Blade Runner Final Cut (2007)

At last. Finally the ‘Final Cut’ of the classic SF film ‘Blade Runner’ hits London. If there is one film I consider myself to be something of an expert on then it’s this one. I must have seen it well over 100 times, in my mis-spent youth I’d watch portions of it every week and can pretty much predict every line of dialogue, every edit, every sound cue…..I’m also good fun at parties. Therefore be in no doubt that this will be a particularly nerdy fan boy type post – you have been warned. Naturally, major spoilers also abound so go see the movie if you haven’t already. Do you really need a plot synopsis? Oh, OK then. Los Angeles, 2019. An unspecified environmental disaster has rendered the earth almost uninhabitable with many of the planet’s wealthy citizens emigrating to off world colonies leaving a predominantly East Asian miasma of citizens to survive in the cluttered West coast metropolis. Harrison Ford is Deckard, a policeman in the Blade Runner unit whose responsibility it is to tracking down and exterminate (or ‘retire’ in the films parlance) any rogue replicants – synthetic, engineered human like androids who are used as slave labour, for military or pleasure purposes in the new frontier of the outer colonies. These ‘Nexus 6’ replicants have a mere four year lifespan installed by there corporate masters and as the film opens we learn that a squad of six replicants have escaped their servitude, murdered their human masters and returned to earth in an effort to eradicate their impending death sentence.

This is a film which you simply have to see at the cinema. I literally had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as the film dissolved in after the opening crawl to present the inferno of future-noir LA  as the Vangelis score echoed around the auditorium. The new digital print is exquisite – the neon illuminations blaze through the omnipresent rain, smoke and shadows. The Final Cut really is a perfect example of seeing films on the big screen as intended – seeing the movie again I was reminded of the horrendous pan & scan versions circulating on VHS in the 1980’s and those being screened on TV, those transfers essentially lose 30% – 40% of the image and dramatically reduce your appreciation of all the efforts that Scott and his Production Designers Syd Mead and Lawrence Paul laboured over.

Right then, the changes but quickly I’ll nod to some nice references to Von Sternberg in that article, very insightful. The film is essentially a hybrid of the US Domestic so called ‘gory’ cut (a moniker coined due to the extended scenes of violence such as Pris being shot an extra time, more inserts and lengthy shots of Roy’s murder of Tyrell and his impaling a nail through his hand during the finale) and the 1992 Directors Cut which exorcised the pointless voiceover and eliminated the ludicrous happy ending. I noted two new lines of dialogue and two amended lines of dialogue, one of which corrects a long standing plot hole in the film concerning the number of adversaries that Deckard faces and another which occurs toward the end of the film that I’ll come to later. There are two inserts at the start of Deckard’s chase of Zhora and Zhora’s death has been partially re-shot with Joanna Cassidy replacing the obvious stuntwoman crashing through the glass in previous versions of the film. Scott has tidied up some of the special effects, erasing some of the spinner cables all inserting some CGI spinners to blend some of dated Matte shots more seamlessly into the image – this all works superbly, we’re not talking Lucas style visual pollution and the efforts enhance the vision. Oh, and the symbolic release of the dove after Roy’s death speech has also been treated. Stop sniggering at the back, I told you I know this film.

And so, alas we come to the change that essentially rendered the final cut as deeply flawed for me. Full disclosure, I got my first and only A+ of my academic career for writing a dissection of the scene where Roy visits Tyrell, his maker and master, for my A Level way back in the early ninties. They have changed the opening dialgue of the scene from Roy’s assertion that ‘I want more life….fucker’ to ‘I want more life…..father. Now, this still makes sense in the context of the scene but it just seems…..wrong. I honestly can’t imagine why they felt they had to do this – I doubt it was to placate any censororing authority given the very limited nature of the re-release so why screw with this pivitol encounter? Perhaps I take these things too seriously but this essentially ruined the cut for me. I have a solution though – I am getting to gips with the media software on the new top range imac I recently treated myself to so I could conceivably upload the film and with the careful application of the editing software restore the line and produce the ultimate Minty cut of the film !! Seriously though, it warrants progression if only for my education of the software and who knows where that may lead….

Normally I have a strong dislike of tampering with films, the so called re-dux and director’s cuts (surprise surprise, Minty’s a pedantic purist – who’d have thought) but given the studio and focus group test screened imposed first cut I can just about forgive Scott – we’re not talking Greedo shooting first or FBI agents being neutered from wielding shotguns to walkie talkies in the re-release of ‘ET’ for example. The Vangelis score. The density of themes and ideas coupled with the incredible projection of a gloomy and uncertain vision of the future – it is a seminal film of the 1980’s and has influenced every worthy SF film since. I also admire the lack of explanation for some of the sub-texts in the film such as the apparent extinction of animals which is never telegraphed by a character speech and gives the film an ambiguous edge. On another note, Sean Young had quite an impact on my adolescent ‘development’ – I don’t think I need to elaborate any further on that….

I’m not going to regurgitate any of the hundreds of academic analysis of the film, many of which I studied at college – the post-modernists loved this movie so it was always a quick fix to cite this film as a source of ‘intertextuality’ or the ‘homogenous discourse of late period capitalism’ when writing an essay and it enabled me to then incoherently bang on about the film for the next 300 words. 25 years later the film still holds some clear contemporary resonance and has ultimately proven to be chillingly prescient in a number of ways. We do seem to be sliding toward an environmental catastrophe. The films theme of the advance of capitalism to it’s ultimate, logical (and ironically) inhuman conclusion of ‘human’ beings themselves being the apotheosis of commerce has it’s echoes in the advent of globalisation and connects to the third and developing world sweat shops that keep us ‘off-worlders’ in the west in our Prada, our Gucci, our Dolche & Gabbana.

For any fan of the film, this is an essential purchase. I’m still quite surprised at how cheap this is, I was expecting and prepared to pay more than double that for this wonderful looking package. I had to exercise astonishing self control in HMV yesterday to not pick it up but since it was my brother who turned me on to the film and it was his copy I wore out with repeat viewings it seems appropriate that he gets me this ultimate release for Xmas – I hope you’re reading this !! I can’t wait to see the work print cut of the film, a holy grail amongst us film geeks As well as five distinct cuts of the film you also get three commentaries, a three hour documentary, various deleted scenes <wipes tears from eyes…..> Man, Christmas is going to be memorable this year…