New Blade Runner: OMG Deckard is a [REDACTED]
The NYT's Fred Kaplan has a piece about the "new" Blade Runner today -- won't include any spoilers in this post, but the Director's Cut DVD reveals a "secret" about Harrison Ford's character. Snip:
“Here we are 25 years on,” Mr. Scott said, “and we’re seriously discussing the possibility of the end of this world by the end of the century. This is no longer science fiction.”Link. O!M!G! I CAN'T! WAIT@ TO SEE IT! (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)The special effects that produced this vision were amazing for their day. Created with miniature models, optics and double exposures, they seemed less artificial than many computer effects of a decade later. But like film stock, they faded with time.
For the new director’s cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched. The results look almost 3-D.
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I can't wait! I already pre-order the ultimate edition on DVD, HD-DVD and Blue-Ray just in case :-)
The chick in The Crying Game is really a man.
I mean, man, is that a good movie.
Now I feel like I'm from a parallel universe because I do recall seeing this movie where Decker finds a figure outside his door. I just didn't understand the significance of it.
On the other hand, I do also remember seeing a director's cut with a voice-over throughout the movie. I hated it. It felt like no one trusted me to understand what was going on. (But then, given my missing the significance of the figure.....)
(Marian)
Sean Young is so hot....... I don't care if she's a replicant or not...
I also consider this to be Harrison Ford's finest moment... when he's up on the ledge with Rutger Hauer just before Rutger passes on...
I definitely consider that Rutger Hauer's finest moment. He was an amazingly sympathetic bad guy. Intelligent, but ruthless. thought provoking.. really good stuff. It's amazing how bad he is in so many other movies.
I can't wait for this. I am combing my hair into a pompadour especially for the occasion.
I just read the article and .. the thing they make the biggest deal about (Unicorn Scene) was included to some extent in the 1990 Director's Cut. Silly people.
But... this might actually push me over the edge into an HD-DVD or BluRay player. Arrgh, I don't want to support any unholy alliances. Sigh.
Anyone know if the theatrical release will see a wider release than NY/LA?
Wow.
This is gonna be GOOD.
Finally, a reason to own a PS3!
after this comes out,
all those other versions
will be lost
like tears
in rain
Speaking of 3D Blade Runner, if anyone has 3D glasses they can check out my attempts to convert pairs of frames from Blade Runner (and a few other movies) into 3D anaglyph images, here.
Sweet! One of my all time favorite movies!
um ya thats right he was always a replicant, that was established in the previous director's cut years ago, both the unicorn dream and the origami unicorn were present, establishing that his dreams were artificial...
by the way, the voice over wasn't in the director's cut, it was in the regular release, required by nervous execs who thought audiences needed spoon feeding.
Actually, the origami shot always meant to me merely what the voice-over claimed - that the other cop had been there to kill Rachel, realized she was going to die anyway, and let her live, not realizing that she wasn't scheduled to die.
So I never imagined the connection between the shape of the origami figure and Deckard's memories.
I'd say the voice over was useful because some of the events in the movie - such as the origami - were ambiguous without some explanation. Only if you thought about them later would you be likely to grasp the significance. When I saw the later director's cut without the voice over, it was only my memory of the original that made this clear.
The original movie scene of Deckard entering his apartment with his gun drawn was generally meant to tease the audience into thinking that he was going to kill Rachel, as the last surviving replicant. That part of the scene was particularly suspenseful since you didn't know what his intent was until he woke her.
The scene with Rutger on the roof was probably one of the best soliloquies ever done.
I feel that it was made/implied pretty clearly in the book and the director's cut that Deckard is a replicant. Anywaays, I would love to see this ona big screen again (besides the one in my basement... :D)
Did anyone read the book the movie is based on??? You guys would understand a whole lot more about the movie if you read the book.
Decker was not a replicant and Han shot first.
Look, if Deckard was a replicant, then there are some serious plot holes in this film. All the conversations with Bryant, Tyrell, and others wouldn't make a lick of sense. And unlike the other replicants, we never see Decker's pupils dilated like the others. And this nonsense about a unicorn doesn't convince me of anything but Scott's own personal fetish for mythical beasts.
I do digital video for a living - one of the things that has bugged me about the standards we've settled on is that they have a very small range at lower light levels - once you take into account gamma correction (a historical artifact in NTSC/PAL to make the creation of vacuum tube TVs easier/cheaper) and the YUV color space used in modern mpeg2 there are very few pixel values in YUV space to represent dark colored pixels ...
You can see it in the original Blade Runner DVD - those dark scenes with smoke in them - the smoke pixelates horribly ....
Sadly we're stuck with this for quite a while and I expect that directors will start designing their productions with DVD in mind and those wonderfull dark/noir sorts of scenes will be a thing of the past - much as fashion changed when color TV came out - because of the way color is encoded in NTSC/PAL you get the 'crawlies' a color artifact when you see the high-bandwidth Y values generated by such things as hounds-tooth jackets and checked ties - as a result the people we see on TV wear solid colors and fashion has changed to match
I would prefer the voice over to be an option on the disc, it was my favorite version, it added to the noir feel, and Harrison's voice is one of the best around.
@Anon#1: Yes, it's an awesome movie, but I think I'm going to hold out for the 17-disc Definitive Real Ultimate Power Deluxe Edition, to be released in 2019. It's going to include two copies of all previous versions as well as a bloopers reel and never-before-seen footage of Harrison Ford's dressing room. We're going to settle this replicant business once and for all.
as far as I know this edition also comes with the 'theatrical release' AKA, voiceover original flavour. It also comes with a nice documentary which UK Channel 4 made around 2000. Hosted by Mark Kermode. It was on google video until recently, some nice interviews with the major players, production crew, the various writers, etc.
did you know that Rutger Hauer wrote that whole "tears in the rain part, right before they shot it?". Well that nugget is in the aforementioned doc.
As far as Deckard being a replicant ...I get the idea than no-one has read the book. That's kind of the point. This is P.K.D after all !
Hopefully this won't be like the previous director's cut, where they removed the 1940's flavored overdub by Deckard. Pretty much changed the entire character of the movie, and not for the better, either.
Still, it's worth getting and seeing in HD either way. I have both HD-DVD and Blueray on a 204" projection system, so bring the HD version on, baby.
@Fyngyrz
...Um...
The voiceovers were added after an unsuccessful screening, where the audience complained that they didn't understand. They were expecting Star Wars or Alien, but they got high-concept SF with art-house sensibilities. So the studio made Scott put in these VOs that completely obliterated that.
The VOs were reviled by director, actor, and fans.
When the Director's Cut came out, it was basically the original cut of the movie, sans the hastily-added VOs. Since that version came out, the movie's popularity has grown, since we're not in the late-70s/early 80s and people are more used to non-whizbang-space-opera SF.
I cannot wait to get this.
omg why is Deckard redacted? . . . i loved that guy . . . can we bring him back from rededactardation with a petition or some thing?
@Anon #18:
Here we have the director himself saying that Deckard was a replicant; that he always was intended to be. The message in the original film was altered by the VO, the omission of the unicorn dream, and the added happy ending.
What wouldn't make sense? Why would there be "plot holes"? If you think about it, everything still makes sense, and makes even more sense in some cases. Like Rachael, He doesn't KNOW he's a replicant. He may begin to suspect it, but not until finding the unicorn at the final scene does he KNOW. It's the "aha" moment, and the theatrical release took it away.
"Mr. Deckard, have you ever tried that test on yourself?"
Also, we DO see Deckard's retina flash briefly in the kitchen scene. More real than human, we like to say.
Errr, more "human than human."
@Angstrom (#22):
Is Deckard a skin-job in Do Androids Dream? I always knew that he was in the movie, but I wasn't sure if that had tainted my perception of the book (I read it after I'd seen Blade Runner).
It seemed a lot more ambiguous in PKD's novel; there wasn't the blatant UNICORN! moment, although there was something about the frog/toad Deckard finds at the end that's always made me think he was an andy.
It's been a while since I read it, though...
Yes, the unicorn dream and the origami were in the original director's cut.
Forget about the Nexus stuff, what got me about the film is the cops brought Deckard out of retirement because he was supposedly an expert - they needed "the old bladerunner magic" - and then spent five minutes explaining to him what a replicant is.
Some F'ing expert.
Yeah, and in the movie Legend, Tom Cruise has a dream of Harrison Ford picking up the tin foil unicorn and then wakes up to realise he's a scientologist.
I don't think there's any question that Scott always intended Deckard to be a replicant in the movie version. I have issues with people claiming it's "perfectly clear" that this is the case in the book, however. It's been some years since I read it, admittedly, but I don't remember anything conclusive from the book pointing to Deckard being manufactured. Could someone point me to some actual evidence from the text?
For an updated, genetic-engineering-based take on the same basic idea of using one superhuman-type to chase down others, check out Richard K. Morgan's latest novel Thirteen (U.K. title: The Black Man). It's got some flaws, but it's still a really interesting read.
I always felt the possibility of Deckard being a replicant was pretty high but many people I knew just wouldn't believe it for a second.
It's interesting because alot of the fan art that was uploaded to the official "inspiring the future" contest really hints at the possibilities of Deckard actually being a replicant as well, and some of the art is just absolutely amazing, I loved reading the literature as well. Check out www.bladerunnercontest.com , The contest is in its voting stages right now so don't forget to vote on some of the art as well.
I've read the book twice, (and most of other of PKD's books) but don't recall any hints of Deckard being a replicant.
The teling of stories from an android's point of view was not something PKD particularly indulged in, he seemed to write more from a human's point of view, desperately enmeshed in a high-tech psychedelic nightmare.
I suppose the final scene with the artifical toad could be taken as a hint, but to me it felt like another one of PKD's unhappy endings, where the anti-hero finally gives in and buys into the illusion so as to maintain some semblance of sanity.