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BrentonBlade Runner (1982 workprint) - Original Trailer & Deleted/Alternate Footage Included
October 15th 2008 00:40
Blade Runner (1982 workprint)
REPLICANT \rep'-li-cant\ n. See also ROBOT (antique): ANDROID (obsolete): NEXUS (generic): Synthetic human, with paraphysical capabilities, having skin/flesh culture. Also: Rep, skin job (slang): Off-world use: Combat, high risk industrial deepspace probe. On-world use prohibited. Specifications and quantities - information classified.
I first saw Blade Runner during its initial Australasian theatrical run back in December of 1982. I had just turned 14. Had I lived in Denver, United States I might have been one of the (now lucky) few that got to see the workprint cut of the movie which was shown in 70mm to preview audiences before its official release in June ’82. This was the version that caused great headaches for the producers when disgruntled audiences expecting to see Harrison Ford in more of a swashbuckling hero mode à la Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark had come out the previous year) were very disappointed in what they saw as an unpleasantly grim and overwhelming future about a loser cop who fails to come out on top, flailing around in a dark, impenetrable, ambiguous narrative.
Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard
Director Ridley Scott was rushed into delivering a “Director’s Cut” in 1991 which removed the dreary voiceover and optimistic ending, and inserted a brief moment of a unicorn running through a forest (seemingly lifted from Scott’s fantasy movie Legend) to give weight to the sub-text theory that detective Deckard (Harrison Ford) is actually a replicant himself.
Generally the "new" cut (basically the workprint tidied up) was well received by critics and audiences, but to add further fuel to the movie's cosmic fire, over the decade since its release it had garnered a huge and very dedicated cult following. The fans knew there was still more being withheld. Rumours of deleted scenes abound, different music, alternate takes. The rare workprint version became the elusive unicorn, something die-hard fans dreamt about. Anticipation built as the 20th anniversary of the movie approached, but the date came and went (due to legal wrangling).
Then finally, December last year, on the 25th anniversary of arguably the most visually influential and critically-polarised sf movie ever made, a deluxe edition of Blade Runner was released including Ridley Scott’s much anticipated Final Cut.
Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty
Blade Runner is my favourite film of all-time. I acknowledge that it’s flawed, but it’s such a magnificent rough diamond. Over the years I’ve seen the movie in all shapes and sizes; the original theatrical cut, then again (and again and again ...) on VHS, later the rarer, more violent International Version on laserdisc, then the Director’s Cut at the cinema (which I later bought on DVD), and rather memorably last December, and to coincide with the DVD deluxe set, a very special HD-digital projection of the Final Cut at the huge Orpheum cinema here in Sydney (which brought all the die-hard fans).
Sean Young as Rachael
The first major difference was the opening credit sequence where the name “Harrison” emerges above a horizontal red line and “Ford” emerges simultaneously below, the word “Blade” slices up, whilst “Runner” slices below. It has B-movie appeal. Then instead of the opening scrawl which accompanies all the other versions there’s a dictionary definition of what a replicant is (see top of post). Now this was very cool, and I much prefer it over the scrawl which I always had trouble with.
Darryl Hannah as Pris
The workprint uses some of the more graphic violence (which surfaced in the International Version and later in the Final Cut), such as Pris (Darryl Hannah) lifting Deckard up by the nostrils. In the opening scene where detective Holden puts the Voight-Kampff test on Leon there’s a lingering shot of Holden after he’s been shot lying sprawled over a table with a large smoking hole in his back. The scene where Deckard uses the Espa machine to enhance a photo uses different photographic footage; in fact in the way it’s been shot and edited it’s almost an entirely different scene. When rogue replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) confronts his maker Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel) he demands “I want more life, father!” In the theatrical releases and Director’s Cut he says “I want more life, fucker!” Scott re-inserted this important line in the Final Cut.
Gaff (Edward James Olmos) flies Deckard to his briefing
When Deckard enters the Bradbury building in the movie’s last quarter to confront Roy Batty the Vangelis music is no longer used (most likely Vangelis was still composing and had yet delivered), instead what is used sounds like stock Hollywood thriller music utilising an string orchestra. It pales against Vangelis’s electronic score something chronic, especially during Batty’s “tears in rain” speech, but it’s curious to watch the action set to a different soundscape and to realise a) just how important musical style is and b) just how amazing the Vangelis score is.
Tyrell Building, Los Angeles 2019
Overall the use of less music and the darker picture quality adds a spare beauty to the film; the inherent loneliness is accentuated, the melancholic tone is heightened, the oneiric quality is intensified. It’s an accidental gem that glitters like c-beams in the dark near the Tannhauser gate …
You play beautifully
All those moments will be lost, like tears in rain ... time to die
Here's a curious very early original theatrical trailer without Vangelis music and including the original title cards, which plays like a 3-minute compression of the entire movie:
Here's a ten-minute selection of the deleted/alternate scenes:
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Comment by James Rickard
unlucky_ fishermen.com
Angling Fish
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
Vangelis was one of my favorite composers even before the film came out. Bladerunner is his best sound track so far. Opera Savague is a very close second.
This cut looks very different and voice over dialogue needed to be rewritten.
I do recall one reviewer at the time bagging the movie because it deviated from the book too much.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I grew up with the original voiceover version and didn't mind it, but I prefer the spare quality of the intended version (Director's Cut and Final Cut). The voice-over which Deckard spouts at the end of the workprint version is pretty dreadful ... however some of the unused narration which features in the deleted and alternate scenes is okay, but only some.
The novel is quite different. Deckard is married and he takes the job so that he and his wife can finally afford a real pet, and not a replicant one. I feel it is time to re-read it, as the film's melancholy transfers quite nicely from the novel (actually more of a novella than a novel).
Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
A slow burner that leaves an impression.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
You know, you have me stumped on that one.
I think I have only read a few of his books. I lost a lot of interest in reading SF for many years and concentrated on reading real science books. It gets a bit hard when you read some pulp and you start screaming at the pages 'You Cannot do that because the first law of thermodynamics says you can't!'
However '...Electric Sheep' (Bladerunner) sticks in my mind.
Another one that I read in my teens that was like an ultramodern 1984 also sticks in my head.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Cass
Filmsi
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
so you watched the Dir's Cut, but not the Final Cut? Curious.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile