For a movie that is now firmly established as a science-fiction masterwork, it must be remembered that it took seven versions and a couple decades for Ridley Scott to finally deliver "Blade Runner" as he intended. Indeed, it was only in 2007 that the movie, first released in 1982, finally got ‘The Final Cut’ version both the filmmaker and fans have been waiting for. At the time, ‘The Final Cut’ played festivals in Venice and New York, and screened theatrically around the world before hitting home video in the must-own set that includes all the iterations of the movie you could want. Ridley Scott‘s movie deserves to be seen on the big screen, and with the sequel now underway, there’s no better time. A new trailer has arrived for "Blade Runner: The Final Cut."
"I want more life, father,” Rutger Hauer‘s Batty tells Tyrell in this version, a change from "I want more life, fucker," which if I recall rankled some fans back in the day. And there are numerous other tweaks in ‘The Final Cut,’ but perhaps most significant is a longer unicorn dream sequence which cements the idea that Deckard is replicant.
"That’s the whole point of Gaff, the guy who makes origami and leaves little matchstick figures around," Scott told Wired in 2007. "He doesn’t like Deckard, and we don’t really know why. If you take for granted for a moment that, let’s say, Deckard is a Nexus 7, he probably has an unknown life span and therefore is starting to get awfully human. Gaff, at the very end, leaves an origami, which is a piece of silver paper you might find in a cigarette packet, and it’s a unicorn. Now, the unicorn in Deckard’s daydream tells me that Deckard wouldn’t normally talk about such a thing to anyone. If Gaff knew about that, it’s Gaff’s message to say, ‘I’ve read your file, mate.’ That relates to Deckard’s first speech to Rachael when he says, ‘That’s not your imagination, that’s Tyrell’s niece’s daydream.’ And he describes a little spider on a bush outside the window. The spider is an implanted piece of imagination. And therefore Deckard, too, has imagination and even history implanted in his head."
It will be interesting to see how Harrison Ford factors into the sequel given this information, and that the followup is apparently set decades after the original. But we have some ideas about What ‘Blade Runner 2’ Can Learn From Successful Sci-Fi Sequels.
"Blade Runner: The Final Cut" arrives in U.K. cinemas on April 3rd. No word yet on if we’ll get re-release screenings stateside, but fingers crossed.