‘It’s Not Genocide, It’s Retirement’
Blade Runner (1982) is extraordinary on every level of any story or film against which I can conceive to compare it.
I loved it the first time and the second time and the third and the fourth.
I didn’t love it in 1992 when the director’s cut was released or in 2007 when The Final Cut was released. It dragged. It lost whatever the original film had which gave it energy and propelled it.
I can see how both of the revisions are more pure in the realisation of the film which Ridley Scott set out to make from the script in 1981-1982. Obviously, they are more faithful to what he intended to make originally.
I don’t think those changes make a better film. In fact, until I saw it last night for the first time in its original form since 1992, I had forgotten that I use to be in love with this film.
The result, as released in cinemas (or theaters) in 1982 is a towering achievement of writing, setting, science-fiction, photography, music, design, futuristic invention, make up, editing, effects, narrative and mise en scène.
I’ve written five or six pages in the last 24-hours about the film which originally captured my attention and my imagination which I spent two hours revising just now.
