The Mutant Clones of 'Blade Runner'
New DVD release is basically a variorum
By Andy Klein
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner has one of the most breathtaking opening shots in cinema history – a fly-over of Los Angeles, ca. 2019, with a million little lights burning in the permanently polluted, dark skies, and huge smokestacks belching out flames … what the filmmaker thought of as the “Hades landscape.”
The awe this inspires comes crashing down a few scenes later when we meet Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a “blade runner” (a detective charged with hunting down renegade “replicants,” i.e., androids). Some of the movie’s producers insisted that Ford record a voiceover to clarify a plot that was reasonably clear to start with. This deadpan, ultra-hardboiled addition constantly threatened to tip the whole effect toward camp.
Which is why, walking out of a Westwood theater on its opening weekend in 1982, I thought, “This is 85 percent a great film … and 15 percent one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen.”
In the 25 ensuing years, a handful of slightly different cuts have emerged, leading up to the recently screened Blade Runner: The Final Cut, commissioned for a definitive home video package. Warner has now released BR:TFC in several configurations: I’m working from the HD-DVD Five-Disc Complete Collector’s Edition (which lists for 40 bucks and can be had online for $28). For the record, there is an identical Blu-Ray set, as well as a standard-DVD equivalent. (The last is $5 cheaper but, unfairly and strangely, omits the fifth disc, which contains the “workprint” cut that started the Blade Runner revival in 1991.) Each of these is available in one of those fancy “collectible packages” with various gewgaws, for more than twice the cost; the standard-DVD collectible version adds the fifth disc, which means that, for non-HD/Blu-Ray people who don’t give a damn about gewgaws, the workprint cut costs more than the rest of the set. Finally, the first two discs are also available on standard DVD in a budget-priced edition.
Phew.
The only reason I’m going into all this detail is that, in all its configurations, Blade Runner is not only the best reissue package of 2007 but, dollar for dollar, the best video release of the year … period.
Producer Charles de Lauzirika has assembled such a profusion of versions and extras that it’s hard to imagine what could be added to induce buyers to double-dip in the future.
Let’s start with the five different Blade Runners. Disc One has The Final Cut. Disc Five has the workprint. And Disc Three has the original American theatrical release (the 85 percent brilliant one); the slightly more violent 1982 international release, which was the version on previous videotape and laserdisc releases; and the 1992 so-called “director’s cut,” which dropped the narration (like the workprint) but also added the controversial unicorn scene, strengthening the impression that Deckard may himself be a replicant.
The three versions are similar enough to fit on one disc, using most of the same material and branching off to variant chapters to accommodate the specifics of whichever cut you’ve chosen to watch.
Indeed, The Final Cut is the best, with the dumb 15 percent fixed. My only slight reservation is that the ending still feels abrupt; Scott and his screenwriters seem to have never come up with a truly satisfying final scene. But it’s hugely better than the tacked-on “happy ending” of the original and international versions.
In hi-def (either format), the visual quality is staggering, as close to theatrical level as I expect to see in my lifetime. This is thanks partly to the restoration team and partly to the movie’s striking look – so a quick shout-out for Scott, the late cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, and the all-star design and special effects people. The redone sound mix is also excellent. The standard-DVD versions look so great that, until you see the hi-def, you’ll think it’s as good as it could get.
Scott has taken liberties with his own work of the sort that purists (including myself) are often uncomfortable with: He has “fixed” errors that were the result of budget and time restraints 25 years ago. For instance, in parts of Zhora’s death scene, a stunt double is visibly replacing actress Joanna Cassidy. For the new cut, Cassidy – 25 years older, of course – came into the studio so they could record her face in the same positions and then digitally “paste” it over the stunt woman’s.
In one scene where Ford’s lip movements are completely at odds with the dialogue, they made the same sort of fix, pasting in the mouth of the actor’s son Ben – whose age now exactly matches his father’s in the film – saying the correct lines.
A third instance is more problematic: Near the end, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), dying on a dark, rainy roof, releases a dove that flies off into a dry, blue sky. To Scott, this was simply an unfortunate compromise that has now been “fixed”; to me, it had lovely thematic implications.
Any uneasiness I feel about these changes is allayed by the inclusion of the other versions – especially the original theatrical cut – on Disc Three. By way of analogy, I wish that Universal had included the much-maligned original opening of Touch of Evil on its DVD release; the revised opening may be better and, more importantly, may be what Orson Welles wanted, but the few of us who prefer the other version would have appreciated having the option.
There is also the question of historical accuracy: The restoration team has redone some other visual elements, most of which I would never notice; the touching up could mislead younger viewers about the state of special effects in the early ’80s. But, again, the presence of the earlier cuts – cleaned and restored but otherwise unchanged – alleviates that concern.
These changes are explained in the half-hour
All Our Variant Futures: From Workprint to Final Cut on Disc Five; and for those who don’t have a Disc Five, much of the same information is imparted in the exhaustive three-and-a-half-hour Dangerous Days documentary on Disc Two. Disc Four has a half-dozen more short documentaries, as well as nearly 50 minutes of deleted scenes and outtakes, edited together in narrative order and accompanied by an earlier, superior voiceover; it constitutes a kind of breathless, alternate version of the whole film.
There are three commentary tracks on The Final Cut: Scott’s is far and away the best, but you can also listen to the writers or to some of the effects and design people, including the great Douglas Trumbull. The workprint has an incredibly informative commentary track by Paul M. Sammon, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. With all this material, there is inevitably a lot of duplicated info.
Among the featurettes is Deck-A-Rep: The True Nature of Rick Deckard, which looks at the “Is Deckard actually a replicant?” issue. Scott himself insists he is, adding (with his trademark tact) that “if you don’t get it, you’re a moron.” Director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist) articulately explains why Deckard shouldn’t be a replicant. There is a fair amount of evidence supporting Scott’s assertion, but at least as much contradicting it … even if it is his film.
There were only two moments in the original release that made me question Deckard’s human-ness. Curiously, the first – a discrepancy in the number of escaped replicants – turns out to be a simple continuity mistake, created by a subplot that was cut. The second – the vocal and physical resemblance between Deckard and the first blade runner we meet – was a casting coincidence. Actor Morgan Paull was initially hired to stand in for Ford during auditions with a few actresses – later he also did some “Ford” voiceovers for the trailers – and Scott liked him enough to give him the part.
Blade Runner: Complete Collector’s Edition. Directed by Ridley Scott. Screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples; based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. With Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Darryl Hannah, William Sanderson, Edward James Olmos, and Joanna Cassidy. DVD produced by Charles de Lauzirika. Warner Home Video, five discs (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray); $39.99. Four discs (DVD); $34.99.
Published: 01/03/2008
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