Film : The Blade Runner Directors Cut

Well spotted TBR, thanks for pointing that out (and sorry to JediMaster), I was sure I'd linked to the non-directors cut.

All this talking about it has made me want to see it again, I must dig out the DVD and rip it to my home's media server so I can watch it here at my desk.

I have the Directors cut and it kicks ass man. Definatly one of the best scifi pics of all time. I would recomment the directors cut DVD. But can some one tell me what the diffrence is between the original and the directors cut, so I can go home and watch for the diffrences....

Thanks

I think its allready been mentioned, differances are added and deleted scenes to the mix and the subtraction of Deckards Voice Over..

The Original is actually pretty rare it seams nowadays..id imagine Warner Bros will release it sooner or later on DVD..

[Edited on 4-5-2004 by The Blade Runner]

I did'nt but the VHS from Amazon, good thing I looked back. I'll look on ebay for the orginal.

They should make an anniversary edition DVD, both versions, a making of feature, stuff like that.

Indeed they should man, I Expect WB to release a DVD with both versions on or something..

Id buy it..

I bought a VHS copy of the orginal on ebay, should be here in a week. I'll post my thoughts on it.

Superb! (and sorry again about giving the wrong link before)

I'm going to watch it again tonight, it's been at least six months now. I've just got to remember which one of my pesky neighbours has borrowed it!

I have just been watching this, my favourite film again.

I was watching the directors cut an noticed that exactly 1 hour and 13 minutes into the film there is what sounds like a girl whispering. It lasts for about 45 seconds on and off.

Anyone any idea what she is saying?

Jack

As an independent filmmaker I am guilty of idolatry for this movie. You never get stuff as stylized, story-driven, or as foresighted as Blade Runner. I am also a die-hard Harrison Ford fan... I think he may have been the only thing I really liked about the original Star Wars movies (I despise the new ones). I'll take the original cut over the director's cut any day. For some reason people tend to believe that "Director's Cuts" are always better... this is obviously a case against that. Directors don't tend to cut stuff out, more so, they add in things that the studios removed! That's why director's cuts are usually better. Scott made a serious error in removing the voice overs and the original end scene... the end scene in the Director's Cut? Please... For anyone who hasn't seen the original it makes no sense... there's proof in this thread. Then from that you get rumors of Deckard being a replicant? Totally ridiculous. Somebody somewhere read into it a little too much.

I want the ORIGINAL on

D
V
D

There were actually three versions of the film-- the original theatrical release had a few of the more violent scenes edited out, which were restored in the initial video release.

I think that the director's cut is far and away the better movie. I find the narration in the original version to be irritating, distracting and wholly unnecessary and the ending of the original version is sappy, unconvincing and entirely at odds with the rest of the story. The ENTIRE point of the original story, and of the director's cut, is Deckard's slow realization of the probable nature of his own existence, and that part of it is glibly cast aside in the original version in favor of a standard, unimaginative "and they lived happily ever after" Hollywood ending. Without Deckard's doubts about his own humanity, there's no particular significance to his job, his romance of Rachel or his final battle with Roy. It becomes just another good guy/bad guy cop story with a fight scene.

'Course, that's just my opinion...

The director's cut is significantly better.

1. The voiceover may add to the Film Noir appeal but it also dumbs down the film considerably.

2. The unicorn orgami at the end makes no sense without the unicorn dream sequence. The director's cut makes it a lot clearer that Deckard himself is a replicant, which then raises questions about what life/conciousness/existence is anyway.

3. The original's end sequence is dire. The shot of at the end of them driving in the countryside was swiped from outtakes from The Shining. The optimistic ending runs contrary to the film's underlying philosophy and looks like it was added on due to the demands of the producers and backers (which it was).

Incidently, the film is still quite beautiful and has stood the ravages of time wonderfully, even though it is almost 25 years since it was made. I still can't believe it was a commercial failure on its release...

If for no other reason than the ending, the Director's cut makes more logical sense to me. The backdrop of the film is that Earth is a wasteland from which everyone wishes to flee for the clean and blissful moon colonies. But in the original, the last scene is our Ford escaping the city in a convertible driving off into the beautiful countryside. If that option was there the whole time, why didn't he just go? The director knew to cut that scene but the producers wanted the happy ending. Am I missing something?

JediMaster, Harrison Ford continues to refuse to talk about this movie as far as I know but I think it has more to do with his relationship with Scott at the time than anything else. Although I did heard there was one intereview where he mentioned it, saying that he thought Deckard was a replicant. (As Scott does too at the end of the documentary mentioned below)

Merkwurdichliebe, the vioceover was not cut in the Directors cut, rather it was quickly added after at the first showings people complained that they did not understand the film. Scott disliked the addition and Harrison Ford apparently done it purposely as bad as he could because he hated the idea and he thought they would then cut it.

If you're interested take a peek at 'On the edge of Blade Runner' (2000) for the cut scene where Deckard goes to visit Holden in Hospital. Also it mentioned that the idea for the story came to Phillip K. Dick when he was at the University of California library reading through the diary an SS officer who had worked in a concentration camp and he came across an entry which read:

"The screams of children keep me awake at night."

Paul M. Sammon: Author, 'Future Noir - The Making of Blade Runner'

...and from that little seed he began thinking 'This person is not human. He cannot associate what he has just written.' In other words he's being bothered by the fact that they're exterminating all these thousands of people around him and he can't get a good nights sleep. So from that Phil inferred that basically these people wern't human. The Nazi's were a synthetic organism. They were completely disociated from human intercourse, and I think that really is the spur of the entire
'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner started out as.

Directors Cut.

Jak







[edit on 2/2/06 by JAK]

The Channel Four Documentary 'On the Edge of Blade Runner' is available on Google Video for those who are interested:

On the Edge of Blade Runner - Google Video



Blade Runner riddle solved

Director Ridley Scott has finally revealed the answer to a plot twist in his film Blade Runner which has been the topic of fierce debate for nearly two decades.

Movie fans have been divided over whether Harrison Ford's hard-boiled cop character Deckard was not human but a genetically-engineered "replicant" - the very creatures he is tasked with destroying.

Little suspicion was raised by the 1982 original version of the film, based on Philip K Dick's novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Jak

The movie and the book are very different , but good all the same.
For example, the movie ignores most of Deckard's will to opwn a REAL sheep, but the book is filled with paragraphs in which Deckard dearly wants to get one.
However, the book has not been desecrated by the movie, and Harrison ford was the only valuable actor to play Deckard.
The atmosphere of the book is reproduced in the movie, and, as a PKDick number one fan, I read one of his last conversations with Mrs Sutin, 2 months before he died, and he just doesn't stop praising Ridley Scott for his work on the movie, even if there have been differences with the book.

He was right, as he was the only one who really knew what he was talking about.

PRAISE PKDICK FOR HIS WRITINGS ::::

If you love the film, I suggest you read Fut ure Noir by Paul M. Sammon. It pretty much has everything you would want to know about Blade Runner, from Philip K. Dick's first screening of the film, to Dayrl Hannah's crazy drawings of the other actors. Though stuff.

I heard waaay back in 2000 that Ridely Scott was going to do a "special edition" of the movie, like taking out the wires on the cars and inserting CGI to the scenes. Has anyone heard of any updates about that?

[edit on 5/25/2007 by Cowboy Clint]

Oh! I get it... My first thought was "Pris didn't get her (other) eye plucked out and then get bitten by a deadly snake?" Yeah, she does wriggle on the floor like Pris!

Pris is the standard I want to hold all girls to!

Refresh me here (it's been awhile) in the directors cut, isn't there more of an implication that he himself is an android too?

Here is my take on why the directors cut ruled: they rereleased it back into theaters and gave me a chance to see it on the bigscreen again! Shoot that was even a long time ago now...