The town is highly based on Tokyo.
Living in Japan for a while will make the idea of a neverending city very un-absurd, and rather make you wish that the US had a child-per-family limit. Ain’t no going back once your whole country is neverending city.
Rubbish.
Gibson, for one, claims to have developed the look and feel in *Neuromancer *independently, and was fearful of just this mistake being made. And since he was certainly writing other stuff in the same setting and genre before Blade Runner, I choose to believe him on this.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Blade Runner, but Scott plugged into the SF zeitgeist, he didn’t invent it.
I absolutely love this movie and would’ve bought the new set anyway, but have to give a hearty +1 here. I hadn’t seen the director’s cut - I had lived with the original on (gasp) VHS for way too long. My son was old enough and this thing came out so I bit. We watched the original U.S. theatrical, and then I told the story about the Director’s Cut (“there are bits of movie added here and there, and one important change happens at the end”). My ever-curious son tried to pry it out of me, leading to questions like “will it be obvious?”
Oy. So the only truly standout difference is a unicorn flash and the lack of the escape flight to nature - and no narration, which didn’t feel necessary even for my son. My son turns to me at the end and has the “hunh??” look on his face. As promised, I cough up the goods and tell him about Deckard. Again - “hunh??” So now I have to try to explain TWO things: what the thinking is behind the Deckard choice, and why it was presented so…cryptically.
It wasn’t worth the trouble - it was effective as it was.
I agree completely. There’s still a happy ending. Gaff’s unicorn is a message, he’s confirming what Deckard has begun to suspect. Gaff could collect on both of them and doesn’t, and we’re left to wonder why he gives Deckard and Rachael a chance to run. Maybe Gaff prefers a chase, maybe he wants Deckard out of the way, or maybe under the exterior he’s as beat down and tired of killing as Deckard is. Either way, we see them start to run and get a momentary insight into the agenda one of the more interesting minor characters in the movie. We never find out if they make it, and that’s how it should be.
Scott didn’t get rid of the happy ending, he got rid of the crappy ending.
Just as a completely off-the-wall reaction to seeing the latest version of Blade Runner, I found myself thinking as Deckard picks up the unicorn origami and turns to Rachel, the scene should now continue as follows:
Deckard: What’s this - a unicorn? How could he know about my dream?
Rachel: It’s because you’re a replicant. You were created just to eliminate other replicants who’ve escaped. You’ve served your purpose now and will have to be eliminated yourself. I’m actually a human being. I faked my responses on the Voigt-Kampf test.
And then she pulls out a gun and shoots him.
Yup. I’d prefer to judge artists by their work–not by what they say about their work 20 years later. On its original theater run, Bladerunner’s visuals knocked me out. And the film still knocks me out–although it reminds me that I really need a bigger TV!
Deckerd’s human/replicant status was questioned in Dick’s book. But–in most of Dick’s books–“reality” is a bit questionable.
Again, from the book & perhaps relevant background for the movie–there had been a very “minor” nuclear weapons exchange in the recent past. Hence the rarity of living animals. And a proliferation of genetic diseases–like the inventor’s progeria that kept him from going OffWorld. And the screwed up weather…
I’m pretty sure this is right, but Blade Runner preceeded Gibson’s Nueromancer by two years. I’d read (but am not finding a cite) that dystopian graphic novels were the inspiration for Scott’s work and for a lot of Cyberpunk as well.
I’ve never been to Japan, and I’m sure Tokyo feels like a neverending city, but the cities are so big and crowded because there’s isn’t much suitable land to build cities.
nah I didnt forget it, I just fail to see the point of actually showing them in a car zooming off into the wilderness on a road…
its classic Hollywood bullshit happy ending nonsense. just like I am legend, just like hundreds of movies with some stupid happy ending that should have ended in darkness and death. there is nothing about that end thats essential or even helpful to the movie.
as far as the question of Deckard being a replicant.
the unicorn dream is the obvious link, and wasnt present in the original release.
but look at how he lives, alone with tons of pictures, we see earlier in the film the same kind of behavior in Leon who collects pictures. its almost like they do it because they know humans do things like that. the pictures are important in the sense that they connect them to their memories. and you can clearly see Deckard looking though his own family pictures after looking through Leons. it struck me at the time that this was a message or at least a hint. Deckard could be a more elaborate version, similar to Rachel.
the problem with this is the time line. if Deckard is the latest line of replicant then why the hell is he the oldest one we see in the movie? there are 2 possibilities that I see, one the nexus 6 models are the latest to be released but the 7’s are still in testing and have been for some time. that or Deckard is shiny new with old memories.
I really dont by the second, and the first while more believable is still way more than you could possibly get from the film.
either way, its a great movie on so many levels I really dont see how you cant be amazed by it. but then again there are people who couldnt stay awake for 2001 if you paid them. once a movie moves to far beyond its time I think people have trouble understanding what the fuss is about. the fuss is about what the movies says in the time frame of when it was released.
in 2001 you have some amazing special effects with zero gravity and some pretty cool effects in other spots in the movie. now in 1967 before American was used to space travel and we were buried in film and great easy to do effects 2001 was groud breaking. now its just old.
I think I have rambled enough.
It’s always seemed pretty clear to me that Deckard is a replicant. His lack of “replicant strength” isn’t surprising if you understand that he’s not supposed to know he’s a replicant. He doesn’t need to physically overpower them. He needs to find them and shoot them.
Couple things that I’ve always been curious about that aren’t addressed in the movie:
The movie would be poorer if it were established that Deckard is a replicant. One of the themes of the movie is that the replicants are gaining their humanity, while the humans are losing it. It’s a much more interesting story to have Deckard as an emotionless human chasing down emotional replicants than to have an emotionless replicant chasing down other replicants.
Deckard as a human on the verge of losing his humanity but regaining it by his contact with various nonhuman replicants is an interesting character. An emotionless replicant is not an interesting character. Deckard is a human who might as well be a replicant, Roy and Rachel and Pris and Leon are replicants who might as well be humans. The only human who’s not a scumbag is Sebastian.
Unless Ridley Scott turned out to be M. Night Shyalaman.
Based purely on my inability to identify the object Gaff makes as a unicorn (I thought it was a giraffe :o ) I took the same meaning as you did.
I think this is exactly why I too have a fondness for the original.
I have to admit I’ve only read up to this point in the thread, but I am working my way through all five versions. I started with the Final Cut, then the original, under the impression this would provide the most contrast. I don’t miss the eye gouging scene, though it is hinted, with the blood on Tyrell’s face as Roy lets him fall.
Watching the original US release yesterday, I was finally struck by the different figures Gaff makes with his origami. When Capt. Bryant is ‘recruiting’ Deckard, Gaff makes a chicken. When they are in Leon’s apartment, he leaves a figure of a man. (It isn’t a big dick, it’s just a two legged origami can stand upright.) Then the Unicorn.
That’s unkind. Gaff’s not a scumbag, that we see. Or the Chinese Eye Designer. (I also noticed in the original, he’s talking happily to himself, before he notices Roy and Leon come in. Can anyone translate what he’s saying?)
I can see that. Check out a comic book title from around that period called ‘Mr. X’ It was started by Los Bros. Hernandez, then other artists took over. A speed freak architect trys to fix a city he designed that is driving people insane. “So much to do, so little time.”
I’m still out on if Deckard is a replicant or not. I’ve heard there’s something about the eyes that is another clue. That the replicant’s eyes flash yellow-green at times, and so do Deckard’s. I’ve looked close and haven’t seen it. I think Deckard has a sort of cat eye look at times. Sometimes I see Deckard’s eyes flash in that lenticular scene of Deckard pulling his pistol, sometimes not. And speaking of the special edition toys, don’t try to open the doors of the spinner car, you’ll just snap the rear view mirror off. Eris bless superglue.
I saw the original film version, and have a VHS copy somewhere. It’s one of my favorite films.
Back in the 1980s, neither I nor anyone I know ever even considered the possibility that Deckard was a replicant.
We all took the scene with the unicorn to solely be an indication that Gaff had been there, and that Deckard and Rachel needed to beat feet.
I viewed that scene much more literally. Deckard is looking through his own pictures and dealing with his emergent moral doubts about viewing his profession as being a killer and assassin, not merely “retiring” artificials. He’s looking at his pics, thinking “what makes us so different from them anyway, I’m human and not any better…drunk, lonely, poor…nothing to show for my life but memories…”, thinking about Rachel, etc. I don’t think at all that it was intended to imply that he may also be a replicant.
Who’s your source in Hollywood? As it happens, this scene will be in Ridley Scott’s Super-Duper Exclusive Director’s Cut, released in 2019. Yours for only $450! Order now.
I’m in the “Deckard was human all along, Scott’s just tryin’ to mess with us and make some more money” camp, but the film is just ambiguous enough that there are obviously points to be made on both sides. Deckard is more interesting as a flawed human being than as a custom-built killing machine, IMHO, and his relationship with Rachel is thus more fraught and poignant.
I saw the movie when it first came out and loved it. I religiously read Starlog magazine, which gave it extensive coverage at the time (I still remember some great articles on Syd Mead’s brilliant production design), and there was never the slightest suggestion that Deckard was or even might have been a replicant. I remember an interview with Harrison Ford awhile back in which he said he asked Scott point-blank during filming whether Deckard was a replicant, and Scott said no.
I like Ford’s voiceover for its noir-ish feel, and the “happy ending” has enough of an undercurrent of fear and uncertainty about the future that I think it works. IIRC, the mountain/forest footage at the very end was spare footage that Stanley Kubrick had shot for The Shining but never used. He gave it to Scott so that Scott could save costs (the movie was overbudget and late, IIRC).
Other than the smartass answer “Because then there wouldn’t have been a movie,” I wonder why the Tyrell Corp. didn’t make its replicants (other than Rachel, who was apparently unique) a distinctive color to set them apart from human beings, and to make them instantly recognizable when and if they came back, illegally, to Earth? Or give them some kind of special chemical signature that could be instantly detected?