apparently no one feels those classics worth putting on the big screen…. But those are rants for another time! This one is really not worth bothering with IMHO.
The Video Game
If you don’t have an issue with some retro gaming, the game released in 1997 (five years after the Directors Cut breathed new life into the franchise) is actually an extremely good point and click adventure game and while it tells a new story it fits well in the movies universe. It’s also one of the few point and click adventure games that actually aged well. I highly recommend it and it is available on GoG, so you don’t have to mess around with CD’s.
The game features many of the original cast (and as the story runs parallel to the movies plot it allows for unlimited cameos) and while it doesn’t technically have the original soundtrack from the movie it does have a pretty accurate re-creation by Frank Klepacki (Most famous for his soundtrack on C&C Red Alert). This is who they should have brought in for Black Lotus or even 2049 because his replication of Vangelis is almost indistinguishable from real thing. The game also has great replayability with multiple endings and some game elements (like who is a replicant) changing each play through.
Books and Comics
Shortly after the original film came out Marvel comics actually made an adaptation of the story and it is surprisingly high quality. It adds some extra detail but remains true to the story. This is well worth picking up if you can find it. There was also a novelisation eventually released by Les Martin (initially they wanted Philip K Dick to write it, but for obvious reasons he refused and insisted they re-release his original novel instead, which they did but eventually got Martin to do the adaptation anyway).
There was also a sequel trilogy written by K. W. Jeter that followed immediately from the events of the film, though he also tried to link the story up somewhat with the original novel (Which is not really possible given the divergence, but it does include at least one character that is only in the novel). These make for an interesting alternative continuation of the story to what we see in 2049 but ultimately doesn’t fit any better. Worth checking out but probably only for the more hardcore fans.
Movie and TV tie ins
Interestingly it seems Ridley Scott actually considers Alien and Blade Runner to be part of the same universe. Though my guess is he isn’t including the Alien Vs Predator movies with that. These actually do have a lot of compatibility (even aside from recycling Alien’s computer screen readout for Deckard’s Spinner). Of course Scott also considers Prometheus/Covenant as canon and a lot of fans would disagree with him there (I actually liked Prometheus, but I can’t defend Covenant and am not keen on it’s version of the origin). Whether this link will ever really mean anything to the casual viewer or not is probably dependant on Scott’s continued involvement with both francizes. Currently he is still involved, so who knows.
Another film that strongly hints at being set in the same world is 1998’s “Soldier” staring Kurt Russel. Certainly for me it felt like a spiritual successor even if not legitimately canon. However, when listing Kurt Russel’s character’s military career it seems he was at a lot of the same battles as Roy Batty. The film never directly mentions androids or replicants and Russel’s unit are all show to have been brainwashed from birth to serve as soldiers (making it very unlikely he is an android), however his unit are all replaced by a new superior model, one whose origin is not explored and which I always felt was suggested to be artificial. The links were deliberate and the film was devised as a sort of Blade Runner sequel. Officially though, there is no link.
It’s also worth noting that because of the Philip K Dick link that many other movies and TV shows based on his work also fit somewhat into that universe. Most notable is the TV series Total Recall 2070 which despite the name was really a Blade Runner TV series. It featured an android cop teaming up with a human and featured a lot more android based stories than it did artificial memory ones (i.e. ones you’d expect from a Total Recall series). As strange as that was, the show was actually pretty good (though somewhat dated now, 90’s TV CGI aged horribly) and worth checking out if you can find it.
Final Thoughts
So that is my epic Blade Runner deep dive done. Through my research and multiple re-watches of the movie this labour of love has only increased my appreciation for the work of art that is the original Blade Runner. At it’s heart it is a philosophical movie and while it is melancholy in tone it brings with it seeds of hope.
If a machine that was created as a solider to do nothing but kill and spent it’s whole life span doing it can learn empathy for it’s enemy perhaps we can learn empathy for each other. If Deckard can find meaning and purpose and go from hunter to protector maybe we can find purpose in our lives too. If Rachael can find something to live for after having everything she thought she was stripped from her maybe we can find that strength too.
Maybe too it is a warning telling us not to forget that the people you see every day with their brains apparently turned off, operating in some kind of automatic response mode are actually still people under all of that. But it’s also a warning not to lose ourselves, not to forget we are human, not to shut ourselves off and treat everything as nothing but an objective, a target, a job. It is truly a deep philosophical story but it is built on a very human beauty.
Despite the artificial nature of a lot of the environment and of the synths in the soundtrack each note and each frame is an emotional one that tells a story. The futuristic world is built on the old world. Each brick is a ghost. This is why the world of the film feels so lived in and real. In creation of the film was a perfect storm of pressure, conflict and emotions but also of course of incredible talent. It’s not something you can replicate by throwing money at it, it is lightning in a bottle. That said, when you make a world this interesting it is a shame to abandon it.
The End
Word is Ridley Scott is involved in a new TV series that will see a further branch of the Franchise (set several decades after 2049 presumably to allow a fresh start). Bringing back franchises for TV shows is quite hit and miss but if Scott is genuinely involved (Instead of just taking an executive producer credit so they can use his name) I am certainly going to be keen to watch it. We will see.
Anyway, I hope you found something of value in this multi-part examination of the film. It’s going to be a while before I do another one of these I think and I’ll probably make that a lot shorter. I’m thinking probably The Terminator, though maybe I’ll throw a curve ball and do Airplane! We will see. Meanwhile October is fast approaching and that means I need to get ready for the torrent of horror movie reviews I will do. Feel free to leave me comments on this.
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