Blade Runner at 40

The magnificent opening shot.  Los Angeles has become an overcrowded hellscape of belching fire plumes.  It is perpetually dark and cloudy here.

“I want more life, father.” - Roy Batty

I remember seeing Blade Runner in an Athens, Georgia theater in 1982.  It was a cool movie to watch on the big screen; great special effects, great music, strange vibe (pioneering cyberpunk), intriguing plot, somewhat philosophical with enough action to hold your interest.  I was impressed by its aesthetic.  I had never seen anything like it.  The dark yet compelling dystopian visuals were a new thing back then.  My friends and I went to see it more than once in what were increasingly empty theaters.  It soon was withdrawn from distribution due to lackluster ticket sells.  

Blade Runner has stayed with me ever since.  The 1991 Director's Cut on VHS renewed my appreciation for the film.  That version was a significant departure in many ways from what I saw in the theater nine years earlier.  The basic story and aesthetic was still the same, but the narration was gone. Several new scenes were added and it offered what seemed to me to be a rather abrupt ending compared with the theater release.  The new version was met with wider acclaim.  The biggest buzz that emerged was the fan debate over whether or not Deckard was a Replicant (an advanced android).  This had been a topic of discussion from the beginning but the Director's Cut really fanned the flames of the argument.

Finally, in 2014 director Ridley Scott made the bombshell statement that yes, Deckard was a Replicant, which surprised me.  I had not picked up on some of the visual cues the film supplies to indicate he wasn't human.  Harrison Ford did not agree with Scott, saying that he specifically played the iconic role as a human because he felt the audience needed a human character they could trust.  Naturally, these conflicting views garnered even more buzz for the film.  

The revelation did not change my impressions of Blade Runner.  In truth, I never gave the idea much thought.  There was plenty else to ponder in the film.  It really didn't matter to me whether Deckard was human or not.  Either way, the story was still about Replicants and their ability to feel fully human within their mere four-year lifespan.  The film was still in the crime noir genre with a love story.  It still presented the same philosophical questions.  

The plumes are reflected in this spinner driver's eye.  A fantastic shot for a fantastical scene.  Eyes are a major theme in the film.

Futuristic advertising hovers above the city streets, urging people to move off-world.  "The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure."

A spinner passes a massive electronic advertising billboard.  Giant corporate capitalism rules the city.

When it came out on DVD, I watched the Director's Cut again, now in higher definition.  It looked amazing, even after the passage of time and in comparison with contemporary CGI stuff that was unavailable in 1982.  I really came to appreciate the film more.  It struck me as dire, harsh, sensational and intimate all at the same time.  Blade Runner definitely gets better with subsequent viewings.  There were some bonus features that I had not seen previously and these broadened my interest and understanding in the film.  That was when I became aware of the controversies surrounding its production and initial release.

By now I have seen five different versions of the film.  That is because about 15 years ago I bought the Blu-ray 5-disc complete collector's edition.  It contains nine hours of features which are very nice to have.  They explore every aspect of the film which can be appreciated artistically and metaphysically.  The rich story of how the film was made, how and why it was changed for its release and how it evolved further after its brief 1982 premiere was fascinating to me.

The collector's edition offered the International Theater release from 1982.  This version has some additional violence in it that was cut from the American release.  There was a (then) rarely seen Workprint version, sort of a late-stage rendering of the original film, before Scott lost control of it.

Screen tests of the Workprint revealed confusion and rejection by the audience.  Viewers could not clearly follow the narrative and they thought the film was too bleak.  So the production studio insisted on several changes.  The most significant were the addition of a somewhat cliché Harrison Ford voiceover narration and the shooting of the “happy ending” final scene.  Both were attempts to make the film more “popular.”  The narration (which Ford voiced but objected to) blatantly explained parts of the story that Scott had intended to only be revealed visually.  The new ending made for an upbeat romantic conclusion to an otherwise dark film.  

But the changes did not save the final product.  Blade Runner failed to perform well at the box office.  It seems that multiple viewings by me, my friends, and a lot of other little bands of people scattered across the country wasn't enough to turn a profit.  It was enough to garner “cult” status for it, however.  Blade Runner remained a fairly constant topic of conversation within the cult afterwards.  As the years went by, more and more people discovered the film and were passionate about it.  That was the main reason the Director's Cut and the Final Cut came along 9 years and 25 years later, respectively.

Though I am sure I benefited from the narration upon those first viewings, the Director's Cut cleverly gives the viewer most of the same information without the narration.  It is a bit of a puzzle you need to piece together from the images.  In a sense, watching Blade Runner is a great way to teach you how watch a film.  How to pay attention to what a film shows you.  But even the so-called Director's Cut was not truly what it claimed to be.  Ridley Scott did not, in fact, control the editing of that version.

In 2007, Blade Runner: Final Cut was released.  This was, at long last, under Scott's direct supervision, the definitive version of the film.  I did not see it during its limited release.  I bought my Blu-ray collection soon thereafter and was very pleased.  I remember watching Final Cut several times along with all the features and long stretches of each of the other versions.  It was the type of obsessive behavior that is all too common for me.  For awhile I was consumed with Blade Runner again.

I just rewatched the 1982 American version and Scott's 2007 Final Cut along with sampling all the documentary content.  I can say that both versions of the film hold up well, in spite of the fact that it was set in Los Angeles 2019.  We're on the other side of 2019 now and things are nowhere near what is depicted in Blade Runner.  Thank god.  

I relate to that date in the film the same way I relate the year 2001 to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The world was nothing like what Kubrick showed us.  It is the same with Scott.  But I think we are proceeding toward both of the world's Kubrick and Scott depicted and many aspects of their visions are already with us.  In a way the two films are like yin and yang.  2001 is the light and glorious, while Blade Runner offers the dark and foreboding.  There's also a bit of one in the other though they are completely different films.  Both are fantastic in their unique way.

Forget the year.  Forget whether Deckard is human or not.  What you have is a visionary story, splendidly told.  Global warming has sort of run amok (the film predated climate change as a mainstream concern by many years) and the world has become this mishmash of cultures, technologies and space capitalism.  The most powerful man in the world makes humanoid Replicants, beings so advanced that they can develop their own emotions and can experience their inhumanity – and fear death in their four-year time span.

Six of the newest model Replicants (Nexus-6) have rewired themselves to desire life beyond their programmed span.  They have killed a bunch of people off-world, stolen a ship and returned to Earth to find their maker and get more life.  This is illegal, which is why Deckard is needed.  To hunt them down and “retire” them.  That's what Blade Runners do.

In the end there are just two of them left – Pris (Daryl Hannah), a basic pleasure model, and Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), an optimal killer.  After a vicious fight, Deckard takes out Pris but his one-on-one combat with Batty is near-fatal, leaving him literally hanging by his fingernails.  It is Batty who ultimately (and inexplicably – could it be compassion?) saves Deckard just before the Replicant's lifespan plays out.

The death of Batty on the rooftop in the rain as Deckard looks on in bewilderment is the film's most remarkable scene.  Batty's monologue is immortal and is primarily due to Hauer's spontaneous acting, changing the script as it was written, with Scott's approval, of course.  It is brief and I will quote it entirely.

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.  Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”  (See discussion about the original script versions and the meaning(s) of this version here.  Incidentally, Batty's first line in the film is simply “Time enough.”  This ties in directly with his final line.  One of the many symmetrical beauties of this film.)

The streets are crowded, it is almost perpetually raining, but there is plenty of neon to make things somewhat vibrant.

Gaff and Deckard cross the street.  It is raining.  The scene is backlit with smoke and/or fog, typical of so many shots in Blade Runner.

Gaff takes Deckard to police headquarters in a spinner.

Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh), the captain of the LA Blade Runner unit, watches videos of the Replicants with Deckard.

Ridley Scott really loves backlighting smoke throughout the film.  Here some mysteriously appears as Bryant discusses things with Deckard.  Note that there is no smoke in the previous shot and neither of them is smoking anything.  Don't get nit-picky with the film.  It's all about the experience.

Perhaps my favorite shot in the film.  The sun is setting from the perspective of Tyrell's massive headquarters.  Deckard first meets Rachael here.

Rachael is a smoker, which suits this film just fine.

During the bizarre final pursuit of Deckard by Batty (which is an odd twist, its supposed to be the other way around), the chase takes them through a dark room filled with searching beams of light and a bunch of birds.  Batty grabs a dove as he passes (this is not actually shown) and is holding it as he utters his famous final words.  Don't ask why.  Just go with it.  He releases the bird, which flies away, signifying his death.  The music by Vangelis is particularly tender at this moment and accentuates the scene wonderfully.

In fact, the musical score by Vangelis is one of the many memorable things about Blade Runner.  It is (depending on where we are in the film) futuristic, fantastic, soft, sexy, heady, tense, violent and powerful.  The score is every bit as striking as the visual effects, which feature more of Douglas Trumbull's impressive work (2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Tree of Life, Interstellar).  Blade Runner is a feast of sight and sound.

Scott's aesthetic includes a lot of darkness contrasted with bright beams of light.  Smoke and fog and rain figure prominently.  The atmosphere of Blade Runner is as much a character in the film as anything else.  This world is dark, neonesque, lively, strange, complex, and somewhat disorienting.  Again, this helped define the cyberpunk sub-genre that emerged after this film.  As much as the narrative or the philosophical questions or the interesting characters and technologies, the zeitgeist of Blade Runner is really compelling.  The successful combination of these elements makes for one of the most remarkable films ever made.

There are plenty of problems with Blade Runner.  Why aren't Tyrell (Joe Turkel) and Sebastian (William Sanderson) more cautious around these renegade Replicants?  They should know better than anyone how dangerous they are.  And they aren't supposed to be on Earth at all.  The fact that they returned should spell trouble (and does for the police).  Instead, they treat them casually as buddies.  The story seems too convenient in this way.  

Even more glaring is the fact that the Replicants supposedly have a four-year lifespan and we are specifically told that Batty's inception date is 2016.  This is 2019.  Why does Batty die?  He's got another year to go.  We are told at the beginning of the film that Blade Runner units specifically exist to “retire” Replicants trespassing on Earth.  And yet Deckard asks why these androids returned to Earth.  He says that it is “unusual.”  If it is so unusual why are there units specifically trained to take them out?  Perhaps Blade Runners operate off-world as well.  But the film does not say this.   

Then, of course, there is the glaring fact that since Replicants are illegal on Earth, why the hell are they made here to begin with?!

There are other things that are “off” about Blade Runner.  But these technicalities take nothing away from the experience of the film, the excitement it provides, and the questions it poses.  The film (along with Alien, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, among others) clearly establishes Ridley Scott as one of the great director's of our time.

Rachel's eye, somehow not obscured by her smoking, as Deckard administers the Voight-Kampff test.

Chew's lab where he designs Replicant eyes is icy cold for some reason.

Rachael sheds the only actual tear in the film when Deckard rather harshly tells her that her memories are just implants.  She is not human, though she feels she is.

Beams of light searching randomly through the foggy darkness.  Sebastian and Pris approach his apartment.

Deckard day-dreaming...

...of a unicorn.  This shot was not in the original 1982 release but was added nine years later in the Director's Cut.  It is also in Scott's Final Cut.  It is hugely important to fully understand the final scene in the film.

There are multiple themes explored in Blade Runner.  An obvious ones has to do with eyes.  Replicant eyes sometimes reflect light in a strange way.  They occasionally glow, which indicates that they are, in fact, fancy robots.  When the six renegades return to Earth, one of their first stops (this is unexplained) is to visit Chew (James Hong), the man who engineers their eyes.  He gives them information about how they might ultimately reach Tyrell, the head of the vast corporation responsible for creating the androids.

Eyes are also featured in a test that is administered in a couple of scenes which focuses on the pupil and iris in response to verbal questions designed to trigger emotions, revealing whether or not the eye is artificial.  At the beginning of the film there is a fantastic shot of various flame exhausts reflected in the eye of someone (unidentified) navigating through the air of dystopian Los Angeles.

The eyes are the window to the soul is one way to apply all these references to seeing.  But also Batty keeps telling others about what he has seen with his eyes.  This indicates that it is through the eyes that Replicants process their experiences.  The key to how their emotions emerge and evolve.  But the same can be said about humans too, though our other senses are also important to emotional experience, of course.  So, while eyes are a way to distinguish who is or isn't artificial, they can also point toward the emotive similarity between android and human.

"It's too bad she won't live.  But then again who does?" - Gaff

Rachael (Sean Young) expresses her implanted memories as visual images.  Replicants are given fake photographs of themselves as children so they can see their memories.  The connection between memory and seeing is strong throughout the film.  The distinction between an implanted memory and a “real” one is not clear.  The film shows the viewer that memories affect the persona possessing them.  It makes no difference whether or not they are actual or artificial in nature, their impact and importance to the entity possessing them is exactly the same.  In this way, the eye theme contributes to the philosophical exploration of artificiality and authenticity that lies at the heart of the film.

Rachael with her eyes aglow.

Deckard's eyes glow very briefly (less than a second) in this shot, which is in all versions of the film.  This was the primary source of the "he's a Replicant" controversy that raged until Scott's confirmation decades later.  Harrison Ford still contends he is fully human.  You can have a lot of fun discussing the film at this level.

Sebastian among the "toy" robots he created.  They are his friends.  Pris does acrobatics in the background.

Pris with her eyes aglow.

Sebastian leads Roy Batty to Tyrell.

He has come for a longer lifespan but Tyrell explains that is impossible.  Batty kills him and Sebastian too.

Natural animals are almost all extinct in this world.  The film features a snake and an owl, both artificial.  Both also happen to be symbols of knowledge  The owl watches as Batty commits his violent murders.  The film shows us his fake eyes as they observe.

No impressions on Blade Runner would be complete without a reference to the famous unicorn shot.  The shot was not included in the original US or International releases.  It was not in Scott's Workprint either, which is a bit puzzling to me knowing all that I know today.  It was not seen until the Director's Cut.  Of course, as it turns out, it is one of the most important pieces of the film's puzzle about whether or not Deckard is human.

As Deckard leaves with Rachael at the end of film, he picks up a small origami unicorn that is lying on the floor outside his apartment.  He stares at it for a moment with a faint cocked smile, then nods his head before entering the elevator with the new love of his life.  That part was included in the original release just before it cuts to the happy ending sequence.  It serves as the abrupt final shot in the film's revised versions.  The happy ending is edited out.

The shot of a unicorn galloping in slow-motion through a forest appears as Deckard sits pensively, looking at photographs at his piano.  The exclusion of this shot ends up rendering the origami unicorn meaningless, which makes me curious why Scott did not place it in his Workprint.  Perhaps he thought at the time it was giving too much away.  Knowing what I know now after all these years of following the evolution of the film, I am rather surprised the origami unicorn was left in.  One shot is directly related to the other.  

Gaff (Edward James Olmos), a police administrator that helps move the story along and seems to know an awful lot about Deckard, makes little origami figures as a matter of habit in several scenes throughout the film.  So we know where the unicorn came from at the end of the film.  But why was it placed there?  The original release doesn't attempt to explain this at all.  It isn't that big of a deal because we move on to the happy ending and film concludes on an upbeat note.

But the Director's Cut and the Final Cut contain the introspective shot of a running unicorn.  The unicorn is book-ended by a close-up of Deckard with his mind wandering.  He is obviously thinking (or dreaming) of the unicorn.  The intent with the origami at the end patently shows that Gaff equated the unicorn with Deckard's earlier brooding vision.  

The fact that Gaff knew about Deckard's unicorn “memory” is one of the big pieces of the puzzle in the whole “Deckard is a Replicant” thing.  This little tidbit could not have been known by anyone else unless the memory was implanted into Deckard and Gaff read Deckard's file.  Which means he is just as much a Replicant as Rachael, Batty, Pris, and the others.

This is contextualized in a touching scene between Deckard and Rachael where he tells her that her memories are not “real.”  They never happened.  She was given those memories so that she could behave in a human-like way as a robot.  These implanted memories supply a “nest” to cushion the shock of Replicants developing their own emotions during their short lifespan.  Deckard's brutal honesty brings Rachael to tears.  She feels not only the reality of her implanted memories but, more importantly, she is hurt by the fact that she feels human but is not.

This scene becomes more powerful the more you consider it.  Are these feelings less real because they are based on experiences that are fake?  Is the longing for more life by Pris and Batty just an unfortunate by-product of their advanced design?  Is the love Rachael and Deckard feel for each other fake?  What is the difference between advanced feelings based on technology and those based on biology?  

For me, the love of Rachael for Deckard, the longing of Batty for more life, and the thought/dream of the unicorn are all about the same thing.  I think that is what Blade Runner ultimately tries to convey.  A lot of this was there in the original release to begin with.  Which makes that 1982 version of the film, while somewhat “popularized,” nevertheless a really good movie.  

But the later versions, particularly Scott's 2007 Final Cut, pushes all of this emotive philosophy further and more fully integrates it with the amazing visual effects, soundscape, and overall aesthetic to create a more complete experience.  Scott did not make a science-fiction movie.  He made a cinematic experience that touches the viewer by sight and sound and concept.  He created a movie that makes you feel things as well as think about things.  Few films accomplish this.  

Fewer still become better some 40 years later.  As it turns out, Blade Runner is not a cult film.  It evolved into mainstream entertainment of the best kind.  Or perhaps society evolved into accepting what the film conveys.  What Scott envisioned and realized initially in his Workprint only later became appreciated in the Director's Cut and, optimally, in the Final Cut.  This is a wonderful film noir and love story that is more widely recieved and highly valued today than it was in 1982.

The vast empty, dilapidated apartment complex where Sebastian lives (lived).  More beams of light and fog.  Very atmospheric.

Batty with the dove.  More rain and fog and light beams.  He is bloody from pushing a nail through his left hand in order to feel pain.  He knows he is dying and pain gives him a rush of life.

TDK in neon behind him.  The film is filled with corporate logos and messaging.

Deckard is saved by Batty at the last moment.  He watches the Replicant die.

"Like tears in rain."

Upon death he releases the dove.

Deckard finds the origami unicorn outside his apartment.

In the original version we know that Gaff made this but we don't know why.  The unicorn "dream" shot in the later versions allows us to fully understand it, which feeds into the "he's a Replicant" debate.

The beginning of the "happy ending" sequence in the 1982 version.  Obviously the natural wold and blue sky contrast starkly with everything else in the film.

As of this post, Blade Runner ranks 54th on recent the British Film Institute Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time.  It was ranked 65th in 2012 and 69th in 2002, documenting a growing appeal within the film industry.  It did not make the list in 1992 or 1982.  The movie currently ranks an unimpressive 176th on the Internet Movie Database Top 250 list, which might indicate that film critics and the motion picture industry admire it more than the average movie goer.  Although, as of today, it scores a 91% with the audience on Rotten Tomatoes compared with 89% rating among film reviews.

For my personal tastes, I don't really pay a lot of attention to these various ratings and rankings.  Fast Times at Ridgemont High, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Tootsie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, Fanny and Alexander, Sophie's Choice, 48 Hours, John Carpenter's The Thing and The World According to Garp are among a slew of decent films that were also released in 1982.  But few of these remain as admirable as Blade Runner.  Nor have any of them increased in popularity after 40 years.  Most are now forgotten.  Like tears in rain, one might say.  

The film became popular enough for a sequel in 2017.  I thought Blade Runner 2049 was a worthy effort.  But that film still did not match what Scott managed to accomplish under far more limited circumstances in the early 1980's.  His vision was to make something completely different from any film before.  He accomplished that so well in the Workprint that he lost artistic control and the producers released a fundamentally different film, though the dazzling look and feel was still there.  

Blade Runner helped inspire the whole cyberpunk genre, though that was an unintentional consequence.  Scott's vision was ahead of its time.  It was 25 years later before the Final Cut showed the world what he had in mind all along.  Now it is considered a classic.  One of the great films of the twentieth century.  It took awhile but the film world finally caught up with Ridley Scott.