from the brief discussion of bladerunner in the film quiz thread, chris:
I think there are four versions released (5, 4, 3 and 2 discs respectively). This was the only version that gave me the new cut (no doubt containing 17 seconds of new material) plus the old director’s cut. Truthfully, I just wanted ‘Bladerunner’ on DVD so I can throw out my old video version. I’ve always liked the movie (a lot) but I found myself teaching a bit of it this past semester, so I thought it would be useful to have it on DVD.
can someone explain to me why so many smart critics (and reynolds as well) slam this movie? i don’t think it is as good as i thought it was when i saw it as a teenager but does it really deserve to be reviled as it so often is, or just faintly praised? here, for instance, is stephen metcalf on the new dvd set, on slate. he has very positive things to say about the film’s stunning visuals and atmospherics, but the review is framed more in terms of the film’s mythos and is finally dismissive. okay, so there are some lame narrative moments–but isn’t this on many levels a visionary film that has had a gigantic impact on its genre?
Well, I’ll cop to ordering the two-disc set–only wanting the one ostensibly-best version of the film and the documentary (which I am keen to see). I slam it for two reasons, really. One, I’ve read the book, which I recall as really tricky and strange and wonderful, and I found the movie had captured–hell, exploded and invented–a world equal to the book, then had just the most portentous, ridiculous, reductive version of the book’s fun. (Much of this is me recalling the first experience of the film, soon after my first experience of Dick. Ahem. Insert punchlines here.) And, two, the movie kept getting touted as a classic by my friends, and I started saying that I thought it was dull, then they’d pound me that it was a classic, so my rhetoric grew increasingly bombastic. (I think the transformation really took hold when Legend came out, and I had Scott-loving friends who claimed that it was a great, visually stunning film, and I think it was either punch them in the face or slam Scott as overrated…) I still think it’s dull, but what I remember is the stunning look and tone… and that seduces me into watching it again, at which point I’m reminded of the dull…
I think the film influenced cinematic sci-fi, certainly. I think those who love literary science fiction are of mixed feelings about the film. I think Dick is more of an influence, and the visions of a blurred city, humanity, technology were more influentially captured in William Gibson’s fiction… so I think some get pissed at how B.R. skims over the surface of interesting generic tropes and development and then gets credit for them. Others are pleased that something other than Star Wars caught people’s attention.
I’m not sure I’d disagree with much that Reynolds says, not least because Netflix insists that we agree 89% of the time and I’d like to save the disagreements for the Steven Seagal oeuvre.
That said, I have watched BR countless times and I have never been bored. I love movies above all because film is a visual medium (otherwise I’d read books or go to plays), and I can’t think of a movie that creates so many lush visual tableaux. It may not entirely hang together but taken as a series of isolated scenes — the initial interrogation, Zhora smashing through glass windows repeatedly, Deckard examining the photograph, Batty visiting the eye-maker, J.F. Sebastian’s home, Pris’ death, Batty chasing Deckard — each one is memorable, and the look of the movie struck me as almost entirely new at the time.
And, while it may not do justice to Dick, the storyline about replicants wishing to be human, and the twist in the director’s cut that Deckard may be a replicant, still seems quite powerful. David Harvey, in ‘The Condition of Postmodernity’, has a nice chapter comparing BR and ‘Wings of Desire’ on the subject of the fractured meaning of human.
Perhaps it helps that I had no friends who insisted BR was a classic (no friends at all, but that’s another story).
SPOILER. I have read the latest director’s cut fully embraces the previously debatable notion that Deckard is a replicant (I swear Scott has gone firmly “on the record”). For what its worth, nobody in my circle thought the film was all that (most found it a disappointing follow up to Alien). Sure, it was a visual feast, but the narrative was nearly impenetrable and that noir-y voice over more annoying than edifying. I rewatched a version of the film a few years ago (for an interdisciplinary course on postmodern cultural products) and enjoyed it a bit more. Seems like this new cut has added more CGI effects to give the film even more pretty surfaces to look at; are there really any structural changes or even new scenes that clarify anything that hasn’t already been clarified. In other words, do I need to see this damn thing one more time?