Slate's Bizbox
the dilettante: Reading and lounging and watching.

Blade Runner: The Complete Ultimate Visionary Final Cut Collector's Edition Is Here!How will its fans defend it now?

By Stephen Metcalf
Posted Thursday, Dec. 20, 2007, at 7:46 AM ET
Five-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner premiered in June 1982. It was Harrison Ford's first picture since Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Scott's first since Alien. Reviews, however, were overwhelmingly negative ("A film that has neither strong characters nor a strong story," wrote Janet Maslin in the New York Times; "It forces passivity on you," Pauline Kael tsked in The New Yorker), and audiences were baffled, sometimes even hostile. Moreover, a lovable bit of merchandise had landed in theaters only two weeks earlier. Scott's brackish rain had no chance against Spielberg's amber goo-glow; and as E.T. began its ascent into universal consciousness, Blade Runner sank with barely a ripple. 

When I first saw Scott's strange brew, a mix of sci-fi, noir, and metaphysics, in 1982, it failed to clear the lowest hurdle for anything that aspires to seriousness: The audience laughed. (For a movie without a single joke, this is no small problem.) But Blade Runner's reputation has seen a complete rehab job since then: It is the 97th best film of all time, according to the American Film Institute, and the Guardian has called it the best science-fiction film ever made. Straighten your face, here comes the king: Blade Runner now enters the room with all the pomp due a full-blown cinematic masterpiece. "Together in One Visionary 4-Disc Box Set" one can now own not only Scott's "Final Cut," but "Three Complete Archival Versions." Need more? Then buy the "Five-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition" in collectible "Deckard Briefcase" packaging.

For those whose memory has lapsed, Blade Runner tells two parallel stories. In the first, a small band of bio-engineered humanoids, called "replicants," escape their "off-world" bondage and return to Earth in search of their designers, in an attempt to lengthen their lifespans, which have been set at four years. In the second, a cop named Rick Deckard (played by Ford) tries to hunt them down and kill them. (At the beginning of the movie, Deckard has recently quit the force, where he was a "blade runner," a bounty hunter authorized to "retire" replicants, but he is strong-armed out of retirement.)

The humanoids are godly; beautiful, amoral, utterly without pity. The humans, meanwhile, are portraits of sallow, creepy-crawly compromise: emotionally stunted, cynical, two-faced. "More human than human," crowed the corporation that designed the replicants. The film pushes the unintended irony of the slogan to its maximum conclusion. Replicants love and die with auroral intensity; we humans are the walking dead.

The prevailing meme—that over time, scales fell from prejudicial eyes, and Blade Runner's true value as an extraordinary act of filmmaking bravado was recognized—is appealing, but also incomplete. It may not have flattered the times, but in one sense Blade Runner benefited, and benefited enormously, from them. Blade Runner is among the first movies—if not the first—whose fortunes revived in the new channels of "ancillary distribution." This is no accident. The movie's unalloyed virtue, admired even at the time of its release, is an assaultive and wildly original production design, a mix of that rain, nuzzling gouts of smoke, and an eternally shifting kaleidoscope of artificial lights—all of it suggestive of a richly dystopic society and a wretchedly fatigued planet Earth. If nothing else, Blade Runner is mesmerizing when caught in pieces; it murmurs beautifully in the background. Unloved on the big screen, Blade Runner found its perfect medium in VCRs and cable TV—in the fragmented, ambient multiplatform afterlife that has become, over the past 20 or so years, the common stuff of movies.

VIEW AS SINGLE PAGE
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Stephen Metcalf is Slate's critic at large. He is working on a book about the 1980s.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Remarks from the Fray:

I don't know how Mr. Metcalf and the echoes of several other critics can claim that the movie is "underplotted." You even agree the movie is Nietzschean, so how does the plot not mirror existentialism? The ambiguous story arch is spiked with violence and still reaches its emotional goal of asking you to question your own existence- of what it means to be human and the fruitless quest for immortality. Batty's death and final gesture is one of the most beautiful, iconic scenes in cinematic history. The power of that scene and the movie itself is partly owed to the acting. The replicants have to seem "opaque," or one-dimensional because the plot's intension is to appear predicated on a dualistic (both moral and Cartesian) theme which is then shattered in the final minutes with Batty's swan song.

--SatoriThroughAllegory

(To reply, click here.)

I love arguments about aesthetics, as it is so prone to dressed up ad hominem arguments. Just to summarize how it plays out in this Metcalf piece:

Because the author's wife laughed at Roy Batty's death monologue, her opinion beats the American Film Institute. We (the readers) should understand that his wife is showing refreshing honesty as a "normal" person. The inference is that the American Film Institute and anyone else who find Blade Runner to be a great film (either by aesthetics or by its cultural importance) is either a "fanboy" or a "stuffed shirt" or both.

Why are ad hominem arguments so weak? Rather than explain, I will demonstrate:

Metcalf, your wife's oafing gaffaw at Roy Batty's death monologue is a perfect example of the expression "pearls before swine." One would not expect a beautiful film like Blade Runner to be appreciated by your ugly ignorant wife. Also, you dress funny and your breath smells. Nah-Nah Nana Nah.

--Cranky1000

(To reply, click here.)

The fact that people are still writing and talking about Blade Runner 25 years after its release is the ultimate testament to its power as a film. Ordinary People and Chariots of Fire may have won the Oscars around that time, but those films are largely forgotten now, while Blade Runner is still very much a part of the public consciousness.

Much of the criticism of Blade Runner misses the point entirely. The much-derided narration by Deckard was supposed to give it a film-noirish quality. It was intended to evoke the black-and-white detective movies in which the hard-boiled gumshoe, speaking in a laconic tone (like Deckard) offers his running commentary on the story he is relating. I thought it succeeded brilliantly. I was actually sorry that the narration was removed from the Director's Cut.

Yes, the original ending was stupid. Not because it was a "Happy Ending" but because the idea that Tyrell had created Rachael with "no expiration date" was internally inconsistent. It was contradicted earlier in the film.

But it's preposterous to think that the reason for the poor initial critical and popular reception was because of the lame original ending. The simple fact is that public and the critics missed the boat on this one. They were wrong. This was a much better film than it was originally given credit for. Fortunately, people started to recognize the power and beauty of the film on subsequent viewings. The "rehabilitation" of this film isn't due to any PR jobs, or subsequently released versions. As the writer of this piece points out, this is still largely the same film that was panned and dismissed 25 years ago. The only real difference is that its audience has become more sophisticated.

The writer errs, however, when he suggests that the subsequent versions of Blade Runner prove that Deckard is a replicant. It does not. It merely leaves open that possibility. The fact that Deckard has been having dreams of unicorns could be coincidental to the fact that Gaff has left an origami unicorn at his apartment, or it could be that Gaff knowns about the unicorn dreams because Deckard is a replicant. The movie leaves open either possibility because the dominant theme of the film is that as human beings, we are defined by our experiences, memories, and emotions, not by our physical makeup. Deckard may never know if he's a "human" or if he's a "replicant", but ultimately it doesn't matter. For all intents and purposes, he's human, as is Rachael.

--CaLawyer

(To reply, click here.)

As many of the previous comments state, Blade Runner was influential on many following sci-fi books and movies in establishing the moody look and feeling. (Then again, so was Scott's earlier movie, Alien, which has a somewhat similar gritty atmosphere, something that bucked the largely slick and antiseptic sci-fi look that dominated at that time.)

But "atmosphere" is about all Blade Runner had going for it. The plot and characterization *were* terribly weak; I guess atmosphere and visuals are Scott's strong point.

Slate opened up a can of worms when it criticized a sci-fi genre film, though. Many genre fans are so desperate to have their favored genre be made into a major movie that they simply have lower standards for the film. Any sci-fi is pretty good sci-fi, as long as it adheres to the limits and expectations of what we call sci-fi.

God have mercy on Slate if they next review the book Lord of the Rings and find it has baggy plotting, weak characterization, and is about 4 times longer than it needs to be...

--jokerx

(To reply, click here.)

(12/20)

Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Let the Oil Deals Flow
Raad Alkadiri | Congress should not interfere in the oil industry's contract negotiations with the Iraqi government.