“It’s too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?”
That question posed by Gaff (Edward James Olmos) in the closing moments of the science fiction movie “Blade Runner” has encapsulated its exploration of humanity since the film’s original release in 1982.
Now, moviegoers have an opportunity to see the film like never before – as “Blade Runner (The Final Cut),” is showing at the Palm Theatre.
Disagreements between director Ridley Scott and other creative parties led to six versions of the film prior to the final cut, which was given a limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles on Oct. 5, 2007 and was released Dec. 18, 2007 in the U.S. as part of a five-disc box set.
Whereas past alterations dealt primarily with its plot, the final rendering reinforces the film by slightly tweaking the visionary intent of Scott’s 1992 revision. This version is also devoted to applying contemporary technology to ubiquitously maximize its appearance.
Unlike similar digital retrofits that overstepped their elementary purpose and interloped on the audience’s built-in relationship with the material, such as the dismaying additions to George Lucas’ “Star Wars” special editions, refurbishment throughout the 25th-anniversary composition of “Blade Runner” is deliberately interjected in opportune prudence that serves not to contaminate narrative, sequence and effect but to enhance them.
As in its previous forms, the experience begins with scrolling text explaining that early in the 21st century, the Tyrell Corporation devised robots almost entirely identical to humans, known as replicants, the latest series of which possessed strength, agility and, occasionally, intelligence superior to their human genetic designers.
Replicants, we learn, were deployed as dispensable slaves in the hazardous colonization of other planets and, following a murderous mutiny by a combat team comprised of the most recent, sophisticated models, were outlawed on Earth.
Special police squads, known as Blade Runner units, were given the task of pursuing and executing renegade replicants bold enough to return to their mother planet.
Soon after being introduced to a November 2019 setting of a hellish, metropolis-turned-megalopolis Los Angeles consumed in commercialism yet devoid of vivacity, we meet Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former Blade Runner known for his dependability.
He is coerced out of retirement to slay a handful of unprecedentedly lifelike replicants who’ve returned home with a relentless desire for prolonging their four-year life spans, and a lethal viciousness toward any who stand in their way.
From the onset of the opening volcanic, endless skyline to the glowing yellow irises inherent to replicants, the final cut bestows newfound illumination providing revelatory depth and intricacy to every frame.
Fans of Scott’s director’s cut are rewarded with the original, full-length extension of Deckard’s fleeting-yet-crucially-suggestive unicorn daydream that had to be re-inserted after the studio initially extracted it for being too abstract, which further butchered the overall work. It forced Ford to utter a slumbering, explanatory voice over culminating in a contrived, upbeat ending seemingly belonging to another story.
Interspersed during the segmented chimera is a close-up of a wide-eyed Deckard, darting to comprehend his thoughts; he grasps their critical implications in the film’s final seconds upon discovering a small piece of origami, presumably left for him by Gaff.
Some straightforward inclusions, such as depictions of wider crowds on smokier streets or eccentrically masked exotic dancers advertising a club where the femme-fatale replicant Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) – one of several exploited, abused women portrayed – works, vividly convey the world’s mechanically drowned soulfulness.
Other amendments correct lingering plot inconsistencies left by the film’s editing frenzy, such as Deckard’s supervisor alluding to another replicant we never saw.
More resourceful modifications include the superimposing of Ford’s son’s mouth over his own, lip-synching brief dialogue that had previously been out of sync, and the re-filmed face of Cassidy being digitally placed over that of stunt double Lee Pulford in a scene where Zhora falls through crashing glass.
When Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the leader of the band of replicants, is able to confront Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), he no longer demands, “I want more life, fucker.” What was perhaps lost in displaying Batty’s passion, however, is compensated by seamlessly replacing the last word with “father,” heightening the fascinating imagery of man meeting maker, several hundred stories above ground – and, ultimately, the restoration of the maker’s gorier demise, which was deleted in the original domestic theatrical release.
Finally removed is the glaringly incongruent background when Batty releases a dove in his final scene, a shot that was originally added on a Warner Brothers back lot in post-production, supplanted by an extrapolation of surrounding scenery.
Directly preceding that final alteration is the unchanged, final monologue given by a self-crucified Batty, whose onslaught isn’t so much to kill Deckard as it is to deliver him into a new existence of understanding that his prey was just as alive as him – if not more so.
“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?” Batty asks a near-death Deckard. “That’s what it is to be a slave.”
Batty’s confrontation echoes the terror of Rachael (Sean Young), a replicant who had earlier told him, “I’m not in the business. I am the business.”
A metaphor for all ostracized and persecuted, Deckard’s blank-stare epiphany in the face of Batty, coupled with his unforeseen love for Rachael – and of course, Gaff’s folded gift – led him to realize those whom he was hunting may not have been so different from, nor less human, than himself.
Due to its timeless inquiry of humanity, “Blade Runner,” which was at first panned by critics and overshadowed at the box office, developed a cult following in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
In 1993, it was chosen for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance, and in 2007 took a place on the American Film Institute’s list of the hundred greatest American movies ever made.
Named in 2007 by the Visual Effects Society as the second-most influential visual effects film of all time, it has been praised in that regard since receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration.
Today, in what ought to be its last incarnation, “Blade Runner” stands not so much simply a “movie” as a filmed coalescence of fine art, ranging from the literary (it was based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) to the musical (graced by the delicately entrancing synthesizer-driven score of Vangelis, of “Chariots of Fire” fame) to the architectural (prominently featuring The Bradbury Building and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House) to the painted (as Scott derived the very mood of the film from Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”).
Seeing the film in its truest form and revitalized on the big screen is enough of a thrill to make anyone feel alive.
“Blade Runner (The Final Cut)” shows at 817 Palm St. in San Luis Obispo at 9:15 p.m. weekdays, 1:30 and 9:15 p.m. Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Sunday.