Actually, to be fair, they still make narrative sense, but the Deckard as Replicant reading doesnt. Most of their narrative sense (or a chunk of it) comes from the voice over version already being a thing though.
Blade Runner 2
- Thread starter WarpFactorZ
- Start date
Actually, to be fair, they still make narrative sense, but the Deckard as Replicant reading doesnt. Most of their narrative sense (or a chunk of it) comes from the voice over version already being a thing though.
The original is the uncut version in this case.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, it's how some people choose to interpret the movie as opposed to the movie itself. So not a problem.
Examples?
I just watched the Final Cut a couple weeks ago, and made perfect narrative sense to me. I will confess I did ask for a bit of clarification here afterwards, but that was all me not the movie.
As long as Deckard is human...no it doesn't so much.
I hated the theatrical cut when I first saw it, in large part because the narration was so terrible. When I finally saw a version without the narration, the movie worked enormously better for me. Part of it was that the narration completely distorted the meaning of the ending and kept me from realizing what it really meant --
namely, that Batty was not the villain after all, and Deckard had been on the wrong side the whole time. The voiceover dumbed that down by having Deckard dismiss Batty's rescue of him as just a meaningless aberration in the behavior of a murderer, rather than a transformative revelation.
While that is sort of true, Roy is also still a murderer (Sebastian at a bare minimum.)
It blows that off? That seems like a weird way to treat a fairly significant moment like that.
To be fair, they had run out of time and money for an establishing shot..all of that ending was shot for BR. It's no worse than the unicorn for certain.
When is Zhora's tattoo "enhanced"? ...and how does that aid the narrative?
What work?
How does that matter? He was, or wasn't, or has false memories that he does...how does the verbal reference to her make the narrative make more sense?
The newspaper bit is shorter in the Final Cut than it is in the theatrical, but even so...the whole movie has a fairly languid pace.
But not the one it ended up with.
Harrison was famously annoyed that his detective never did any detecting. Zhoras tattoo was almost invisible in the earlier cuts. Deckard does come over as working more in the FC.
The marriage is just a detail, but it ties in with everything else around his character, some of which is now missing (Deckard had already left the force etc...something which I am not sure is now in FC at all.) I don't say it makes the narrative make more sense, but it is something only really apparent in the original cuts.
BRs pace is pretty standard for its time period and style of film....long sections of silence obviously waiting for something, even the flyby sequence is sort of changed...it actually puts the city in more prominence, but I think it's fifty fifty whether that's as intended.
It got through a few different attempts at the VO, there's so much myth and legend around that its ridiculous...but much of it comes out of a 'Ridley is God' mindset that ignores other aspects of making a film, including the fact it's production pre-existed his involvement. Looking at Alien it's quite clear Ridley likes to form a film in the edit suite and sometimes has to cheat a little to make that work (Lambert turning into Brett for her death. )
The fact is, an 'escape the city' was scripted and storyboarded, and a version of that was shot and in the film at release. A voiceover was planned from practically day one, and a version of that was in the film. Yes, Ridley was off the film for running over time and budget, yes the producers stepped in, but they had a right to and ultimately put out the film that had its underground popularity for many years.... the dislike for the 'happy ending' in general, and the Deckarep stuff sometimes just feels like marketing flim flam from the early 90s after the workprint discovery. Hipster BR almost xD don't forget even the unicorn wasn't footage for BR, so worrying about a few aerial shots of some trees taken from a bajillion feet of Kubrick outtakes seems disingenuous. (As to its new poster child, the origami unicorn...well, that ignores its original symbolism, and Ridleys 'I've read your file mate' makes no sense...because Rachael's memories weren't in a police file. Tyrell told Deckard about them.)
Oh...and don't forget Roy's soliloquy is improv from Hauer.
The original is a film with greater meaning, and the ending is part of that.
In what way?
So you implied, but I'm asking when/where. As far as I know, the tattoo is only different in a single shot, and that's because they replaced the double with Joanna Cassidy in the ESPER sequence.
It is.
If you're no longer claiming that the narrative makes less sense without the voice over, I'll drop it. That's all I was really asking about originally.
It does make less sense. On just the on screen evidence....who is gaff? Why is he there? Why can Deckard say things like 'i was quit when I came in here...etc' to someone who appears to be his boss? (There's no implication Deckard is anything but an employee...the VO version makes him into someone who was already out of the system but directionless.)
(I had a longer post but the site crashed safari abloodygain. )
Seriously...try and look at the later cuts with none of the detail you only know cos of the earlier cut.