 Starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Joanna Cassidy, Daryl Hannah, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
Director: Ridley Scott
Year Of Release: 1982
Plot: Rick Deckard is a retired Blade Runner – a person who hunts down replicants (human-looking androids) that are illegally on Earth – who’s called back into action when four ‘skin jobs’ start running around LA. The replicants are near the end of their four-year lifespan, but want to live longer, and come to believe that the Tyrell Corporation may hold the answers. Meanwhile when Deckard goes to see Tyrell himself, he meets Rachael, a replicant who doesn’t know that she isn’t a real person. |
What can I write about Blade Runner that hasn’t been said before? For a film that flopped when it was first released, a huge volume has been written about Ridley Scott’s future noir movie. It’s also had one of the most extensive DVD releases ever, with five different version of the film, a three-and-a-half hour retrospective documentary and numerous other featurettes and material, which ensure anyone interested can find out an awful lot about the movie.
So instead of just only rehashing what’s been written many time before (although I will do that a bit), I thought I’d give a few thoughts I’ve had on the film, having just watched numerous versions of it (and yes, I am feeling a little Blade Runner-ed out).
To Voiceover Or Not To Voiceover? – It’s been one of the biggest debates over Blade Runner. Was Harrison Ford’s voiceover, which was added to the original theatrical cut of Blade Runner, better in the movie or out? Harrison Ford didn’t want it included, Warner Bros. did, Ridley Scott wasn’t completely averse to the idea but didn’t like what the studio came up with (after he’d failed to find a solution that worked himself), and it was the first thing he removed when he made his 1992 Director’s Cut.
Some fans hate it, while others like it and wish Scott had kept it in (one of the most interesting bits of the massive making of documentary on the Ultimate DVD release is Guillermo Del Toro arguing for the voiceover, while Frank Darabont argues against). To my mind though, the problem isn’t whether there’s a voiceover or not, but what that voiceover consists of.
To be honest, I rather like the feel the voiceover generates. Blade Runner is, after all, a sci-fi film noir, and one of the hallmarks of classic noir is pulp voiceover from the protagonist. In Blade Runner, Harrison Ford’s weary voiceover echoes classics like Sunset Boulevard and adds to film’s mix of the future with the 1940s. As a result, I think in principal the voiceover is a good idea and adds to the atmosphere of the film, but the problem is in the execution.
The voiceover in the theatrical version of Blade Runner doesn’t really work because it’s immensely clunky. Warner wanted to add it because they thought parts of the movie were confusing. However it’s generally only used to tell us the blatantly obvious. That’s a departure from film noir, where voiceover was used to comment on and give a different take on events, making many classic noir films the subjective version of events as told by one person. However, despite the Blade Runner theatrical cut vaguely attempting this, it’s just too blunt, obvious and badly placed. Most of the voiceover comes in cheesy, over-the-top chunks near the beginning, then disappears for the majority of the running time, before returning with a thud when Roy Batty dies (and it’s hideously placed then, so that it completely undermines the emotional impact of that moment).
If I had my way, Blade Runner would have a voiceover as I think it adds to the atmosphere, but just not the badly executed one in the theatrical cut.
Why Are There So Many Versions Of Blade Runner? – A lot has been written about why the initial release of Blade Runner wasn’t what either the director or star had originally envisioned, and why the US got a slightly less violent version than the rest of the world. Then came the 1992 Director’s Cut, which brought it closer to being something Ridley Scott was happy with. However, due to the fact that he didn’t have the time to devote to it that he wanted to, we ended up with the 2007 Final Cut as well, which finally allowed him to iron out the other things he didn’t like and tighten the whole movie up (it is indeed, in my opinion, the most satisfying version of the movie overall). The workprint has now also re-emerged on the Ultimate Edition DVD release, which was the version shown to preview audiences before the movie came out.
However while there’s been a lot of talk about the Theatrical Cut being flawed because Warner didn’t understanding the movie and they made the final revisions and cuts to the film without Scott’s involvement, less mentioned is that in some respect the studio wasn’t too far off the mark in thinking that the film had a few problems (even if their solutions weren’t that great). Although it’s difficult to fault Blade Runner visually – as to this day virtually no other movie has created such a fully developed futuristic world, which is a joy to wallow in for two hours – narratively the film has a few problems.
It’s one of the things you can’t help picking up from the ‘Dangerous Days’ making of documentary on the Ultimate DVD release, that from the beginning of pre-production to just before the film’s release, the maker’s were constantly trying to work out what tied the whole thing together. Even Ridley Scott says that it wasn’t until he’d pieced together the initial cut of the film that he realised he needed to work out what it all meant.
If you’re only trying to find an overall vision for your film after you’ve filmed it, it’s always going to be difficult to tie everything together into a satisfactory whole, especially because budget and time issues meant they didn’t actually film a large chunk of the script, including several relatively important sequences (such as that originally when Roy kills Tyrell, it was meant to be revealed he was a replicant too and that the real Tyrell was dead, which would have helped explain Roy’s emotional journey and furthered the theme of questioning what is human and what isn’t).
Even what the makers did film had problems, particularly plot-wise (even the two screenwriters admit the film is narratively weaker than they’d hoped, partly due to conflicting ideas about what it was all about). If you think about what happens, it’s all relatively straightforward. Deckard has remarkably little difficulty finding the replicants, which he does pretty quickly and without too much fuss. Although visually and thematically strong, plot-wise there’s not actually a huge amount to the film, and as a result the emotional journey of the characters is often muddy because so little happens to take them through that journey.
Blade Runner is a film that is constantly fighting against the occasional weaknesses of its screenplay and dialogue. If we go back to whether the film ought to have a voiceover or not, it’s worth the naysayers taking another look at the scene near the beginning of the movie where Deckard is talking to his boss, Bryant, about the four replicants. If you watch it, Bryant is basically just telling Deckard things he really ought to know if he’s a Blade Runner – and which to be honest, might have been handled better in voiceover or in a less clunky, expository scene.
Some have even used this scene as part of the evidence that Deckard himself is a replicant, because why else would he be so ignorant about the androids, if it’s always been his job to kill them? Actually I think it’s more evidence of the occasional clunkiness of the screenplay, and that while visually the film has one of the strongest guiding visions ever seen, it didn’t have that kind of narrative strength while they were filming it, and so it was a case of pulling the various disparate strands together to try and make something that worked as a whole in post-production.
In fact it’s interesting in Dangerous Days how many of those involved with making the movie still aren’t satisfied it, largely because they feel it just misses the mark on a narrative and emotional level (for example Daryl Hannah feels it lacks the emotional punch she’d hoped it would have), even if everyone agrees it’s an astonishing and engrossing visual achievement that thrusts you into an incredibly detailed world.
In many ways it’s this as much as Warner’s involvement that’s meant we’ve ended up with so many different versions of Blade Runner. If you watch the workprint, you can certainly see why the studio thought it needed work, and even Ridley himself admits he was having trouble finding solutions to some of the issues. It was only when he could sit down 25-years-later and really look at the movie, tightening some sections and altering others, that he finally came up with the least flawed version. The fact is though, narratively the film will never live up to its visuals, simply because they didn’t film everything that was planned and the film lacked a truly cohesive narrative vision. As a result they’ve been trying to give it that vision ever since, and as a result we’ve had numerous different cuts of the movie to try and get around the narrative flaws.
So, is Deckard a replicant? – Well, it obviously depends on who you ask, however on balance I’d say yes, but it doesn’t really matter anyway. Many of the film’s crew seem adamant that it isn’t even a question and that he is definitely a replicant, while others seem relatively sure he isn’t (which again goes to show the lack of narrative vision that plagued the making of the film). However as the newer versions have come along, the film has edged ever closer to saying that yes he is indeed a robot.
In the theatrical cut, the main inferences that he might be a replicant comes from things like the fact he has the shakes (which is a sign of a replicant coming to the end of its life), and also Rachael asking Deckard whether he’s ever taken the test that would show whether he’s human or not. However the inference is weak and it’s only in later versions that the idea was brought to the fore.
The main thing the 1992 Director’s Cut added to this was reinserting Deckard’s famous unicorn dream sequence, which then ties into Gaff leaving an origami unicorn in Deckard’s apartment at the end of the film. It’s a strong suggestion that Deckard is a replicant, although you can see why a commercially minded studio like Warner thought it might have confused some people (which is why they wanted to remove it from the 1982 version), as I’ve known a few people who’ve seen the Director’s Cut and didn’t have a clue what the unicorns were all about. There are a few other things as well that suggest that in true noir style, Deckard himself may be the thing that he hunts.
However, the important thing about all this isn’t the answer, it’s the question. The whole point is that you shouldn’t be able to come away from Blade Runner with a definitive yes or no answer to whether Deckard is a replicant, as it feeds into the themes of the film, which are all about questioning what makes something human, and understanding the importance of life.
The replicants are machines, but throughout the film their actions are the ones that seem most human. For example you have Rachael, who’s a replicant who doesn’t realise she’s a machine, but even though we know she’s not real, her reaction to finding out she’s an android makes her seem more human than most of the people in the movie. You also have the fact that despite Deckard hunting replicants for a living, he finds it easier to relate to and get involved with Rachael than anyone else (although this could again suggest he’s a replicant himself).
Roy and his fellow machines’ preoccupation with finding a way to live longer is also very human, and by the time he dies, Roy has gone from being a villain to a tragic figure because of his desperate love of being alive (Roy is by far the strongest character in the movie and helps ensure the whole film hangs together, despite narrative weaknesses elsewhere).
As a result it is purely the question mark over Deckard’s head that’s important, because in the end it doesn’t matter whether he’s a replicant or not, but that he’s come to understand the importance of life.
TIM ISAAC
PREVIOUS: The Birds – Or, what's Hitchcock's The Birds really about, and what's it got to do with Psycho?
NEXT: Blazing Saddles - Or, can comedy help change society?
CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter
