Blade Runner (1982)

Director: Ridley Scott

Oh hi, fancy seeing me here… Anyway, long time since I last watched this, and even longer since I watched this version… there being so many versions of this film, of course, that part of the fun of watching it on TV tonight was wondering exactly which one we’d get. Lo, it was the actual original cut from 1982 with Ford’s infamous voiceover, which I’ve not seen since probably the late 80s… Back in the 90s when I was doing film studies at UNSW we watched it in class once, i.e. the 1992 “director’s cut” that wasn’t really, and the lecturer asked if any of us had seen both versions. I was the only one who had, so she asked which of them I preferred, and I said neither, and the ensuing gasp of horror from my classmates was something to hear; I half expected someone to burn me as a heretic. Still, ask me a question, run the risk of getting an honest answer; I didn’t think either version could be called “better” than the other, cos frankly I didn’t really like either. It did nothing much for me in either form (I’ve not seen Scott’s proper director’s cut) and I never really understood why people thought so highly of it; I mean, it was perfectly adequate and technically accomplished but not that much more.

I last saw it about a decade ago thanks to my erstwhile radio colleague Evan when I saw the 1992 version at his place, and I think I liked it for the first time pretty much… but I didn’t love it, and on rewatching the original version tonight I still don’t. I’ll obviously concede its visual splendour (if nothing else, seeing it in a proper widescreen version only reminds me yet again how inadequate pan-and-scan VHS editions of films like this were back in the pre-digital dark ages), cos I’m not that stupid, and it’s an excellent illustration of Isaac Asimov’s theory that science fiction is less a genre unto itself than a flavour you apply to other genres; basically Blade Runner is really an old-style film noir tarted up with androids and other “futuristic” details. I’m actually less offended by Ford’s voiceover than most people are, cos that’s just another thing noir does. I still don’t love it, though. It’s perfectly good, eminently watchable and well-made (though with hindsight the unicorn business is just even more obscurely handled than in the director’s cut), all of that. And it still feels kind of cold and empty and it still doesn’t fully connect with me and I still don’t entirely understand why it’s supposed to be one of the greatest films of all time.