The Definitives
Blade Runner (1982)
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Daryl Hannah
Rated: R
Runtime: 117 min.
by Brian Eggert
Entered into
The Definitives:
12/3/2007
Original Release Date:
6/25/1982
Blade Runner is one of the greatest of all science fiction films because, while asking questions about humanity, it creates a fully realized world superior to escapism, rather in the realm of futurism, described with breathtakingly real visuals. Written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, from Philip K. Dick’s extraordinary novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the narrative poses questions about humanity, how it creates and destroys in the same breath. It also prophesies such 21st century dilemmas as mass globalization, global warming, and genetic engineering. That troubled world, expertly conceived by Dick and realized by director Ridley Scott in 1982, was brought new life recently when the director released his “Final Cut” version of the film.
Dick’s novel takes place in the Los Angeles of 2019. It tells the story of Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford), an elite bounty hunter known as a “blade runner” in the film, sent after replicants: genetically-engineered human beings used for off-world colonization and labor. When four rogue Nexus-6 brand replicants return to Earth hoping to extend their limited lifespans, Deckard is hired to find and retire (kill) them. Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and Pris (Daryl Hannah) are two of Deckard’s targets, both taking refuge with chickenhead engineer J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson), who holds ties with their maker, Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel). The violent Leon (Brion James) and exotic dancer Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) are the other two, but they remain submerged somewhere in Dick’s vast, crumbling L.A.
Much of Dick’s future is grim, realized by Scott’s sweeping, moody, dark visuals and bravado special effects. The movie changes a few plot points, but remains true to Dick’s story—the blueprint for the film’s tone and future mise en scène. Skies are blackened; according to Dick’s novel, they have become shrouded with nuclear fallout and dust. Because of such environmental concerns, Earth has been abandoned for colonies in other parts of the galaxy, save for human leftovers like those depicted in the movie. Those stragglers are derelicts living in empty buildings, abandoned from Earth’s virtual evacuation; The Bradbury, where J.F. Sebastian lives, is a building in near-ruinous condition and inhabited by a sole attendant. Inconceivably large buildings reach to the tattered atmosphere, with a few flying vehicles gliding about their heights. Nature no longer exists, as humankind has wiped it out. Genetic engineering of animals is widespread, and in Dick’s book, to own such an animal is a sign of stature. Even Tyrell Corporation could not find themselves a real owl, as they are all extinct; we see their ersatz owl in Blade Runner.
Dick’s world shows an oppressive weight on nature and humanity. If we look in the background of Scott’s cityscape, there is always a police presence, a monitoring airship, scanners, advertisements, or sensors flashing. This world feels familiar, yet futuristic, as designers worked from highly modernized and foreign cities like the frantic, neon-laded designs of Tokyo and Hong Kong. The film’s urbanity feels familiar, but long grown out of control and since deteriorated. Quality of life is low, justifying the numerous mentions of the idealized off-world colonies. It is clear the narrative’s society has destroyed itself, beaten itself down with technology. And so, Blade Runner, as a concept of futurism, remaining prophetic, certainly plausible, and even far from fantasy, noting how truly obscured humanity becomes when so disproportionately mixed with technology.
Replicants are hence unidentifiable by sight, engineered by Tyrell Corporation to be perfect examples of humanity—only smarter, stronger, faster than the normal human. Their lives are restricted, however, to a period of a few years. As Tyrell explains, “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” Dick often used examples of engineered beings as philosophical tools, to consider the limitations of “human.” His novel We Can Build You tells of an automaton salesman who helps manufacture artificial copies of historical figures; an Abraham Lincoln simulacrum, which develops a consciousness, decides, as Lincoln would, that he does not want to be sold. It is determined that consciousness denotes humanity, or at the very least, life. Thus, even what has been created by humans is not artificial. Roy and the other Nexus-6s rebel against their intended purpose because the bliss of consciousness attacks them; they fight to extend it, and are burdened with its limitation.
Deckard has profiles on each of his four targets; otherwise his sole outlet for spotting a replicant is the Voight-Kampff empathy test. The exam includes a pseudo-lie detector for replicants that works by posing questions of human sympathy; it reads involuntary flushes in the skin or pupil dilation, which would suggest empathetic emotional responses about or toward human life. As replicants remain unattached from all life, their results will vary from that of a human. The Voight-Kampff empathy test supplies a counterargument for the Nexus-6 group’s claims on existence, through emphasis of their incomplete human physiological and emotional imitation.
And yet, Tyrell adamantly insists on their superiority to humanity, their perfection—an engineered example of superior humanity, but superior to be sure. Roy refers to himself, through poetry, as an angel. After all, the Tyrell Corporations’ maxim is "More Human Than Human." In an adlibbed recitation of William Blake’s poem America: A Prophesy, Roy says “Fiery the Angels fell, deep thunder rolled around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc.” Blake’s original lines were slightly different: "Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd, around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc." While Blake’s poem heralded themes of rebellion, Roy alters “rose” to “fell,” signifying the falling or death of Blake’s Angels, better suiting the terminal circumstances of the Nexus-6 replicants. Roy identifies himself with god-like creatures, superior to man, but somehow lacking; angels are often considered to be greater than humans, and yet, they do not have humanity per se. In the spirit of Blake’s works, the replicants do not rebel against an institution, rather rumble fatalistically against something they (as well as all of humanity) are hopeless to prevent: death.
Because of this, Blade Runner presents a grand link between the artificial and the human. Replicants reach for life, whereas Deckard brings himself closer to death by killing those who so desire life. Humanity (Deckard) is rendered less than human for ostensibly killing itself; artificiality, as a result, becomes more than human. Replicants are merely condensed versions of a traditional human, as if every bit of potential was filtered from an average person’s life and compiled into a personified form. By destroying that, Deckard destroys himself.
Replicant consciousness is not suspect, but does that self-awareness denote humanity? Deckard’s relationship with Rachel (Sean Young), Tyrell’s “niece”, sheds light on that question, as our hero’s romantic sympathies reside within her. Deckard, who remains a devout noir protagonist, cold and straightforward, researches the Nexus-6 model at Tyrell Corporation. Deckard is asked to administer the Voight-Kampff on a non-engineered human, Rachel. When giving the test, he barely discovers Rachel is in fact a replicant. She exists with implanted memories and emotions, allowing for consciousness and a realized personality, which work to fool even the replicant herself. For her own sake, Tyrell has engineered Rachel to be unaware of her construction. And so Blade Runner asks, What is humanity? Does it reside in self-preservation, self-awareness, memories, or dreams? Rachel contains all of these characteristics, and yet she is not human. As Dick’s novel states: “The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are.”
As a reluctant, difficult romance blooms between Deckard and Rachel, the blade runner begins to question even himself. Strange dreams float in his unconscious mind: a unicorn prances through an idyllic and softly lit forest, ethereal music plays, and the camera pans over archaic photographs to which Deckard has seemingly no association. Humanity has become an obscured ideal, especially with the realization that it can be mimicked, if not perfected by genetic engineering. Tyrell's motto "More Human Than Human" begs the question: Can humans be engineered and made better than someone born naturally? And if so, wouldn't that make Deckard's role as blade runner paradoxical? If he is killing replicants who are thus more human, does that make him a murderer, as opposed to a police-backed bounty hunter?
Edward James Olmos plays Deckard’s coworker Gaff, a mysterious in-between for Deckard and his supervisor Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh). Gaff places bits of origami before Deckard throughout the movie, as though they should have meaning. And perhaps they do, looking at the way Deckard explores these pieces. Perhaps they recall some thought or memory in him, making the paper figure or animal curiously suspect. Not until the film’s final scene, when Deckard sees Gaff has placed an origami unicorn outside of his apartment door, does Deckard understand the truth: that with his dreams known to Gaff, they must be implanted, so, he is a replicant. Strangely, this insight was not always so in Blade Runner.
Hampton Fancher wrote a screenplay called Android, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and producer Michael Deeling became interested. Fresh off the artistic and commercial success of Alien, Ridley Scott was approached to direct in 1980. Scott’s eldest brother had just died of skin cancer, and the film’s probing inquiries on the legitimacy of life seemed appropriate. His desperate attempts to distract himself from his pain would immerse the director in perfecting the movie’s signature detail.
But Android seemed hardly a fitting title. Furthermore, Scott wanted to avoid calling Deckard a bounty hunter, as it seemed to automatically criminalize, thus dehumanize his targets, the replicants. Producers discovered William S. Burroughs’ script for Alan E. Nourse’s book The Bladerunner, a novel about black-marketing medical supplies, and purchased title rights. Fancher retitled Deckard’s position, which now made Deckard out as a harbinger of death, thus giving the production a more commercial title: Blade Runner.
In 1982, when the theatrical version was released, Ridley Scott’s ending was wholly different compared to the one audiences know today. Instead of surviving Roy and escaping with Rachel only to realize he too is a replicant, the theatrical version featured Deckard escaping with Rachel, but pursued by Roy, ending without resolution. Moreover, Deckard’s unicorn dream sequence was left on the cutting room floor, leaving out the final implication that Deckard is not human. The theatrical cut also harbors inglorious voiceover narration, which star Harrison Ford balked about at the time. Critics split on the result, praising its visual mastery, but calling it narratively dull. As Blade Runner opened two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, one of the most successful box-office hits of all time, Scott’s film was overshadowed and forgotten.
Ford voiced his frustration with the theatrical cut, specifically about his character’s voiceover, telling Empire magazine “When we started shooting it had been tacitly agreed that the version of the film that we had agreed upon was the version without voiceover narration. It was a fucking nightmare. I thought that the film had worked without the narration. But now I was stuck recreating that narration. And I was obliged to do the voiceovers for people that did not represent the director's interests." Some reports say Ford gave intentionally poor readings of his narration lines, so that producers would opt not to use it. Alas, the narration found its way into the theatrical version, despite being unnecessary to the narrative. For the third feature-film by Ridley Scott, he had little say over his final product.
In 1990, while scouring through Blade Runner archives, film restorer Michael Arick found a Workprint Cut, which Scott had roughly edited as his intended Director’s Cut, but never finished. Back in ’82, the studio opted for the Theatrical Cut’s more commercial ending, so Scott’s alternate was buried. Now discovered, the Workprint was shown at some minor screenings, and received high praises for the diverse approach. Warner Bros. paid Arick and Blade Runner’s assistant editor Les Healey to work from Scott’s notes on his version, including changes in tone, reinsertion of the unicorn scene, removal of the voiceover, and most importantly the famous ending that suggests Deckard is indeed a replicant. Warner released the Director’s Cut into theaters, where it was hailed unanimously as a superior masterpiece.
And despite being a monumentally better film, Scott’s 1992 Director’s Cut still harbored imperfection. At that point, Scott himself was strained with limited time, as he was completing Thelma & Louise for MGM. Scott insisted to Warner Bros. that they provide a considerable sum to fix poor looping and exposed special effects apparatuses visible in the Theatrical Cut, but no such patchwork was made since, for the studio, putting more money into revamping a movie that previously flopped was poor business, no matter how positive Workprint screenings were.
Between 1992 and 2006,the Director’s Cut has been called visionary filmmaking, growing in popularity from cult classic to just a plain, simple classic. Early in 2007, the American Film Institute inaugurated Scott’s movie into its 100 Years, 100 Films list, placing it alongside film history’s greatest achievements. With the movie’s increasing popularity, Warner Bros. finally saw fit to allow Scott, who remained unsatisfied with his so-called Director’s Cut, time and money to improve his film one more time. Working alongside longtime collaborator Charles de Lauzirika, Scott oversaw a digital print improved from the original negatives, sound remastering, and even reshot what Scott believed to be sloppy scenes from the previous versions.
For 2007, prints of Blade Runner: The Final Cut circulated around art house theaters, receiving rave reviews for Scott’s now absolutely perfected vision. To the naked eye, one might not notice changes from the Director’s to Final Cut. Alterations are primarily a fine-toothed cleaning, fixing those minute details visible only to the trained eye or devout fans of the movie. Extended scenes from the Workprint and International Cuts were reinserted, namely a lengthened unicorn sequence, and violence and blood that were trimmed slightly from American cuts. In one scene, Roy crushes Tyrell’s head, pressing out his victim’s eyes in the process; blood now streams generously from his victim’s sockets. Later, we see Roy press a nail through his own hand, to prolong his failing synthetic body; that scene has been elongated, now showing the nail popping out from the other side. In Zhora’s death sequence where she runs herself through plates of glass, the stuntwoman’s face was originally clear; Scott reshot this scene with Joanna Cassidy, still looking as young as ever, to repair the visible inconsistency. The Director’s Cut also contained a scene with out of synch dialogue, the result of poor looping; Harrison Ford’s mouth has been digitally replaced, matching up what we hear with what we see, thanks to the participation of Ford’s son, Ben.
With this recent washing of Blade Runner, changes are less obvious than some other Ridley Scott Director’s Cuts. With Alien, Gladiator, and the underrated Kingdom of Heaven(which included a significant improvement after being recut by Scott into a 45-minute longer Director’s Cut), whole scenes were reincorporated, reedited, or sometimes removed to create an alternate outlook. And while we might accuse another director for making such alterations solely to sell DVDs, with Scott, the result often conveys maturation, or suggests something different from his original intent. These are artistic rethinkings, worthy of the effort, and often the double-dip on DVD. Artists do that, I suppose, take months off a painting, or book, only to come back to it and rework, though some would rather leave an individual work as is, a product of its time. In Scott’s case, the young filmmaker may not have had the power his now esteemed reputation as a consistently successful filmmaker affords him; that power allows him to recut his work in a manner he was previously not allowed to, or perhaps was thought to be a hindrance on the respective film’s box-office success.
Most importantly with Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Scott retains the exact finale where Deckard realizes his own replicant nature. This enlightening closure does not follow Philip K. Dick’s novel, but capture’s the author’s spirit. A number of Dick’s short stories end with such a realization, so that those familiar with his work cannot deny the germane Dickian point on which the film ends.
Philip K. Dick resided somewhere in the back row during production, despite Blade Runner representing his body of work’s first filmic treatment (he has subsequently become one of the most adapted book-to-film authors, just after Stephen King). Getting his hands on Fancher’s script made matters worse, as Dick balked that script’s tone was wrong. Scott then hired David Peoples to rewrite Fancher’s script; the two would work on it off-and-on throughout the two-year production. After reading a revision in 1981, Dick congratulated Peoples with a surprising enthusiasm, claiming his book and the screenplay would compliment, rather than detract from one another.
Scott invited the author for an onset tour, where he was shown an extended special effects reel. Following his set visit, on October 11, 1981, Dick wrote a letter to Jeff Walker of The Ladd Company, co-producers of Blade Runner. Dick’s letter sings praises to the scenes he was shown, insisting that the filmmakers “may have created a unique form of graphic, artistic expression, never before seen. And, I think, Blade Runner is going to revolutionize our conceptions of what science fiction is and, more, can be.”
Dick could forsee, with the popularization and mass consumption of Blade Runner, science-fiction becoming more than yarns about robots and lasers. Could Blade Runner become prophecy contingent to our society? Or to the sci-fi genre? Indeed, Dick’s readers found material wading in the pool of intellectual entertainment; and his philosophical approach elevated his work to legendary status after his death, which, occurred from heart failure only a few months before Scott’s film hit theaters. One would suspect, however, that Dick would be more than pleased with Blade Runner’s result.
Dick’s frequent meditation on what defines humanity is brought to awe-inspiring life in Blade Runner. The world co-created by Dick and Scott announces the self-destructive nature of humanity, paralleled by both Deckard and his environment. We see a world that man has destroyed, thus causes despair and eventual emigration from Earth; we assume initially that Deckard is human, which may be true in the beginning, but as he continues to track down and kill that which is “More Human Than Human,” Deckard effectually dehumanizes himself, enough so that he realizes he is pointedly not human. Among the stellar adaptations of Dick’s work (among them Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly), the author’s frequent philosophical themes have never been so gloriously described by a marriage of narrative and production.
“All I can say is that the world in Blade Runner is where I really live. That is where I think I am anyway. This world will now be a world that every member of the audience will inhabit. It will not be my private world. It is now a world where anyone who will go into the theatre and sit down and watch the film will be caught up and the world is so overpowering, it is so profoundly overpowering that it is going to be very hard for people to come out of it and adjust to what we normally encounter.”
–Philip K. Dick, Official Collector's Edition of the Blade Runner Souvenir Magazine
