The year is 1982 and no one is worried about the implications of Dolly, the first cloned mammal, because Dolly is still nothing but a glimmer in some crazy Scottish researcher's eyes. But Ridley Scott is about to change that...or is he??From day one, the production of Blade Runner was plagued with problems. The script had been re-written enough times to cause Greenpeace demonstrations about the rain forest trees that were being cut to keep the writers supplied with paper. The various incarnations of the script had been praised or denounced by the author of the original novel so many times that if this script was a kid, it would have developed split personality disorder and would be hospitalized for life. The torturous, perfectionist attention to detail demanded by the director would often lead the cast and crew to reactions that probably resembled scenes from "300", with everyone literally fighting with everyone else (some of the crew would even come to lovingly call the movie "Blood Runner").
And those internal woes of the movie were not its only problems. It was released at the same time as Spielberg's "E.T." and a year after "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark", and the reason I'm mentioning this will become clear in a minute. Everyone knows that Spielberg is GOD in Hollywood (or Lord Xenu if you're a scientologist) and that E.T. is his secret minion of alien destruction. How could the bleak, gloomy, dystopic Blade Runner compete with the evil, money-making cuteness that was E.T.'s "phoooone hooooooome"? And how could anyone sell Mr. Indiana Han Solo Jones himself as a fallen-from-grace, morally challenged future cop in a movie with no clear-cut, black-and-white heroes or villains?These ar
e the exact same questions asked by the movie's executives at the time and we ended up with enough cuts of the movie to make an emo kid with a razor happy (and probably dead), long before George Lucas had discovered his obsessive-compulsive joy of re-editing and "enhancing" his older movies. The original cinema cut had a tacked on happy ending that made the whole dark atmosphere of the film pointless. Unsurprisingly, it didn't do very well at the box office. Then came a director's cut (originally not approved by the director (!)) that somewhat restored the original vision. And finally, in 2007, we got the Final Cut, which was what Scott had intended to show us in the first place (unless he has a Super-final-for-real-this-time-no-really-I-promise Cut of the movie up his sleeve which I don't know about).
e the exact same questions asked by the movie's executives at the time and we ended up with enough cuts of the movie to make an emo kid with a razor happy (and probably dead), long before George Lucas had discovered his obsessive-compulsive joy of re-editing and "enhancing" his older movies. The original cinema cut had a tacked on happy ending that made the whole dark atmosphere of the film pointless. Unsurprisingly, it didn't do very well at the box office. Then came a director's cut (originally not approved by the director (!)) that somewhat restored the original vision. And finally, in 2007, we got the Final Cut, which was what Scott had intended to show us in the first place (unless he has a Super-final-for-real-this-time-no-really-I-promise Cut of the movie up his sleeve which I don't know about).
This movie is no Terminator, you've been warned. It doesn't just graze the surface of the whole creator-creation / man-machine (or clones in this case, called "replicants" in the film) conundrum, the conundrum IS almost the whole movie. Through it, the movie tackles the fleeting nature of life. It also tackles the over-commercialization of everything and the ever-expanding, overreaching, powerful arm of corporations (a topic briefly touched upon in Scott's previous sci-fi epic, "Alien"). Yeah, it's deep. And even though I criticized the Matrix sequels for preaching, that is not the case here. This movie doesn't preach, it doesn't lecture, it just absorbs you into its atmosphere and story and let's you make up your own mind about its core philosophical questions.And boy, does this mo
vie have atmosphere! It has enough atmosphere to make 10 earth-sized planets inhabitable. The dark vision of the future is presented in such meticulous, awe-inspiring detail that it literally redefined what sci-fi looked like after its making. Think of dirty, neon-filled streets, flying cars, huge skyscrapers full of lights, immense flying advertisements and tell me how many movies you've seen those in over the years. This movie is the Daddy of them all. Humanity's dark, gritty, but still hi-tech future image had been born. I had the fortune of watching a high definition copy of the final cut recently, gloriously restored through what must have been an almost labour-of-love type effort to make it look and sound better and clearer than ever. I was blown away...again. I wanted to take the disc out of my player, marry it and make babies with it.
The amazing electronic music score by Vangelis, the deep story, the breathtaking visuals, the way-ahead-of-their-time concepts, they all combine to create what is one of the best sci-fi movies of all time and probably one of the best movies of all time in general. I, personally, will never get tired of revisiting the world of Blade Runner once in a while. Come with me for a visit (or be hunted as a renegade replicant!) below.________________________________
Movie info:- Year: 1982
- Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos and others
- "Blade Runner" on: IMDb (8.3/10), RT (94%); "Blade Runner" Wiki; Official Site
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Media:- Trailer (Youtube)
- Edward James Olmos speaks about Blade Runner (Youtube)
- Blade Runner Theme (Youtube)
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Downloads:File is 700MB MP4 (sorry about it being an mp4, but it looks really good), divided into 8 RAR archives, each is one Megaupload link. Decompress using WINRAR, watch with VLC player.
Remember, if you like it...BUY IT!!! (Before I and my Voight-Kampff replicant-scanning machine start liking you for a replicant)
i wanna see this movie again! :P
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