Comments on: Blade Runner: The Final Final Cut for Xmas

By: Sam Parsons

Sam Parsons — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:08:17 +0000

In the original ending, a human watches as a robot recognizes that conscious life is the most precious of all and chooses to spare the human life that he was just about to end. Given this recognition, the human returns to the female robot and attempts to take her to safety; thus, recognizing the importance of her life. This is a pretty powerful way of saying that these robots had attained human consciousness and life.

If the ending is altered so that our hero is now a robot, you have exactly the same equation except that the human has been removed. In this ending, our hero, the robot policeman unaware that he is a robot, becomes aware of the preciousness of human life. OK, so, that adds what to the story?

By: Ed Driscoll » Stardust Memories

Ed Driscoll » Stardust Memories — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:09:18 +0000

[...] period in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Hollywood routinely churned out sci-fi potboilers, might I suggest… Filed under: Hollywood, Interrupted, Oh, That Liberal [...]

By: Ed Driscoll » Meanwhile, Back at the Tyrell Corporation…

Ed Driscoll » Meanwhile, Back at the Tyrell Corporation… — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:48:08 +0000

[...] links to a pretty nifty video that seamlessly dissolves between location shots from the movie Blade Runner, and how they look today in real-life Los Angeles (or as close to real-life as Los Angeles ever [...]

By: Ed Driscoll » Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sexbots?

Ed Driscoll » Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sexbots? — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:01:22 +0000

[...] of classic science fiction movies ahead of their time, “the sexbots are coming!” Filed under: Hollywood, Interrupted, [...]

By: raphael

raphael — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:58:38 +0000

I saw it when it was released in ’82 when I was a teenager who was fascinated by SciFi (and even by StarWars). In the Baltimore press it got great reviews so I went to see it with much anticipation.

Two things I remember about it:

#1: My Mother falling asleep 20 minutes into the film.

#2: The plot made no sense as presented, there seemed to have been scenes placed in the movie without the needed information background.

Last time I watched it I just made it through more than my Mother did.

sometimes Mother does know best

By: AST

AST — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:05:07 +0000

Funny, it never occurred to me that Deckard might himself be a replicant. That would ruin the whole story for me, which was about the dilemma of these artificial people and the reality of their emotions, including fear and hope. I never saw the ending as a happy one, since neither Deckard nor Rachael knew how long her life span was. Her situation, like that of Roy Batty and the others, is tragic, and it begs the question of how real “natural” humanity really is.

Philip K. Dick had a gift for confronting such unnerving questions about existence. His novel focuses on a world in which real animals were virtually impossible to distinguish from artificial ones and extremely rare and valuable. The Voight-Comp test is designed to discover inhuman responses to scenarios that are Un-PC in a world where PETA has re-educated everyone.

The film never loses its poignancy for me, mostly because of the acting of Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford’s reluctant hard-boiled policeman. There, but for the grace of God or the stem cell researchers, go we all.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 04:23:39 +0000

The Matrix is basically a repackaging (or ripoff, depending on your point of view) of Phil Dick’s novel, Ubik. Phil Dick, of course, also wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, from which Blade Runner was based. So, it’s not surprising you would see The Matrix as a successor to Blade Runner.

By: ibid

ibid — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:25:48 +0000

The first time I saw it in 1982 I was high on something or other and thought at the time how cool it was, fast forward some twenty years of detoxed mindset I tried watching it again; it was so boring I couldn’t make it past the twenty minutes.

I guess some things need mind-altering before they can be taken at face value.

By: Sheva

Sheva — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:30:26 +0000

Seems like there is more uncovered by looking at the people behind the look of the film than the reissue itself. Perhaps that’s the point.

However, I am most interested in seeing this in HD-DVD on my big screen. The JVC RS1 will be doing all of its resolving power in the look and feel of the film.

By: dougf

dougf — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:21:26 +0000

Umm, well as respects to to the cultural and cimematic elites who found the ‘original’ ending to be just to ‘happy’ to endure, I liked it.

And it remains my favorite of all the various ‘editions’ of this film. Maybe I just was never watching the same flic. I was never very confused about the story and all the ‘little continuity errors went and still go completely unnoticed.

It is the original film that is the popular edition I believe not the subsequent ‘improvements’. But at least this is supposedly the FINAL FINAL effort.

Frankly Scott could have stopped after the 1 and most everybody whould have been quite content. Saved a lot of editing costs as well. But then I guess they could not have issued a 5 film collectors editon.

Five variants of the same basic film. Golly you really have to be a HUGE FAN to shell out for this do you not ? Either that or simply not ‘well’ in some fundamental sense.

Kind of sad that the best film of 2007 was made decades ago.