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Blade Runner 2

Allyn Gibson said:
I'm excited -- Paul Sammon's Future Noir is being reissued in September, updated to cover The Final Cut. It's also supposed to have a new interview with Rutger Hauer, a 2007 Harrison Ford interview, and a chapter on Blade Runner 2049. I wonder if he'll also cover the K.W. Jeter novels and BOOM!'s DADOES? comic books. I've treasured the original 1996 (or was it 1995?) edition, and i'll be nice to have a book that brings the Blade Runner story up to date. That's the book to have if you've ever wanted to know everything there is to know about the making of Blade Runner.
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Wow, I'm surprised I haven't heard of this book before, especially considering how big of a Blade Runner fan I am. Sounds like it complements Dangerous Days very nicely.

Is the new edition listed on Amazon yet? The only editions I'm finding are the '96 and '97 editions.
 
Ah, thank you! For some reason it's not listed on the author's page on Amazon and when I searched both the title and author, it kept searching "Salmon" for some reason.
 
jaime said:
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.)
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I understood all of this perfectly fine without the narration, I thought most of it was pretty obvious just from the context. It's pretty clear from the way Deckard was picked up and his conversation in the police station that he wasn't on the force any more, and Gaff is pretty clear a cop or another Blade Runner.
(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.
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I've only seen the cuts without the narration and I've never had any trouble following the story. Sure, there might be a few little details that are filled in by the narration, but none of them were necessary to follow the plot.
 
JD said:
I've only seen the cuts without the narration and I've never had any trouble following the story. Sure, there might be a few little details that are filled in by the narration, but none of them were necessary to follow the plot.
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By the time I finally saw a version without narration, it had been at least a decade (probably) since I'd seen the version with narration, so I doubt I remembered many specifics. And as I mentioned earlier, I didn't understand the ending until I saw it without narration. The "explanation" imposed by the narration changed its whole meaning and made the story as a whole less coherent.
 
JD said:
I understood all of this perfectly fine without the narration, I thought most of it was pretty obvious just from the context. It's pretty clear from the way Deckard was picked up and his conversation in the police station that he wasn't on the force any more, and Gaff is pretty clear a cop or another Blade Runner.
I've only seen the cuts without the narration and I've never had any trouble following the story. Sure, there might be a few little details that are filled in by the narration, but none of them were necessary to follow the plot.
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Gaff, as shown in the final cut, could have been sent to get a tardy Deckard from his lunch break.
 
Tosk said:
Only if the viewer refuses to pay attention.
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Deckard is waiting for food.
Deckard gets food.
Deckard is interrupted from his lunch, and 'arrested' to take him to meet Bryant where he is given his assignment. Gaff then acts as Deckards driver and quasi partner.
There are no visual clues and almost no dialogue to suggest any of the stuff we know is there... gaffs ambition, Deckards retirement, none of it. Cityspeak becomes Hollywood mosh mash.
 
Tosk said:
Then you admit there is some.
Scratch "given" and change it to forced back into active duty.
"I don't work here any more. Give it to Holden." "I was quit when I came in here. I'm twice as quit now."
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That would be the some dialogue. But it's not much. And it doesn't come until two scenes after Deckards arrest. (Btw sorry if these posts come out as short and bad tempered....the text box literally slows with each character I write. Or crashes. This took at least half a minute longer than it should.) it also is vague.
 
I believe the reason the studio added the narration in the first place was because they believed the film would be too confusing without it, as is often the case (see also Dark City, where the added exposition at the beginning basically ruined the suspense by giving away the mystery in the first minute). Studios tend to have little faith in the ability of their audiences to pay attention and figure things out. Some films work better if you have to work at them rather than having the answers spoon-fed to you -- especially when the spoon-feeding gets the answers wrong, as in Blade Runner, or gives them away up front, as in Dark City.
 
Christopher said:
I believe the reason the studio added the narration in the first place was because they believed the film would be too confusing without it...
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Except that the narration was always a part of Blade Runner's design. It evolved during the production, three different versions of it were recorded, and the version that was used was the third version that no one particularly liked, but some narration was always meant to be there. Ryan Britt at Den of Geek:

The great voiceover debate is a perfect synecdoche for debunking nearly all discussions about Blade Runner. Before I read Sammon's Future Noir, I believed the facts concerning Harrison Ford's sleepy narration were cut-and-dry. Simply, that director Ridley Scott was forced by the studio to slap on the voiceover in order to make the movie more comprehensible to an average moviegoer. Broadly, this is true-ish. But as Sammon reveals "…it was Scott who pressed for the narration in the first place.” Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher corroborates this in the book, saying, "Scott was after the feel of a '40s detective thriller, so he liked the idea of using this film noir device."
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I don't expect Blade Runner 2049 to have a Ryan Gosling voiceover, but if it did I'd be thrilled, and if it doesn't then maybe the Blu-Ray can have an alternate audio track with one. :)[/url]
 
Allyn Gibson said:
Except that the narration was always a part of Blade Runner's design.
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Technically, it wasn't always a part of it. The script did not feature a voice over until the draft that came after Ridley signed on.

Lots of things get put in or taken out of a film as it gets refined. Just turns out that this time it took nearly ten years for it to get taken out. ;)
 
Well, whatever the reason for the voiceover's existence, the fact remains that Harrison Ford is terrible at voiceover narration. It's not just here -- I've heard him narrate in equally stilted tones elsewhere, though I don't recall where. It's just not something he does well.
 
jaime said:
The original is the uncut version in this case.
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Sure, the ending is. But the whole replicant/Decker part might not be.

Allyn Gibson said:
I'm honestly not sure. I was working on marketing copy for it at work yesterday.

Here's the product page for it on HarperCollins' website. It doesn't have the cover, which I have seen.

There's an ISBN there; let's see what happens when I plug it into Amazon...

And here's the Amazon page.
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There is actually a more recent edition that came out. I think it was in 2007 when the final cut was released. It had extra material also on the newer cut. Looking forward to the update.
 
Christopher said:
Well, whatever the reason for the voiceover's existence, the fact remains that Harrison Ford is terrible at voiceover narration. It's not just here -- I've heard him narrate in equally stilted tones elsewhere, though I don't recall where. It's just not something he does well.
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Actually the problem is, the narration itself was badly written. There's only so much you can do with shitty dialogue.
 
Did the revised Future Noir from a few years back get published in North America? I thought it was a UK thing.

Looking forward to this new edition, anyway. No doubt there will be some other Blade Runner-related books popping up in the next few months.
 
jaime said:
Deckard is waiting for food.
Deckard gets food.
Deckard is interrupted from his lunch, and 'arrested' to take him to meet Bryant where he is given his assignment. Gaff then acts as Deckards driver and quasi partner.
There are no visual clues and almost no dialogue to suggest any of the stuff we know is there... gaffs ambition, Deckards retirement, none of it. Cityspeak becomes Hollywood mosh mash.
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I still understood all of that fine without the narration. Everything we need is pretty easy to figure out from the context. The only thing I'm not sure about was "Gaff's ambition", but not knowing that didn't seem to have any kind of negative effect for me.
So Ridley Scott was hired to direct Blade Runner?
I had assumed it was his movie from start to finish.
 
JD said:
So Ridley Scott was hired to direct Blade Runner?
I had assumed it was his movie from start to finish.
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Honestly, I doubt it would've been as good if it had been. Scott's filmography has been hit-and-miss -- arguably more miss than hit. Apparently the quality of his films depends a lot on whether he has a good script to start with -- although there was that notorious case of his Robin Hood movie where he was given a script everyone said was fantastic and innovative (basically heroic Sheriff of Nottingham hunting the terrorist Robin Hood) and tossed it out in favor of a dull, generic version of the legend.

(Muscle memory of a Star Trek writer -- I almost typed "Scotty's filmography.")
 
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