Director: Ridley Scott Writers: Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples, Philip K. Dick (based on the book by) Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe”
Blade Runner: 2049 is out on Oct 5th, so we decided to review the original, in eager anticipation of the sequel. Here, we will be looking at Ridley Scott’s Final Cut (2007), which is the definitive version of the movie. While some still prefer the original theatrical cut, the Final Cut offers more mystery and ambiguity, through the omission of Harrison Ford’s hand-holding voiceover, which allows us to focus on the visual. The Final Cut also furthered the hubbub around the movie for film theorists everywhere, by adding more hints at the nature of Ford’s Deckard.
But why was a Final Cut of the movie ever needed? Back when Blade Runner was originally released in 1982, the world had not had a vision of the future as bleak and pessimistic as Ridley’s Scott’s Blade Runner, outside of the pages of science fiction. Scott has said himself that they were ahead of the times with Blade Runner, audiences being used to the space action of Star Wars or the optimistic views of Star Trek. To compound the fact that there was little demand for something like Blade Runner at the time, the movie was also released around the same time as E.T., and so it suffered in a big way at the Box Office. The same fate befell The Thing the same year. However, just like John Carpenter’s Antarctic horror movie, Blade Runner enjoyed a healthy cult following over the years, with the advent of VHS. It has since become one of the most adored movies of all time, and is heralded as a massive technical achievement.
The result (and multiple following end results over the years) was not achieved, however, without its problems. Near the end of production, Ridley Scott and Michael Deeley (Producer) were fired, before the studio were persuaded to bring them back on. Harrison Ford also famously had many fall-outs with the reportedly irascible Scott, with the former being dissatisfied with much of the project, especially the studio-enforced somnambulant voice-over by Ford.
That infamous voice over, which was only in the original theatrical release, was apparently inserted into the film as the studio felt that mainstream audiences wouldn’t “get” the story. The story, of course, was adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, who only saw a portion of the film before he passed away. Scott’s main inspirations for the film, outside the source material, were the noir films of the 40’s. Harrison Ford’s Deckard, the eponymous Blade Runner tasked with taking down 6 rogue replicants, was a call back to The Big Sleep’s Philip Marlowe. Deckard is accordingly vulnerable, and becomes both physically and emotionally compromised throughout his investigations. One of the opening shots of the film even shows one of Deckard’s Blade Runner colleagues being murdered by a replicant, ramping up the stakes for the main character from the get go. We are immersed in Scott’s vision of Dick’s world, as we question, along with Deckard, just what it means to be human.
Of course, many of the characters ask themselves what it is to be human throughout the film, especially the “more human than human” replicants. The question that has persisted for fans of the film over the years is, of course, whether Blade Runner’s protagonist is a replicant himself. In the Final Cut we were given more clues than ever of Deckard’s true origin, and Scott has even come out himself to say that Deckard is in fact a replicant, in Mark Kermode’s documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner (2000). In the same documentary, Kermode also interviews the writers of Blade Runner, who reveal an interesting back story behind one of cinema’s greatest mysteries. Both writers, Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples, credited each other with the creation of the intriguing plot point, both believing the other had written it into the script. It seems then, that in the confusion, the story ended up writing itself into existence, determined to have cinephiles delving into the movie’s details for years (Check out Kermode’s full documentary here).
Aside from the story, the visuals of the film were ground-breaking in 1982, and still stand up well today. The fiery landscape of LA, the beautifully realised sets and the dark, gloomy and breath-taking cinematography made a stunning cityscape, akin to a hellish version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Whereas Star Trek had shown people an optimistic future we might have hoped for, Blade Runner portrayed a future which seemed hauntingly near and scarily possible.
Blade Runner’s influence over the years has also been widespread, inspiring movies like 12 Monkeys, the Ghost in the Shell anime and Dark City, while also giving birth to techno noir. And now, after all this time, we finally get a sequel! After the Final Cut, Ridley Scott said that he was done with it, that it was “Time to die” for Blade Runner. However, with Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 out this month, it seems that Blade Runner is still very much alive.
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