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LV: Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 2007)
I don't think I've seen The Director's Cat since its release around 1992 - the version which removed the voice-over that had been added after the previews, added a few music cues to replace the speech, added the bloody unicorn, and ended with the lift doors closing rather than the sailing away into the sunset. There were still the wrong number of replicants walking the streets (the much unlamented Mary the all American Mom) and so forth.
It became quickly apparent that this was more of a Warner Bros cut - Scott had been busy on 1492 Conquest of Paradise and had not been able to make the changes he wished, and the colour timing was not all it might have been. Around 2000 a new team came together and catalogued all of the surviving footage, although apparently none of the archivists knew any of the names of the characters so their work was a bit flawed. The project seemed to drift into apathy (legal stuff? ownership? indifference as to having another bloody version?) until the approaching 25th anniversary galvanised the project anew.
They've gone back to original negatives and sound sources and have updated the sound (to 5.1?) and cleaned it up, have cleaned up the images, and have passed it through a digital intermediate to (presumably) photoshop where they can. A number of the mistakes are solved - Harrison Ford's son redubbed his father's speech in the scene with the Egyptian (or rather they used his chin to resynchronise dialogue) and Joanne Cassidy's face has been superimposed on the stunt double in the death scene. They haven't superimposed heels on her boots, I suspect, nor have they changed the colour of Gatt's eyes (maybe he's a replicant...). The pigeon now flies up into a stormy sky rather than into the blue.
In other words, short of having your own 70mm print, this is the best looking version of the film you'll ever see, and it remains beautiful to look at (although the hairstyles look curiously eighties now). The removal of the voice-over gives the humans and replicants more of a sense of equal agency (and thus it's actually less interesting; being able to speak and narrate is partly about ownership of the story - and being shown scenes the narrator cannot see requires some thinking through). Deckard continues to have no more motivation than Being A Man Because If You're Not A Cop, You're Little People. We continue to relish the death of the female replicants more than the males (Zhora keeps going in slo-mo after more bullets than (insert questionable line about deaths on the Underground) and Pris screams and flails for a minute or so whilst Leon's head explodes and Roy just nods off).
So then, Ridley Didley now tells us we're stupid if we don't get the idea that Deckard is a replicant.
The facts are these: Gatt creates three origami figures, a chicken, a man with an erection and a unicorn. The chicken occurs when Deckard doesn't want the job, the erecion man when they leave Leon's apartment and Deckard may have the hots for Rachael and the unicorn in the lobby outside his apartment.
Deckard, in a reverie in front of his photos (which all look too Victorian and Edwardian to be his parents) and his paino, dreams of a unicorn. His eyes glow in one shot, just as all the robotic creatures and repliants' do at various stages of the point.
Deckard, on trying to escape with Rachael, interprets the unicorn to mean, Gatt has read my mind and now what it has been programmed with (like Deckard's recitation of the spider memory - he's telling Rachael about it even though she has never told anyone, so he knows the content of her memories). He realises that he is a replicant - how ironic. Killing replicants is a dirty job, you send replicants on dirty jobs, therefore Socrates was a Greek.
But. Deckard seems to be all too easily beaten up, needs to be rescued and isn't that smart. In fact he only manages to kill two replicants, both female and I think both shot in the back. It is clear that someone recognised as Deckard has worked for the police department for a number of years, and there's no sense that replicants are body doubles. I'm not sure Deckard's eyes glow in earlier cuts anymore than other humans do (and what about Gatt's eyes changing colour?).
Deckard reads the unicorn to mean, Gatt's been here before and had a chance to kill Rachael easily, but has chosen not to, and is letting me now I can flee. Aren't unicorns associated with virgins (Gatt might not know Rachael and Deckard have slept together)? The horn is clearly phallic. The unicorn dream is about freeiung fantasies or something.
On the other hand, Deckard and Holden sound and look similar. (The actor playing Holden was used to voice some of the trailers, and is easily mistaken for Ford's voice).
You know, you can still have the irony of Deckard being more alienated, conflicted and amoral than his prey without him literally turning into his prey - as Dick points out in his comments to Sammon, it ends up being what you do that defines your humanity in the end.
Okay, I really cannot face going through all the commentaries for now (maybe next year). I'm still in two minds whether to set the film on my sf module or not. But it really is, that's enough Blade Runner — Ed.
Edit: That's what you think - there's that review for SFS to write which will require you to read about the blasted thing.
Totals: 55 (Cinema: 19; DVD: 34; TV: 2)
I don't think I've seen The Director's Cat since its release around 1992 - the version which removed the voice-over that had been added after the previews, added a few music cues to replace the speech, added the bloody unicorn, and ended with the lift doors closing rather than the sailing away into the sunset. There were still the wrong number of replicants walking the streets (the much unlamented Mary the all American Mom) and so forth.
It became quickly apparent that this was more of a Warner Bros cut - Scott had been busy on 1492 Conquest of Paradise and had not been able to make the changes he wished, and the colour timing was not all it might have been. Around 2000 a new team came together and catalogued all of the surviving footage, although apparently none of the archivists knew any of the names of the characters so their work was a bit flawed. The project seemed to drift into apathy (legal stuff? ownership? indifference as to having another bloody version?) until the approaching 25th anniversary galvanised the project anew.
They've gone back to original negatives and sound sources and have updated the sound (to 5.1?) and cleaned it up, have cleaned up the images, and have passed it through a digital intermediate to (presumably) photoshop where they can. A number of the mistakes are solved - Harrison Ford's son redubbed his father's speech in the scene with the Egyptian (or rather they used his chin to resynchronise dialogue) and Joanne Cassidy's face has been superimposed on the stunt double in the death scene. They haven't superimposed heels on her boots, I suspect, nor have they changed the colour of Gatt's eyes (maybe he's a replicant...). The pigeon now flies up into a stormy sky rather than into the blue.
In other words, short of having your own 70mm print, this is the best looking version of the film you'll ever see, and it remains beautiful to look at (although the hairstyles look curiously eighties now). The removal of the voice-over gives the humans and replicants more of a sense of equal agency (and thus it's actually less interesting; being able to speak and narrate is partly about ownership of the story - and being shown scenes the narrator cannot see requires some thinking through). Deckard continues to have no more motivation than Being A Man Because If You're Not A Cop, You're Little People. We continue to relish the death of the female replicants more than the males (Zhora keeps going in slo-mo after more bullets than (insert questionable line about deaths on the Underground) and Pris screams and flails for a minute or so whilst Leon's head explodes and Roy just nods off).
So then, Ridley Didley now tells us we're stupid if we don't get the idea that Deckard is a replicant.
The facts are these: Gatt creates three origami figures, a chicken, a man with an erection and a unicorn. The chicken occurs when Deckard doesn't want the job, the erecion man when they leave Leon's apartment and Deckard may have the hots for Rachael and the unicorn in the lobby outside his apartment.
Deckard, in a reverie in front of his photos (which all look too Victorian and Edwardian to be his parents) and his paino, dreams of a unicorn. His eyes glow in one shot, just as all the robotic creatures and repliants' do at various stages of the point.
Deckard, on trying to escape with Rachael, interprets the unicorn to mean, Gatt has read my mind and now what it has been programmed with (like Deckard's recitation of the spider memory - he's telling Rachael about it even though she has never told anyone, so he knows the content of her memories). He realises that he is a replicant - how ironic. Killing replicants is a dirty job, you send replicants on dirty jobs, therefore Socrates was a Greek.
But. Deckard seems to be all too easily beaten up, needs to be rescued and isn't that smart. In fact he only manages to kill two replicants, both female and I think both shot in the back. It is clear that someone recognised as Deckard has worked for the police department for a number of years, and there's no sense that replicants are body doubles. I'm not sure Deckard's eyes glow in earlier cuts anymore than other humans do (and what about Gatt's eyes changing colour?).
Deckard reads the unicorn to mean, Gatt's been here before and had a chance to kill Rachael easily, but has chosen not to, and is letting me now I can flee. Aren't unicorns associated with virgins (Gatt might not know Rachael and Deckard have slept together)? The horn is clearly phallic. The unicorn dream is about freeiung fantasies or something.
On the other hand, Deckard and Holden sound and look similar. (The actor playing Holden was used to voice some of the trailers, and is easily mistaken for Ford's voice).
You know, you can still have the irony of Deckard being more alienated, conflicted and amoral than his prey without him literally turning into his prey - as Dick points out in his comments to Sammon, it ends up being what you do that defines your humanity in the end.
Okay, I really cannot face going through all the commentaries for now (maybe next year). I'm still in two minds whether to set the film on my sf module or not. But it really is, that's enough Blade Runner — Ed.
Edit: That's what you think - there's that review for SFS to write which will require you to read about the blasted thing.
Totals: 55 (Cinema: 19; DVD: 34; TV: 2)
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