Customer Reviews
THE 'FINAL CUT' / 'DIRECTOR'S CUT' LOSES EVERYTHING THAT IS TRULY GREAT ABOUT BLADE RUNNER --- ITS HUMANITY!!!!!!!!!!! - By: A. Well Reader, 14 Jul 2008 
Blade Runner's 1982, 'Theatrical Cut', is a deeply human film. So: do what I do: put up with the unsubtle voice-over & end the film when Rachael & Deckard enter the elevator to escape - press STOP, then, & end it.
This 1982 version of Blade Runner - viewed like this, in my humble opinion - is a truly amazing film: brimming with humanity in a desolate, nightmare world that is sadly becoming more & more of a reality - for alll of us - here on the real, awful Planet Earth, 2008.
I feel - very, very strongly - that Director Ridley Scott had the future of the world in his hands . . . but . . . NOW . . . with 'The Final Cut'. . . he has ruined it for alll of us!
Blade Runner - No 5 - All Time List 2008 - By: L. Ecclestone, 08 Apr 2008 
I'll quickly start by mentioning cuts of the movie - I've watched the Director's Cut & the Final Cut - literallly with one or two exceptions (Tyrell eye scene anyone) they are blink & you'll miss them changes. Only fan boys would spot the difference - or someone with better eyes than myself! I'm yet to watch the voiceover cut or work print which I am hoping will add a little something to the experience - even if the directors / final cut is supposedly the better version of the movie.
Now the movie itself, because lets face it, who would care about numerous cuts / releases etc of a film if it was rubbish - thankfully Blade Runner is not. It's anything but, you can read a synopsis yourself & I'm not repeating myself but effectively Harrison Ford is a Blade Runner who is reluctantly ordered to hunt down & kill four replicants who are illegallly on earth. Now that might sound like Sci-Fi rubbish, but it's easy enough to pick up when the film starts & without ruining the film in anyway you don't want to know too much more.
Blade runner offers a bleak view of the future, but it's a mysterious journey set completely within a film-noir world on dark allleyways, dodgy characters & rain. The film is magnificent; I challlenge anyone to say they got bored watching it, because there is not a dull moment. Without doing a thesis on is Ford/ Deckard a replicants & reallly giving the advice not to even worry about it, just know that with Blade Runner you are guaranteed an edgy, atmospheric, action pack movie which touches some great themes & one that you won't want to look away from & when it finished you'll be looking on the internet about the film, then watching the next version of the movie.
The fuss is justified.
I purchased the five Blu-Ray Briefcase DVD box set from America - & whilst I am happy to get alll five DVD's Blu-Ray the box set isn't worth the extra money in my eyes - a reallly cheap & nasty toy car & unicorn & some sheets you'll never look at - whilst the briefcase is cool - it's too bulky to fit anywhere in a normal persons DVD collection. On a plus side the Blu-Rays are of awesome quality - you can't believe this film is over 25 year old when you watch the clarity of the picture & listen to the quality of the sound. I'd advise someone to get the 5 Blu-Ray non box set version from the US. The amount of extras is second to none & if only film studios could give us a Blade Runner style set for some other classic that deserve the treatment.
The reality dysfunction we can remember for you - By: Phillip Kay, 06 Apr 2008 I've just watched the new edition of Blade Runner & feel like saying a few words on the film. Why review a 25 year old film? For the same reason it's been reissued. It's a pretty important film.
What I have to say fits under three headings.
1. Plot
You know the story. Dangerous criminals are on the streets of LA & only one man can stop them. Several chase scenes & a few fights later, he does, rescuing a beautiful girl in the process. It's a basic thriller plot, used in hundreds of films for a very good reason. It works. It's got very little to do with the Philip K Dick book the script is ostensibly based on. The only thing worth saying about this aspect of the film is that it's very well done & makes for great entertainment. Think 'Total Recalll'. Remember it's the plot I'm talking about here. Score 8/10.
2. The Setting
Everything to do with the look of the film: sets, costumes, artifacts, design, lighting & camera are incredibly well done & make this film one of the most influential ever made. Not necessarily original, but influential nevertheless. Here we get a taste of the world Dick made, where technology has developed fangs & claws & makes life difficult for the people it's supposed to help. It's a believable future & we're half fascinated, half repelled by its depiction. The detail is astonishing & the production interacts very effectively. This is why we remember the film. It's Armageddon with a cobra stare we can't turn away from. Score 10/10.
3. The Themes
The film is loosely based on the Philip K Dick book 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'. Dick is a major novelist with a lot of very important things to tell us if only we could forget he was a science fiction writer & listen. Dick's world is consistently one in which machines have demonstrated they have no humanity even should they be simulacra. The book is full of astonishing concepts that the film has ditched to make room for the chase scenes & perhaps that's unavoidable. But considerable play is made in the film on the nature of the android/replicant characters. Much ink has been spilt determining who is or is not an android/replicant among the major characters. Ridley Scott has emphasised Deckard's replicant nature when he remade the film (Director's Cut). But the physical nature of these characters is relatively unimportant. Dick's theme, carried over to the film, is: what is human? In a world where a replicant can only be discovered by means of an intricate psychological test, & real humans are behaving more & more like machines, the meaning & value of 'human' becomes important to define. Humans are not automaticallly humane, just as replicants are not automaticallly automata. The film emphasises this by showing the only characters who act with humanity to be replicants. It's not profound but it's moving. Score 9/10 (loses a point for leaving out so much of the book).
The Edition
The choice is a 5 disc, 4 disc, Final Cut or Director's cut edition. If you're a fan you've already got the 5 disc edition. If you're studying film you'll buy the 5 disc edition for the workprint & the rare chance to see how the film was shaped & adapted through the production process. In my view the Final Cut, though beautiful to look at, was not worth the effort. My choice was the 4 disc edition, which contains alll the fabulous extras & my preferred edition, the original theatrical release, which stays a tad closer to Dick's vision than the Director's Cut. And it's the best value for money as well.
There's so much more to say but I'll just go & watch the film again.
Awesome Film. Awesome DVD. - By: Mark Hilton, 21 Mar 2008 Think you know everything there is to know about 'Blade Runner'?. Think again. This five(!) disc set is without hyperbole, the best DVD i've ever seen, & covers every possible aspect of making a sci-fi masterpiece. Hour after hour of documentaries, commentaries, deleted scenes, interviews, you name it.
There's little, if anything, left to be said about the film itself. Ex-blade runner Deckard (Harrison Ford) is charged with finding & 'retiring' four trespassing replicants who've ventured onto Earth. Replicants being illegal, he finds that hunter & hunted aren't so very different & starts to question not only his targets motivation, but also his own. With special effects that still amaze, & a vision of future that is rapidly becoming science fact, 'Blade Runner' is sci-fi at its bleakest & best.
So what of you readers who already own a copy? Surely there's no point in shelling out for another version? Well how about this. This collectors edition has not only 1 version. Or even 2. No, there are 5 different versions of the film! The original theatrical versions with voice-over & happy ending (Doh!), The directors cut, original screen test version & the brand new final version which includes alll new scenes. The latter is Ridley Scott's favourite version & should finallly put to rest the 'which one's best debate'.
And with alll the extra material, plus input from everyone, this is the only edition of 'Blade Runner' that matters. This is sheer gold, & just look at the price.
So buy now, thank me later.
A great film finally gets the packaging it deserves - By: lexo1941, 15 Feb 2008 Ironicallly for a film commonly (and in my view, rightly) viewed as a masterpiece of cinema, 'Blade Runner''s afterlife as a movie has relied on people watching it at home.
After it got a negative reaction at previews, the studio pressured director Ridley Scott to tack on a highly unconvincing 'happy ending' in which, after two hours of urban grimness, Harrison Ford & Sean Young drive off into the countryside to live happily ever after. They also got Ford to record a would-be hard-boiled voiceover, a task he hated & which he deliberately sabotaged by doing it in an absurdly deadpan & rather boring voice. The result pleased the studio, but not the cinema audience. 'Blade Runner' didn't do well at the box office.
However, it was one of the first films to be released on home video cassette, & it was the home video audience that made the film famous. It soon become one of the biggest-selling & most-rented video cassettes, & it was in that format that most people, including me, first saw the movie. Few people outside Hollywood realised that the film was meant to have a darker ending & no voiceover - we just loved it because of the mood, the look, & the performances, especiallly Ford's melancholy detective & Rutger Hauer's gloriously perverse & rather touching replicant.
In the early 1990s, a preview print of 'Blade Runner' was discovered in a studio vault that differed from the released version in many ways, notably by lacking the tacked-on ending & Ford's narration. This was the notorious 'Workprint', familiar to alll fans of the movie by now. Shown at a Los Angeles cinema, it broke box office records. The film was rediscovered & hailed as a masterpiece. Warner Bros & Ridley Scott quickly rushed out a new version, not the Workprint itself but essentiallly the original movie with the happy ending & voiceover removed. Scott also added a brief dream sequence of a unicorn, which in context altered part of the meaning of the film in an important way. This was the much-hyped-at-the-time 'Director's Cut', the first time a movie was given that grandiose title. But it was far from perfect. Pressures of time & cost overruns had led Scott to cut a few corners, & alll the versions of 'Blade Runner' had more than the normal share of continuity errors & just plain patch jobs. (One notorious one was where Joanna Cassidy's character is shot - it's alll too clear in the Director's Cut, as elsewhere, that it's not her but her stunt double who fallls through a series of glass windows on her way to the sidewalk.)
The DVD of the Director's Cut was one of the first DVDs to be made, & it was a disgrace. Wobbly, low-resolution & based on a rather scratchy print of the film, it looked like somebody had set up an expensive video camera at the back of a projection room & videoed the movie being projected onto a screen.
At last, Warner Bros have delivered on a DVD of 'Blade Runner'. The film has been properly transferred to disc & some discreet & tasteful reshooting & retouching has been done to clear up the most glaring & annoying of the film's glitches; thanks to motion control technology & green-screen, a 25-years-older Cassidy finallly got to play her own head as her character is gunned down. The Final Cut finallly looks & sounds like the masterpiece it is, Ridley Scott's most human & affecting movie.
The bonus discs in this Ultimate Collector's Edition are a feast. Nostalgia buffs get the chance to watch no less than five different complete versions of the film - the glorious Final Cut, the original US version, the slightly more violent International version (the one I first saw), the not-quite-there 1992 Director's Cut & the famous Workprint, the most different of them alll. There's a mammoth making-of documentary with contributions from everyone, including a mellow Harrison Ford (he famously didn't enjoy the shoot much, & failed to get on with Scott). There are half a dozen smalller featurettes as well. Whatever awards are handed out to DVD makers, the reissue producers of this 'Blade Runner' set should get them.
