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Blade Runner: 30 Years Later
- Thread starter PhoncipleBone
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-COOLIO-
The Everyman
heee-eell no
Auron_Kale
Member
One of my all time favorite movies ever. My history with this movie has practically engrained it into my soul (I'm 30 now for reference).
The first time I saw this movie was on TV at my cousin's house. While everyone else wasn't really pay attention to it, I was totally engrossed by it - at the age of 9. A few years later, when I was in the 7th grade, I stopped by the local Hollywood video by my house on a rainy afternoon on the way home from school. Browsed the sci-fi section and discovered two different Blade Runner tapes - one had the Director's Cut cover and the other was definitely older. I rented the DC version and was still blown away by it. A week later, I rented the other version - only to learn that it was different: it had the narration in it and a longer ending. After I returned that one - I never saw it again strangely.
In high school, many of my friends and I had discussed the movie - we were all fans - but it was only then that I picked up Future Noir in my Sophmore or Junior year for reading as I was still obsessed with the movie. In college, I finally picked up the OST and DC DVD and once I created an ebay account, I started hunting down the lone VHS I saw years back (never did find it).
When they announced the Ultimate 5-disc version, I already had a good job but was worried that I couldn't get the set due to how expensive it was. I eventually said 'fuck it I'm buying a piece of my childhood' and bought the set - briefcase and all - on BD as I had just gotten my PS3 just a few weeks before it came out.
Probably my only holy grail now is to see the Final Cut somewhere around SF/Bay Area.
The first time I saw this movie was on TV at my cousin's house. While everyone else wasn't really pay attention to it, I was totally engrossed by it - at the age of 9. A few years later, when I was in the 7th grade, I stopped by the local Hollywood video by my house on a rainy afternoon on the way home from school. Browsed the sci-fi section and discovered two different Blade Runner tapes - one had the Director's Cut cover and the other was definitely older. I rented the DC version and was still blown away by it. A week later, I rented the other version - only to learn that it was different: it had the narration in it and a longer ending. After I returned that one - I never saw it again strangely.
In high school, many of my friends and I had discussed the movie - we were all fans - but it was only then that I picked up Future Noir in my Sophmore or Junior year for reading as I was still obsessed with the movie. In college, I finally picked up the OST and DC DVD and once I created an ebay account, I started hunting down the lone VHS I saw years back (never did find it).
When they announced the Ultimate 5-disc version, I already had a good job but was worried that I couldn't get the set due to how expensive it was. I eventually said 'fuck it I'm buying a piece of my childhood' and bought the set - briefcase and all - on BD as I had just gotten my PS3 just a few weeks before it came out.
Probably my only holy grail now is to see the Final Cut somewhere around SF/Bay Area.
TheJollyCorner
Member
have we ever figured out if androids do dream of electric sheep?
Giant Robot
Member
I'm pretty sure The Retro Dome in Saratoga played Blade Runner a couple years ago, not sure which version though. Pretty rad theater. They played Aliens recently. I saw Total Recall there over the summer. You can make suggestions too. I'm still waiting for them to acknowledge my Repo Man suggestion, haha.
Liquidsnake
Banned
Frustrated_me
Member
Wait what? That looks incredible.. I cant believe I've been putting this movie on hold for so long. Gotta watch it this weekend!
The Directors cut the version to watch?
The Directors cut the version to watch?
TheRagnCajun
Member
Incidentally, I watched this movie for the first time yesterday. Great movie.
Diatribe1974
Member
Own the 5 disc DVD "Final Cut" version (aka the "Suitcase Version") and also the Blu-Ray version of the Final Cut. Still a great movie.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
Final Cut
Dude, what you trying to say? There's no "might" about it - in Ridley's eyes Deckard is 100% a replicant. In fact, in every edit of the film bar the original theatrical/criterion cut, it's impossible for him to be anything but a replicant, unless Gaff is just really good at guessing people's dreams. Final Cut, as in definitive, also puts the foot down and if you listen to the director's commentary he even says at the end something along the lines of "... which means, if you've been paying attention, that he is a replicant".
Now, the real debate is whether Ridley had that particular truth 100% in mind before he began shooting or not. Again, much like Rutger's "tears in the rain" fake-improv meme, accounts vary wildly, even from Ridley himself.
My "Nexus 7" comment comes from Ridley and others supposing Ford might be the next-next-generation of the line, perhaps one with a normal or even greater-than-human life-span. This obviously isn't alluded to in the film at all, it's just a thought exercise you could use.
No
Big, big NO.
"The Final Cut" is Ridley's 'directors cut'.
The version released as The Director's Cut was merely given an "okay" by him; he approved it solely on the fact they relented and re-inserted his unicorn scene for the first time. It was a rushed edit, quick cash-grab on the fact that the re-runs of the workprint in specialist cinemas were generating so much buzz.
The Final Cut is not only the best edit of the film, but also uses the wonders of digital correction techniques to make the picture pristine, fix visual continuity errors and generally make the whole thing shine like it's 1982.
Liquidsnake
Banned
Final Cut
Ever since Final Cut came out and became my best film everererer, Blade Runner has been more than special for me. That film echoes my own artistic and philosophical mind; the thought processes it evokes are so powerful and deeply affecting to me.
It's one of those rare works of art that lifts the soul and forces the mind to ascend into something you can't put your finger on, something fleeting, that is again forgotten once the credits roll but for a long, sweet melancholy that lingers for days afterwards.
When people get close to me, there's a moment in our developing relationship where I innocently invite them over for a "film night" and make sure the last film shown is Blade Runner. For the greatest effect you want the film to finish sometime after midnight, when it is pitch black outside, nearly all ambient noise gone and an slight sleepiness settling in that makes you feel like the entire film was a dream.
I hope that as those elevator doors close and the closing theme starts up that the person I invited over understood me for a moment. Not so much me as a person, because that'd be silly, but briefly they thought and felt like me.
It's like how some people have this one album or book that changed their mind in some way and they hesitantly want to share that with people, excited to enlighten someone else but kind of scared because if it's such a huge part of who they are.
Man, that's Blade Runner.
It's one of those rare works of art that lifts the soul and forces the mind to ascend into something you can't put your finger on, something fleeting, that is again forgotten once the credits roll but for a long, sweet melancholy that lingers for days afterwards.
When people get close to me, there's a moment in our developing relationship where I innocently invite them over for a "film night" and make sure the last film shown is Blade Runner. For the greatest effect you want the film to finish sometime after midnight, when it is pitch black outside, nearly all ambient noise gone and an slight sleepiness settling in that makes you feel like the entire film was a dream.
I hope that as those elevator doors close and the closing theme starts up that the person I invited over understood me for a moment. Not so much me as a person, because that'd be silly, but briefly they thought and felt like me.
It's like how some people have this one album or book that changed their mind in some way and they hesitantly want to share that with people, excited to enlighten someone else but kind of scared because if it's such a huge part of who they are.
Man, that's Blade Runner.
But it has that theme-hurting unicorn dream. I've always maintained that the purposeful ambiguity regarding Deckard's nature was critical to the film. If the viewer and Deckard both can't tell whether Deckard is human or replicant, that goes a hell of a long way towards saying that even deep down there isn't a terribly significant difference between the two, speaking directly to the "what is human?" theme of the film.
It was a question that absolutely did not need an answer. Batty's sacrifice at the end is also a lot more meaningful if that question is left open, because it has poignant significance regardless of whether Deckard is human or replicant.
Auron_Kale
Member
Sounds like an idea. And thanks for the heads-up.
Both were probably the same, but the one with the narration made it seem longer.
And, like a few others, I actually did like the narration. Mostly due to how you can tell Ford hated doing it, but it added to the burnt-out quality in Deckard.
Wolfe
Member
DevelopmentArrested
Banned
solid rebuttal 10/10
But that's the ultimately beauty of it: even with the unicorn dream, nobody gets that Deckard was a replicant on their first watch. Even people who watched the Final Cut or Directors Cut first. It doesn't click. You can observe this by showing Blade Runner virgins The Final Cut and asking what they thought about it.
It takes time to think about it or a second or third or even fourth re-watch or possibly even someone just telling you about it for it to suddenly hit you and go "oooooh shit!". Then you watch it again and it all falls into place.
Blade Runner begins with that ambiguity. Then, once you know the truth, subsequent rewatches expand the question of "more human than human" even further. Instead of questioning the meaning of life as per that film, you question the meaning of reality. Systems, always systems.
Deckard is a Blade Runner he hunts replicants who are fake humans created by the system for the system except the replicants cannot be a system because they are life so they fight the system which means deckard is the system as he hunts them to impose the system only what deckard doesn't realise except at the end is that he is just another part of the system because he is a system himself because he's a machine except what does it mean to be a machine because these machines are life they are more human than human and are deckards memories real how long has he been retired is he a new version of replicants maybe a nexus 7 that is different because he's even more human than roy batty who was the most human creature anyone ever knew OH GOD THE SYSTEM THE SYSTEM THE SYSTEM.
The more you know about Blade Runner the less you know. I've watched the Final Cut maybe thirty times now. I still feel like I'm getting something new and uniquely profound out of it with every single watch.
Wolfe
Member
I take it back you're an ass, you know how hard it was to read that?!
But in all seriousness fuckin a, I was trying to hold off getting that briefcase set a little longer, then I got paid today.
drugstore_cowboy
Member
Best way to watch it is on HD DVD!
Someone, please buy all my fucking HD DVDs.
Someone, please buy all my fucking HD DVDs.
In my defense, it's not exactly easy to have that as a thought process either.
Wolfe
Member
It's funny cause I imagined you thinking that as opposed to saying it out loud with the way it's written out, gave me a chuckle.
It's hard to beat the HD DVD prices on Amazon
PhoncipleBone
Banned
Decker with the Replicant eye reflection. Just one of the subtle clues in the entire film.
Nappuccino
Member
I think that scene is fine. It is the scene where Deckard's eyes glow that is the more controversial one for me, though both can easily be hand waved as metaphors if you, like me, want to disregard Ridley's opinion of Deckard's lack of humanity
Unless my memory fails me, that was just an accident they decided to work into the movie. His eyes weren't supposed to glow too. Plus, in the world of the movie, her eyes aren't glowing (if they were, why would they need that elaborate test to see if someone was a replicant? They'd just see if their eyes glowed under x condition.) Really, the glowing eyes is just a cue for the audience and it could be argued it is a metaphor for their lack of humanity (something Deckard struggles with, although he is human [in this interpretation of it].
You have to be looking for that one, too. The way the shot is framed and focused the first-time viewer's attention is almost solely on Rachel.
This is why as I said I think the ambiguity of Blade Runner remains in Final Cut for the first few watches - it's really difficult to notice every detail and piece it all together on a first go.
Maybe the eyes, but not the dream. Deckard having that dream then Gaff leaving a unicorn origami for him at the end is objectively Gaff saying "I know how you dream, therefore you are designed".
Liquidsnake
Banned
You and I would be great friends. I'm on that level. It took me three viewing over 10 years to understand, but I understand it now. I really do. When the final credits roll and the music hits, I have a strange feeling that I can't describe.
I usually say to myself out loud, man that's so good. Masterpiece.
Reading this thread and thinking about Blade Runner, and how the whole sequence of Deckard in the Bradbury building right through to Gaff's exit on the rooftop is possibly the closest a film has ever reached cinematic perfection for me. Just totally faultless beauty.
IT'S TOO BAD SHE WON'T LIVE, BUT THEN AGAIN WHO DOES?
IT'S TOO BAD SHE WON'T LIVE, BUT THEN AGAIN WHO DOES?
PhoncipleBone
Banned
"It's quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."
Yeah, the entire last part in the building is just fucking incredible and still gets me every single time.
http://youtu.be/LuBToeQeeEU
Just yesterday I watched the movie for the first time. It was the Ridley Scott's Final Cut from 2007.
But I have to say it wasn't really that good to be honest, but it wasn't poor movie either, don't get me wrong. The acting and dialogue felt quite average, the plot left too much for your imagination and guessing, the bad guys/girls didn't seem to have much character at all (I did like the very ening of the final battle though).
The visuals still impressed me as did the whole setting, the only thing that bothered me was how the computers were totally 80s, the rest they were able to make look futuristic enough.
I guess I just expected a different kind of movie, but at least I've finally seen the damn movie
I have to agree with this. I find the movie conceptually interesting, but I was expecting it to have something more interesting to say about the line between man and machine.
Nappuccino
Member
Deckard doesn't dream though in that scene. You could argue it is a day dream, I suppose. Possibly a recurring one, possibly one inspired by Rachel. But who is to say Deckard didn't tell Gaff about it or maybe Gaff picked it up in a psych evaluation or something like that. There isn't a lot given to us in the movie. A lot of it is open to interpretation... even if Ridley makes it harder to have a different one.
bengraven
Member
Edmond Dantès
Dantès the White
As an origami connoisseur, I find the Unicorn quite a challenge even with all my experience. The larger variation is actually two separate pieces as well as the horn put together to create the finished piece. It looks stunning in my collection though.
Although I sort of lean toward believing Deckard is a replicant, I can see other possible arguments for why he wouldn't be. For example, in J.F's apartment, there is a unicorn among his "genetic design" creations. It's possible, given one of the main themes behind the source material, that unicorns were in fact a common replicated animal.
I do like that Blade Runner's ending can mean a lot whether you believe him to be a replicant or not. There's a pretty wonderful message on both sides.
Not dream then, but thought process. He tries to think about the other Replicants by looking over the photos, plays a couple of notes on the piano then his mind is flooded with this image of a unicorn - the unicorn footage cuts straight to a shot of Deckard shaking his head, trying to shake the unicorn thought out like he doesn't understand where it came from. Combine with the origami and the message is Replicants, or at least Deckard, have a set of programmed in thought processes.
I'd say it's pretty much set in stone. But that's okay. Because the real interesting question then becomes: "why?" Why a unicorn? Why even program in that particular quirk? Actually, is it even programmed, or is it something that for some reason occurs in Replicants, regardless of their design? Is it the constructed man day dreaming of a (constructed) fairy tale?
It must also be noted that the shot is the only time you see a natural landscape. A forest. The natural world is now a fairytale. Hades Landscape and desert is all that exists. So, are the creators of replicants programming in a memory of a time gone, or is Deckard, who despite being a machine is also very much life, having something more, a biological memory of a time long ago? Does life automatically know how things should be? Does it remember a forest that never was because it knows there should be forests?
The more the ambiguity seems to be stripped away with each re-watch and each hidden detail come to light, the more questions come to me.
Oh believe me I was going to make a similar comment myself because it's getting ridiculous now.
OH FUCK I'm watching Blade Runner again tonight.
... not that I think your catch serves to explain away the thought process/origami PLUS the eyes things. But oh SHIT even more questions now my mind is going deeper I love this film so fucking much.
... I think I'll try and time it so the credits roll just as dawn is breaking this time. That might be good. Dawn is just breaking as Batty dies...
Nappuccino
Member
Oh good catch, I never noticed there was a unicorn there. Now I have a reason to re-watch the movie.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
I thought he was you for a bit, Chinner. Then I started paying more attention to the names.
Only on a Sunday. We can meet up then.
At least you didn't use the "I agree with Chinner" meme.
Nappuccino
Member
Interesting interpretation.
I see it more as how nature, like unicorns, is a fantasy in this world. Similarly, the hope that replicants can be alive seems like a fantasy which is where the juxtaposition comes in. Rachel is, arguably, the unicorn -a made up, imaginary creature, one that does not live- and the nature (life) is symbolic of the freedom she can never have.
It seems interesting that you assume he doesn't know where the thought came from instead of him just trying to stop thinking about that fantasy and focus on the reality at hand, which is how I would interpret that.
edit: I do need to re-watch the movie... I will admit I am forgetting some of the context as to when the daydream actually occurs in the movie, like what happens shortly before it.
I actually like this thought. I seem to recall something about the genetic designers who put the replicants together having the ability to add their own finishing touches, sort of like signatures, and that these could be reflected in memories or personality. However, I can't remember if this was from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Blade Runner or an entirely different fiction. It might just been mentioned in Dangerous Days, come to think of it.
If it was from one of the first two though, I like the idea that it's a little memory added by J.F. or whoever may have constructed Deckard's false memories. It also adds more questions, like does putting in memories of an entirely different era (pre-Hades landscape) effect the personality of a replicant, or are they easier to control? Considering Rachael also appeared to have memoires of a different era, it's an interesting idea. Or does it somehow affect empathy, making the model "more human"?
So many questions.
Well, it's both. It's intruding into his mind and he needs to think about other things. But he also looks kind of confused as well. I mean, you would be too if you were thinking about replicants and how you are going to find and kill them and possibly have sex with another one when all of a sudden OMG I'M THINKING OF A UNICORN.
And yes, Rachel = the unicorn is another artistic way to look at that it's sooooo good.
ANOTHER INTERESTING THING - memories are tied to art in the film. Rachel and Deckard are provoked by music - Rachel with memories of playing piano and Deckard having the piano notes trigger the unicorn daydream.
Leon obsessively takes and collects photographs, quite well composed photographs at that. Zora and Priss both do some form of physical activity that has roots in artistic form - Zora with the erotic dance and Priss with the gymnastics.
And Batty quotes poets. He even mis-quotes some of them, making up new lines on the fly to better serve the situation. This trait is also mirrored in his creator, Tyrell, who himself may also have been a Replicant (certainly, he was intended to be one but they ran out of budget to show the 'real' Tyrell, preserved in death, after Batty had crushed the fake one's head in the bedroom scene). Batty chases Deckard at the end to what sound like the words of a kids rhyming song. His final speech is so achingly poetic.
When looking for evidence of when the human species began, historians look for cave paintings. They say that you can use that as evidence of when the other sapien races gave birth to homo sapien. Art is the most human of traits. So the Nexus 6 line, the more human than human, is obsessively drawn towards this artistic side of themselves. They represent the birth of something truly human, more than human, something new.
Or, you know, maybe they don't. QUESTIONS, man. Questions. Maybe their artistic leanings are just another layer of the system for whatever reason. Maybe the designers liked to put those traits in like a programmer would little programming easter eggs; a signature. Maybe it's just a bunch of character design traits that happily all line up to make this interpretation possible.
But you know what the real kicker is for me? That childish smile of Batty's. He is more knowing, more wise, yet also more childlike than Deckard and everyone else. He's a young boy who is just discovering the possibilities of the universe itself when his time is up. And maybe that's why he's smiling so much at the end - maybe he's found some absolution? Or maybe he's laughing at the fact he sees things differently than everyone else and that's about to be lost like those tears in the rain - his short lifespan is humanity's loss.
Or maybe he's just a fucking psychopath.
edit - sorry I'm typing so poorly and being almost incoherent sometimes but I'm listening to Memories Of Green while I'm doing this and it brings it all back and my mind is racing.
Auron_Kale
Member
Well, thanks to Suairyu's thoughts, I'll definitely be watching Final Cut tonight after I come back from the gym.
I also have the urge to go look for my copy of Future Noir now to read it while on my trip next month.
I also have the urge to go look for my copy of Future Noir now to read it while on my trip next month.
I regret making that post this morning saying I found this film boring, this thread has got me thinking about it which has resulted in entertainment. So if I'm having fun thinking about the film then that means it's a fun film? Right?
Now I'm going to have to watch it again to find out if I like it or not.
Now I'm going to have to watch it again to find out if I like it or not.
Amazing film. I love the general atmosphere, the story, all those little details, let alone the soundtrack... Been listening all the time while reading this thread. I've got a question though. I've only ever watched the Final Cut of this movie, but I happen to own the 5 disc special edition... Now you people made me want to rewatch the movie again, but what version to watch? I think the original?
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