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THE ESSENTIAL BLADE RUNNER
By BILL FLORENCE
Much has been said over the past 25 years about Sir Ridley Scott’s dissatisfaction with certain elements of BLADE RUNNER, the seminal 1982 SF-noir film that many consider to be the director’s magnum opus.
The voiceover by Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) and a tacked-on happy ending—both added at the insistence of studio executives—were particularly distasteful to Scott.
Today, though, as Warner Bros. prepares to release the director’s new, definitive version as BLADE RUNNER: Ridley Scott’s 2007 Final Cut in selected theaters October 5 (and then on DVD December 18th as part of a five-disc 25th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition), Scott discusses the film’s history with more equanimity.
“I always liked the film at the time,” maintains Scott,.“It’s true that I didn’t like the [studio’s] ending and the voiceover. None of us did. But [aside from deleting those], if I were making BLADE RUNNER today, there is nothing I would do differently.”
Nothing substantive, at least. Scott says The Final Cut is primarily a technical update, with improved sound, a cleaner transfer and some special FX fixes. Unlike the ’92 “Director’s Cut,” this time no thematic or narrative changes have been made.
“We resurrected it technically, so it’s back to what it should be, soundwise and visually,” Scott explains. “Almost two generations of movie audiences haven’t seen this film the way it should be seen. If you think you’ve seen BLADE RUNNER, you haven’t—not until you see this new print. It’s as if I shot the movie last week.”
One of the most interesting fixes in The Final Cut involved a reshoot that required actress Joanna Cassidy to return to action as the Replicant Zhora. (Shortly after the reshoot, Cassidy reported on her website that she still fit in the character’s original costume.)
In that scene, Zhora plunges through a pane of glass after being fatally shot by Deckard.
“The original special effects throughout the film were pretty damn good,” Scott declares, “but we did repair and improve certain ones, like where Zhora runs through the glass. At the time, we didn’t want to risk injury to Joanna, because even though it was a sheet of sugar glass, that can still cut you. So I used a stunt lady for the middle bit of that sequence. The match wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as it should have been. For Final Cut, we were able to repair that by shooting Joanna against a green screen and putting her into the shot. She still looks great!”
Were any of the other cast members asked back to shoot new footage? “Just Joanna,” Scott notes. “Although the others were recalled for interviews.”
Additionally, the filmmakers removed cables from a Spinner that were visible in earlier prints. “The Spinner was held by a crane that brought it around the corner,” Scott notes. “We did everything by hand in those days. Now, you do it digitally.”
Fans have speculated that the new release might include extended scenes, but Scott says that isn’t the case—except for a couple of gory moments deemed too graphic for U.S. audiences in 1982.
On the other hand, some scenes were slightly shortened rather than extended—a procedure necessitated by the removal of Deckard’s narration.
“Sometimes the voiceover required me to leave space to fit it all in,” he observes. “By taking the voiceover out, I was left with some longer shots than I wanted. For that reason, we did some trimming here and there.”
“Back when I made ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER, I was enthused about the genre... and I was always searching for more [SF projects]. The danger with science fiction is that, whilst you can do anything with it, ‘anything goes’ is not really what makes good material. You have to be selective. You have to draw up your own rulebook for your particular story, and you have to stick to that.
Instead, there has been an abundance of indulgence. We’re starving for good SF yarns. I’m always looking for science fiction material.”
In fact, Scott considered making a BLADE RUNNER sequel for years. “I thought about that all the time,” he remarks. “But the powers-that-be didn’t really want to do it. I don’t know whether that will change now, but clearly there’s a big digital market for BLADE RUNNER, so we’ll see.
The smart thing to do is to test the film as if it were made this year. We made it 25 years ago, so it’s now free—it paid for itself long ago. If the studio puts some money into the marketing, we may find we have a big surprise.”
If the necessary backing for a sequel were to materialize, would Ridley Scott still like to direct it?
“Of course!” he replies.
Read the full interview in STARLOG #359
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AUTHOR OF THIS MESSAGE
Corsair
MESSAGE TIMESTAMP
09 october 2007, 16:20:52
AUTHOR'S IP LOGGED
127.0.0.1
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