I watched Blade Runner twice in quick succession. My plan was to watch the Final Cut, the Director's Cut, and the original theatrical cut, in that order. I had the chance to watch the Final Cut in a proper cinema (The Ones We Love series at Riffraff, Zürich). A few nights later, I watched the Director's Cut from a DVD which I had at home for almost 25 years, unplayed, as I was waiting for the perfect moment to finally see it – only to find out that Final Cut and Director's Cut are practically the same thing! It's an interesting early DVD, though, with no extras apart from a few biography tableaus, pressed on a double-sided disc with the widescreen version on one side, and a cropped full-screen one on the other.
Because I'm very fond of film noir, enjoy dark, dystopian visions of the future, and appreciate ambiguous films which get me to think about big topics, I was almost sure I was going to love it. However, I was a bit disappointed after first seeing the Final Cut at the theatre. It was all I had hoped for in terms of visual style, mood, and music, but the way it handled the tricky questions it's so famous for asking fell quite flat for me. Maybe it's because my expectations were too high after having read and heard so much about the core story and its interpretations before seeing it – this isn't a movie I was afraid of having spoiled for me, that ship had sailed years ago. Blade Runner was over forty years old by the time I watched it, and its core themes have become very popular in books, movies, and games that came after. I was left feeling that in the meantime, others had done a better, more subtle job.
I love the idea of the story, the things it leaves unsaid and unresolved, and the philosophical questions it asks. And there are many scenes where it does an excellent job with the core concept of showing replicants as beings with emotions, wishes, and suffering. The parenthetical line about Leon's precious photos, the gruesomeness of Deckard "retiring" Zhora, or Roy's breakdown when telling Pris about Leon's death are moments where it does this really well. In those scenes, Blade Runner goes all-in with asking about what it means to have memories and emotional attachment, an identity, to feel friendship and love, what it means to be human, and if the replicants aren't sometimes in fact more human than the humans. These few moments are what make it a great film, and more than just a sci-fi-themed Western.
However, this clashed with many other scenes where it fell back into painting replicants as the stereotypical unhinged bad people, in order to shoehorn in some worn-out action and horror movie clichés, especially in the final third of the movie. It destroys a lot of the emotional impact it so carefully built just moments earlier, where it contrasted human remorselessness and brutality with replicant, well, humanity. I'm not referring to the brutal things they do, which they do in order to survive in a world that is hostile to them. It's how they are repeatedly portrayed as psychopathic monsters who enjoy the brutality. Especially considering that I was watching the cut which is described as pandering less to mainstream audiences, I felt way too often that giving people a thick layer of cookie-cutter Hollywood, black and white, good versus evil was high on the list of priorities. Now I'm curious about the happy ending of the theatrical cut, which the back of my DVD case says was removed, because it still felt like a pretty happy ending to me.
Another scene that really works against the film is the sexual assault scene near the middle, which apparently was meant to be interpreted as a love scene, not least suggested by the cheesy erotic saxophone music that starts playing after Deckard forced himself onto Rachael. It's disturbing to watch, took me out of the story, and goes a long way to work against and destroy the movie's romance subplot. It alienated me so much that I ended up looking for some comments on how other people felt about this scene. Some arguments in its defense are that Deckard is still acting from a position of seeing replicants as machines, of lesser value than humans and with no real emotions, and that Rachael is falling back on her programming as being a servant to humans, and that the dynamics of the scene can be explained by both of them struggling with losing those certainties. I think that's being unduly generous with the script writers, though. There's no indication on screen that this is what they were going for. In fact, the violent moment immediately follows one where Deckard starts treating Rachael as an individual worth connecting to on an emotional level. Everything suggests that the filmmakers didn't intend the scene to feel as uncomfortable as it did, and that it simply stems from their "no means yes but be more forceful" understanding of sexual advances. It's the definite lowpoint of the movie, and had it been removed from the Director's Cut, the rest of the romance plot would have been more believable and less creepy.
I also read an interview with Sean Young where she shared her own thoughts on the scene. Apparently, she felt that Ridley Scott directed the scene to be so violent as a revenge for her refusing his real-life advances on set. Most importantly, Young herself feels that the scene doesn't make sense and shouldn't have been in the movie.
On my second viewing, my impression was rebalanced a bit. I found the over-the-top action/horror clichés less obnoxious and disruptive than the first time, and got a better appreciation for the scenes that work well. Because some of them work exceptionally well, which makes up for a lot. The final scene with Roy cyring in the rain as he is about to die, mourning the memories that will disappear with him, is one of them – "all those moments will be lost…" – also because it hints at the wider scope of the world the movie takes place in, all the things we didn't get to see, which often works in making something stick around in my mind for a lot longer. But most of all, it's about the moment when Deckard brutally reveals to Rachael the truth about her. It's an absolutely heartbreaking scene, where the movie really lives up to what I had hoped it would be, and the performance of Sean Young, who is clearly the star and highlight of the movie anyway, is simply amazing. I was almost sure before watching it that Blade Runner would make my list of favourites, but wasn't so sure after my first viewing. Seeing those two scenes in particular a second time, however, sorted it out: it goes on the list.
What really, really works are, predictably, the visuals. The set design, backgrounds, costumes, props, and lighting are all simply stunning. It's clear that there's very little in dark sci-fi and tech-noir which came after it, but wasn't heavily inspired by it. Stylistically, movies don't get much more influential than Blade Runner, naturally including its soundtrack. What I found particularly amazing considering the visual quality is how short the credits sequence is. Around a hundred people were involved in this production, not counting the cast, and it just looks perfect. Compare this to current-day Hollywood, where you get movies with 4,000 people in the credits sequence, and yet the resulting CGI effect excess looks like total garbage in comparison. In terms of how good they look, movies truly seem to have peaked some decades ago. I hope that there will be a change of thinking again some day soon, and that people remember how much better real sets, real actors, real stunts, and real visual effects look than the rendered rubbish we are being shown by major studio movies today.
It took me two tries, but I now appreciate Blade Runner for the influential classic it is. Some parts of it really didn't age well, but those also just stick out so much because in turn, the rest of it aged exceptionally well. The philosophical themes and ambiguities have been written about so much over the decades that it can feel surprisingly heavy-handed and lacking nuance when actually seeing it, but that's also because it suffers from being compared to the massive reputation it has built after the fact. On its own merit, it's still an essential watch.
Review by DanielVIP 4BlockedParent2024-05-01T06:04:31Z
I watched Blade Runner twice in quick succession. My plan was to watch the Final Cut, the Director's Cut, and the original theatrical cut, in that order. I had the chance to watch the Final Cut in a proper cinema (The Ones We Love series at Riffraff, Zürich). A few nights later, I watched the Director's Cut from a DVD which I had at home for almost 25 years, unplayed, as I was waiting for the perfect moment to finally see it – only to find out that Final Cut and Director's Cut are practically the same thing! It's an interesting early DVD, though, with no extras apart from a few biography tableaus, pressed on a double-sided disc with the widescreen version on one side, and a cropped full-screen one on the other.
Because I'm very fond of film noir, enjoy dark, dystopian visions of the future, and appreciate ambiguous films which get me to think about big topics, I was almost sure I was going to love it. However, I was a bit disappointed after first seeing the Final Cut at the theatre. It was all I had hoped for in terms of visual style, mood, and music, but the way it handled the tricky questions it's so famous for asking fell quite flat for me. Maybe it's because my expectations were too high after having read and heard so much about the core story and its interpretations before seeing it – this isn't a movie I was afraid of having spoiled for me, that ship had sailed years ago. Blade Runner was over forty years old by the time I watched it, and its core themes have become very popular in books, movies, and games that came after. I was left feeling that in the meantime, others had done a better, more subtle job.
I love the idea of the story, the things it leaves unsaid and unresolved, and the philosophical questions it asks. And there are many scenes where it does an excellent job with the core concept of showing replicants as beings with emotions, wishes, and suffering. The parenthetical line about Leon's precious photos, the gruesomeness of Deckard "retiring" Zhora, or Roy's breakdown when telling Pris about Leon's death are moments where it does this really well. In those scenes, Blade Runner goes all-in with asking about what it means to have memories and emotional attachment, an identity, to feel friendship and love, what it means to be human, and if the replicants aren't sometimes in fact more human than the humans. These few moments are what make it a great film, and more than just a sci-fi-themed Western.
However, this clashed with many other scenes where it fell back into painting replicants as the stereotypical unhinged bad people, in order to shoehorn in some worn-out action and horror movie clichés, especially in the final third of the movie. It destroys a lot of the emotional impact it so carefully built just moments earlier, where it contrasted human remorselessness and brutality with replicant, well, humanity. I'm not referring to the brutal things they do, which they do in order to survive in a world that is hostile to them. It's how they are repeatedly portrayed as psychopathic monsters who enjoy the brutality. Especially considering that I was watching the cut which is described as pandering less to mainstream audiences, I felt way too often that giving people a thick layer of cookie-cutter Hollywood, black and white, good versus evil was high on the list of priorities. Now I'm curious about the happy ending of the theatrical cut, which the back of my DVD case says was removed, because it still felt like a pretty happy ending to me.
Another scene that really works against the film is the sexual assault scene near the middle, which apparently was meant to be interpreted as a love scene, not least suggested by the cheesy erotic saxophone music that starts playing after Deckard forced himself onto Rachael. It's disturbing to watch, took me out of the story, and goes a long way to work against and destroy the movie's romance subplot. It alienated me so much that I ended up looking for some comments on how other people felt about this scene. Some arguments in its defense are that Deckard is still acting from a position of seeing replicants as machines, of lesser value than humans and with no real emotions, and that Rachael is falling back on her programming as being a servant to humans, and that the dynamics of the scene can be explained by both of them struggling with losing those certainties. I think that's being unduly generous with the script writers, though. There's no indication on screen that this is what they were going for. In fact, the violent moment immediately follows one where Deckard starts treating Rachael as an individual worth connecting to on an emotional level. Everything suggests that the filmmakers didn't intend the scene to feel as uncomfortable as it did, and that it simply stems from their "no means yes but be more forceful" understanding of sexual advances. It's the definite lowpoint of the movie, and had it been removed from the Director's Cut, the rest of the romance plot would have been more believable and less creepy.
I also read an interview with Sean Young where she shared her own thoughts on the scene. Apparently, she felt that Ridley Scott directed the scene to be so violent as a revenge for her refusing his real-life advances on set. Most importantly, Young herself feels that the scene doesn't make sense and shouldn't have been in the movie.
On my second viewing, my impression was rebalanced a bit. I found the over-the-top action/horror clichés less obnoxious and disruptive than the first time, and got a better appreciation for the scenes that work well. Because some of them work exceptionally well, which makes up for a lot. The final scene with Roy cyring in the rain as he is about to die, mourning the memories that will disappear with him, is one of them – "all those moments will be lost…" – also because it hints at the wider scope of the world the movie takes place in, all the things we didn't get to see, which often works in making something stick around in my mind for a lot longer. But most of all, it's about the moment when Deckard brutally reveals to Rachael the truth about her. It's an absolutely heartbreaking scene, where the movie really lives up to what I had hoped it would be, and the performance of Sean Young, who is clearly the star and highlight of the movie anyway, is simply amazing. I was almost sure before watching it that Blade Runner would make my list of favourites, but wasn't so sure after my first viewing. Seeing those two scenes in particular a second time, however, sorted it out: it goes on the list.
What really, really works are, predictably, the visuals. The set design, backgrounds, costumes, props, and lighting are all simply stunning. It's clear that there's very little in dark sci-fi and tech-noir which came after it, but wasn't heavily inspired by it. Stylistically, movies don't get much more influential than Blade Runner, naturally including its soundtrack. What I found particularly amazing considering the visual quality is how short the credits sequence is. Around a hundred people were involved in this production, not counting the cast, and it just looks perfect. Compare this to current-day Hollywood, where you get movies with 4,000 people in the credits sequence, and yet the resulting CGI effect excess looks like total garbage in comparison. In terms of how good they look, movies truly seem to have peaked some decades ago. I hope that there will be a change of thinking again some day soon, and that people remember how much better real sets, real actors, real stunts, and real visual effects look than the rendered rubbish we are being shown by major studio movies today.
It took me two tries, but I now appreciate Blade Runner for the influential classic it is. Some parts of it really didn't age well, but those also just stick out so much because in turn, the rest of it aged exceptionally well. The philosophical themes and ambiguities have been written about so much over the decades that it can feel surprisingly heavy-handed and lacking nuance when actually seeing it, but that's also because it suffers from being compared to the massive reputation it has built after the fact. On its own merit, it's still an essential watch.