Once when I reviewed “Blade Runner,” I wrote, “It Looks good, the film special effects fully to build a universe on its own, but It is poor in its in the character; the human story.” This appears to be an odd criticism, in view of the fact that a lot of the film is about who is a human and who isn’t, and what it means to be human anyway. Even, it is safe to say, one character who we have reason to believe is human the lizard like Tyrell, head of the company which produces Webb’s units seems to be a potential replicant. Even the lead man, Deckard (Harrison Ford), well all we can presume for definite is that the film’s and the character’s creator, director Ridley Scott, provided as much evidence in several versions of his film that Deckard can be classified as a human being and as a replicant.
Now study that paragraph again and notice I have committed a journalistic misdemeanor. I have made mention of replicants without ever taking the pains to indicate what a replicant is. No wonder a ‘cult’ status of 25 years after the premiere of “Blade Runner” most people who read this know about replicants. They offer no help in Munchkin’s definition to the Reviews of Wizard of Oz do they? This is important film which more or less continues where other classics such as Metropolis (1926) or Things to Come, have left off establishing a dominant vision of the future which has shaped science fiction films. Its most popular legacies include Super powerful oligopolies, ecological devastation, overpopulation, advances in technology and the upper class, an impoverished or enslaved lower class and, almost always, a bleak cinematic outlook. Therefore, to take “Dark City”, “Total Recall”, “Brazil”, “12 Monkeys” or “Gattaca” will be subject vertically its descendants.
I was never particularly enthused about “Blade Runner”, enjoying it as an outsider, but I feel it is now appropriate to get in and acknowledge it. More than twenty years after its release, Ridley Scott has issued a version that leaves apparently nothing else to be said about the movie “Blade Runner: The Final Cut”. This exclusive version of the movie will be released first via theaters and will then come to store shelves on December 18 in three DVD collections with “The Five Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition” which is reported to contain “All 4 Previous Cuts, Including the Ultra Rare ‘Workprint’ Version!
The voice over narration contained in Scott’s earlier cuts is the most significant aspect he has altered in this version. This was attached to the 1982 original, voiced over by Ford, in a Philip Marlowe impersonation in particular for a studio equally firm in its stance that we wouldn’t get the film. Since the marketing tactics of this film were that so much was pitched in a subtle manner that we weren’t sure we understood it as well, that was not a big setback. The ending has gone from dark to happy to dark and philosophical to a combination of all those and more, cut shots have been added and subtracted, but for me the 2007 version fundamentally affected in the most interesting way the print quite literally.
Scott has not given in to the urge of going back and trying pratical effects again which annoyed some fans of Geoge Lucas’ Star Wars. He has preserved original special effects created by Douglas Turnbull while restoring the original picture and sound quality to unprecedented levels. This looks so wonderful that one can almost want to throw away the story aspect and enjoy just watching the film instead.
But the story benefits from this, too, since it appears to be sitting more naturally within the story than simply on top of it. The story follows Deckard, a blade runner assigned to hunt down six renegade replicants who have escaped from colonial off worlds, presumably to Los Angeles. (The movie never actually deals with more than five replicants, however, unless, as the critic Tim Dirks speculates, Deckard might be the sixth). Replicants, as you know, are more than mere automata Faux Humans, designed to slave away in earth colonies. They do serve a purpose in the story itself being as they are forged and manufactured with short life spans of four years only due to the fact that even though these are born with fake history tapes or memories drilling in them, any more than four years and these simple mechanized freaks may begin to entertain doubts that they are real people. Before long they will want the right to vote, the right to marry a white man, and any other civilization they deem fit. Most of this can be traced back in one form or the other from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick the original text.
It is worth noting here, however, that since replicants by definition generally do not comprehend that they are replicants, there can indeed be very deep sentiment as well there’s sadness in their lives.
One character that we particularly sympathize with is Rachael (Sean Young), who becomes romantically attached to Deckard, who is pursuing her. Deckard is quite fond of her although there is an evidence to suggest that she is a replicant. But a very good one. Almost impossible to spot.
What I have always failed to comprehend is the reason why the Tyrell Corporation decided to create androids which looked exactly like humans. Why not give them four arms and put them to good use? Why do the work to maybe cut out four people? Is there a hidden agenda that, in time, the replacing of humans is the end game of Tyrell? Is the entire blade running thing simply a front for this what the blade running was really about? But who cares? What is important to the audience is that the rules seem to be there, and they apply, in one of the most amazing worlds that has ever been depicted in a movie.
In this Los Angeles of ours however, pollution is contained in the form of airborne filth that dominates the sky at all times. It is mostly common to rain. The design and architecture appears much the same as now though older and congested with thousands of floating dirigibles and individual jet cars and buildings of gargantuan sizes. When I first watched the movie the ads with moving speaking mouths and faces advertising Coca Cola and other well known products impressed me very much. Now I take a walk to Millennium Park which has enormous faces staring down at me and smiling winking and at times even spitting (well not coke). As for the flying cars they have been around on covers of science fiction magazines for ages now why do they even still add them? It is not until you lock them up in the control grid that they look fun and make some sense, without killing people.
So, as I call it, there is a movie in which it is necessary to apply facilities, which as practical tests establish whether someone is a replicant, and there are other practical tests (such as love) to establish how much that matters (a) people, if they are in love with a replicant, and (b) the replicants, if they know that they are. This has always been an artificial issue which could be easily evaded in practical frameworks unless (as I think) the Tyrell Corp. is more than just a couple of arms. Though, it is ridiculous to watch the movie and realize how it is important for a story to have rational motives. And, how many more surprises in store for us within the framework of film noir that was born in the form of a butterfly from the caterpillar of 1940s, and still manages to dominate the future. Dark City again. I am sorry where is film noir this has brought so much bounty and also so bloody prognostation concepts that half your inside set and costume decisions are already decided with fully know what your tone will or what your comfy.
The highly esteemed Ridley Scott is a man who has always envisaged challenging projects. He is the one behind Adrian Shergold, Lolita, equal access, cinema history includes, Methetisis, American Gangster, just adding another title to his long list of films and it mauld finds itself horrified at the time. I can still remember disabusing myself of some notions about “The booster” where the director himself has put his foot down and tolerated no alterations after he has achieved perfection in his vision, which is not very difficult to fathom it is all about the physical scale of the action. Some of those people are not good enough for the project to purchase their intellectual assistance and wish to destroy their names together with the films for a cause.
Watch Blade Runner (1982) For Free On 123movies.
ALSO WATCH ON 123MOVIES