Blade Runner at 25, Why the F/X Still Matter

mattnyc99 writes "Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's dark vision of the future that changed the future of filmmaking and still stands up today, argues Adam Savage of The MythBusters (and the F/X crews of The Matrix and Star Wars). Between the "lived-in science fiction," pre-CGI master models, futuristic cityscapes and tricked-out cars, don't you agree? And after we got the first official glimpse of him from Indiana Jones 4 this weekend, isn't Harrison Ford still the man?"

didn't know what a steier .222 looked like, found

[Anonymous Coward]

http://props.steinschneider.com/blade_runner/bldru nbl.htm [steinschneider.com]

Re:Special edition DVD?

[edawstwin]

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=36328 [scifi.com]

"Blade Runner: Final Cut will arrive in 2007 for a limited 25th-anniversary theatrical run, followed by a special-edition DVD with the three previous versions offered as alternate viewing."

Re:Special edition DVD?

[edgrale]

You can find more information on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. (Fall 2007)

Re:Special edition DVD?

[Qhue]

There is a trailer for it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fAm7qOY7Vg [youtube.com] it was aired on the American Film Institute's top 100 movies special last week (where Blade Runner was added to the list as well) Apparently they are considering a re-release in theaters as a way to help recoup the costs of the reshooting they did earlier this year.

Printable version

[refitman]

Link to printable [popularmechanics.com] version without 4 pages of ads.

Re:Maybe?

[chris_mahan]

There are no androids in BR. Only replicants.

Re:But Is Deckard A Replicant? Or Not?

[way2slo]

Many moons ago.... Scott gave us the answer and we posted it here:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/09/205821 7 [slashdot.org]

Re:But Is Deckard A Replicant? Or Not?

[GodfatherofSoul]

I just watched this again a few weeks ago. A lot more things I noticed after hearing that Deckard was rumored to be a replicant. You left out a lot of FOR arguments:

* Deckard was an older, presumably more reliable, model.
* When the sergeant tells Deckard that replicants have a life expectancy of 4 years, he looks at him and apologizes.
* The unicorn dread that Deckard has. The cop makes an origami unicorn as well. How the heck did he know what he was dreaming? A little too coincidental to me.
* There's a scene in his apartment where Deckard has that weird glare in his eyes like you see with other replicants.

Maybe I'm too young - I didn't find BR special

[SpecialAgentXXX]

Sure, I guess way back in the day when Blade Runner came it, it must have been visually exciting to watch. But as a younger person, I only saw it for the first time last year. Personally, I find most of today's modern CGI movies to be the same or more interesting than Blade Runner.

Do other younger /.'ers feel the same way? The only sci-fi movie that I can think of that I enjoyed from that pre-CGI era was Star Wars and Star Trek 2.

Re:i love blade runner

[elrous0]

Batty's assertion of his own humanity at the end is still one of my favorite science fiction scenes of all time. It's so subtle and simple, yet so powerful. Rarely do you see so much meaning condensed into just a few lines (and kudos to the great Rutger Hauer for his performance).

There is a lot of good "grown-up" science fiction in movies out there for those willing to look for it. I would add movies like "12 Monkeys" and "Primer" (rare serious looks at the ramifications of time travel) as personal favorites, as well as (of course) "2001: A Space Odyssey," one of the few science fiction films to treat alien/human (or is it God/human?) contact in any serious way. "Gattaca" was also good, but a bit heavy-handed for my tastes. A lot of people hated "The Fountain," but I thought it was an interesting meditation on human mortality.

Re:Some things stand up, some don't

[hachete]

Ridley Scott's vision of Los Angeles always seemed amazingly futuristic and innovative to me until I went to live in Taiwan.

Ridley Scott went to Art College in Middlesborough, which has the huge ICI chemical plants on it's doorstep. That's his starting point. The inclusion of a large Asian population seems in retrospect almost visionary.

Found it...

[haplo21112]

Original Article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/825641.st m [bbc.co.uk]

Slashdot Story Pointing to article:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/09/205821 7 [slashdot.org]

Re:I've always kind of wished

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask and you shall receive... [thinkgeek.com]

Less than 12 parsecs

[Anonymous Coward]

This was expained in one of the Han Solo Trilogy books, about a young Solo working his way up the Hutt Syndicate.
The Kessel Run is close to the Maw, a collection of black holes, that is between Kessel, a prison/spice production planet, and Nar Shadda, the smugglers moon orbiting the Hutt homeworld. Because of the gravitational pull of the Maw, smuggler ships that pass between Kessel and Nar Shadda have to skirt around the black holes to avoid the event horizons (even if it would take infinitely long to fall in). Faster ships can run closer, shortening their time and distance.

Re:I've always kind of wished

[deprecated]

you can buy them at ThinkGeek

One of the reason for the amazing sets

[bitrex]

There was a PBS documentary on the other day (the name of which unfortunately escapes me) about the production design of various classic films. Apparently one of the reasons the street scenes in Blade Runner were so incredibly detailed is that during the early stages of filming, the screen actors guild in L.A. went on strike for 8 weeks or so. The only folks still able to come into work and that had anything to do with no actors around were the set-building crew and production designers, and left to their own devices they went nuts. Apparently "Ridleyville" (as the main street set was jokingly referred to) ended up one of the most intricately detailed in movie history by the time the actors came back to restart shooting.

Sweet jesus on a fricken' pogo stick

[spun]

Mods like Contact? WTF? Are you ALL on crack? IT SUCKED ASS! It wasn't just bad, it was dreadful. The kind of people that liked it are the kind of Sci-Fi dilettantes that liked The Matrix or Cocoon. Posers.

Waste your damn mod points modding this troll, it's my honest opinion. I don't give a rat's ass what someone dumb enough to like Contact thinks anyway.

Because you saw the inferior Director's Cut

[Mal Reynolds]

I'd almost guarantee what you saw was inferior and hastily remixed, 1992 "Director's Cut".

The director's cut is the only version shown on TV and is the only version to ever be made available on DVD.

I and many others find the original theatrically released version of Blade Runner to be a far superior film. The differences between the two versions are massive. Substantive changes are present in nearly half the scenes of the movie, including the ending.

Other than the huge shift in the ending, the key difference between the two cuts is the absence of the detective noir style voice-overs. All of Harrison Ford's voice overs were removed from the director's cut. Some claim the voice overs were put in over Ridley Scott's objections, but evidence at the time of filming strongly contradicts this. (see the excellent Paul Sammon book "Future Noir - The making of Blade Runner" for the specifics)

Plainly put, the voice overs give the movie a far different feel and do a far better job of explaining the environment in which the film takes place. Had I not seen the theatrical cut, I would have found the director's cut to be quite vague.

Do yourself a favor, search the bittorrent sites for the original theatrical cut. Or wait for the October release of the 25 year anniversary package. It's been reported that an HD version of the theatrical cut will be one of the included versions.

The original theatrical version is simply a much better film.

Re:i love blade runner

[ben_white]

Check out this npr story [npr.org] that ran today on "Day to Day" (Windows Media or Real, podcast available here [npr.org]).

Very interesting take on a comparison between the LA of Bladerunner and the current LA.

Re:I want the voice over

[Shrubbman]

It appears to be included but to me the voice over was key to the movie, it let us in his head.

I couldn't agree more.

I couldn't DIS-agree more. While I certainly like the idea of having the voiceovers, the actual execution I personally find to be the most grating piece of voiceover work in the history of cinema. It just grates on me to no end whenever I hear Ford droning on in that bored humdrum monotone. Neither Ford or Ridley Scott wanted the voiceover to begin with, the studio forced their hands to put it in (some say Ford tried his absolute worst when recording it to try to force them to leave it out), and it IS NOT in the "Final Cut" version. Both the US and International theatrical cuts will be in the special edition box set, so yes you will get your voiceover in the special edition box set, just don't get you're hopes up for it being in the new "Final Cut" version that'll be in theaters this year.