Blade Runner: The Final, Final, Director’s Cut

By my estimation, Sir Ridley Scott has made two of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. I’m talking, of course, about Alien and Blade Runner. Whatever misanthropic, bloated epics he’s made since then–see Kingdom of Heaven–I’ll always love him for that.

And now, Blade Runner is available in a shiny new, 25th Anniversary version that is being touted as the ultimate, final, we-wouldn’t-kid-you director’s cut. Here’s a blurb from the ad over at Amazon.com:

“In celebration of Blade Runner’s 25th anniversary, director Ridley Scott has gone back into post production to create the long-awaited definitive new version. Blade Runner: The Final Cut, spectacularly restored and remastered from original elements and scanned at 4K resolution, will contain never-before-seen added/extended scenes, added lines, new and improved special effects, director and filmmaker commentary, an all-new 5.1 Dolby® Digital audio track and more”

Thank God! Added lines. One of my biggest complaints about the first Final Director’s Cut was that it didn’t have enough lines.

Anyway, over at Slate, Stephen Metcalf describes the”rehab job” the film has undergone, from it’s disastrous opening reviews to its triumphant labeling by the Guardian as the best science fiction film ever.

“The prevailing meme—that over time, scales fell from prejudicial eyes, and Blade Runner’s true value as an extraordinary act of filmmaking bravado was recognized—is appealing, but also incomplete. It may not have flattered the times, but in one sense Blade Runner benefited, and benefited enormously, from them. Blade Runner is among the first movies—if not the first—whose fortunes revived in the new channels of ‘ancillary distribution.’”

Aside from the fact that I don’t know what a meme—prevailing or otherwise—is, I think Metcalf is right on the money. I have never seen the film in a theater, but it became a favorite of mine first on TV and now DVD. Back in 1982, when it was released to dismal reviews and box-office, I was too busy mooning with the rest of America over Spielberg’s E.T. (there, I admit it . . . I feel much better now). E.T., which Metcalf claims gave off an “amber goo-glow,” was released just two weeks before Blade Runner. That coincidence, coupled with the studio’s last-minute insertion of a laughable voice-over and polyanna ending, insured that the movie would sink like a stone.

Then, as Metcalf describes it, video came along, and a curious mythos grew up around the film, that there was some final vision of the movie, floating around in Ridley Scott’s head, and if we could just nail that down on celluloid, everything would be all right. Well, now they have, and the world as we know it will survive.

I for one will probably pick it up, because the DVD I have now is a little long in the tooth (it’s of the 1992 director’s cut), and the transfer doesn’t stand up all that well on my Sony 16×9. The only question is whether to go HD disc of some sort (if there’s any film made for HD, Blade Runner is it) or normal res DVD. Ah, the choices our consumerist life-style brings.

(For the rest of Metcalf’s funny and insightful piece, go here. To see comparisons of the original 1982 and 1992 director’s cut endings, as well as a Fresh Air interview with Scott, go here.)